1916: 90 years on - Gombeen Nation

national | history and heritage | opinion/analysis

Monday March 20, 2006 13:07

by WS - WSM

wsm_ireland at yahoo dot com

This Easter marks the ninetieth anniversary of the 1916 rising. There is an unedifying scrabble by every politician in the state to wrap the green flag around themselves and stake their claim to be the inheritors of the tradition.

From Micky McDowell across to Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern to Enda Kenny, every party, paramilitary and sect are raising the flag.

The 1916 proclamation however if taken to mean anything should surely give them some discomfort.

The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal oppurtunity to all its citizens......cherishing all children of the nation equally...

Is this what the state is doing when it deports children and their parents, when the Gardai beat people up at protests and in custody, where people are locked up in jail for defending their communities and homes,when workers lose their jobs to be replaced with cheaper labour, where resources are denied to schools whilst the rich are free to pay no tax, when we live with a two tier health system with overcrowding and waiting lists for the poor and exclusive private clinics for the rich. Does this Republic really provide equal oppurtunity and equal rights or does it depend on your wealth?

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland...

Maybe this doesnt include the Corrib gasfield or any other oil or gas field, which the state under practically every government has given away to the multinational oil companies, but you would think it should. Does it include other assets like Coillte which owns 7% or Irelands land and is being prepared for privatisation?

2006 will provide plenty of oppurtunity for many a politician to pose as a great patriot and to seek to bask in some reflected glory, but really none of them represent our interests, the interests of the working class, none of them offer any real hope of a break with the system of exploitation and oppression under which we live. To defeat that system and to build a society that truly cherishes all of its children equally will take a revolution built from below in every workplace, community and town in Ireland.

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Comments (7 of 7)

Class struggle

by Pat Ingle

Mon Mar 20, 2006 18:45

There can never be " equal opportunity for all ", as the Proclamation promised, so long as a class society exists.

Those who by their policies and control of power perpetuate an unequal, class society have no right to claim the legacy of 1916.

The lessons are clear: to achieve the ideals of 1916 reliance must be placed on the people of no property. All else is hypocricy. So leave it to those who are willing...

We should have no elected governments

by Communist

Mon Mar 20, 2006 18:04

If we remove class divisions rid ourselves of the shackles of capitalism and equally distribute the wealth to all the people of Ireland -then we will not have to elect leaders - the job of leaders will already have been achieved?
Why are you so blinkered by neo-con facist capitalist propaganda? Open your eyes and join the workers struggle!

1916

by John - dunaree2000

Mon Mar 20, 2006 16:52

Au contraire. The leaders of 1916 would be amazed at just how prosperous independent Ireland has become. They would see the Celtic Tiger as a vindication of their efforts. If told in 1916 that, by the end of the century, Ireland would have the highest GDP per capita in Europe and would have net immigration of 50,000 to 100,000 annually, they would never have believed it. Its a total myth that all the 1916 leaders were socialists. A few were, but the rest were in what has always been the pro-capitalist mainstream in Ireland . You're confusing a national struggle with a socialist revolution. Most countries in Europe have had national struggles in which pro-capitalist and socialist polticians co-operated. To suggest, when the struggle ended and the population chose the pro-capitalist ones over the socialist ones, that this was some sort of betrayal of the national struggle is absurd. For example, the French national struggle against German occupation involved co-operation between the supporters of DeGaulle and the communists. When the war was over democratic France elected Gaullist governments in preference to communist governments. No one says that this was a betrayal of the ideals of the French Resistance merely because some of that Resistance were communists.

Rocky road

by Joe - WSM 1st of May (personal capacity)

Mon Mar 20, 2006 15:12

I saw the Rocky Road in the IFI and it was quite something, in particular for those of us old enough to remember the end of that period of clerical domination.

To Marxist - we are in the process of producing something very much more detailed on that period. But there is a use in even a brief highlighting of the contradictions between the limited program of the proclamation and the reality of the state that celebrates it 90 years on. We can do long winded but we don't always need to be long winded.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

by eeekkkkk

Mon Mar 20, 2006 14:50

Just pre the troubles documentary - banned at the time - about irish society and what it was doing at the time with it's revolution - wonderful - speaks to the above more than anyone does now - maybe the antichrists could have some screenings?

Available in all good dvd shops - good on IFB and Se Mary Doyle for restoring

you don't want Bertie cruising around in whatever Car the Irish state got after De Valera'a Rolls?

by iosaf

Mon Mar 20, 2006 14:08

Well I can understand that. I think if the men and women of 1916 had known that 25 years and 50 years later the long fellow would be cruising around in a rolls royce taking salutes from a partitioned nation's army, to be followed 90 years later by the Ahern brothers, Mc Dowell, Harney, Haughey on the ex-taoiseach bench...

They might have called it all off.
¿don't ye agree?

nous sommes touts de racailles!

Sowing illusions

by marxist

Mon Mar 20, 2006 14:04

WSM did not say a whole lot about 1916. Just pettit-bourgeois appeals to the limited Proclamation. Is the Proclamation the limit of their demands? WSM are all hot air and little substance. In reality they can be quite tame.

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1916: 90 years on - Gombeen Nation

Comments (7 of 7)