Members of the Defence Forces Parading through the streets of Dublin during the commemoration of the Centenary of the 1916 Rising. The parade saw 3,700 members of the Defence Forces, Gardaí and the emergency services march along a 4.5km route from St Stephen's Green, past the GPO to Capel Street. The event was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. | Photo: Philip Jones/MKC
Kieran Walsh reports
We visited Dublin on both Holy Saturday and Easter Monday to sample the atmosphere and festivity of the Easter 1916 Centenary Commemoration.
It was a pleasure to hear the Island of Ireland Peace Choir (previously known as the Waterford Omagh Peace Choir) performed at the Garden of Remembrance before President Michael D Higgins, Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
We met with choir leader and guitarist Phil Brennan who spoke proudly of their involvement on the day, where they performed ‘The Parting Glass’, immortalised by Carrick-on-Suir’s Liam Clancy. The choir had also performed at the 1848 Tricolour Festival and on the previous evening, March 25th, had sung prior to the Republic of Ireland/Switzerland international soccer friendly.
The Garden of Remembrance event featured considerable involvement on behalf of the Defence Forces, with the President and Taoiseach both inspecting the Honour Guard.
Those who died during Easter Week 1916 were honoured by a wreath laying, poetry, prayers, ‘The Last Post’, the playing of Amhrán na bFhiann and the hoisting of the Tricolour, which had been at half mast in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks.
On Easter Monday, we returned to the capital to take in some of RTE’s excellent ‘Reflecting The Rising’ events, and it proved a day well spent.
There was a great crowd gathered on O’Connell Street, with the good weather matching the masses’ good humour, where they were entertained by the High Kings, featuring Mooncoin’s Darren Holden, Carrick-on-Suir’s Finbarr Clancy, Waterford-born Martin Furey and Brian Dunphy.
During the concert, which also featured Sharon Shannon and Mundy of ‘Galway Girl’ fame, we met fellow Waterfordians Margaret Walsh and her sisters Jacinta Landy and Ann Marie Flavin.
We attended the well-publicised wreath laying ceremony on Moore Street, the site of the last exchanges in Easter Week, where Arts Minister Heather Humphreys was heckled in the wake of the controversy over the long-term future of Moore Street.
The Save Moore Street campaigners.
The ‘Save Moore Street’ campaign, who wish to see the area historically preserved, was heavily present at the wreath laying ceremony, and despite their recent High Court success, one suspects their fight has some road to run yet.
A visitor attraction at Moore Street would appear to be a logical and fitting memorial for the area given what happened here a century ago: the Rebels’ surrender to the British.
We also visited Sackville Lane, just off Moore Street, the site where the O’Rahilly was shot and mortally wounded.
As he lay there, the Rebel wrote: “Written after I was shot – Darling Nancy, I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street took refuge in a doorway. While I was there I heard the men pointing out where I was & I made a bolt for the lane I am in now. I got more [than] one bullet I think. Tons and tons of love dearie to you & to the boys & to Nell & Anna. It was a good fight anyhow. Please deliver this to Nannie O’Rahilly, 40 Herbert Park, Dublin.
Good bye Darling.” The note made it to his wife: a British officer ensured it did. And on the wall below which he died, there’s a depiction of that note.
Proinsias O'Rathaille, grandson of 'The O'Rahilly', pictured beneath his grandfather's memorial.
Travel writer and broadcaster Manchan Magan, a great grand nephew of the O’Rahilly, provided a walking tour of the area, detailing how his ancestor had made his attack on the barricades. We also met Proinsias O’Rathaille, the grandson of the famous rebel who felt that his grandfather hadn’t been sufficiently honoured during the official events, having led the first evacuation of the GPO after it was set on fire. He believes that the evacuation route in Henry Place could become a special feature, given that it was used as an escape route by some of the 350 volunteers during Easter Week 1916. They honoured the O’Rahilly in music and story, and have no doubt, more shall do so at this historic location in the future.
As we spoke to a young man form the Cork Road in Waterford, Ger Quinn and his friend Gerry Liston, we saw Republican Sinn Féin marching down Parnell Street, in berets and face scarves, towards the GPO.
Some on O’Connell Street were surprised by the appearance of this group at what felt like an impromptu and unexpected march as young flautists played ‘The Foggy Dew’ and ‘Roddy McCorley’. Armed Gardaí in bullet-proof vests watched on at the time.
We then progressed from the GPO to the Mansion House’s Round Room, where President Higgins, not for the first time in recent weeks, delivered another eloquent and compelling speech in relation to the Rising.
“There is always a risk, then, that commemoration might be exploited for partisan purposes, and some historians have rightly warned us against the perils posed to historical truth by any backward imputation of motives, any uncritical transfer of contemporary emotions onto the past,” said President Higgins.
“Commemoration can also lead to a form of public history aimed at securing the present, whether by invoking an ‘appropriate’ past, or, in desperation, by calling for such an amnesia as might allow a bland transition to the future. Such approaches are often those that least discomfit those who wield power.
“As Diarmaid Ferriter will show, each anniversary of the Easter Rising has had a different focus, a distinctive way of looking back at the past, which tell us at least as much about the zeitgeist of every commemorative period, and perhaps about those who controlled the process of commemoration, as they do about the events of 1916 themselves.
“Conscious of these risks, my emphasis, as President of Ireland, has been on the challenge of remembering ethically as we engage with the ongoing Decade of Commemorations – a Decade that encompasses not just the Easter Rising, but other defining events such as the Great Lockout of 1913, the outbreak of the First World War, the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.”
President Higgins added: ” The ethics of commemoration also entails an openness to the dissonant voices and stories of “the other”, the stranger, the enemy of yesterday – a disposition described by philosopher Paul Ricoeur as ‘narrative hospitality.’
“In speeches I have given in the North and South over the last years, I have often drawn on Paul Ricoeur’s suggestive conceptual work, and I have emphasised in particular the importance of avoiding any false or comforting amnesia.
“Neither is ethical remembering one that dispenses with historical empiricism, acknowledging as it does that the selection or exclusions of facts or from facts can close doors to reflection and research.
“Furthermore, while commemoration is always, as I have just observed, a process of selective remembering, ethical commemoration is that which seeks to respect context and complexity, as well as the agency and the integrity of the motivations of the men and women from the past.”
President Michael D Higgins excelled in his role as Head of State during the 1916 Commemorations. | Photo: Cyril Byrne
President Higgins told the audience: “Crucially, and perhaps most importantly, there is an introspective dimension to ethical remembering, inviting us to revisit critically the collective myths and beliefs by which we have defined ourselves as a nation.
“Commemoration provides an opportunity to address at a profound level the assumptions of competing foundational mythologies, mythologies that have turned our historiography into a space of contestation with fluctuating passions…
“The question has often been raised during these ongoing commemorations, as to whether, in our political independence, we have lived up to the ideals articulated during the foundational events of the Irish Republic.
“This is, as I have suggested, an insufficient question. Indeed we must never forget how, at the beginnings of our independence, Irish society as a whole was neither factually equal, nor ideologically drawn to egalitarianism. It was then, and it remains, a challenge to create such a society as will enable all of its children, women and men to flourish in equality.
We did not descend from equality into inequality; an inequality that may be described today as ever deepening. The early years of our State did not represent any idyll of liberty and freedom – but the a study of the revolutionary moment does present to us a moment of idealism and hope, the promise of what our nation might yet become. Let us put it positively: the joy of making equality the central theme of our Republic remains for us.
“As we set to this task, we are also called, I believe, to revisit our conceptions of what constitutes a real Republic – a Republic that would have solidarity, community and the public world at its heart; a Republic that would acknowledge the State as a shared responsibility, and recognise, too, its vital role in achieving the common welfare of all citizens.
“This conception of the State and the Republic is so much richer that any limiting, individualistic definition of citizenship – and it is also, I suggest, closer to what the leaders of 1916 had in mind. They were advanced thinkers, selfless women and men, who took all the risks to ensure that the children of Ireland would, in the future, live in freedom and access their fair share of Ireland’s prosperity.”
The President concluded: “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.
“All of us are invited, then, in this year of 2016, to reach for the ideals and hopes that animated so many of the men and women of 1916 in their struggle for freedom, equality and social justice. Informed by the manifest needs of our times, let us test again these ideals; let us retrieve the courage, the utopianism, of 1916 – and let us add to it, as we craft, together, a new and inspiring vision for the coming generations.
“Let us revive the best of the promise of 1916, so that those coming generations might experience freedom in the full sense of the term – freedom from poverty, freedom from violence and insecurity, and freedom from fear.”
UCD historian and author Diarmaid Ferriter followed the President with another excellent presentation in which he referred to the need to “disentangle memory from myth”, and referred to how the tangle for control of the Rising’s narrative had continued well beyond the Civil War and right up to the present day.
He noted that in 1924 there was “a contested celebration” while in other years, many chose not to attend events staged by the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal government; for example, Fianna Fáil opted out of the 1926 anniversary event at the GPO and held a rival event at Glasnevin.
The satirical magazine, Dublin Opinion, suggested that there were 3,000 rebels inside the GPO during Easter Week, which arose after a plethora of pension claims were sought by activists with Sean O’Casey’s ‘The Plough And The Stars’ controversially, at the time, questioning the outcome of the revolution.
The rows continued: into the 1930s when the Cúchulainn statue was unveiled at the GPO, which Cumann na nGaedheal stayed away from, as politicians, Diarmaid Ferriter said, picked “over the bones of the patriot dead”.
During the 1940s, Eamon De Valera contested the (surviving) IRA’s claim that they still represented the 1916 leaders, claiming that they had no authority or moral right to do so.
Come 1949, when the 1948 Republic of Ireland Act came into effect, then Taoiseach John A Costello invited Eamon De Valera to partake in a joint broadcast to mark the declaration of the Republic, but he refused to take part. And this contesting of history continued right up to the 50th Anniversary in 1966, when Sean Lemass was Taoiseach, with Sean Ó Faoláin, in the Bell Magazine, noting “how much the bloodstream of an Irishman was made up in memories”.
The weekend’s events were rounded off on Easter Monday night by the well-received ‘Centenary’ broadcast from the
Ger Quinn (Cork Road), pictured with Gerry Liston, in Dublin on Easter Monday.
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, which, among a cast of hundreds, featured the High Kings. It was a night – and a weekend – high on emotion.
With a more mardi gras feel north of the Liffey over the weekend, the events were incredibly well organised, and the mood of the weekend felt very much commemorative as opposed to a jingoistic, triumphalist celebration.
Ireland honoured the men and women of 1916 over Easter Weekend most commendably, and the people who turned out in such enormous numbers warmed to it with great enthusiasm.