Stop using the Proclamation of 1916 to justify every cause

Irishmen and Irishwomen, in the name of God and of the dead generations, stop using the Proclamation as an excuse for every action and a justification for every cause.

We have had enough already. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, citing the Proclamation has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.

The latest organisation to take the name of the Proclamation in vain is a direct action feminist group called Imelda (Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for Abortion) made up of Irish emigrants based in Britain. During the recent Road to the Rising, its members chained themselves to the pillars of the GPO and read out an alternative Proclamation.

“We declare the right of all people in Ireland to ownership of their own bodies. And to control their own destinies”.

Evoking the Proclamation in the name of abortion rights is not only ahistorical – legalised abortion did not exist anywhere in 1916 – but also fanciful.

Even if it did exist, it is highly unlikely the signatories of the Proclamation, steeped in Catholic piety as they were, would countenance such a breach of a fundamental tenet of Church teaching.

Imelda cited the “name of the freedom promised us on these steps 99 years ago”. You could equally argue, if you were a pro-lifer, that the Proclamation’s promise to “cherish all the children of the nation equally” extends to unborn children.

That is the problem with the Proclamation. It is a high-sounding document full of lofty ideals and noble sentiments which, understandably in the circumstances, gives no practical guide on how to make these ideals a reality.

Tragically its authors never lived to bear living witness to its sentiments. It is possible to ascribe to Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly and the other signatories of the Proclamation all kinds of noble motives. Their reputations have never been sullied by the messy business of finishing what they started.

Before considering how the men of 1916 would interpret the Proclamation, it is instructive to remember how they did interpret the Proclamation. (And they were mostly men who ruled Ireland after independence).

When the 50th anniversary of the Rising came along in 1966, Easter Rising veterans, William T Cosgrave, Éamon de Valera and Seán Lemass had ruled the State for all but three years of its existence. For better or worse, the State was the one imagined by those who fought in the Easter Rising.

In 1925 Cosgrave, then the President of the Executive Council, attempted to introduce a bill prohibiting the already limited access to divorce. This nakedly sectarian act was done at the behest of the Catholic bishops and against the wishes of the Protestant minority in the State, most notably the poet and then Senator William Butler Yeats.

“It was from His Grace (Archbishop of Dublin Edward Byrne) that I learned that His Holiness had jurisdiction over all baptised people,” wrote Cosgrave in one notorious letter. His successor Éamon de Valera copperfastened the ban on divorce in the Constitution and introduced the provision which recognised the “special position” of the Catholic Church.

So much for the Proclamation’s pledge guaranteeing “religious and civil liberty” and ending the differences which “divided the minority from the majority as in the past”.

Sinn Féin is equally on shaky historical grounds when it cites the Proclamation in its criticisms of austerity policies North and South. Its self-serving analysis suggests that no true republican would consider austerity as a viable or just policy

The original austerity government was the one stuffed with veterans of the Easter Rising. It embraced the austerity agenda which was popular among governments retrenching after the first World War.

The pension to the blind was cut and, in the most notorious cut of all, the old age pension was reduced in 1924 by a shilling a week. The government refused to raise income tax for fear of losing competitive advantage with Britain. Instead, it raised indirect taxes on consumption which hurt the poor the most.

The heirs to the revolution saw fiscal rectitude as the mark of a responsible state. “Those who denounce the policy of balanced budget do not know the first thing of what they were talking about,” Cosgrave said in answer to his critics. “Expenditure must balance.”

This is the reality of the Proclamation as envisaged by the men who fought for it. These were not some political thieves in the night stealing the revolution from the people. These were the revolutionaries and they saw securing national sovereignty as trumping everything, including social justice.

It is intellectually dishonest to ascribe some kind of purity to the actions of those who fought in 1916. They did their best according to the standards of the time. They could have done better. If the present Government has fallen short of the ideals of the Proclamation, it wouldn’t be the first.

Ronan McGreevy is an Irish Times journalist