Francis Brolly

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Francis Brolly

MLA
Incumbent
Assumed office 2003
Constituency	East Londonderry

Born	Dungiven
Political party	Sinn Féin
Spouse	Anne Brolly
Website	Sinn Féin Website

Francie Brolly MLA is a nationalist politician in Northern Ireland and a retired teacher. He was first elected in 2003 and was re-elected in 2007 to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin member for East Londonderry. His son his all-Ireland winning Derry Gaelic football player, Joe Brolly. Brolly was the Sinn Féin Mayor of Limavady between 2003 and 2004, the council in which he was elected to in 2001. He is the spokesperson for Sinn Féin on Culture, Arts and Leisure, due to his background with the Irish language, Music and the Gaelic Athletic Association.

Brolly is also a gifted lyricist and musician, most famously the author of the The H-Block Song:

H-Block Song

I am a proud young Irishman. In Ulster's hills my life began; A happy boy through green fields ran; I kept God's and man's laws. But when my age was barely ten My country's wrongs were told again. By tens of thousands marching men And my heart stirred to the cause.

So I'll wear no convict's uniform Nor meekly serve my time That Britain might brand lreland's fight Eight hundred years of crime.

I learned of centuries of strife, Of cruel laws, injustice rife; I saw now in my own young life The fruits of foreign sway: Protestors threatened, tortured, maimed, Divisions nurtured, passions flamed, Outrage provoked, right's cause defamed; That is the conqueror's way.

Descended from proud Connacht clan, Concannon served cruel Britain's plan; Man' s inhumanity to man Had spawned a trusty slave. No strangers are these bolts and locks, No new design these dark H-Blocks, Black Cromwell lives while Mason stalks; The bully taunts the brave.

Does Britain need a thousand years Of protest, riot, death and tears, Or will this past decade of fears Of eighty decades spell An end to Ireland's agony, New hope for human dignity; And will the last obscenity Be this grim H-Block cell?