Stephen J Fallon
Despite a three week build up before Queen Elizabeth II’s visit, it all lasted less than an hour and proved to be an almost perfect stop for Queen Elizabeth on her way back to Britain via Cork, with the weat appeared her temporarily co-operating and the locals seperated from her behind a ‘ring of steel’. Arriving at exactly 10.45am on Friday 20 May , her scarlet helicopter decorated with the royal coat of arms touched down minutes after a Defence forces’ helicopter. A small group of press photographers and journalists stood ready on a platfrom near the landing site in Hore Abbey, located just outside of Cashel, County Tipperary. Despite the presence of anyone but the select few, veted by the Garda Siochana, the Queen was usshered quickly into her motorcade and driven a mere 600 metres around the bottom of the Rock of Cashel, along a recently tidied and pruned country road, past the local heritage centre and into the middle of the Rock. All reporters inside the Rock had been taken to Cork that morning to have equipment scanned, one local journalist questioned the necessity of the 200 kilometre round trip he made that morning, instead of the usual three hundred metre walk from his home to the Rock. The local Community school choir sang to the Queen inside the crumbling medieval Catherdal, as she enjoyed the panoramic view of the countryside from atop the Rock during the convenient window in the poor weather.
For those that didnt watcth the event on television, very little of interest occured at the Rock, aside from the Queen actually being there. Queen Elizabeth was greeted by a a number of local counsellors and politicians. Most interestingly was the decision by the Sinn Fein Mayor of Cashel, Michael ‘Mickey’ Browne to meet the Queen. This act appears as an obvious ‘breaking of ranks’ from the party’s unofficial stance leading up to and during this trip so far regarding the Queen. This act appears at odds with Sinn Fein’s policy during this visit that had up until then seen it decline invites and avoid events where it would meet the Queen both in Ireland and abroad. Indeed this mere meeting of the Sinn Fein Mayor drew criticism from his superiors who considered it as an official endorsement, in stark contrast to the unwelcoming behaviour outisde the Sinn Fein party store on West Parnell Square, Dublin on Tuesday that saw anti-British music blared onto the streets and large Garda presence greeted with open contempt and ridicule. Immediately outside the Rock, the former Archbishops’s home that looks out on to Rock was the source of a minor security threat as a Sky News’ reporter that had taken the iniative to broadcast from an upstairs balcony was taken live, off-air by Special Branch officers for looking suspicious.
Preperations leading up to the Queen’s arrival in Cashel saw similar steps taken as in Dublin in the days before here arrival, with the town’s gutters, man-holes and drains checked, sealed and marked. Both Special Branch and local Garda checked the fields around the Rock on a quotidian basis, right up until a few minutes before the Queen’s arrival. However, unlike Dublin, the Garda force was supplemented by an additional contingent from The Defence forces. Two full battalions (approximately 600 soldiers) arrived on the southern and western sides of Cashel on Thursday morning setting scores of Observation Posts in fields, ditches and hedgerows around the town. I was informed by the three soldiers billeted in my own garden that an unknown number of the Irish Special forces were in the vicinity and appoximately eighty British, SAS soldiers were also “around”, but would remain out of sight, while they had been told to merely maintain a semi-covert posture, sleeping in camoflaged postitions, but not in Foxholes. Most poignantly for Cashel, this visit witnessed the combat-ready deployment of hundreds of soldiers amongst a sizable civilian populace on Irish soil for more than twenty four hours, surely a remarkable enough occurance in its own right and one that has drawn scant comment from any other news media.
With powerful portable lights in place on the Rock and the army in place around the town, Cashel came a virtual to a halt on Thursday evening at 6pm. With roads within a 7 kilometre radious closed to non-essential traffic and approach roads to the rock sealed to all but those living within the inner-cordon except by foot. The morning of the visit saw the few properties that the Queen would pass sealed off and the owners told not to leave their property under any circumstances. Indeed as in Dublin, the Gardai and Army appeared to conduct all operations under the modus operandi that anyone save the veted few were to be considered a viable threat. Using my grandfather’s old binoculars, my brother and I saw ourselves consantly being watched by Garda snipers on the Rock and inside the Cathedral (all of whom were obviously not shown by RTÉ’s coverage and shots of the event) as we moved freely around our garden, drawing glares from Special branch officers outside our gate.
With the town effectively sealed off from the outside world since the previous evening, only a mere twenty protesters appeared at the check-points with in the town. Just before noon, the Queen flew out heading for a private visit to Coolmore Stud in Fethard, some ten miles away, where her family have had a business interests for decades. Despite her brief trip, Cashel Town councillor Eoghan Lawrence (Fine Gael) said that he considered the Royal visit “a great success”. By three o’clock in the afternoon, Army units, Garda snipers and the majority of materiél had been cleared away as the responsibility for the Queen became that of Cork city Garda and army Units, however a number of uniformed Garda units remained around the town for the remainder of the evening. A number of the soldiers informed me that from Cashel they were going to Portlaoise, preparing to set up on Sunday in advance of President Barack Obama’s even more fleeting visit to Moneygall, just across the border from Tipperary in County Offally on the afternoon of Monday 23 May.
