1916 Military parade to be reintroduced

simu

Squaletto wrote:

Finally the Irish Government has woken up to the need of true Irishmen and Women to celebrate the destruction of Dublin and the killing of fellow Irishmen along with the poor British conscripts on the dreary streets of the then United Ireland in an effort to shake off the shackles of British Imperialism. Horray for the peacemaker Bertie. That said I do recall the fact that the Rebels were actually TERRORISTS if one were to go by the media reports of the day. How ironic, today a government well known for its mantra against criminality and terrorism, supporting a parade which celebrates terrorism!!!! Could only happen in Ireland!!!
I wonder if Mc DOOdawl will preside over the whole affair. Now that would be something to see given his outburst about Pearse being a convicted terrorist!!!

Autres temps, autres moeurs.

murphaph

Diorraing wrote:

My sentiments exactly. These people who say it was nothing more than a "failed rebellion" are not looking at the broader pictuer, at how it set the wheels in motion for us to gain our full independence.

But the failed rebellion in 1798 started things off too....I mean, you can try to claim that this or that would or would not have happened. The fact remains that this country came into being as a modern republic in 1949. The guys that fought and died in 1916 believed in their cause. I'm not in the slightest bit 'ashamed' of them, I was showing a friend of mine from Lyon around Kilmainham Gaol just a few weeks ago, but I can't help but feel that at the time, I may not have supported their actions especially if I had relatives off fighting the war. Why don't we commemorate 1798 if we're to commemorate 1916?

That's why I think if we must celebrate a national day other than St. Patrick's day it should be the 1949 coming of the republic.

Diorraing

murphaph wrote:

Why don't we commemorate 1798 if we're to commemorate 1916?

You've just exposed how little you know about anything to do with Irish republicanism. Every year the Taoiseach gives a speech at the grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown. Do you not remember the celebrations in 1998 of the 1798 rebellion? Of course there were people like yourself who complained about that aswell.
You keep talking about 1949 as being the great year because a republic was declared. Do you not understand that there would have been no republic then if there was no freestate. There would be no freestate without the war of Independance. There would have been no war of independance without the 1916 rising. So go ahead and celebrate your 1949 declaration (by yourself most likely) but either way you'll be celebrating the sacrifice made by the volunteers of 1916. Might aswell do it directly than indirectly

murphaph

Why don't we celebrate 1641 then? Ah I'll 'celebrate' nothin to be honest. Nationalism can be ugly at the best of times.

Anybody who thinks this plan is anything other than FF wanting to reclaim the republican mantle from SF is pretty naive IMO.

Maskhadov

Personally I am overcome with national pride. We were robbed of our national idenity for decades because of the northern ireland "troubles".

For the first time in years we can express our national pride on the major Boulevard of our capital city like other European nations do. We have a proud history and Im delighted that for once we can express it without pandering to people outside the state.

I hope the military parade is done properly and covers all our military forces. The french bastile day is simply fantastic.

A Dub in Glasgo

I knew people would be confused by this

The idea of celebrating the Rising of 1916 by remembering the day when part of Ireland declared a Republic is laughable and shows an ignorance of what 1916 was about.

Hagar

There was a series broadcast by RTE during Easter week in 1966. It was called "Insurrection". Eoin O'Suillibhain played Padraig Pearse, I can't remember any of the other actors. It was along the lines of an embedded news team with the Insurrgents and gave a daily news bulletin with "film" of the fighting. It was very realistic. The format was years ahead of its time. The ordinariness and humanity of the people involved came through very well.

I have never seen or heard of it since. It has probably been hidden by the puppets in RTE. Although it was in B&W I would really love to see it broadcast again if anybody had the balls to do it.

lostexpectation

why does it have to a _military_ parade, surely resistence at the time wasn't confined to military means?

Victor

Yes lets celebrate democracy by promoting militarism.

murphaph wrote:

It was a failed r[e]bellion after all, just like the ones before it.

By definition, uprisings and rebellions are unsuccessful, revolutions are successful.

black_jack wrote:

So you're a fascist then?

No, that would be the people promoting the military parade.

For the first time in years we can express our national pride on the major Boulevard of our capital city like other European nations do.

You mean they'll build a boulevard for this? Will they cancel the trams though?

You keep talking about 1949 as being the great year because a republic was declared. Do you not understand that there would have been no republic then if there was no freestate. There would be no freestate without the war of Independance. There would have been no war of independance without the 1916 rising.

No 1916 without British Empire, should we thank Strongbow or Cromwell?

Diorraing

Victor wrote:

No 1916 without British Empire, should we thank Strongbow or Cromwell?

Your logic is exteremly weak.

lazydaisy

People hold onto 1916 because it's iconic and holds symbolic power, not because it makes any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to commemorate a failed military coup on a day which coincides with a Catholic holiday which times itself on a pagan fertility festival tied to the cycles of the moon.{Easter}

Most former colonies {USA & France for example} commemorate the day they secured freedom, not the day they started the War.

If the commemoration marked the official 1949 date wouldn't that be a good start to severing nationalism from religion?

mcgarnicle

lazydaisy wrote:

People hold onto 1916 because it's iconic and holds symbolic power, not because it makes any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to commemorate a failed military coup on a day which coincides with a Catholic holiday which times itself on a pagan fertility festival tied to the cycles of the moon.{Easter}

Most former colonies {USA & France for example} commemorate the day they secured freedom, not the day they started the War.

If the commemoration marked the official 1949 date wouldn't that be a good start to severing nationalism from religion?

That is totally wrong, the 4th of July in America marks the declaration of independence in 1776, US Independence was not achieved until 1783. Bastille Day in France marks the storming of the Bastille which represents the beginning of the French Revolution.
By citing these two examples you have just proved why we are totally justified in celebrating the 1916 Rising.

Hobbes

Cork wrote:

They was a danger itwould as a vehicle for justification for terrorism, carnage and propaganda.

No fear of that happening now eh. :rolleyes:

lazydaisy

I stand corrected. But I will point out that the date of American Independence is up for interpretation as it is said they overthrew the existing government before 1776. I think the date you cite 1783 is the year the first presidential election was held.

I should also correct myself and say I didn't mean to imply France was a former colony. I must have been half asleep.

It's still strange to me that Irish independence/revolution is beholden to Easter as the date will change every year.

Hagar

Pesonally I have no objection to it being held on 24th April but as a national event it is better suited to a Bank Holiday weekend. Anyway it has always been referred to a the Easter Rising. What's so terrible about that? More anti-religious paranoia I think.

OT I think St Patrick's Day should be celebrated on the Monday nearest the 17th March and make a decent holiday event of it. This closing down the country on a Wednesday or whatever is just mad.

Maskhadov

boul·e·vard Audio pronunciation of "boulevard" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bl-värd, bl-)
n.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=boulevard

1. A broad city street, often tree-lined and landscaped.

I hope it done properly. The army were consulted by B.Ahern before he made the press announcement. Im sure they can fit in the 600 odd soldiers ok but the vehicles will have to go in single file as opposed to the 2 a breast like they used to.

This will make SF's look like a bunch of clowns.

mcgarnicle

lazydaisy wrote:

I stand corrected. But I will point out that the date of American Independence is up for interpretation as it is said they overthrew the existing government before 1776. I think the date you cite 1783 is the year the first presidential election was held.

I should also correct myself and say I didn't mean to imply France was a former colony. I must have been half asleep.

It's still strange to me that Irish independence/revolution is beholden to Easter as the date will change every year.

Well like I said the date doesn't mark American independence it marks the declaration of independence, just like the Irish declaration of independence was read out during the rising. 1783 is the year the War of Independence ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

Orizio

Hagar wrote:

How could it have been hijacked by SF/IRA it was their Rising FFS.

At the time they were the only Irish Army.

We should always have remembered it. It was a glorious deed. It was not a thing to hide and be ashamed of.

Glorious?Since when is war glorious?

It was a brave but moronic act,and those that led the young men out on that day were aware that they would lose men and lose the battle.They were tactically incompetent in the extreme and it was more an act of mass self sacrifice then that of an responsible and pragmatic rising.If it wasn't for the British reaction from Maxwell the day would have went as a catastrophe,and the names of Pearse etc would have been cursed rightly for there irresponsibility and fanaticism.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.~Ernest Hemingway.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.~Otto Von Bismark.

murphaph

mcgarnicle wrote:

Well like I said the date doesn't mark American independence it marks the declaration of independence, just like the Irish declaration of independence was read out during the rising.

Yeah, but the americans actually achieved their declared aims. The proclamation of the republic declared the 32 county republic and correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the northeast part of a constitutional monarchy?

mcgarnicle

murphaph wrote:

Yeah, but the americans actually achieved their declared aims. The proclamation of the republic declared the 32 county republic and correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the northeast part of a constitutional monarchy?

Yes it is but that's not the point is it. That is the date when independence was declared and that is why we celebrate it, the nation it will be celebrated in is a republic. If you want to get all technical about it you could say that only the states that were under British rule in 1776 should celebrate American indepence day or that the French shouldn't really celebrate Bastille day as the new republic only lasted a few years before a monarch once again took control of the country. The Easter Rising may not have technically been a success but to most Irish people who are actually moved by this issue it is the symbolic beginning of the War of Indepence and while many here would argue that Ireland becoming a republic is what should be celebrated the country was a de facto republic long before it officially became such. The most obvious proof of this is our neutrality in WW2.

Hagar

Orizio wrote:

Glorious?Since when is war glorious?

I see you are from Cork. The town that never rose. What right have you to talk of glory?

Unless you count the murder of a good man in Beal na mBlath?

Flex

Orizio wrote:

Glorious?Since when is war glorious?

It was a brave but moronic act,and those that led the young men out on that day were aware that they would lose men and lose the battle.They were tactically incompetent in the extreme and it was more an act of mass self sacrifice then that of an responsible and pragmatic rising.If it wasn't for the British reaction from Maxwell the day would have went as a catastrophe,and the names of Pearse etc would have been cursed rightly for there irresponsibility and fanaticism.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.~Ernest Hemingway.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.~Otto Von Bismark.

it was a great and monumentally important event and the 1600 men who went out knowing they wouldnt win (unless you actually think they thought they could take on the most powerful empire on earth and win) but did it anyway to keep alive our traditional resisitance to british rule and asserting our right to independence through force of arms and because they believed in it, and loved their country. its something to be proud of. without it there would have been no war of independence (though i presume you would have been against that too). thank god they did what they did. the history of this country would be very different if it wasnt for those "tactically incompetent in the extreme" people commiting "mass self sacrifice".

BuffyBot

I see you are from Cork. The town that never rose. What right have you to talk of glory?

Unless you count the murder of a good man in Beal na mBlath?

Posts like this are what they invented this for :rolleyes:

Snickers Man

lazydaisy wrote:

Most former colonies {USA & France for example} commemorate the day they secured freedom, not the day they started the War.

That's a load of cobblers. The two examples you gave commemorate the start of the respective countries' revolutions.

Americans celebrate the 4th of July, which was the date in 1776 in which their Congress adopted the declaration of Independence. They didn't finalise it until the end of the war in 1783.

Similarly, the symbolic START of the Frence Revolution was the storming of the Bastille Day in France on July 14th 1789. Still commemorated more than 200 years later.

Also commemorated in France is June 18th. That was the date in 1940 when De Gaulle made his famous broadcast to the French people at the point of the government's capitulation to the Germans that 'France has lost a battle not a war' and urged them to fight on. The START of the resistance, not the liberation of France at all.

We can disagree on interpretation but in these days of Google and instant information at your fingertips, there is really no excuse for this shoddy denial of facts.

Lazy by name, lazy by nature.

Snickers Man

Squaletto wrote:

Finally the Irish Government has woken up to the need of true Irishmen and Women to celebrate the destruction of Dublin and the killing of fellow Irishmen along with the poor British conscripts on the dreary streets of the then United Ireland in an effort to shake off the shackles of British Imperialism. Horray for the peacemaker Bertie. That said I do recall the fact that the Rebels were actually TERRORISTS if one were to go by the media reports of the day. How ironic, today a government well known for its mantra against criminality and terrorism, supporting a parade which celebrates terrorism!!!! Could only happen in Ireland!!!
I wonder if Mc DOOdawl will preside over the whole affair. Now that would be something to see given his outburst about Pearse being a convicted terrorist!!!

Well given that McDOOdawl is the grandson of Eoin McNeill who was nominally in charge of the Irish Volunteers, (for all that he cocked up the whole issue by rescinding the order to mobilise) he has a direct ancestral link to one of the key figures of the time and might be quite enthusiastic about the whole thing.

I think there are two reasons why this is coming to the fore now.
1) Fianna Fail trying to regain the mantle of republicanism from Sinn Fein.

2) the increasingly shrill demands from some influential sectors of the media that we remember our countrymen who were slaughtered in British Army uniforms in places like Gallipoli, the Somme and Mesopotamia as being just as representative of OUR nation.

Fair enough. Let's examine all the facts of history. It helps us realise that the picture is more grey than black or white.

And as many of those who want to commemorate our glorious cannon fodder from the Great War for the Preservation of European Empires seem also to want to portray their actions as a consistent movement for 'freedom for small nations' extending to and including the current neocolonial neoconservative adventure in Iraq, then it does no harm to raise awareness of a 'small nation' that incurred the wrath of its colonial master when it sought for itself the very freedoms its sons were purportedly sent to France to win for others.

Hagar

Hagar wrote:

I see you are from Cork. The town that never rose. What right have you to talk of glory?

Unless you count the murder of a good man in Beal na mBlath?

Hmmmm, if this is going to descend into a Cork -v- Dublin thing, then allow me get the first volley in.

While the good men of Cork were making a stand at Kilmichael that would reverberate through the Empire and prove decisive in our history, were people still lining the streets of Dublin waving Union Jacks and waiting for another Royal Visit?

Orizio

Hagar wrote:

I see you are from Cork. The town that never rose. What right have you to talk of glory?

Unless you count the murder of a good man in Beal na mBlath?

I really shouldn't respond to such a post but...

I wasn't aware you fought at 1916?:eek:

The majority of the country didn't rise in 1916,thanks mainly to the fantastic communication abilities of the IRB leadership.

I presume you have just forgotten about Tom Barry,Moylan etc.And MC was actually from Cork.

As well as that,I wasn't in the know about Beal na mBlath at the time,but rest assured I would personally have stopped the assassination if I was actually alive.

Orizio

Flex wrote:

it was a great and monumentally important event and the 1600 men who went out knowing they wouldnt win (unless you actually think they thought they could take on the most powerful empire on earth and win) but did it anyway to keep alive our traditional resisitance to british rule and asserting our right to independence through force of arms and because they believed in it, and loved their country. its something to be proud of. without it there would have been no war of independence (though i presume you would have been against that too). thank god they did what they did. the history of this country would be very different if it wasnt for those "tactically incompetent in the extreme" people commiting "mass self sacrifice".

I am proud of what they did,but I'm not one to make the mistake to think that war is 'glorious'.That was the prevailing attitude in 1914 in Europe before WW1 as the best young men in France and Germany flung themselves aimlessly at a batch of machine guns.Thats not glorious,its insanity.

What they did should be respected but it should be understood that what they did they did so the future generations wouldn't have to be scarred by the horrors of war.

sceptre

Hagar wrote:

I see you are from Cork. The town that never rose. What right have you to talk of glory?

Good lord:rolleyes: I love this "where was your grandfather during the war of independence? Under the bed that's where hoho" line of reasoning when it arises.

Deleted User wrote:

Hmmmm, if this is going to descend into a Cork -v- Dublin thing

It's not - if it does the whole thing gets horsed over to the Thunderdome where I rarely if ever visit.

Squaletto

Snickers Man wrote:

Well given that McDOOdawl is the grandson of Eoin McNeill who was nominally in charge of the Irish Volunteers, (for all that he cocked up the whole issue by rescinding the order to mobilise) he has a direct ancestral link to one of the key figures of the time and might be quite enthusiastic about the whole thing.

I think there are two reasons why this is coming to the fore now.
1) Fianna Fail trying to regain the mantle of republicanism from Sinn Fein.

2) the increasingly shrill demands from some influential sectors of the media that we remember our countrymen who were slaughtered in British Army uniforms in places like Gallipoli, the Somme and Mesopotamia as being just as representative of OUR nation.

Fair enough. Let's examine all the facts of history. It helps us realise that the picture is more grey than black or white.

And as many of those who want to commemorate our glorious cannon fodder from the Great War for the Preservation of European Empires seem also to want to portray their actions as a consistent movement for 'freedom for small nations' extending to and including the current neocolonial neoconservative adventure in Iraq, then it does no harm to raise awareness of a 'small nation' that incurred the wrath of its colonial master when it sought for itself the very freedoms its sons were purportedly sent to France to win for others.

I couldn't agree with you more, snickers, in fact as far as I know the minister for justice lost relatives in the bloody Civil War as well. What really gets my goat up is his continuous rant on about republicanism while staying quiet about state terrorism and the surrogate factions which helped to bolster up the death machine of the security forces in the north. I mean his Granfather was a terrorist in 1916 but yet he has the nerve to slander the good name of PH Pearse. I find the man a political opportunist who has done nothing to bring about peace and stability in the north but seemingly tries his best to bring into disrepute the good office he holds in this current government. All his party political broadcasts on P Kenny amount to nothing but ineundo and truthless facts aimed at an audience who easily swallow the PD mantra of all Republicans are evil. I only hope the good people of Ireland dump him out on his fat arse when the next election comes round!