Don’t turn the pride of 1916 into cheap political stunts

TEN weeks from today the Irish nation will be in full flow as thousands of our uniformed forces, from Army to Civil Defence, will parade from St Stephen’s Green to the Garden of Remembrance as we mark the most seminal moment in the history of the Irish state. In the meantime we will have a general election. Already there are ominous signs that the battles of 1916 will turn into an unholy war between competing political parties to claim ownership of the Rising for their election campaigns. This is a great pity that serves only to sully the events of Easter Week 100 years ago and besmirch the memories of the 500 who died between the two canals in the centre of Dublin. Opposition parties are simply using the Rising commemorations to do a roll call of every conceivable thing that is wrong with Irish society.

In any society, on any given day, this list could be compiled, but what it has to do with the events of 100 years ago is beyond me. The rebels of 1916 morphed into three political parties, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the already existing Labour Party. The people, in democratic elections, returned these parties to government time after time in the last 100 years. Among the many sins laid at the foot of the Irish State none have claimed that elections have been rigged.

The Government needs to be careful that commemoration events are not turned into election rallies by those who happen to be in office at the moment and hold the purse strings. Neither does every State event for Centenary 2016 have to be ‘balanced’ with a Government minister from Fine Gael and Labour sharing the speechifying and publicity honours.

One thing that has struck me because of the overwhelming and surprising reaction to my research and book on the children killed during the Easter Rising is that there is a great hunger for the untold stories of real people who fell that fateful week. That it took a hundred years for a list of 40 children to be compiled and their stories told is a statement in itself.

As I have said before, I still don’t believe the list is complete. Indeed, it would take a slew of history professors and countless students to trawl through the dead of 1916 to get the full story.

The fact that a book on the children killed in 1916 outsold every other tome on the Rising speaks volumes about the inclusivity that Irish people are crying out for.

One area where the information is complete is the roll call of those who were killed during the Troubles between 1969 and 2006. This is due to the incredible work of the team led by David McKittrick and Brian Feeney who compiled Lost Lives, which tells the stories of the 3,720 who died.

On this day alone, January 17 nine families in Northern Ireland are marking the anniversary of a loved one who died violently in the Troubles. Every single day of the year sees families bow their heads on the anniversary of a relative who died violently.

When I went through Lost Lives over the last few months I found 143 children, aged 16 and under, who died during the Troubles, 41 of them in West Belfast alone.

All of them would be adults today but for the violence.

So we should tread softly, with humility and inclusiveness, over the next 70 days. The country has come a long way, we have a lot to be proud of – but our humanity behoves us to remember all those who died unnecessarily.

Children of the Rising: the untold story of the young lives lost during Easter 1916 by Joe Duffy is published by Hachette Books €19.99