Revere the heroes of our real revolution

THE problem with the fight for Irish freedom, is that most of us think it happened about 60 years before it actually did.

The “revolution” which started in 1916 ultimately delivered the handover of power from the British empire to the empire of the Vatican — and frankly, if I had to choose between the two, I’d probably take the Brits.

The real liberation of this country came in the 1960s and particularly the 1970s, and it was mainly rock’n’roll that did it — an energy captured brilliantly in Citizens of Boomtown, the documentary on the Rats, part one of which was shown on RTE 1 last week.

Here was the real emergence of something new, and the end of the old regime, decades after it is alleged to have happened in our school histories.

Miraculously, some of the heroes of the revolution are still available for public appearances — Horslips are playing the Olympia on St Patrick’s Night.

Indeed it is time for all primary schools to have a new version of the old “Seven Signatories of the Proclamation” framed on the wall, with suitable profiles of Rory, Philo, Geldof, Bono, Eamon Carr, Philip Chevron and Paul Cleary up there. And a statue of Sinead

O’Connor.

RATS: Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers of the Boomtown Rats in 1979

And there are some who’d think I’m joking about that too. In an interview with Tony Leen on an Irish Examiner podcast, you will find the RTE head of sport Declan McBennett giving a kind of an ‘Official Guide’ to the workings of the Dead Hand — that urge to keep things nicely balanced, a perfectly reasonable urge you would think, if it wasn’t for the fact that for some mysterious reason it tends to make everything worse.

Would that be a personal attack on my part?

McBennett has declared that RTE Sport doesn’t want “personal attacks”, explaining to Tony Leen that “we all know there is a line you don’t cross”.

No Declan, what we know, is that that statement of yours is the Dead Hand — in one of its purest forms.

As for the crossing of lines: if you stay on the “right” side of the line but you lose Joe Brolly (inset), then you’re actually on the wrong side of the line. “There was an era in Irish broadcasting which was very personality driven... and I think people have tired of it somewhat,” he explained. No Declan… just…

No.