Remember 1916, when we had guts and self-esteem?

Posted by Jim on January 9, 2016

By Niamh Horan (for the Independent)

You’d have to wonder what the executed leaders of the Rising would make
of it all.

Thomas J Clarke, Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Padraig Pearse,
Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett.

Men willing to die for their country; for liberty, sovereignty and
economic freedom.

They wrote the Proclamation swiftly, under life-threatening conditions
in Liberty Hall on the night before the Rising.

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of
Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be
sovereign and indefeasible,” they proclaimed, before taking up arms.

Mac Diarmada was in poor health. His hip was bad. He walked in pain and
with the aid of a stick, travelling the country, as the Irish Republican
Brotherhood’s principal organiser.

On the day of the Rising, Clarke went into the GPO to fight alongside
his comrades, even though he was almost 60 and suffering from a bullet
wound to his elbow.

Across the city, on Mount Street Bridge, where a handful held off the
Crown forces, a 28-year-old carpenter turned lieutenant, Michael Malone,
sent his youthful troops home in order to save their lives.

The lack of weaponry juxtaposed with the sheer bravery displayed on the
day has oft been commended by historians.

Fast forward 100 years and Ireland has “changed utterly”, as W B Yeats
predicted.

But in ways they could never envisage.

Our risk from foreign adversaries has changed from the very real threat
of the enemy at the gates to intimidations of a different kind in the
financial sector.

Today’s leaders never had to take up arms to protect their people. And
yet the stark language of warfare has been conjured up at every turn.

Unlike the rebels who fanned out across the city on Easter Monday in
April 1916 facing artillery from all sides, today’s governments have
only had to deal with the metaphorical “loaded gun” while Trichet and
the ECB threatened financial Armageddon to let a “bomb go off” in the
Irish economy unless Finance Minster Michael Noonan met their demands.

And yet the sheer lack of courage to go toe-to-toe against these foreign
threats would leave you wondering where Kenny and his comrades would
cower if they found themselves in a plume of smoke 100 years ago as the
British closed in.

Over the past two governments, leaders have kowtowed again and again to
foreign interests.

The bank guarantee, a willingness to honour bondholders debts and the
submissiveness shown when the US government blocked an attempt by the
previous Irish government to burn [euro]20bn worth of bondholders has been
staggering.

The last person to oversee the country in such a crisis was Charlie
Haughey. For all his flaws, it is hard to imagine him ever allowing the
Irish taxpayer to be screwed by Europe like that. He may have been
crooked but he was smart. And he would never have rolled over like a
pair of schoolteachers.

Our politicians skinned the country for the interest of global financial
institutions, saddling the nation with [euro]9,000 debt for every man, woman
and child.

And when there was “blood on the streets”, as Steve Schwarzman, chief
executive of Blackstone said when offering his views on buying up
Europe’s distressed assets to an audience at Goldman Sachs in New York
in 2010, they let foreign vultures swoop in.

Afterwards, Schwarzman’s company bought [euro]2bn of Irish loans and
property, including the Burlington hotel, a 25pc stake in Eircom,
offices and a [euro]1.8bn par value of loans linked to developer Michael
O’Flynn, bought from Nama at a discount for around [euro]1.1bn.

The state agency – which was given unprecedented powers in a bid to get
credit going – sold loans secured by prized assets to foreigners, like
Claridges and Battersea Power Station, while the Irish could only stand
and watch.

What a turnaround when our forefathers had always fought to protect our
land from foreign interests and keep the welfare of the Irish people at
it’s heart.

But hey, this year the Government has been busy handing out free flags
and copies of the Proclamation and the nation is expected to get in the
spirit.

No doubt Kenny will give a tall speech too at Dublin’s GPO this Easter,
waxing lyrical about the true meaning of patriotism. The same man who
sat in front of the Irish flag to deliver his State of the Nation
address four years ago upon taking up office.

He told the country: “I want to be the Taoiseach who retrieves Ireland’s
economic sovereignty” and even evoked the spirit of the “founding
fathers of our nation”.

So you’d have to wonder what they would make of our leaders 100 years
on.

My guess is, come Easter, you can forget resurrections, the only
movement up on Arbour Hill will be some real patriots turning in their
graves.