Easter Lily & Rising Commemorations

[From the Bunker]

http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/columnists/john-fogarty/time-gaa-put-a-lid-on-fictitious-hill-16-tale-389914.html

[Rossfan]

Why the forelock tugging sh1te that the first time rubby was played in Croker was the GAA's greatest day?

[tonto1888]

At least the Monaghan Republican Front  tried  to invade and liberate Tyrone from the yoke of brit imperialism and their various quasi-military backwoods thug lackeys  but we were betrayed and undone by a local snitch.

And now look at how Tyrone repays us for that blood loss of our children?

It was a Monaghan man who betrayed the Loughgall martyrs.

Was a Monaghan Man lead them too

Martyrs? Really??

A martyr is someone who is killer because of their religious or other beliefs. Which is what happened to those men. So while you may not agree with their beliefs and actions you can't really deny they were martyrs

Which particular belief were they executed for? A united Ireland? Civil Rights?

having not known the men personally I couldn't tell you their beliefs but I would imagine it was the cause of Irish freedom???

[Declan]

Today's Examiner
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/why-are-we-so-apathetic-about-the-prospect-of-a-united-ireland-390454.html

[ashman]

To be brutally honest about a United Ireland it is fairly low down the priority for the vast amount of people on this island.  To quote a certain William Jefferson. Clinton

"It's the economy stupid"

As things stand the southern economy is just off life support and have a debt fof €204 billion and growing . The northern economy is largely based on a disproportionate transfer from Westminister.

The likes of that lady in the examiner and others can write about it all they like but at the moment it is echo chamber stuff.

[tiempo]

, back to the shires of Roscommon where all is fine and dandy.

What the F are the "shires of Roscommon".
I've never seen or heard of them in 40+ years of living in this great County.

A demilitarised zone for quislings.

Grow up you stupid *******

Exactly the response of a quisling in denial, predictable.

If yous showed that level of aggression against the British we might have a country we could call Ireland. Instead we're left with two failed b**tard statelets thanks to quislings.

Stay in the shires lad, wait for the Brits to come to you.
Love Ulster, hate quislings.

Go back to your doctor. You need a change of tablets.

Insult after insult.

Could you bring something to the debate for a change and try to clarify why after the 1916 proclamation was so clear with regards to the formation of an Ireland of equals, that families in Tyrone, Derry, Armagh, Antrim, Fermanagh and Down were left to fend for themselves against a brutal sectarian British regime?

Until someone can crystalise that with justification I shall continue to see last weekends festivities as nothing more than an inverted pyramid of piffle.

[Il Bomber Destro]

You somehow seem to be revising an outlook that The War of  Independence was a success. It may have got the 26 it's freedom but it created a sectarian statelet which would inevitably lead to another bloody conflict

Yeah revisionism is to be reviled

You paint the Provos campaign as a failure. It certainly hastened a more equal and accommodating society for nationalists to live in today. It seems to have delivered peace to the island, certainly for the time being.

f**king brilliant. You really are a deranged tool but I really, really wish you had your own TV show ("An Idiot at Home") or channel even dedicated to your espousal of your views. You would make a fortune in advertising revenues.

Are you denying that the O6 state has not been in a relative state of peace since the GFA was signed?

I think what you don't like about me is that I'm a skilled debater while you are an empty vessel.

A skilled debater would note that ending a conflict to bring about a state of peace, does not mean that the conflict itself achieved peace. Peace is the absence of conflict.

I didn't say the conflict achieved peace, I said it hastened the process for equal rights which in turn lessened the appetite for conflict, culminating in a peace process.

Yes you did

I did not and you are a liar, the end result of the conflict was a hastened process of equal rights to the nationalist community, thus reducing the civil unrest, thus facilitating the requirements for a peaceful state.

[Il Bomber Destro]

At least the Monaghan Republican Front  tried  to invade and liberate Tyrone from the yoke of brit imperialism and their various quasi-military backwoods thug lackeys  but we were betrayed and undone by a local snitch.

And now look at how Tyrone repays us for that blood loss of our children?

It was a Monaghan man who betrayed the Loughgall martyrs.

Was a Monaghan Man lead them too

Martyrs? Really??

Yes.

Martyrs

[Rossfan]

Tiempo, The countless thousands from all over Ireland( all of it) who attended or took part in last weekend's commemorations don't particularly care what you (or I) think of them.

The Republic proclaimed on Easter Monday never existed in reality, or if it did lasted for 5 days and only in 5 or 6 buildings in Dublin.
Nationalist Ireland's elected reps declared Independence for the whole country in 1919.
The Brits unleashed their war machine to ensure that didn't take effect.
In 1920 they passed an Act setting up 2 Welsh type Assemblies for "Southern Ireland" ( Connacht/Leinster/Munster plus Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan) and for "Northern Ireland" consisting of the remaining 6 Cos. Pro British Unionists were a majority in 4 of those while the other 2 were about 50/50.
Nationalist Ireland refused that and fought on as well as a few hundred poorly armed ordinary lads could till the Truce.
The people who accepted the Treaty in the main did so because half a loaf was better than no bread.
Those opposed did so as they wanted a Republic not a Dominion.
Both sides knew they couldn't have or get the other 6 Cos. and any attempt to do so would have resulted in mass slaughter.

But you know all that already and are happy to remain bitter and spout about "quislings" etc etc because that makes you feel better.
Nothing any of us can do about the past; it can be remembered but can't be recalled or changed.
As Nationalists/Catholics are now equals in the 6 Cos and will soon be the majority time to focus on where you go from here as a Community.

[Il Bomber Destro]

Tiempo, The countless thousands from all over Ireland( all of it) who attended or took part in last weekend's commemorations don't particularly care what you (or I) think of them.

The Republic proclaimed on Easter Monday never existed in reality, or if it did lasted for 5 days and only in 5 or 6 buildings in Dublin.
Nationalist Ireland's elected reps declared Independence for the whole country in 1919.
The Brits unleashed their war machine to ensure that didn't take effect.
In 1920 they passed an Act setting up 2 Welsh type Assemblies for "Southern Ireland" ( Connacht/Leinster/Munster plus Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan) and for "Northern Ireland" consisting of the remaining 6 Cos. Pro British Unionists were a majority in 4 of those while the other 2 were about 50/50.
Nationalist Ireland refused that and fought on as well as a few hundred poorly armed ordinary lads could till the Truce.
The people who accepted the Treaty in the main did so because half a loaf was better than no bread.
Those opposed did so as they wanted a Republic not a Dominion.
Both sides knew they couldn't have or get the other 6 Cos. and any attempt to do so would have resulted in mass slaughter.

But you know all that already and are happy to remain bitter and spout about "quislings" etc etc because that makes you feel better.
Nothing any of us can do about the past; it can be remembered but can't be recalled or changed.
As Nationalists/Catholics are now equals in the 6 Cos and will soon be the majority time to focus on where you go from here as a Community.

Mass slaughter happened regardless of that, although you lads were happy that it was contained to an area outside of your state.

[AQMP]

Tiempo, The countless thousands from all over Ireland( all of it) who attended or took part in last weekend's commemorations don't particularly care what you (or I) think of them.

The Republic proclaimed on Easter Monday never existed in reality, or if it did lasted for 5 days and only in 5 or 6 buildings in Dublin.
Nationalist Ireland's elected reps declared Independence for the whole country in 1919.
The Brits unleashed their war machine to ensure that didn't take effect.
In 1920 they passed an Act setting up 2 Welsh type Assemblies for "Southern Ireland" ( Connacht/Leinster/Munster plus Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan) and for "Northern Ireland" consisting of the remaining 6 Cos. Pro British Unionists were a majority in 4 of those while the other 2 were about 50/50.
Nationalist Ireland refused that and fought on as well as a few hundred poorly armed ordinary lads could till the Truce.
The people who accepted the Treaty in the main did so because half a loaf was better than no bread.
Those opposed did so as they wanted a Republic not a Dominion.
Both sides knew they couldn't have or get the other 6 Cos. and any attempt to do so would have resulted in mass slaughter.

But you know all that already and are happy to remain bitter and spout about "quislings" etc etc because that makes you feel better.
Nothing any of us can do about the past; it can be remembered but can't be recalled or changed.
As Nationalists/Catholics are now equals in the 6 Cos and will soon be the majority time to focus on where you go from here as a Community.

Spot on Rossfan.  I've been saying for years that in the "campaign" for a United Ireland we have to start with persuading a large number of "nationalists" that this is a good idea before we even get to the Unionists!

However I remember from my parents (both born in the late 1920s) and my grandparents (born in the late 1800s and early 1900s) that there was a strong sense of "abandonment", that Irish people in the North were left without support in a state that treated them worse than the British had.  What the fledgling Free State coming out of a disastrous Civil War could do I'm not entirely sure but that emotion did exist and while I don't particularly feel it, they did and some people today still do.  It's a bit like the Civil War still casting a bit of a shadow over Southern politics today.

Having said that I agree with the main thrust of your post.  Those of us in the North who believe that a United Ireland is a good idea have an absolutely huge amount of work to do to map out how it would work etc.  I'd say we'd need 7-10 years just to be able to produce an idea of what a single state (if that's what it is) would look like.

[Il Bomber Destro]

Nothing any of us can do about the past; it can be remembered but can't be recalled or changed.

The Southern state, for a start, could acknowledge how they abandoned the nationalist community in the North. They never have owned up to their failings, instead they like to moralise, lecture and diminish the nationalist community for armed resistance against a brutal and sectarian regime. The Provisional IRA were an inevitability, the Southern media like to portray them as violent, psychopathic gangsters when that was far from the truth, they were ordinary people who were doing extraordinary things, such was the environment they grew up in at the times.

[Applesisapples]

At this stage I'm bemused and confused.The events in the South were an impressive pageantry but I cannot make up my mind if the rising is a source of pride or embarrassment generally down there.Bit like St Patrick's Day,any ould excuse for a Hooley while missing the real point.

Up North there was a more aggressive militaristic edge,but even those taking part must realise deep down that they are totally different people than those in the South,who don't view the rising in the same way at all,and certainly don't want any form of Irish Unity.

Say what you like about Unionism,but it maintains clear core beliefs and goals and celebrates these no matter who might be offended.

A bit like your self Tony.

[Rossfan]

So if the " Southern State" by which I presume you mean the State which calls itself Ireland and consists of East, South, West , Midland and North west Ireland was to acknowledge that they abandoned the Nationalist Community -  what will that do for anyone?
Better they keep putting their energies to ensuring Brits/Unionists don't try unravelling the GFA and that the All Ireland aspects of it are maintained.
Mass slaughter in the 1920s would have been tens of thousands of  Catholics in the North East murdered by well armed Unionists and thousands of Protestants in the rest of Ireland in retaliation.

AQMP -  you're right - it's all about the future and certainly the Nationalist Community and their ( limited no more than our own) political parties should be addressing what the new All Ireland political entity would be like.

[AQMP]

Once again Alex Kane (a good Unionist ) makes sense.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/its-time-hypocritical-unionism-took-look-in-mirror-34588580.html

Speaking on Monday at a symposium entitled Remembering 1916, Irish President Michael D Higgins noted: "Of course, a critique of Irish nationalism such as it manifested itself at the turn of the last century is a task that many have already undertaken. By relocating the Easter Rising within the frame of the First World War, but also in the context of the wider currents of ideas that then stirred the world - movements such as socialism, feminism, but also militarism, imperialism and racialist ideologies - there has been a great deal of critical reassessment of aspects of the Rising and, in particular, of the myths of redemptive violence that were at the heart, not just of Irish nationalism but also of Imperial nationalism.

"My view is that the latter has not, perhaps, been revisited with the same fault-finding edge as the former. Indeed, while the long shadow cast by what has been called 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland has led to a scrutiny of the Irish Republican tradition of 'physical violence', a similar review of supremacist and militarist imperialism remains to be fully achieved. In the context of 1916, this imperial triumphalism can be traced, for example, in the language of the recruitment campaigns of the time, which evoked mythology, masculinity and religion, and glorified the Irish blood as having 'reddened the earth of every continent'. But this is for another day."

It was like that moment from To Kill A Mockingbird when Atticus Finch tells his children that to understand someone you need to see life from their side of the fence, wearing their shoes and in their skin. Unionists still throw out the lines about the Easter Rising representing treason, but they never see it from the perspective of people who believed that they had been colonised and then had their dreams of independence put on hold again because England was preoccupied with a war against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Unionists never seemed to get round to asking the question how they would have felt if the shoe had been on the other foot in April 1916. Actually, that's not entirely accurate: as the threat of Home Rule increased from 1912 onwards unionists did make it clear that they would resort to arms to defend their identity and nationality. It was because they didn't share the Irish nationalism of a majority of people in Ireland, in the same way that the majority of Irish didn't share their sense of unionism or Britishness: and both were ready to take up arms to promote and protect their own interests.

Interestingly, at that crucial moment we saw one of the key super powers, the United Kingdom, playing both sides of the field. The Home Rule Bill was given Royal Assent in 1914, leaving us with the question of how far the Government would have gone to push it through and how far unionists - and the Conservative Party - would have gone to stop it had the war not intervened. Yet in 1916 we saw how ruthless the British Government could be in dealing with the leaders of the Rising.

Empires (and this was a time when the UK 'ruled' a quarter of the world) protect themselves. They sacrifice one cause and then raise another. They send brutal, bloody messages - which is what they did in 1916: and what they may well have been prepared to do to unionists in 1914 had the World War not led to the suspension of the Home Rule Act.

So here are some questions that unionists could do with addressing. What would have happened had the World War not intervened? How far would Carson, Craig and the Conservatives have gone to protect their interests? Would Carson's UVF have turned their fire on British troops? Would we have ended up with a civil war across Ireland and a separate civil war involving unionists and the British? How far would the Conservatives have gone in their support for an armed, rebellious unionism?

President Higgins has a point, therefore: unionists do tend to focus on the 'physical force' tradition within republicanism while glossing over their own attitudes and responses at the time. They also tend to remain mute on the subject of the reach and swagger of the British Empire at that point in history: possibly because the collapse of that Empire from 1945 onwards had worried and spooked them. And there is precious little evidence of any significant voices within unionism raising concerns about the alleged British State sanctioned brutality in a number of colonies and possessions which were seeking independence in the 1950s and 1960s.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland was, from the 1920s to the late 1960s, run very differently to the rest of the UK. It was a one-party state that regarded non-unionists as the enemy and even viewed liberals within its own ranks as potential troublemakers. Again, that's a conversation unionists tend not to have with each other, let alone with anyone else.

In five years time unionists will be 'celebrating,' 'commemorating' and 'cheering' the birth of Northern Ireland. Perhaps it's time we looked at our own history. How have we run Northern Ireland? What does the rest of the world think when they think of Northern Ireland and of unionism? What is the nature of the relationship between unionism and our fellow unionists across the rest of the UK? Why do so many unionists still have difficulty when it comes to 'trusting' Westminster? Why, even though Northern Ireland is still (and reasonably safely so) in the UK, is unionism still so prone to bickering and division?

President Higgins finished his speech with this comment: "The passage of one hundred years allows us to see the past afresh, free from some of the narrow, partisan interpretations that might have restricted our view in earlier periods. We have a duty to honour and respect that past, and retrieve the idealism which was at its heart. But we have a greater duty to imagine and to forge a future illuminated by the unfulfilled promises of our past."  Unionists have a similar task ahead.  They need to understand their own history. They need to understand the causes and consequences of that history. They need to understand the nature of their relationship with Dublin, London, republicanism/nationalism and with each other. They need to understand and explain the idealism which underpins their beliefs and they need to begin to "imagine and forge a future illuminated by the unfulfilled promises of our past".

What we understand as 'Ulster' unionism was born and forged under very particular circumstances in the mid-1880s: yet that mindset still seems to determine many of our attitudes and responses today. Isn't it about time that mindset was challenged and adjusted for the post-1998 era?