There were bands, banners, marching steps, militaristic imagery and fighting talk galore but in the end the only discord at the Dublin 1981 Hunger Strikes 20th anniversary commemoration rally was over how many attended.
The organisers, the Dublin 1981 Committee, said 10,000. Guest speaker, Sinn FΘin MP Michelle Gildernew, raised a whoop from the crowd when she suggested 20,000. The garda superintendent on duty wasn't one to rain on anyone's parade - the elements took care of that - but his highest estimate was just over 3,000.
But 3,000 was more than enough to make the rally one of the biggest gatherings seen in Dublin city centre for years. It cleared the main thoroughfares of traffic for several hours, catching ill-prepared shoppers unawares and panicking motorists trying to get to Lansdowne Road for the 6 p.m. kick-off against Cyprus.
It was undoubtedly an emotional occasion for the relatives of the 12 hunger strikers who died - 12 because the organisers remembered not only the 10 who died in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh from May to August 1981 but also Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, who died in prison in Britain in the 1970s.
But the rally was otherwise a good-natured reunion of republicans of various hues from all over Ireland and Britain along with assorted activists from an array of left-wing organisations.
A man from the Kieran Doherty Memorial Fund was selling raffle tickets for a framed mirror etched with a picture of gunmen firing a volley over Doherty's coffin.
Another collected signatures on postcards calling for solidarity with the Turkish hunger strikers. Yet another promoted a sponsored hill-walk in Glendalough next month in aid of the "Colombia 3".
The parade moved off from the Garden of Remembrance led by a silent row of people holding portraits of the dead. Behind them came six young people in blankets and bare feet, followed by children, each carrying a large cardboard "H" painted with the name of a hunger striker and his picture.
There were several roars of "IRA" as the procession passed by the GPO before carrying on to Leinster House and back to the GPO where traditional musicians played laments.
Addressing the crowd, Ms Gildernew said that but for their sacrifice, those who died would be home by now, their sentences having run their course or their early release granted under the Good Friday Agreement.
With an apparent knack for making a crowd of 3,000 feel seven times its size, she raised loud cheers when she declared: "We are off our knees and we are never going back."