The Liberty Project was established to celebrate the role of the labour movement in Irish History – with particular reference to the events surrounding 1916. It is the brainchild of the Irish Labour Party and SIPTU.

In 2006 the project published a booklet to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Declaration of Independence. This is Colm’s essay for the project.

 

“Many suffer so that some day all Irish people may know justice and peace…”

Theobald Wolfe Tone

I like many other Irish men and women am moved and impassioned by the courage and nobility of those who gave their lives to win the freedom of this nation. I welcome the opportunity to celebrate and commemorate that courage. In the context of the Northern Ireland Peace Process the commemoration of the 90^th Anniversary of the Easter Rising and the Proclamation of Independence has a new resonance. It seems that with the ending of armed conflict we are, as a nation, adopting a less tribal view of that history. There is a sense of us coming together to mark and remember that sacrifice, perhaps for the first time, beyond the shadow of the Civil War which followed. As we remember the struggle for the freedom of our nation I believe that we must also take time to reflect upon the nature of the State that we have become.

Those who gave their lives in 1916 did so in the name of Irish freedom. Irish Freedom, two words that have such resonance in the hearts of generations of Irish women and men. Yet when we commemorate those who died in its pursuit we mark not the vision and aspirations for which they gave their lives, but the act of martyrdom itself. In recalling his commitment to the ideals of Wolfe Tone, James Connolly said, “We who hold his principles believe that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration not from the mouldering records of the past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future.”

Connolly it seems would wish us to be inspired by the present, by the possibility for what we might yet become. Those who fought and died in 1916 were visionaries; they were revolutionaries who were prepared to die for the hope of a new tomorrow, a future where the principles and dreams which they cherished and died for would be made real by those who followed. They had a profoundly radical vision of the nation that Ireland might become. They proclaimed a vision of a free Ireland, a republic that “guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally…”

I passionately believe that their sacrifice demands that we, as the inheritors of the Ireland they died to free, work to fulfill their dreams for this nation. I believe that we owe them a debt as a nation that cannot be repaid by military parades and the tribal retelling of the story of their deaths, but rather by our tireless work to make real their dreams of an Ireland of equals. I believe that we owe the memory of all who laid down their lives more than a remembering of the act of martyrdom; that the proper celebration of those acts of patriotism would be to fulfil their vision of a free and democratic Republic that truly “cherished all of the children of the nation equally.” That was in large part the ideal for which they laid down their lives; the principle for which they died.

 

I am struck by how often when that aspiration in the Proclamation of Independence is intoned in the context of children’s rights, letter writers to national newspapers are quick to point out that by “all the children of the nation” those who declared independence meant all the people of the nation. And of course they did, yet it is children uniquely who are not granted individual rights under our constitution. Their rights are somehow inferred through their status within the family, and they are to be considered within the context of the primacy of the rights of parents within the family system. Regardless of the capacity or inclination of those parents to properly discharge their duties to safeguard, cherish and nurture those children; regardless of their intentions, be they benign or malign, towards those children, it is the rights of parents rather than the rights of children that we enshrine in our constitution. 

 

There is much in Ireland’s recent history that demonstrates that this nation has failed to recognise the rights of its children and our collective responsibility to protect those rights. Sadly, we’re all too familiar with the consequences of that failure; the abandonment of our most vulnerable to appalling abuse and neglect of every kind in State sponsored institutions and the failure to ensure that children were safe in our churches, in our schools, in our communities and in their own families. Recent inquiries would suggest that this State had little concept of the need to protect children, to ensure that they were free from abuse and exploitation. We have heard evidence before the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse that the State only became aware, at a policy level, of the non-accidental injury of children in the 1970’s and of child sexual abuse in the 1980’s.  There is a broad acceptance of our collective failure to recognise the ongoing abuse of Irish children for the first sixty to seventy years from the foundation of this State, of the failure to recognise that threat to our children and act to prevent them from being harmed. We have come to accept that these appalling failures were somehow inevitable, the result of a less enlightened time, a time which failed to recognise the precious nature of childhood and our duty to cherish and protect all of our children collectively.  In examining our constitution there are grounds upon which to base such a view. Nowhere within that document, the foundation of the law of this State, do we see any recognition of the inherent and individual rights of children or any recognition of our collective responsibility as citizens and as a State to protect those rights.

 

What happened to that dream of an Ireland that recognised the equal rights of all its citizens? How can we say that we do indeed “cherish all of the children of the nation equally” whilst we fail to even recognise the unique nature of the rights of children? Is that what those who framed the 1916 declaration envisioned? Was their view of the rights of children so conservative or were they perhaps more radical in their approach? I believe they were profoundly radical in their appreciation of the need to celebrate and cherish children’s rights. There is clear evidence of profoundly radical views of children’s rights being a central aspect of the revolutionary vision of 1916. It is to be found prominently in the programme for government of the first Dáil Eireann;

 

It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter…

- Democratic Programme for Government of the First Dáil Eireann, 21^st January 1919

There in a determined and radical affirmation of the primacy of the rights of children we can see a vision of a nation that should have become a shining light in the area of children’s rights. In appreciating just how radical a view this was consider that the first Dáil affirmed its duty to protect the children of the nation a full seventy years before the United Nations adopted its Convention on the Rights of the Child,  and at a time when children’s rights were not really considered an issue in most jurisdictions. That first Dáil and those who worked to see it established were truly radical, truly visionary. But something slipped between revolution and nationhood that caused us to lose sight of that vision; perhaps in the cloud and mire of civil war we lost that radical drive to equality and enlightenment. The conservative forces that achieved supremacy in our nation, both within government and in positions of unquestioned authority within our society, subverted that republican dream and led not to the State fulfilling its obligation to protect and cherish its citizens but to abdicate those duties to unaccountable authorities. There are those who believe that our recent success could never have been achieved had the State been forced to be responsible for those functions. It is as if they believe that this republic was born unable to govern itself, unable to discharge the most basic responsibilities of a truly republican, democratic state. That loss of vision has cost us dearly; the cost of our failure to name and insist upon equality for all our citizens, most particularly our failure to name and vindicate the rights of our nation’s children has been paid not by those who failed, but by many thousands of our children. They paid with their suffering, endured over decades leading to shattered lives, families and communities. Their pain is our shame.

 

As we recall 1916 let us not abandon the dreams of those of our fathers and mothers who gave their lives in the name of a free, equal and courageous Republic. Let us all now show courage and respond to the challenge of 1916; we do not need to abandon who we are to become what we might be; instead we need to reach back ninety years to a time before the cloud of civil war and embrace the ideals which were the reason for revolution. We must become the nation we were destined to be. To honour those who fought and died for us all as children of this nation, we should not march in military fashion, we will never discover the beauty and glory of the vision of 1916 by holding arms aloft, but rather by rediscovering and realising the radical heart that still beats with a passion for the boundless possibility of our mighty future.