Ireland sells it's heritage and celebrates Easter Rising!
Easter Rising 1916 - 90th Anniversary
(1) Irish Republican News, (2) Daily Ireland
Thursday, 13 April, 2006
Monday-Thursday, 10-13 April, 2006
Monday, 10 April, 2006
State's failure to buy 1916 artefacts slammed
By David Lynch
A heritage campaigner last night slammed the Irish government's failure to purchase 1916 historic items at a major Dublin auction yesterday.
Among the items sold at the auction was the first draft of the national anthem which fetched €760,000 (£525,000).
The Soldier's Song (Amhrán na bhFiann) was written in advance of the 1916 rising against British rule in Ireland and quickly became the anthem of the independence movement. At Adam's and Sons Auctioneers in Dublin, there was a buzz of anticipation when the rare document, containing the words of the anthem, went up for sale. "Anything I could say about this would be superfluous. "On offer today is the national anthem of Ireland," said auctioneer Fonsie Mealy. However Mr Mealy's attempt to start the bidding at €1 million (£690,000) drew no response from the audience or the telephone bidders and he dropped the starting price to €500,000 (£347,000).
It rose steadily up to 600,000 (£416,000) and then €700,000 before being sold for €760,000 (£485,000) to an anonymous telephone bidder.
The first draft of the anthem, which was signed by its author Peadar Kearney in 1907, had a guide price of between €800,000 (£550,000) and €1.2 million (£820,000).
However, Vincent Salafia, who has been one of the leading members of the campaign to save the Hill of Tara, last night claimed there was a connection between the Tara campaign and yesterday's auction. "Of course there is a connection, it is the same government involved that does not care about this country's heritage," Mr Salafia said. "The situation here for us is that the government is selling of parts of the Hill of Tara to a private tolling company. "They are selling off something that is fundamental to all our history. "And what we had at the auction is the government sitting idly by, while some of the most important historical artefacts from our history are sold into private and foreign hands. "Both situations show the government allowing our heritage that belongs to us all going into the private open market." Mr Salafia took part in a protest yesterday outside Dublin auctioneers, James Adam & Sons against the auction. "While I am not a member of any party, I salute the actions taken today by these patriotic youths, who did nothing more than exercise their civic duty to protect our national assets," he said shortly after the protest.
Mr Salafia was referring to members of Ógra Shinn Féin who also protested outside and inside the auction.
Two Ógra Shinn Féin members were arrested during a protest at the sale, which included the first draft of the Irish national anthem. "Today's protest was to draw attention to the government's failure to intervene to secure historic documents," said Ógra spokesperson Daithi O'Riain. "The government should not allow such artefacts to be sold on the open market to wealthy individuals, either in Ireland or abroad.
The Independence Sale was billed as the most significant auction in Irish history, featuring 480 lots of previously unseen artefacts which chart Ireland's struggle for independence - from the spark of 1798 right through to the declaration of the Irish Free State. Sinn Féin TD Sean Crowe said the 1916 memorabilia should be the property of all the people of Ireland. "This is our shared heritage. It is part of what we are as a people and a country. This sale amounts to nothing more than the vulgar prostitution of our collective history," he said.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Ireland
Monday-Thursday, 10-13 April, 2006
Rising reborn?
By Irish Republican News
This weekend Ireland will witness one of the biggest official commemorations of any historic event since partition.
On Sunday, the 26-County government, state forces, church officials and civil leaders will march from Dublin Castle to the headquarter of the Easter Rising, the General Post Office (GPO), to remember those who died in the 1916 rebellion.
In an almost unprecedented display of the South's military equipment, the Aer Corps will fly over head, the 26-County army will accompany the parade in tanks and armoured personnel carriers, Gardaí police will march in military formation and the 26-County navy will send a warship up the River Liffey.
At noon the tricolour will be lowered on the roof of the GPO. An army officer will read the Proclamation. President Mary McAleese will lay a wreath, followed by a minute’s silence. The flag will then be raised again and the commemoration will reach its climax with a rendition of the national anthem.
Despite the Dublin government's failure to mark previous anniversaries of the Rising, most notably the 75th in 1991, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern declared the existence of a “continuous thread” in Irish history since 1916. The 1916 Proclamation, he said, accounted for one of four cornerstones of an “independent Ireland in the twentieth century”.
The other three, he claimed, were the 1937 Constitution, the 1972 ratification of the Treaty of Rome and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
“The freedom to plan, decide and implement the policies that are transforming our country today cannot be taken for granted," he warned. "Just as nobody should seek to own Irish history, nobody should seek to disown it either. Our history is a shared legacy and a continuous thread.”
Some politicians were critical and cynical of Fianna Fail's very recent project to claim the spirit of 1916.
“Although I welcome that fact that we are now celebrating our independence, it is a unfortunate that 1916 had been ignored for years," said former Green Party Dublin MEP, Patricia McKenna.
She said: “For years we were the only nation in Europe ashamed of our independence. I can’t understand why there is so much enthusiasm for it now. Why is it now acceptable?”
Mrs McKenna said she found the militaristic trappings of this weekend’s commemoration “offensive”.
She said the event itself was “total hypocrisy”.
“The glorification of militarism at Sunday’s events flies in the face of an attempt to promote peace in a global environment torn apart of war and strife, particularly now evident in Iraq.
“We also have situation where the government is ceding hard-fought national powers to the European Union.
She added: “If the current support for 1916 among the big parties is motivated by a desire to stave off a perceived electoral threat from Sinn Féin, then Sunday’s event is a mere political stunt and an insult to those who died in 1916.”
Sinn Fein’s Dublin South Central TD, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, said it was important to hold a separate commemoration. In reference to the contrast of those who died in the Rising and the military state forces taking part in the official commemoration, he said: “The main difference between these two groups of armed forces are stark. The people of in 1916 risked life and limb, motivated by an unbending political idealism.
“There were no financial benefits in doing so. They set about the task of changing society totally, as opposed to defending the interests of those in power.”
Commemorating the 1916 Rising was "not enough", Sinn Féin's Pat Doherty said yesterday. Irish reunification needed to be placed top of the political agenda and a programme of measures adopted to achieve unity, he said.
Speaking at the announcement of plans for Sinn Féin commemorations at more than 40 locations throughout Ireland, Mr Doherty called for a renewed drive to end partition.
"Simply commemorating the events of Easter 1916 is not enough," he said. "Learning the lessons of 1916 means putting the issue of Irish unity at the top of the political agenda. It means the Irish Government driving forward a process which will deliver national reunification."
Mr Doherty said this weekend's 90th anniversary was an important time for Irish republicans, when they would "remember friends and colleagues who have given their lives in pursuit of our republican ideals and goals".
He cited the Proclamation as one of the most progressive documents ever written and one which spelled out the demand for social and economic justice and democracy, of cherishing the children of the nation equally.
"Easter is also a time of renewal - a time when we as Irish republicans rededicate ourselves to the legitimate and achievable goals of independence and unity for the people of this island."
He confirmed that party president Gerry Adams will speak at events in Dublin on Saturday and in Belfast on Sunday.
Among scores of republican events across the country, Martin McGuinness will address a commemoration in Cork on Sunday; Sinn Féin leader in the Dáil, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, will speak in Drumboe, County Donegal.
PATRIOTS 'NOT CONSUMERS'
Two members of Ogra Shinn Fein, the party's youth wing, were arrested in Dublin after disrupting an auction of Irish historical artifacts and papers yesterday.
Two members of the party's youth wing entered the auction venue and distributed leaflets protesting against what was described as the 'sale of the century', before being evicted and arrested.
"Today's protest was to draw attention to the government's failure to intervene to secure historic documents," Sinn Fein youth wing spokesman Daithi O'Riain said in a statement. "The government should not allow such artifacts to be sold on the open market to wealthy individuals, either in Ireland or abroad."
Dublin-based James Adam and Sons sold around 400 items, mostly to unknown bidders, including an original of the Proclamation of Independence that was read by Padraig Pearse, and the original handwritten text of the Irish national anthem.
Sinn Fein TD Sean Crowe said the sale amounted to "nothing more than the vulgar prostitution of our collective history. I have no doubt that much of this material will be bought up by private speculators with an eye to the 100th anniversary of the Rising in ten years time."
"This material should be on display in our museums for all to see. It should not become the personal trophies of a select few or worse still viewed by profiteers as an item that will increase in value as we approach the 100th anniversary.”
The items were viewed by 26-County Taoiseach, but he rejected public appeals to secure the treasures for the nation.
In advance of the anniversary, Ahern used a keynote speech to call for "a new culture of active citizenship" in Irish society.
He urged a renewal of republicanism "by marrying new ideas to steadfast values", and said there was a need for "a great national conversation" on what it means to be Irish.
Speaking at the launch of a new 1916 exhibition in the National Museum in Collins Barracks, Dublin, yesterday, Mr Ahern asked people to look "beyond our purely private roles and rights as consumers".
"Patriots today are people who are at least as fully aware of the needs of their community as they are of their own individual rights," he said. "Ireland now needs to develop a strong and corresponding sense of duty and community."
Monday-Thursday, 10-13 April, 2006
Feature: Easter 1916
By Michealín Ní Dhochartaigh
Just before noon on Easter Monday, April 24th, a group of 150 men strode out of Liberty Hall in Dublin, then marched toward Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) a few hundred yards away. About one fourth of the marchers wore the dark-green uniform of the Irish Citizen Army, others wore the grey-green of the Irish Volunteers. Still others — perhaps most of them — wore no uniform Armed with an odd mixture of rifles, shotguns, and handguns, they moved in step, heading straight for the General Post Office (GPO).
The Dublin citizenry took little notice. Such sights had become quite common over the past three years — groups of men playing at soldiers. Today was different. When the men arrived at the post office, their leader, James Connolly, gave the order to charge. The guards on duty were taken completely by surprise.
Once inside, the men took control of the building, removing the British flag and replacing it with two others, a plain green one with the words 'Irish Republic' and a green, white, and orange tricolor. It was the first time that flag had flown over Dublin. The man who hoisted the flag was Skibbereen-born Gearoid O'Sullivan, later to become Adjutant General of the Irish Free State. O'Sullivan was a distant cousin to and a few years later, would marry Kitty Kiernan's sister, Maud.
In addition to affiliation with Irish Volunteers or the Irish Citizen Army, many of these men had connections to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). This secret society, sometimes called Fenians, was founded in 1858 and conspired to overthrow British rule by force. Earlier rebellions had failed, and by the turn of the century, the group had achieved little. At this time, however, younger men joined, men with new ideas and fire. Within ten years, the revitalized IRB had planned the Easter Rising.
Two of the most active IRB men in the Dublin area were Tom Clarke and Sean MacDiarmada (MacDermott). Clarke had served prison time for his part if the dynamite plot of the 1880s; Leitrim-born MacDermott, a generation younger, was a born organizer who traveled throughout the country on behalf of the Brotherhood. Clarke, MacDiarmada and a few others in the Brotherhood formed the military council and included Padraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett.
James Connolly, the leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, was planning a rising of his own. The IRB wisely let him in on the plans. Connolly proved to be their best commander in the field. Michael Collins, adjutant to Plunkett, was also an IRB man.
The military council's greatest need was for arms. Roger Casement, a British Foreign Office employee, was a passionate nationalist. At the outbreak of WWI, he went to Germany and arranged a shipment of arms to arrive off the southwest coast of Ireland aboard the Aud. Good Friday 1916 was the date set for the arms arrival.
Dublin Castle knew something was going on, but they couldn't be sure what exactly. Then came the news that the Aud had been intercepted by a Royal navy ship. The German captain scuttled the arms cache, and Casement was captured from an accompanying German submarine.
With the arms gone, everyone assumed the rising was off. On Easter, the day originally set for the encounter, the military council gathered and decided to plan the action for the following day, despite the arms shortage and the fact that Volunteer leader, Eoin MacNeill, ordered all activities canceled.
The men leading the charge on the GPO, therefore, were the secret military council. Once inside, they sandbagged and fortified their garrison against the expected British counter-attack. Barricades were set up in the streets, and snipers moved into position.
The counter-attack began on Tuesday morning. Troops under the command of General W. H. M. Lowe arrived from the Curragh, thirty-five miles away, and took up positions in several areas. They cordoned off Dublin from west to east which brought them into immediate conflict with some rebels. A British machine gun crew positioned themselves on the fourth floor of the Shelbourne Hotel, the tallest building around St. Stephen's Green, and began shelling the rebels who had retreated to the College of Surgeons. By seven o'clock, the rebels there had been reduced to about 100 counting men, women, and boys. Their position hopeless, they would hold on for five days until the surrender.
Around the city, other rebel commands maintained as much pressure as they could on British troops, however, it was now clear that MacNeill's orders canceling activity had taken its toll. Turnout was much lower than hoped, and Dublin was virtually on its own.
By nightfall of the second day, General Lowe had nearly 5,000 British troops at his disposal, vastly outnumbering the rebels. Four pieces of artillery had arrived earlier, and Lowe began to cordon off the northern suburbs which, with the southern cordon already established, would trap the rebels' GPO and Four Courts garrisons.
On Wednesday, the Helga, a grey fisheries patrol boat, sailed up the Liffey and tied up on the south quays opposite the Custom House. Her duty: to shell the rebel positions. The first target — Liberty Hall.
By now, the fighting centered on the Mendicity Institution. Twenty men, commanded by rebel Sean Heuston, inflicted casualties on over one hundred British, but soon the rebels were surrounded on all sides. After the British forces lobbed hand grenades into the building, Heuston was forced to surrender. The Helga sailed down the Liffey to begin shelling the rear of Boland's Mills garrison, commanded by Éamon de Valera.
Meanwhile, at the port of Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), British troops landed and marched toward the Royal Hospital, some nine miles away. En route, they marched into the rebel forces at Mount Street Bridge, where twelve men held off the British for the remainder of the day, inflicting over two hundred casualties. Four of the rebels survived.
The Helga now shelled the GPO, the British forces' main objective. By late afternoon, they added the boom of artillery to the barrage.
Sackville Street burned on Thursday following a 10 am non-stop artillery attack. Inside the GPO, the flames were so intense the rebels had to hose down the sacking on the barricaded windows. By 10 pm, an oil works directly opposite the GPO caught fire. As sparks began to hit the roof, the rebels moved their explosives to the basement.
The leaders knew their position was hopeless — had known it from the start — but felt the need for an armed rebellion. National honor demanded it and the IRB principle demanded it. The rebels could now only delay the inevitable for as long as possible to get public opinion on their side.
James Connolly was full of energy and directed GPO operations in a brisk, no-nonsense way until that afternoon he was struck just above the ankle by a ricocheting bullet. The pain was intense, and greatly weakened by it and the loss of blood, he was not the same afterward. Clarke and MacDiarmada also took leading roles, Pearse busied himself with writing proclamations and bulletins.
A furious gun battle ensued at the South Dublin Union between British troops and the rebels under the command of Eamonn Ceannt and his second in command, fiery Cathal Brugha.
On Friday, James Connolly was carried into the public office of the GPO, in pain, but wanting to stay at the center of the operation. He dictated a lengthy address to his troops which was taken by his secretary, Winifred Carney. It spoke of victory, when in fact there was defeat, of the entire country taking up arms, when in fact, it was just in Dublin, of armed Volunteers marching on Dublin when there were none. Connolly knew the Rising was a gesture, but the longer the gesture went on, the longer Irish patriots were seen to be fighting the might of the British Empire, the greater the rebels' chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Irish people.
By 4 pm on Friday, the roof of the GPO was on fire and the Volunteers were forced to evacuate. Pearse and Connolly were the last to leave. As the GPO was burning, Gen. Lowe ordered a savage frontal attack on the North King Street rebels that lasted until Saturday morning. The South Staffordshire Regiment, unused to fighting men who didn't always wear uniforms, took out their wrath on the civilian populace by murdering fifteen innocent men.
By 9 am Saturday morning it was over. The last headquarters of the Irish Republic was established in the back parlor of Hanlon's fishmonger's shop at No. 16 Moore Street. No further retreat without the possibility of high civilian casualties was possible. The military council decided to surrender.
Nurse Elizabeth O'Farrell made her way up Moore Street wearing Red Cross markings and carrying the white flag of truce. She was taken to see Gen. Lowe who demanded an unconditional surrender. She returned to No. 16 and half an hour later, returned with Pearse. Pearse took off his sword and handed it over to Lowe in a formal act of surrender. The photo of Pearse surrendering to Gen. Lowe shows the general with his son who served under him. Lowe's son later became known as John Loder, a British actor of minor note.
Pearse was driven away to see General Maxwell at army headquarters where he drafted the formal surrender document. Nurse O'Farrell then delivered this document to the other rebel garrisons. Shortly afterward, the wounded Connolly was taken to the Red Cross Hospital. The main body of Volunteers was marched under military orders into Sackville Street where they laid down their arms before the British. The Four Courts garrison surrendered next and joined their comrades, now totaling about 400 men. They spent the night in the open, huddled under guard in the gardens of the Rotunda Hospital at the top of Sackville Street.
On Sunday morning, they were marched off to Richmond Barracks. As they passed through some areas of the city, people hurled rotten fruit and vegetables at them. On their return from imprisonment, these same Volunteers would be hailed as heroes.
The leaders were court-martialed, and fifteen of them were sentenced to execution by firing squad. On May 3, they shot Padraig Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Tom Clarke. The executions continued until May 12 with the shooting that disgusted everyone. There was little outcry at first, but as the executions continued, public figures pleaded for clemency. Maxwell refused. To him, they were traitors who had committed treason and deserved to die.
On May 12, Sean MacDiarmada was executed, followed by James Connolly, who was too ill to stand and had to be tied to a chair. Countess Markievicz had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment, as did Eamon de Valera — Markievicz because she was a woman, de Valera because he was born in America.
The Rising was over, but it was not over. It has been called 'the triumph of failure' because it made martyrs of its leaders and their deaths revived the spirit of republican separatism. Within a year, the Sinn Fein party which had nothing to do with the rebellion, would be taken over by the republican survivors of the Rising and would win numerous by-elections. The quest for freedom became a national pursuit, run by IRB men, 1916 survivors and inmates of Frongoch, the prisoner of war camp in Wales known as the 'University of Revolution.'
Monday-Thursday, 10-13 April, 2006
Easter, 1916 - By W.B. Yeats
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born
Monday-Thursday, 10-13 April, 2006
Analysis: 1916 and all that...
By Danny Morrison for Daily Ireland
By any objective standards there was more cause for an armed struggle in the North post-1969 than there was for the 1916 Rising.
If 1916 was about the denial of freedom and British misrule in Ireland, the armed struggle in the North was about the denial of the same freedom and a more egregious form of British misrule in the form of partition with its ‘Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’.
In Ireland’s major cities in the early part of the twentieth century there was extreme poverty and high unemployment. There had been two deaths in baton charges during the Dublin lock-out in 1913, which preceded and helped define the radical nature of the Proclamation. There had been three deaths at the hands of the British army after the Irish Volunteers’ Howth gun-running incident in July 1914. By 1916 it was obvious to the prescient that Home Rule – as proposed in the suspended statute – had been thwarted by the Unionist/Conservative threat of violence, but that a dramatic, violent assertion of Irish independence might inspire and embolden the general population (or, at a minimum, strengthen Ireland’s demands in post-war negotiations).
Compare the conditions in 1916 to the conditions which nationalists suffered: Fifty years of humiliation; the physical persecution of any outward expression of their identity; discrimination in housing, employment and investment; its minority position entrenched; a people denied access to government or power to change government; deaths at the hands of the RUC, B-Specials, loyalists and the British army long before the IRA reorganised and launched its armed struggle.
To justify or to sympathise or, at the minimum, to understand, 1916, is to justify, sympathise or understand the IRA’s armed struggle in the North. It is inescapable, regardless of what casuistry is employed to argue otherwise.
The founders of Fianna Fáil trace their lineage back to those who resisted and fought against the Treaty in the civil war, to those who waged guerrilla war for independence, to those who occupied the GPO and declared a Republic.
Let’s put it in starker terms.
Say Cumainn na nGaedheal, which was formed in 1923 from the pro-Treaty element of Sinn Féin and which took power as Free Staters, had remained in power for 50 years with the support of the British government. That during those years it financially, economically and politically discriminated against and gerrymandered those areas which supported Fianna Fáil. That the police force, comprised only of its supporters, oppressed Fianna Fáil supporters, batoned them off the streets, killed some of them when they demanded their rights and burnt thousands of them out of their homes, before killing more of them at barricades or at street protests. Wouldn’t Fianna Fáil and its grassroots have a sympathetic view of a physical-force struggle against single-party rule, and the British army coming in to defend that rule? Of course, they would, and o, republicans welcome the decision by the Dublin government and establishment to celebrate and commemorate the Rising.
Yeats worried: “Did that play of mine send out /Certain men the English shot?”
Dublin worries, “Does this commemoration of ours/Justify the men who shot the English?”
The answer is, yes, it does, but no one, not the IRA, not Sinn Féin, not Fianna Fáil or any party or organisation owns the Rising or its legacy.
Celebrating it, however, triggers certain imperatives, primarily an examination of the malignity of British rule in Ireland, the divisions it caused between brothers and sisters, families, communities, political parties. It should encourage a revision of what really happened to the North and an analysis of the forces at play. It can only lead to conclusions which will not harm but explain the republican movement, its motivation, its history, and how it survived and thrived.
It is a debate which frightens the major political parties in the 26 counties, in the same way as they fear the truth about collusion emerging which would trigger other imperatives – that is, dealing with the reality of British government involvement in bombings and assassinations and probable infiltration of the state itself.
Such discomfiting truths would leave the populace more open to understanding and sympathising with republicans on the issue of the North. Such truths could impact on contemporary politics to the advantage of Sinn Féin, and so such truths must be avoided, must be minimised, hidden, denied or distorted.
Ninety years after the Easter Rising Britain is the ally!
My first consciousness of Easter was always chocolate eggs.
That culture of boiling a hen’s egg in tea, patiently painting it and then rolling it down Bearnagh Drive never caught on in 1950s Andersonstown.
Soon I was to discover the politics of Easter. I remember the Falls decked with bunting in 1966 for the 50th anniversary of the Rising.
When I first went to the Felons Club at the age of 14 or 15 and began learning something about my country the Rising was the big date in Irish history. I also learnt about Tom Williams and his comrades in Belfast, and Brendan Behan in Dublin, being arrested on Easter Sunday after republican commemorations and about republicans having to run a gauntlet of RUC men when they went to march to the republican plot in Milltown.
After 1969 I read up on the period and devoured Tim Pat Coogan’s and Bowyer Bell’s respective histories of the IRA.
I took part in republican Easter parades, stood proudly in the Cages of Long Kesh, in the yards of the Crum and the Blocks, during those poignant minute silences when we remembered our fallen comrades. I spoke at Easter commemorations the length and breadth of Ireland and got a feel of how widespread and visceral was the love for and devotion to the patriots of 1916.
The ‘defence’ of the Republic declared from the steps of the GPO, or the re-establishment of that Republic, and the quest for a united Ireland all became synonymous, was taken as a given as the ultimate solution to Ireland’s English problem.
There is a maxim by a famous German Field Marshal that: “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” Well, that political plan of reunification has survived contact with ‘the enemy’s’ propaganda, with the arguments of unionism and Free Statism.
Were the dream pursued just for the sake of sentimentality it would be madness and pointless, but a united Ireland would make social and economic sense.
The successes of the Celtic Tiger have reduced unionists to the argument of opposing it solely on political/cultural grounds.
Within my lifetime a united Ireland is unlikely to be configured as a unitary state, but united it will become and it will be a better place than a land disfigured by British rule.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Ireland
Debate on 1916 raising key issues
Daily Ireland Editorial
Editor: Colin O'Carroll
Recent opinion poll findings in the Sunday Business Post confirm the abiding respect of Irish people for the architects of the 1916 Rising - despite a generation of vilification and revisionism.
Yesterday, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern reflected the growing regard for the legacy of 1916 when he launched a new exhibition on the Rising in Collins Barracks. Calling for a "great national conversation on what it means to be Irish, on the values we hold and cherish", he defended the men and women who struck for freedom on Easter Monday 1916. In most modern states, especially those which were once colonised, respect for the nation's founders is a given. In Ireland, however, until recent times, it was deemed efficacious by our betters to abandon the nationalists of the North post-1921 and ditch any links to 1916.
Thankfully, the IRA ceasefire of 1994 created the circumstances where the events and legacy of the Easter Rising - and, indeed, all things Irish - could once again be explored and celebrated without censor or censure.
The Taoiseach has called for the Volunteers of 1916 to be honoured even as we consider how their legacy is passed on to future generations in an increasingly multicultural Ireland.
What does it tell us about the state we're in, for example, when the premier event linked to the Rising this week is the sale of republican artefacts? (Though, where the business class goes in Celtic Tiger Ireland, the politicians follow, so perhaps the Independence auctions will play their own role in engendering pride in our past).
Next Sunday's government commemoration of the Rising is a step in the right direction but is too timid in its reach, too restricted in its military nature, to do full justice to the heroism of Easter Week.
That said, it will raise questions, some of which may prove uncomfortable to those on the viewing stand but which deserve to be aired.
Chief among those is this: if it's now acceptable to honour the idealism and valour of the men and women of 1916 - even while, as some prominent commentators have suggested, deploring the violence they used - is it also permissable to honour the idealism and valour of the hunger strikers, without endorsing the armed struggle of those young rebels?
The Dublin newspaper which literally bayed for the blood of the rebel leaders in 1916 can be content that its torch has been passed on to some of today's media commentators. However, their revisionist ravings - which will reach a crescendo this coming week - are, thankfully, being ignored by an Irish people who are afraid neither of the legacy of the past nor the promise of the future.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Ireland
