The 1916 rising: an enemy within (part 1)

In the photo above taken during the 1916 rising, take a look at these Irish men in their ill fitting uniforms, cobbled and knitted together quickly from curtains and coarse linen by mothers and sisters to give them dignity and legitimacy as they fought for the freedom that they hoped you would have today.  They were wrong.

Though their idealism and courage was unsurpassed, and for many the ultimate sacrifice was given for they could not give any higher, that which was their life, again their hopes would never be realised. Another enemy was waiting in open view: the enemy within. 

As this republic came into being it had inherited a country fractionalised, not only by religion, but polarised by the landed gentry, their Irish supporters and the real poor. Sixty five years after the mass starvation of a nation, for the famine never existed except in the minds of the ignorant and brainwashed, things had not changed all that much. The penal laws, what was left of them, were still used, not only by the British, but by the Irish to club and subdue their fellow man.   

Many an Irishman was bought off by a few acres of stony land and for many more, a lot less to help a less common enemy to some, the British. The more innocent gave their lives to fight for the British in 1914 in the cruelest and bloodiest conflict to have ever raged in history until then in the hope that England would give Ireland their freedom, but it was going to be everything but free instead.

The reactionary forces that forced Irish men to dress up in soldiers uniforms and coloured them a symbolic green to fight and die for the scraps left, died in a river of blood. Before they died, they were spat on by Irishmen and women long bought off by the queens shilling; and to ensure they died, newspapers led by the Irish Independent, cried out for their legitimate murder as they lay wounded and dying on stretchers where they insects and lice feasted on them first. The establishment must and would be protected at all times no matter how rotten to the core it was. As the political landscape changed the protection of the establishment would survive above all others, at least until now.

To be continued……….

Barry Clifford