As depressing as the provocative stupidity of the President's UCC speech has been much of the resulting correspondence in this newspaper. Naturally, not one of the readers who criticised my columns on the subject answered the questions I asked from the outset. What right had the 1916 insurgents to kill anyone? Why had none of the signatories of the Proclamation ever stood for parliament? How could they call the butchers of Belgium "gallant allies"? How could people today "celebrate" an orgy of violence in which hundreds of innocent Irish people died?, asks Kevin Myers
Peter Martin of Dublin no doubt thought he was being rather smart when he observed that I had made the "unsurprising" discovery that innocent people had been killed in the Rising. Unsurprising? Well, it was something of a surprise to the President, who didn't even mention the many civilian dead of 1916 - and few of the letter-writers have done so either. Adding that I "implicitly" asked what right the insurgents had to take up against the regime, he then helpfully provided various answers to a question which I hadn't asked, while of course ignoring the very questions that I had explicitly asked.
And they are central to everything. Because men do not take arms against an intangible thing like a "regime", but against real people, with real families and real souls. And I can apparently repeat this forever, and never get a forthright answer from those who wax so lyrical about the Rising. So here we go again. What made the Volunteers immune to the fifth commandment and allowed them to kill unarmed Irish police and civilians? With what moral authority did Pearse embark on a campaign which would, from the beginning - by his own admission - possibly kill the "wrong" people? How do socialists justify Connolly's orders to shoot looters? Of course, the insurgents were truly men of their time, the worst epoch in European history since the Black Death (though worse was to come). But no one else in Europe today would dream of celebrating the continent-wide banquet of bloodshed of 1916. To find pride in tragedy and to exult in death today is only possible by viewing history through a Nelsonianly republican telescope.
The Rising led to the War of Independence, which caused the deaths of thousands and the ruination of the Irish economy. Then, almost six years to the day after the Rising, the Civil War began. By its conclusion, the Free State government had executed 81 of its prisoners and interned another 11,480. Nearly 500 soldiers of the new Free State Army - whose descendants will be marching this April in "celebration" of the event which ultimately led to the deaths of so many of their predecessors - were killed by anti-Treaty forces.
To put things in perspective, the British had interned 454 prisoners by the Truce, and had executed 24 during the War of Independence, in addition to the executions of 1916. In Northern Ireland, 728 prisoners were interned between May 1922 and December 1924. In other words, UK authorities interned a tenth as many prisoners and executed half as many IRA men as the new Free State did.
At the end of this monstrous orgy of violence, this small island contained two confessionalist and mutually hostile states, with hundreds of thousands of refugees. Moreover a haemophiliac cult, combining tribal pride and an infatuation with blood-sacrifice, had become the predominant political force in this State, propelling independent Ireland into a half-century long parabola of isolation, poverty and philistinism. In other words, the Rising, far from leading to a (still unachieved) united Irish republic, was the gateway to a human and historic catastrophe.
When the President speaks as the leader of the nation, and my head of state, with the statesmanlike balance and prudence which have characterised most of her presidency, I will respond with the utmost respect, even if I disagree with her. But whenever she talks like an "Up the Republic!" saloon bar braggart of 1966 vintage, I will treat her remarks with the contempt such tribal gibberish deserves.
So, when will we finally get it into our thick heads that there are two tribes on this island, and one tribe cannot uninhibitedly exult in its myths without the other tribe taking fright? The 50th anniversary of the Rising was marked with a jubilant nationalist triumphalism in 1966, sending shock-waves through the Northern unionist community. Two months later Gusty Spence began the Troubles when he brutally murdered a Catholic, 28-year old John Scullion, an only child who minded his blind and widowed father.
In other words, we have no excuses any more. We've been here before. We know now that if our leaders once again embark upon yet more witless and unreflective glorification of the "heroes" of 1916 - the President's term - we are taking a very dangerous step indeed.
Yet where is Enda Kenny in all this? Where Mary Harney? Where Pat Rabbitte? Are they scared of confronting Fianna Fáil on such a vital national issue? Or do they really believe the men of 1916 had the moral authority to kill poor Constable O'Brien at Dublin Castle?
Fifty years later, in June 1966, did Gusty Spence not arrogate to himself exactly the same right when shooting Peter Scullion? Did the murderers of Jerry McCabe not arrogate that self-same right another 30 years later, in June 1996? Yet another decade on, and once again, we are back to celebrating murder. This is worse than cretinous; it suggests that political blood-worship in this country has become a pathological and incurable perversion.