Courtney McGrailFr Joe McVeigh
The men and women who led and took part in the 1916 Rising were idealists of a kind rarely seen in any country except when there are extreme situations of oppression and tyranny as a result of colonisation by an outside force.
These men and women had seen the dreadful poverty, the unemployment and terrible housing conditions in which the working class people lived. They had witnessed the cruelty of the authorities in confronting the 1913-14 strikes. They were very aware of the effects of the Great Hunger that had taken place just a few decades earlier.
As far as they were concerned this situation could only be dealt with by confronting the British forces and making a bold bid for independence.
As well as being idealists they were also realists in that they knew that their actions would almost certainly lead to their deaths.
It was a courageous thing they did – to take on the might of the British empire. It was a courageous thing to go into battle knowing that their lives were at stake. I cannot fully comprehend that kind of courage and selflessness – except in spiritual terms and in their historical context.
Firstly, the leaders of the 1916 Rising must be understood in their historical and political context.
As they stated in the Proclamation, they were inspired by the brave men and women who went before them, in the Fenians, the Young Ireland movement and in the United Irish movement who made various attempts to end British rule in Ireland using armed resistance.
Moral rightness
Secondly, the men and women of 1916 were a highly motivated bunch who believed strongly in the justness of their cause and the moral rightness of how they proposed to achieve their aims by the use of physical force. They wanted to see a republic where all the children of the nation were treated equally.
Thirdly, some of them felt they were making a symbolic blood sacrifice in order to move people from their apathy about their own oppression to work as a nation for freedom, justice and peace. The notion of blood sacrifice for your country was common enough at the time and is reflected in English poets like Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen.
Fourthly, in commemorating 1916 one hundred years on, we are also considering how we, who live in Ireland today, can achieve the goals for which these brave men and women sacrificed their lives.
Looking back on it now, I believe it was a courageous act of defiance that was justified in the circumstances in which they lived.
I too have lived under a tyranny and understand what it is like to be on the receiving end of British military repression, humiliation and discrimination. I understand why many young people like the present Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, were prepared to take up arms and risk their lives in pursuit of justice and freedom.
The 1916 men and women, as far as I am concerned, were people of honour and conviction, committed to radically changing the social conditions of the poor in Irish society.
They believed that they were acting in accordance with their consciences to bring about independence for the Irish people, Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.
They were convinced like some people in every colonised country that they were fighting for the soul of their country, so that future generations would be free to grow up in a country where their Irish identity would be respected. They were certainly not fighting to establish a narrow sectarian Catholic state like the one that emerged after the Treaty. Like the leaders of 1798, they were opposed to all forms of sectarianism.
Some of the 1916 men and women were visionaries, poets, writers and thinkers and all of them were committed to the ideals of freedom, justice and peace and unity. Joseph Mary Plunkett’s ‘I see his blood upon the rose/ And in the stars the glory of his eyes.’ is an example of the radical spirituality of one of these leaders.
This deeply religious man was, like the others, totally committed to peace and freedom in Ireland and believed that an armed rebellion was the only way of achieving that.
The Rising itself was doomed to fail militarily when Eoin MacNeill issued orders commanding that it be cancelled the day before it was due to go ahead. Some believe it was doomed to fail anyway given the opposition to the rebels. In that situation I believe that those who went ahead with it are heroes who must be honoured and remembered.
They did not achieve then what they set out to do because they were opposed from within and without, and when the forces of counter revolution were aligned and the leaders were all executed it was difficult to see how their goal might be achieved in the foreseeable future.
The settlement that was arrived at by representatives of the British government and the Irish delegation to partition the island of Ireland was to have serious repercussions for the whole of the Irish people – most especially for the working class in the six north-eastern counties, often wrongly referred to as ‘Ulster’.
That decision was to create further division and violence and economic deprivation.
The counter-revolutionaries, mostly from the middle class, who opposed the republican struggle, were now in the ascendant and that settlement was to stay in place until the next large-scale outbreak of armed insurrection in the north in the 1970s.
Peaceful means
The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought that war to an end and hopefully marks the end of physical force as a weapon in Irish politics.
The agreement now offers the Irish people the opportunity to achieve the aims of the men and women of 1916 by peaceful and political means.
The words of Patrick Pearse at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa in August 1915 still ring true: “Ireland unfree will never be at peace.” The logic of this statement is that until political and economic freedom from Britain is achieved the peace is fragile. It must ensure equality and justice for all citizens of this island.
There are some encouraging signs at grassroots level in the North that a growing number of people want this peace to last and want to progress on the economic front so that our young people are not forced to emigrate to find work and so that all can live together in peace and respect.
In the last two years, in my own parish of Enniskillen I have been taking part in meetings with members of the different churches concerned to bring about lasting community peace and prosperity for all in our area.
As long as this kind of work aimed at reducing and eliminating sectarianism and promoting social cohesion and employment continues and is encouraged by the governments in London, Dublin and Belfast, and by the European community then there is hope for the bright brand new day, envisioned by the women and men of 1916.
Fr Joe McVeigh is a priest of the Clogher diocese.