Easter rising
The French have Bastille Day, the Americans have 4 July. And the Irish? St Patrick's Day? Well, yes and no. The day that marks the notion of an independent Ireland is not 17 March but Easter Monday 1916, the occasion when the Irish Republic was proclaimed at the General Post Office in Dublin. The "Easter Rising", as it became known, is a mythical event that lasted a week and ended in tears. It was an anarchic affair that has parallels with the liberation of Iraq: "The streets had the feel of a mad carnival, a surreal cityscape of revelling looters, dead horses, haphazard barricades, a mad and murderous army captain, an exotic countess, a weird jumble of exhilaration and terror. Wild rumours took the place of hard facts."
That quote is taken from a splendid Easter 1916 supplement produced by The Irish Times to mark the 90th anniversary of the uprising. Tomorrow, 2,500 soldiers from the Irish Army will march past the GPO to honour the 1916 rebels for the first time in almost 40 years. The parade was halted in 1970 after the rise the Provisional IRA. By restarting the parade, the government is attempting to reclaim the spirit of the rising from the IRA, or, as Taoiseach ( Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern puts it, those who have "abused and debased the title of republicanism." At a time when the country is experiencing unprecedented prosperity, Ahern believes that now is the moment for a "great national conversation" to take place on what it means to be Irish. We'll drink to that, tomorrow. NOTE: it is inspiring that the Department of the Taoiseach has provided a version of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence in Chinese, in both RTF and PDF formats. Expect copies to be pasted around Tiananmen Square in the coming week. After all, if the Irish were able to rise up against tyranny, surely the Chinese can be expected to do the same one day. Good man, Bertie!
