“What The Proclamation
Means To Me”
By Colm Breathnach (Irish Socialist Network, personal capacity)
Historical documents are inevitably of their
time but threads of relevance run forward and reassert themselves in new
times. And so it is with the Proclamation of 1916. Not simply because we are
fast approaching the hundredth anniversary of the Rising but because the
radical democratic vision that inspired those who rebelled is still
unfulfilled. Who can doubt this when we hear eulogies from some to Redmond,
who urged thousands to their slaughter in the senseless clash of
imperialisms, who had no problem with violence as long as those who
perpetrated it wore the uniform of the empire, while those who challenged
that same empire with arms, are derided as blood-thirsty fanatics. Worse
still, others come to feign praise, fattened on builder’s bungs, long ago
sold to the new empires of Brussels and Boston.
Let us then use these words, long ossified in frames on grey school walls,
to renew that challenge of Pearse and Connolly. To struggle incessantly, in
this most unequal of countries, to build a society that really cherishes all
of the children of the nation equally. To raise once again, without any
hesitation, the right of the people of Ireland, not multi-national or local
capital, to the ownership of Ireland. To insist on the sovereignty of this
land, free from the rule of London, Brussels or Washington. To challenge the
continued militarization of our island, to struggle for complete
demilitarisation and disarmament, north and south, Shannon Airport to South
Armagh.
And in doing so, in advancing towards that goal of a republic of working
people, let us not forget the words of warning as well as the words of
wisdom. Let us accept that some of those who oppose the all-embracing empire
of today are also guilty of cowardice, inhumanity or rapine; let us not see
in my enemy’s enemy a friend. Let us beware of those who would cloak
themselves in the language of nationality to divide a minority from the
majority, whether new minorities or old. Let us be vigilant about the
democratic gains so dearly won by the mass of people. Civil and religious
liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities now face new threats from new
structures of security and power, from the ever-expanding ‘war on terror’.
We must defend as well as advance.
The struggle for the common good, the struggle that stretches from the
revolutionaries of 1798, through 1916 to today, is unceasing. The
establishment of that republic, truly representative of the whole people of
Ireland, dreamed of and fought for by the women and men of 1916, will not be
an end but just a beginning. From there onwards opens a vista of liberation,
a new dawn where all women and men, together, begin to build a truly equal
society.
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