A history that continues to inspire
As a nation, it is important that we celebrate and honour a moment that a small group of people had the courage and vision to strike against Empire for a free republic.
Maurice Walsh in his recent ‘Bitter Freedom’ tells us that “nationalist movements across the world were taking advantage of the immense pressure on the empires that controlled them.” Why should Ireland be any different? According to the Czech leader Tomáš Masaryk, the war had turned Europe into “a laboratory atop a vast graveyard.”
As we commemorate the Easter Rising, we recognise that it must be seen as the product of combination of the forces of Irish nationalism and various revolutionary, social, cultural and language movements.
We appreciate now also that the Rising took place in a context of urban and rural poverty, industrial unrest, political upheaval and a global war that would rob Europe of a generation of young people. It is particularly important that we recognise the central role played in the Rising by the movement for labour rights which had taken on new momentum in the early 20th century, illustrated so dramatically in the 1911 Wexford Lockout and the 1913 Great Dublin Lockout.
It was the Lockout that brought Pearse closer to Connolly. It is reflected in their joint influence on the Proclamation; the loss of both explains much of the diminished emphasis on equality in what followed. The remarkable attempts to realise greater rights for workers were the closest Ireland ever came to a socialist revolution — and they were met with violence on the part of the authorities and with great condemnation from the Church.
The violence experienced by those who were involved in the trade union movement in turn prompted the creation of the Irish Citizen Army, turning the loosely organised groups of union rally stewards into a highly disciplined security force.
And although its initial aim was to protect striking workers, by 1914 it had evolved — under the leadership of men like James Connolly — into a force engaged in armed insurrection against British rule in Ireland. The vision of those who formed or joined the Irish Citizen Army was not confined to replacing an alien landlord class with a native one. It was not about supplanting one form of conservative nationalism by another; it was about challenging power relations and tackling the social and cultural, as well as political, hierarchies of the Ireland of the turn of the 20th century.
As such, the emancipation of women was an integral part of the social transformation called for by the leaders of the Irish Citizen Army, such as Francis Sheehy Skeffington and James Connolly. The atmosphere of equality that prevailed between men and women in the ranks of the ICA reflected the vision held by many Irish and international socialists of the time, for whom women’s emancipation was a precondition for any just society. And we understand that the Rising was about more than military or political actions — it was also an act of imagination.
The leaders were inspired by the idea of creating a very different Ireland and they believed in a social as well as a national revolution in which every facet of Irish life could be improved. It was this vision for a different Ireland — a better Ireland — that turned the movement for workers’ rights into an essential element of the broader movement for Irish independence.
Yet it is precisely because theirs was not only a struggle limited to political independence but a struggle for equality and social justice that the aspirations of those who joined the Irish Citizen Army remain such a well-spring of inspiration for us nowadays.
It is a history that continues to inspire us, because the ambition of the men and women of the Irish Citizen Army was transformational — geared towards the creation of such a Real Republic as would be operated on the principle of full and equal participation of all its citizens — and because it was from the tenements and the ranks of the excluded that so many of its members came.
For us, living a century later, their ambition and perseverance are a source of inspiration.
As we mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, we can pause and reflect on what motivated the insurgents and we can take stock of their achievements, and on how the ideals formulated a century ago might apply today, in very different global settings, in a world that has yet to bear the imprint of peace, freedom from hunger, sustainability or solidarity placed upon it.
The moment of commemoration prompts us to reflect on what it is to be an active and responsible citizen, in a free and independent Ireland and a highly globalised and inter-connected global society. We must now ask ourselves how we might best use the freedom which was handed down to us by previous generations.
And we must undertake the work of making Ireland the Real Republic of which our founders dreamed; of sharing responsibility for a different global order, free of war; of celebrating our inter-dependence with genuine solidarity as we face challenges such as eliminating global poverty, achieving gender equality and protecting our vulnerable planet from the effects of climate change
This article, written by President Michael D Higgins was published in a special edition of Liberty as we reached the crescendo of a wave of events marking the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising.
The newspaper can be read in full here.
