dlowan wrote:Hmmmm...
"If an architect could be ascribed to the ensuing mayhem, it would be poet and schoolteacher Padraig Pearse, who won his co-conspirators over to an ideology of "blood sacrifice"---the notion that if a small cache of committed men died public martyrs' deaths, then the island's entire population would join in the struggle for independence."
"After all, why does a supposedly democratic party need to hang on to guns and bombs if it truly is a democratic party? Like lots of simple questions in Ireland the real answer is complex and mired in myth, murder and political strategy.
The first part of the answer lies in history and the actions of the man the present Irish Republic, and the Provisionals, revere as the founding father of the State. When Padraig Pearse, and his doomed rag-tag rebel army, took over the General Post Office on O?Connell Street in Dublin at Easter in 1916 and walked outside to proclaim an Irish republic, he wasn?t trumpeting the greatness of parliamentary politics.
The Easter Proclamation was, and is, a chilling semifascistic rant that is heavy on the power of arms, blood sacrifice and dead children to bring a united Ireland into being. Killing ?alien? British soldiers was, Pearse declared, the ?fundamental right? of all true Irish republicans. Guns and bombs were the way forward.
In the end, Pearse got what he wanted, a honourable execution by baffled British Army generals, but his poisonous legacy lived on, inspiring generation after generation of young Irishmen to take up the gun.
The proclamation is still read out, usually by a child, at every republican Easter commemoration, traditionally held at the graveside of dead IRA volunteers. Peace process or no peace process, there will be the same bitter words at Easter 2003 as there were in 1916."
Not too impressed yet, Gav. Got anything to add?
And - 'tis not just a small group of committed men dying in palestine.
And that doesn't come across as simple case of, well, character asassination? It doesn't sound even
wee bit biased to you?
Here's that "bitter" proclamation thats read at the Commemorations - like I mean it reeks of equality and civil liberties for all and other such nasty things!!!
POBLACHT NA H EIREANN
___________________________
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the last three hundred years they have asserted it to arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God. Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, in humanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on Behalf of the Provisional Government.
Thomas J. Clarke,
Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh,
P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett
