Reflections on an Easter Sunday

April 24th - April 30th, 1916. 92 years ago. A group of men storm the GPO in Dublin city centre (then known as Sackville Street) to assert the cause of Irish freedom and to demand the establishment of an independent Irish Republic.

This event is obviously look back to with great fondness and patriotism by many Irish Republicans. It was, after all, the spark which ignited the flames of the War of Independence, which eventually achieved freedom of a sort for 26 of the naton's 32 counties. However, what would the seven signatories think looking at the Ireland we have today, and especially the deplorable events in the North over the past 30 to 40 years?

For a start, the whole nation is not yet free. It is impossible, I think, for those of a partitionist mindset to look back to the Proclamation as something to be revered. There is no room for a divided nation anywhere in the wording of the document itself. In fact, the proclamation asserts that 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.

Secondly, I wonder how they would respond to the evil acts perpetrated in the north by those who called themselves "Republicans". Bear in mind that the Rising leaders surrendered partly because they weren't able to sustain the conflict much further, but also because of the damage that the violence was causing to the general population. It was not right, in their eyes, to cause harm to, or to inadvertantly bring harm to, civillians. A lesson that seems to have been forgotten by various people in the period since the Rising.

Also where has the sense of unity gone from "Republicans" in the North? It seems many have forgotten that 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 of all its parts, cherishing all 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.

It's been 92 years. It saddens me as a Republican that not only have these beautiful ideals not come to pass, but that their very spirit is forgotten by those who would call themselves "Republicans". It's been 92 years... hopefully it won't be 92 more.