Madam, - As someone who was unsure of the wisdom of reinstating the Easter military parade, I must confess that, after watching it on television live, I believe it struck exactly the right note. The parade showcased our Defence Forces in an extremely positive and professional way as they paid tribute to the brave men of 1916.
Given my own family background, I doubt if I would have supported the Rising had I been around at the time. However, there is no doubt in my mind today that what the rebels did was as valid in the great scheme of things as any liberation struggle anywhere in the world, and a great deal less bloody.
Nobody on this island could, or should, feel threatened by this commemoration. It was a display of a mature Republic, proud of its past, secure in its present, and optimistic about its future.
I felt proud to be Irish and independent. - Yours, etc,
ANDREW JONES, Mullagh, Co Cavan.
Madam, - As an Irish citizen, I celebrate the bravery of the men and women of 1916 who declared the Republic and stood up to the imperial might of the British empire. As a member of the Church of Ireland, I celebrate those members of the religious minorities on this island who were prepared to play a role in the fight, in spite of the prevailing political orthodoxy in their own communities. In particular, I remember people such as Kathleen Lynn, daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman, who was present in City Hall and went on to play a socially progressive role in the development of St Ultan's Hospital.
As we celebrate 1916 afresh, we need to challenge, in our own day, the established orthodoxies of church and State. If the dream of the 1916 men and women is to be achieved, there has to be a profound change at the heart of government in Dublin and in the body politic of the island of Ireland.
A free and economically prosperous society has emerged in 26 of our counties and for the good things that have been achieved, we give thanks. Sadly, social inequality still exists throughout the island and the goal of a sovereign, 32-county Irish Republic still lies before us. We have a republican polity in one part of Ireland but six counties still remain attached to a British state that is rotten to its very core.
The Government may feel a smug satisfaction at pulling off a good show on Sunday last, but not all the people are fooled by the glamour of the event. The Government has failed the people and its leaders will not win another term in office by making out that they are the inheritors of the spirit of 1916. - Yours, etc,
Rev DAVID FRAZER, Laytown, Co Meath.
Madam, - Last Sunday, the Christian world celebrated the resurrection of the Son of God and the victory of life over death.
On the very same day, and in stark contrast, the President and Government of Ireland invited the Irish people to commemorate an altogether different resurrection - one that resulted in death and "blood sacrifice".
Out of respect to the very God invoked in the Easter 1916 Proclamation, should not the bizarre and partisan ritual which took place on the streets of Dublin last Sunday at least have been left over until Easter Monday, the day that the 1916 Rising actually commenced? - Yours, etc,
NIALL H TIERNEY, Kennington, London SE11.
Madam, - What a wonderful military parade in Dublin to honour and commemorate the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. I call on the Taoiseach to now set up a cross-party independent commission that will represent all citizens of our country to make recommendations for a broader and more appropriate celebration of the 100th anniversary, ensuring that such a proud occasion should never be announced at a political conference.
Perhaps the Taoiseach will start by reviewing the appropriateness of the partisan national anthem in a peaceful Ireland. - Yours, etc,
TOMMY MORRIS, Castletown Estate, Leixlip, Co Kildare.
Madam, - For once, has Garret FitzGerald allowed his (wholly admirable) filial piety to get the better of his formidable intellect (Opinion & Analysis, April 12th)? His article contains a contradiction, a paradox, a fallacy and an omission, each of which cannot go unchallenged.
First, the contradiction: he thinks it "absurd" that judgment on 1916 should be made on the basis of today's mores. That's fine, except that at the same time he also assumes that the men of 1916 would have been horrified by the modern IRA's campaign. If the first proposition is absurd, the second is unknowable.
Secondly, the paradox: his treatment of the great "might-have-been" - what would have happened if the Rising had not occurred - prompts a most profound question. That question, which is seldom asked, is: what was the purpose of independence? We know that 1916 ultimately delivered an economically impoverished state, with continued massive emigration - and, moreover, one in which "freedom" was narrowly defined as "political freedom from an English castle administration". We know that the new State was characterised by an Irish castle administration (still there, in the excessively centralised government machine we have today).
A cultural and social subservience to Rome was followed by a similar subservience to the US via the Marshall Plan and multinational colonisation, and latterly, to the EU - this latter, ironically, in exchange for the very mess of potage that Dr FitzGerald seems to think would have subverted our pure desire for "freedom" in the first place. He rather gives the game away when he posits that the population of an Ireland still within the UK would have been so prosperous under a proper state welfare regime that it might not have wanted independence. Exactly.
Thirdly, the fallacy: Dr FitzGerald seems to be to assume that the prosperity of modern Ireland is built on an independence which vitally required the impetus of the Rising. Quite the opposite appears to have been the case. There are two concepts here - independence, and the means by which it was achieved. Despite being over-taxed, Ireland was, relatively speaking, one of the most prosperous entities in Europe in 1910. Half a century after independence, though, it had sunk to near the bottom of the league, despite having avoided directly the horrors of the second World War.
It is arguable that the way in which independence was achieved condemned the State to a much longer period of economic decline than would otherwise have been the case. In any event, it is only in the very recent past (since the early 1990s) that Ireland has caught up with the rest of the developed world. Even this explosion of material prosperity is so new that its permanence cannot yet be claimed with any confidence. If this is success, I am not sure how failure might be defined.
Lastly, Dr FitzGerald's omission is equally telling. The way in which the new Irish State came into being was inimical to the continued presence in the Free State of a critical part of the population the southern Irish Protestants. Historians may differ on the precise scale and cause of the rapid decline in Protestant numbers between 1911 and 1926; but it is reasonable to infer that the economic consequences of the flight of a significant proportion of an educated and capital-owning class were not positive.
Home Rule (or a variant), without the Rising, might or might not have led to where we are now. I suspect that, while the route might have been less traumatic, the destination would have been much the same. The difference might have been a less confessional state, better relations with the peoples of Northern Ireland, earlier economic prosperity and, above all, a more confident and less navel-gazing nation. It seems to me that, in carrying on an obsessive national debate on the Rising, we elevate the primacy of means over ends, at the cost of asking what those ends should rightfully be. - Yours, etc,
IAN D'ALTON, Rathasker Heights, Naas, Co Kildare.
Madam, - While we are in a commemorative mood, let us spare a thought for those who, deprived of that wonderful optical instrument we call hindsight, failed to treat the Easter Rising with the right amount of respect at the time. People like my grandfather who, with a family of seven, was deprived of his livelihood for the duration because his place of work was a rebel garrison. Like his eldest son, my uncle Tom, serving in the trenches in France. Like my father who, at the age of 10, had his bedroom searched by soldiers looking for a sniper firing on the nearby Wellington Barracks.
You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, of course. The omelette, however, when it finally arrived in 1922, was by no means palatable to everyone, and did not necessarily improve with the passing decades. - Yours, etc,
PAUL GRIFFIN, Pembrokeshire, Wales.