大象传媒

It is as fatuous to seek to repudiate what happened at Easter 1916 as it is to cite it as justification for today鈥檚 violence. Those who would now endeavour to define it solely in either of these terms are engaging in self-serving casuistry. The Rising was many thing; treachery and bravery, idealism and opportunism, patriotism and fanaticism, self sacrifice and self importance, vision and myopia.

What is important today is that we can begin to see it in these many dimensions, in contrast to the dangerous simplicities which sponsored the 1966 celebrations. Those were innocent times and the 25 years since represent, in terms of our maturing and growth as a people, a longer span than the full half-centry which had at that time elapsed since 1916. The nightly toll of the dead and the maimed of the North show the bloody reality of violence; a reality of broken bodies and shattered lives which give the lie to the self styled idealists and patriots.

Easter Week in 1916 must not be judged wholly by our standards of today; nor ought we seek to define today鈥檚 issues in the values of three quarters of a century ago. Human life and human rights are vastly more secure as we approach the end of this century. War and violence are universally adjudged as undesirable and reprehensible. In 1914 the world, in its foolishness, celebrated the call to arms. Pearse was not so unusual among the intellectuals of his time in exulting at the "red wine of the battlefield". Today鈥檚 heroes are not the war-makers, but the law givers and the life savers; those who draw peoples together rather than cause them to stand apart, most of the time working patiently, slowly and undramatically. Easter 1916 was a different world. It must neither intimidate nor antagonise us in today鈥檚 Ireland.