90th anniversary Plan to mark 1916 revolt arouses controversy
Ninetieth anniversaries are rarely celebrated with such official enthusiasm and the decision to revive the parade is stirring up a national debate about the country's ambivalent relationship to the violent events that led to the foundation of the Irish state. Critics, north and south of the border, fear the march past will rekindle respect for paramilitary violence, and they accuse the governing Fianna Fail party of harnessing history to its political campaign to outflank Sinn Fein's recent electoral advances.
At one level, according to the republic's defence minister, Willie O'Dea, the ceremony marks a recognition that Northern Ireland's sectarian bloodletting is over. In his office behind Ireland's parliament, the Dail, he defends the revival. "It's the end of the Troubles," he told The Guardian.
"For years troops were not readily available because they were on border duties, patrolling. There was an annual commemoration up until 1971 but then it stopped. Soldiers would have had to be withdrawn from the border (at the height of the violence).
"We will now have one annually. This year's parade will be a trial run for the 100th anniversary. There will be a minute's silence in memory of everyone - volunteers, British soldiers and the civilians - who died. Other countries commemorate their national independence days - Spain, France, Italy, for ex ample - with ceremonies that have a military centrepiece."
Reverence for the martyrs of the uprising permeates the Irish state. A gilt-framed copy of the proclamation hangs in the Dail's entrance lobby. A tricolour which supposedly flew over the bombarded GPO is being auctioned this month: keen bidding is anticipated.
Extremists
Immediately after the fighting, which claimed the lives of 64 rebels, 200 civilians and 132 police officers or British soldiers, those who directed the insurrection were dismissed as revolutionary extremists. They were jeered at and pelted with rotten fruit in Dublin.
It was the decision by the British commander, General Maxwell, to execute the captured leaders which transformed military defeat into political success. In the 1918 election, Sinn Fein won a landslide victory across Ireland and launched the campaign that eventually led to independence.
The last major commemoration was held in 1966 - the 50th anniversary - and since it preceded the Troubles has been viewed in retrospect as having contributed to the resurgence of the IRA.
Ireland's main parties all trace their origins back to the smouldering ruins of the GPO. Sinn Fein (which translates as "Ourselves Alone") claims true ideological continuity of the uprising's ideals. Fine Gael (approximately "The family of the Irish") was formed from the faction of Sinn Fein which signed the treaty partitioning Ireland with Britain in 1921. Fianna Fail (or "The Soldiers of Destiny") derive from the anti-treaty forces in the subsequent civil war.
"There's been an attempt by Fianna Fail to hijack the event. It was announced at a party conference," said Ciaran Conlon, Fine Gael's director of communications.
"We would like to see more stress on the aspirations behind the rising - universal suffrage and social justice - rather than on militaristic violence.
"It's more Fianna Fail positioning itself, in relation to Sinn Fein, because it is in danger of losing votes on its republican fringe. We're broadly supportive: the main parties trace their roots back to the GPO. But the current generation have moved so far past this we don't think about it anymore. Being Irish is about being successful in music, business and sport. We have so many other role models now."
Liz McManus, the Labour party Dail member on the cross-party committee organising the ceremony, insisted that all participants should be remembered. "I put forward the view that we should commemorate the civilians who died and people who were doing their duty in the police and the British army as well," she said.
"Ninety years on, we should be able to reconcile and forgive."
Sinn Fein believes the ceremony was "dropped like a hot potato" during the Troubles to extract the Irish government from an impossible position.
"They would have to explain why they supported Padraig Pearse (president of the self-declared, provisional government in 1916) and not the (provisional IRA's) physical force republican ism," Shane Macthomais, a party spokesman, pointed out.
The columns of the Irish Times have resounded to complaints. The parade was revived, suggested historian Dennis Kennedy, "to fight off the barbarian invasion of revisionists who would sully the glorious memory of the heroic founders of the republic by suggesting they had no right to do what they did . . . and (secondly) to keep the grubby hands of Sinn Fein off the holy grail of 1916."
MPs and assembly members from Northern Ireland have been invited to attend the ceremony on April 16. "I don't think we've had a definite response from the unionists," Mr O'Dea said. "I'm hopeful the Ulster Unionist party will see their way to attend."
Disgust
The party's former deputy leader, Lord Kilclooney, has, however, already signalled his disgust. "Our ambassador is to join with Gerry Adams (the Sinn Fein leader) and Bertie Ahern (the Irish prime minister) in marking the rebellion against British rule," he has complained.
In a sign of political reconciliation and revisionism, the Irish government is planning a second state ceremony in July to remember those who perished on the Somme in 1916, fighting alongside the British. Commemorative stamps will also be issued for that event.
"There should be symmetry in recognising the sacrifice made by 50,000 Irishmen who died in the first world war," commented Fine Gael's Ciaran Conlon. "We are just reaching a point of maturity as a nation that the history books (can recognise both sides). I'm in my 30s and was taught nothing about Irish participation in the war at school."
Inside the GPO on O'Connell Street there is a framed copy of the proclamation and a bronze statue of the mythical Irish warrior Cuchulainn, "a memorial to the participants of the 1916 Rising". A woman behind the commemorative stamp counter apologised that the designs of the stamps were not yet available."This is the greatest secrecy I have ever come across," she remarked.