Stormont an obstacle to realising ideals of 1916 – Ó Brádaigh

international | miscellaneous | press release Monday April 09, 2007 13:02 by Seán Ó Murchú - Sinn Féin (Poblachtach) - Cork

Speaking at the GPO, Dublin, on Easter Monday, April 9, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President of Republican Sinn Féin, said:

“The 1916 Rising against British rule in Ireland meant (a) the re-assertion of the right of the Irish people to national independence; (b) the re-birth of Christian idealism – the idea of service and self-sacrifice to one’s country and (c) the emergence in the 20th century of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement which was to spread world-wide.

Those who in recent times attempted sign away the rights of the Irish people by restoring Stormont may have worn the time-honoured Easter Lily but in reality they were putting back an obstacle on the road to the freedom of All-Ireland.

This, according to one commentator (Éamonn McCann) makes “an abstraction, if not a nonsense”, of the ringing words of the 1916 Proclamation that they have read out publicly this weekend.

They have accepted Stormont under the Union Jack, British police, British courts and British law in denial and flat contradiction of that Proclamation and the deeds of the Volunteers, Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan and Fianna Éireann 91 years ago.

The massive bribes made by the English government – €50 billion over four years together with €6 million from Dublin – remind people of “How did they pass the Union?” in 1800, “By bribery and by fraud”.

The poets’ Insurrection of Pearse, McDonagh and Plunkett, as it was called, asserted the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland, which right could only be extinguished by the destruction of the Irish people.

It promised civil and religious liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities, and ignored the differences carefully fostered by an alien government. Resistance to British rule would continue, it said, until “the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrage of all her men and women”.

The recent McEntee Investigation into the Dublin-Monaghan bombings which caused the deaths of 33 Irish citizens was fruitless because the relevant documentation was “missing” or “lost” from 26-County police custody and the Departments of Justice and Defence.

Similarly, the Barron private inquiry and the Joint-Oireachtas Committee investigation into British forces collusion with those and other atrocities had been hamstrung because of official British refusal to cooperate. Nothing less than a high-powered international inquiry would be sufficient to deal with the situation.

The task for Republicans today remained to organise and lead the section of the Irish people opposed to English rule here. The way forward is through a nine-county Ulster Parliament as part of a new four-province federation.

Optimum devolution of power and decision-making will provide for all sections, whether of the majority or of local minorities. Thus can the bright ideals of the 1916 Rising be advanced and the stand taken by Pearse, Connolly and their followers vindicated.