The power of a dream
Sean Whelan
This is the 75th anniversary of Ireland's 1916 Easter Rebellion. It is undoubtedly the most important single event in the history and politics of Ireland and had a huge impact worldwide.
In the ensuing war of independence, the Irish won an unprecedented level of freedom and in doing so gave a beacon of hope and determination to colonised people all over the world.
The great irony of the rebellion was that its leaders never expected to achieve real victory. Their goal was simply to keep the dream of Irish freedom alive so that the next generation would take up the fight again. They believed, as Pearse so eloquently put it, that "the rose tree of Irish freedom" needed "a blood sacrifice". They were willing to provide that sacrifice.
In this goal, they were remarkably successful, for it was not the next generation who were to take up the struggle, but their own. In so doing, they won the measure of freedom that Ireland enjoys today and provided inspiration for revolutionaries throughout the British and other empires.
The British establishment had come to believe that Ireland would accept her "rightful place" within the United Kingdom because they were practical men. All the signs of the time pointed that way.
But people like Pearse and Connnolly dreamed. It was a powerful dream indeed. They dreamt of Ireland taking her rightful place among free nations, and that dream changed the destiny of a nation forever — perhaps even the destiny of the world, for other colonised people, encouraged by the Irish example, were soon to follow suit. Some even argue that because 1916 foreshadowed the destruction of the British Empire, the British establishment have never forgiven the Irish, a contributing factor to the occupation of today.
Even the great Irish romanticist W.B. Yeats was too practical to dream such wild notions. In "September 1913", he wrote: "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone. It's with O'Leary in the grave."
On this Easter weekend dreamers of Irish freedom will again assemble in large and small groups throughout the world to commemorate the sacrifice of 1916. — in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth; in countless locations throughout North America and Europe; in most Latin American countries; in Africa and Asia; and of course in every Irish county.
They will remember what Yeats called "all that delirium of the brave": long past figures like Edward Fitzgerald, Patrick Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, and the figures of modern history like Roger Casement, Padraigh Pearse, James Connolly and Terance McSweeney. They will also think of more recent sacrifices: people like Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Mairead Farrel and Dessie Grew. They will spare a thought for the current Irish political prisoners, men and women scattered throughout the British penal system, and elsewhere.
If it were not for the dreamers of 1916 it is quite likely that the Ireland of today would be in the same position as Scotland and Wales, locked in forever to the whims of the British establishment.
No doubt at this year's Easter commemorations there will be many who will recall the final lines of W.B. Yeats' best-known poem, "Easter 1916":
"And what if excess of love / Bewildered them till they died? / I write it out in a verse — / MacDonagh and MacBride / And Connolly and Pearse / Now and in time to be, / Wherever green is worn / Are changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born."
Sean Whelan is editor of the Irish People. For information on events commemorating the anniversary, see page 23.