As the establishment remained preserved and intractable after 1916, and the murdered Irishman that died by firing squad, were interred, the world beyond these shores woke up while little Ireland turned on itself. The killing had begun in earnest. By 1922 and after being given a quasi -independence, they called the killings a civil war where being civil was the last thing on anyone’s mind. Though the nation became divided, the spoils of war was all that was left to divide after they ran out of bullets. A new order was created and with it a shared constitution with a religious order: the Irish republic and the Catholic church. Some even called it a democracy. Institutional corruption along with raw nepotism slowly wound it’e way around the green flag and one as old time itself.
Marcus Cicero would describe this state of affairs best (106 BC-43 BC) almost two thousand years earlier than 1922:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
The last elected leader that stood for something in this country is almost forgotten now and his son- in law would make sure that any good that he intended would be interred with his bones. This son-in law of Sean Lamass was woven from a different cloth, and any new clothing would have to be in silk. He saw the political landscape and the veneer of democracy always as Benjamin Franklin described it: “Democracy is like two wolves and a lamb sitting down at the dinner table discussing what they will eat for dinner.”
Before Charles Haughey had a real chance at that menu, Rome burned just across the border of the six counties in 1968 and 1969 as the pogroms against the nationalists that remained fettered to the six counties were attacked en-mass and their houses burned and razed to the ground. The Irish Republic held their nerve simply because it did not have one.
And the demands of these nationalists were equal to the African American, through there they got those right before the Irishman did here. These demands in the north were simply this: One person, one vote; an end to the gerrymandered local government boundaries; an end to discrimination in the allocation of housing; and end to discrimination in employment; and the end of the repressive Special Powers act. Pretty basic stuff you might ask but a matter of life back then.
The B-specials had replaced here in the north the black and tans that once ran amok in the south forty five years before, and were backed up by the Northern Police force and the British army. But that was not important in the south. Going to Mass was and and in a place where gulags up and down the country were not locking up criminals, but children and unmarried mothers.
Still, Haughey was planning bigger and better things as a pale and wan neurosis overtook the general population of the republic that had once boasted courage as a virtue and cowardice as a crime punishable by death. These ancient ancestors believed it better to die standing while living swiftly as a lion than living a little longer as a sheep. By 1971 it could be safely said that the cries of the sheep who could be heard all across the land of the republic as the wolves devoured the north. The echoes of 1916 had long since died away in the distance..........
Barry Clifford (to be continued.....)
1916 as it was happening below
No comments:
Post a Comment