Black Shamrock and W
All the great splits in Irish Republicanism have basically been about whether the independent Irish state of the day should be considered legitimate as constituted.
To that end it struck me as obvious that the most authentic claimants of the political legacy of the 1916 Rising are Republican Sinn Fein, and not Provisional Sinn Fein, nor Fianna Fail (the Republican Party), nor Fine Gael, nor the Progressive Democrats (stop laughing), nor Official Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein the Workers Party, The Workers Party, Democratic Left, The Labour Party.
Ireland being Irish however, the obvious is often not said, and I only noticed Eamonn McCann giving the nod to RSF, whilst he also wondered why Catholic Ireland didn’t bid for her part of the tradition.
Pertinently McCann ponders the thoughts of the major political figures in Nationalist Ireland today, in terms of drawing a legacy from the actions of 1916 to present-day Ireland, from Irish President McAleese, through Taoiseach Ahern, and on to Gerry Adams. From the Irish socialist view McCann sees the enduring legacy of the Rising in the fact that:
it was a blow against the most powerful Empire on earth at the time, and (we) regard it as self-evident that its spirit is best represented today in the fight against the imperial power of the US ruling class.In this view, the most egregious betrayal of 1916 lies not in grudgingly taking seats in a partitionist parliament but in cheerfully breaking bread with George W. Bush. The most fitting symbol of the Rising is not the Easter Lily but the Black Shamrock
Although an Irish presence in Kansas City predates 1916, the Rising still carries a significance for KC as it does for anything with an Irish identity. Of course we don’t know what would have happened, but had there been no Rising in 1916 it’s quite possible that none of the Irish who arrived in the midwest in the 90 years since would ever have boarded a ship or a ‘plane.
You won’t have to put up with much more of this, at least not for another ten years - but by then we’ll all be in a different place. And if that place is at a great big party, then that probably means less people are dying. Or the globalization of O’Connell Street and Dublin has been completed.
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