Ownership of 1916

Mary Hanafin is a "great fan of the Proclamation". She said so herself on Questions and Answers on Monday night. The Minister of Education, or CEO of MurderMachine.Com if you like, commended the progressiveness of the document, and pointed out that 1916 belongs to us all, as part of our heritage. This was peculiar given that the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Rising in 1991 were extremely low-key. Heritage, like commemoration it appears, is a very flexible friend.

The question of ownership of 1916 is not one that has taken quietly to the bed, even after the greater part of a century. Its commemoration in 1991 was subdued because of the physical force element of the Rising, which was perceived by elements within the still-active Provisional IRA as bestowing legitimacy on any armed struggle that confronted the imperial might of the British. The legacy of the Rising was, therefore, tainted, and consequently ignored by the political establishment. The media chose to follow suit. The rancorous debate surrounding the issue is catalogued in Revising the Rising, a collection of essays dealing with the ins and outs of one of Irish History's most contested issues.

The rancour has not died down, and the debate on Q and A highlighted this reality. Hanafin's remarks were typically generic and did not address the underlying motivation behind Fianna Fáil's race to the bottom of the commemoration barrel, i.e., to head the Shinners off at the pass. Her reading of the situation was hotly contested by the always entertaining but perpetually blundering David Norris, who questioned the wisdom behind commemorating an event so shrouded in the concept of 'blood sacrifice', Pearse's wonderful euphenism for shepherding the boys of St. Enda's through cleansing ritual of sacrificing their internal organs on the battlefield to purge Hibernia of its former tragedies. Knock-out stuff.

The real legacy of 1916 is this. The promises made, however honorable and high-minded, ushered in a generation of politicians so bereft of imagination and a sense of civic duty that the "august destiny" promised in the Proclamation had much more of the cold, dark November night about it; censorship, conservatism, religious orthodoxy and an horrendous, explicit contempt for the less prosperous elements of society. The celtic, catholic mysticism inherent in the document contributed to the alienation of the North, which was clearly highlight by Finola Meredith on Q and A, who, a northerner herself, felt outside the parameters of the debate.

This is not to blame the leaders of the Rising for what came in the aftermath. But it is to highlight how their contemporaries, hiding behind the progressiveness of the Proclamation, proceeded to enforce the exact opposite kind of society that was promised by Pearse's words. This political dishonesty is still rampant today; every time a Fianna Fáiler opens his/her mouth, an angel in heaven dies.

That we haven't come so far as we may like to think was borne out by the tenor of the debate, which receded gradually from a simple question asked by an audience member into an an impassioned, narrow, sniping debate.

As for commemorating the event, I'll leave the last word to Finola Meredith, who, as a northerner should probably feel even more betrayed by the unkept promises of 1916 - the political establishment turned avoiding the issue of partition into a fine art for over fifty years. In response to Bertie's pledge to hold a military parade, she questioned this show of armed "might".

"By all means let's have remembrance, but remembrance in a nuanced way. Not by parading military might up and down O'Connell Street while the conflict in the North is unresolved"*

*I'm paraphrasing here, but it's extremely close to what she actually said.