Sir, - Former taoiseach John Bruton (Opinion, November 11th) refers to the Easter Rising as a "feat of organisation" that showed what Irish people could do and gave confidence to those who founded the State five years later.
The Rising was, of course, much more than that. It was our revolution - a rebellion against injustice, inequality, oppression and foreign rule.
The decade of commemoration now being referred to by Mr Bruton and others is to be welcomed, particularly by relatives of the executed 1916 leaders who for decades witnessed the abject failure of successive administrations to properly commemorate the Rising - he himself headed an administration during that time.
Commemorations during the decade ahead should not be used as a device to minimise the central importance of the Easter Rising. While other events during that period in our history were important and cannot be dismissed, the pretence that they are of equal importance to the pivotal event that led directly to our independence is nonsense.
Our freedom did not fall from the sky - it was fought for by a golden generation of people some of whom paid the ultimate price for the liberty we enjoy today. The importance of the Rising and their sacrifice deserves to be remembered as a separate event in an appropriate manner with the active participation of all citizens. - Yours, etc,
Sir, - As someone who commenced service in the ranks of the ITGWU in Liberty Hall 40 years ago, and who looks forward to President Michael D Higgins leading the way in centenary commemorations of his own and my union's struggle for its very existence during the 1913 Lockout, I deeply resent former taoiseach John Bruton's attempt to counterpose such 1913 commemorations to centenary commemorations of the 1916 Rising (Opinion, November 11th).
The fact is that the Irish Citizen Army, founded in Liberty Hall in November 1913 by Larkin and Connolly in order to defend my Union's members, was given an explicitly separatist constitution by Sean O'Casey to enforce and defend by force of arms.
As someone whose grandfather lost his first cousin John Sheehy during the prolonged holocaust of the Somme front, and who knows how his family's sense of bereavement was compounded by profound regret that he had perished in a British army uniform, I also deeply resent Mr Bruton's "balancing" of the 1916 Rising's fight for Irish freedom with the Somme's imperialist slaughter.
As a citizen of this Irish Republic, I am also ashamed to say that I know of no other self-respecting Republic where a former head of government would seek to swamp or otherwise diminish the foundation stone of that Republic.
Could one imagine any US president or any French president or prime minister calling for the proud Republican commemorations of July 4th 1776 or July 14th 1789, respectively, to be muted or "balanced" by commemorations of North American loyalism or the Bourbon dynasty? All Irish war dead of whatever army should indeed be commemorated, on Ireland's National Day of Commemoration each July.
But this Republic can only honour its own War of Independence, not the Imperialist Great War. It was the December 1918 general election that democratically ratified the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916, and its Easter Rising was regarded as the foundation stone of Irish freedom, not only by the Irish Republic's first and second Dáils, but also by the subsequent Dáils of the Irish Free State.
Notwithstanding the fact that his own brother Michael had perished in Flanders in a British army uniform, the Cumann na nGaedheal minister for justice, Kevin O'Higgins, proclaimed in the Dáil in March 1927: "No one denies the sacrifice, and no one denies the patriotic motives which induced the vast majority of those men to join the British army to take part in the Great War, and yet it is not on their sacrifice that this State is based, and I have no desire to see it suggested that it is." On that score, at least, I would stand by Kevin O'Higgins! - Yours, etc,