Is this the country these brave Irish revolutionaries died for?
The foundation of our Irish Republic was made inevitable by armed organized rebellion against the British Empire. Peaceful means had failed and now the British refused to allow limited Home Rule so a Proclamation of independence was issued and in one telling sentence announced Ireland would be a ‘sovereign, independent state’.
Led by two very different and impossible idealists, one a dedicated and pragmatic Marxist internationalist, James Connolly, the other a very religious Irish Catholic nationalist and poet, Padraig Pearse, the rebellion failed against overwhelming odds but their sacrifice did not finish with their defeat and execution, it only served to galvanise opposition to British rule in Ireland. Finally in 1921, after a brutal guerrilla campaign led by Michael Collins, the British were finally forced to grant independence to 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland.
The Irish Republic was declared sometime later and was also declared neutral and unaligned to avoid the bloodletting of the first World War.
Remember Irish soldiers, both Protestant and Catholic, died in their tens of thousands in the British army during WW1 and the memory of that war was something that haunted my own youth.
’Never again’ was the slogan, so Ireland, under the courageous leadership of Eamonn DeValera, somehow managed to keep us out of the Second World War, despite the severe pressures of Great Britain and the United States (Eisenhower threatened to invade if Ireland stayed neutral) to force us to join that bloody conflict.
Our present clear and dangerous situation.
Last month, when no one was looking, the two largest Irish political parties conspired to enroll Ireland into unelected EU ‘President’ Juncker’s new EU army titled ‘PESCO’, another name for the NATO war machine.
Hard to believe but this Fianna Fáil party is the same party founded by Eamonn DeValera who stood up to Churchill, Eisenhower and even Hitler, forcing the Nazis to pay massive compensation for their ’accidental’ bombing of Dublin when civilians were killed and buildings destroyed by Luftwaffe bombers -and who denounced Churchill, in an extraordinary national radio broadcast, for threatening our neutrality and for trying to force neutral Ireland into the war on the allied side. This took real courage and determination -I don’t recall the Nazis paying compensation to anyone else for bombing and killing civilians?
Now we have two serious breaches of our neutrality all at once -with many more to come if the posh schoolboy elite of this neocon FineGael party has their way:
1. Whether the people of Ireland like it or not Ireland is now enlisted in the new EU Reich NATO army -renamed PESCO.
(one recent poll stated 70% of our electorate favour neutrality with only 20% in favour of ending it).
2. We are now in the crazy situation where we work with the neocons of NATO and this corrupt #FineGael and Fianna Fáil coalition and join Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkars ‘allies’ in expelling a Russian diplomat on behalf of the UK Tory Party.
Even the British people who voted to exit the EU and NOT join the new EU army have severe doubts about their role in this discussion. They, the British people, remember only too well the lies about ‘Weapons of Mass destruction’ and the horrific casualties their soldiers, male and female, suffered as a consequence of these lies.
This is the time
This is not our fight, never was, never can be, never should be,
This is a contest between two massive military blocs and we are NEUTRAL. Time to remind the corrupt political elite who think they rule us off this singular fact..
Time to re-read our own ‘Proclamation of Independence’.
Time to stand up for our right to neutrality and independence.
Time to retake our country from the venal, despotic and corrupt Irish elite:
‘We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland
And to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.’
-The Proclamation of 1916.
I could not say it better or more clearly if I tried.
Jim FitzPatrick. Easter 2018.
IRELAND IS NEUTRAL. SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD.