Madam, – It is notable that coverage by RTÉ of the 1916 ceremony at the GPO on Easter Sunday was the last item on the 9pm news. One more breaking news story and it would have slipped off the radar completely. This is indicative of a carefully fostered attitude over many years past on the part of “official Ireland”to the question of remembering and understanding the revolution. That attitude is to revise it, ridicule it, take the breath out of it, bury it.
On the April 24th, 1916 my grandfather, Volunteer John Stokes, said goodbye to his wife and children, not knowing if he would ever see them again, and walked away to join his comrades in Boland’s Mill. Over the next five days he, and they, faced down the military might of the British Empire knowing that the odds were heavily stacked against them.
Why would a rational man, a loving husband and father, walk away from the life he loved and towards potential disaster for himself and for his family? Because he believed that we Irish should enjoy the status of living as free citizens of an enlightened republic and not be forced to live as subjects of a feudal monarchy.
That the Irish State subsequently failed to vindicate the Republic is not John Stokes’s fault, or the fault of any of his comrades of 1916. They set the test for us in paragraph four of the Proclamation. Thus far, we have failed the test. The proof of this lies all around us.
John Stokes survived the revolution to rear his children. At the age of 58 he died rescuing a young woman from drowning at the Shelley Banks. A brave and honourable man to the last, a good citizen.
I will remember him and all of his comrades of 1916 on April 24th. That is, for me, Republic Day. – Yours, etc,