Madam, – I have noticed that when people write to The Irish Timesabout the 1916 rebellion, who also have a direct connection to those events, it is customary to declare it. This is something I am very uncomfortable about: I do not have much time for hereditary insight or importance. I do so only to make a point.
On Easter Monday 1916, my grandmother Geraldine Plunkett, whom I grew up with on the same road in Dublin, married Thomas Dillon. Geraldine’s brother, Joe Plunkett, was the military organiser of the rebellion and a signature of the Proclamation.
Thomas Dillon’s close cousin, with whom he had grown up, was John Dillon, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster, and successor to John Redmond.
My point is this: the divide between the parliamentary struggle for Home Rule and the militant campaign for Irish separatism was much less than is often commonly supposed. Yet in little over two years, the Irish Parliamentary Party was wiped out, replaced by a more radical politics. The first abstentionist MP elected in that process was my great grandfather, George Noble Plunkett, who took a seat in John Dillon’s home county of Roscommon.
In my case, nothing more than family history, if it did not have a direct relevance for today. The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party and Government has become totally detached from the people they claim to represent. I can never remember encountering the levels of anger, frustration and fear that I now do every day on the streets of Dublin. I have never met Irish people who feel so disconnected from decisions that are being taken in their parliament and which will affect them and their children for a very long time.
In a democracy, governments rule by consent. That consent has neither been sought by, nor given to the present Government as it railroads through legislation which it refuses to explain or account for. The most cynical example of this is the introduction of the Nama estimates just in time to call a two-week recess when it cannot be questioned, when parliament cannot do its job.
And at Easter time; the ironies abound. Perhaps Brian Cowen gave a rendition of The Foggy Dew in his local on Easter Sunday to his admiring supporters. But this is no laughing matter. The Easter rebellion came about because of thwarted parliamentary ambitions for Home Rule. Right now, people want a say in how their affairs are governed; they want to be governed by consent. That consent can only be given through the ballot box. There must be a general election. If it is not freely conceded, it will be taken by people going on the streets.
That is the mood I encounter, and it will leave an Ireland fractured as never since the Civil War. If it comes to that, Fianna Fáil will go the way of the old Parliamentary Party and disappear overnight. It would be a real an irony if a party which has so associated itself with 1916 were to meet its historical terminus in such a fashion. – Yours, etc,