Irish Echo March 5, 07

Dear Editor,                                                                                           

“Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead generation of Ireland served...”. With these words, the undisputed leader of the 1916 Easter Monday uprising in Dublin, admonished fellow mourners at the graveside of Irish patriot O’Donovan Rossa in 1915 to stand fast in the cause of freedom and republicanism. He eloquently and unequivocably described that cause as the same cause belonging to the long list of Irish Republican heroes going back to Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. That cause involved giving voice to the sovereign right of Irish self-determination free of English rule by breaking all connections with the foreign occupation. That same Republican tradition also spawned the Young Irelanders, the Fenians, the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland and the Clan na Gael in America. Then in 1905, Sinn Fein became the focus of the political movement of Irish Separatism. After the uprising the rebels were thought by many to be cranks and extremists without popular mandate. However, less than three years later the all-Ireland Republic was in fact established and declared as a result of the exercise in self-determination of the great majority of the Irish electorate. Their chosen candidates in the British elections of 1918 abstained from their seats in the British controlled parliament and instead formed the first Dail Eireann.

I am happy to see that that same Republican legacy is being carried on and exemplified again along side the Stormont partitioned elections of March 7. Both British Unionists and Irish nationalists including Provisional Sinn Fein under the leadership of Gerry Adams will if elected take their seats in the partitioned assembly to administer British rule and support its enforcement by the crown police force. But opposing these candidates are Irish Republicans who if elected will not take seats in the British assembly but will continue to seek support for an Irish separatist assembly as their forbears did in 1918.

 “If Tone said ‘BREAK the connection with England’ and if I say ‘MAINTAIN the connection with England’, I may be preaching a saner (as I am certainly preaching a safer) gospel than his, but I am obviously not preaching the same gospel. Separatism is in fact the national position. Whenever an Irish leader has take up a position different from the national position, he has been repudiated by the next generation.”  P.H. Pearse

Eventually the suppressed Irish instinct for freedom will move again like a wave over the land and the people will again give legitimate authority to an Irish assembly exposing the usurping illegitimacy of the British presence in Ireland. “Let no man blaspheme the cause......by giving it any other name or definition than their name and their definition.” 

Vic Sackett

Glenwood Landing, NY