Léargas

I hope you are all staying safe and well. My thoughts are with those who are sick and with their relatives, and with those who have suffered bereavement. Welcome back to our leader Mary Lou who was down with Covid-19. Notwithstanding the primacy and priority that the pandemic deserves, not least because of the deaths and distress it is causing I want to return to the need for a Government for Change in Dublin. In fact the pandemic and the recovery from it requires such a government. In the days before the February General Election I described that election as part of the necessary process of the realignment of politics on the island of Ireland. I also remarked that this process has been slow and hesitant at times but that if republicans do our work well – think strategically, organise, be energetic and rooted, never give up and stay focused on the future, that a tipping point can emerge – a space in which significant and historic change is possible. I said:  “This election ...

Republicans across the island of Ireland and beyond commemorated the 1916 Easter Rising last weekend.  The online Sinn Féin events were all exceptional and I want to commend everyone involved in producing them. The National Commemoration broadcast in particular - including Mary Lou’s oration - was very uplifting. As we continue to commemorate these events, including in a few weeks the executions of the leaders, let’s look at the disgraceful way in which successive Irish governments have refused to preserve Moore Street and its part in the historic events of 1916. So where is Moore Street? Moore Street runs parallel to O’Connell Street- Sackville Street in 1916- from Parnell Street to Henry Street close to the GPO. It is the location of the final meeting of the Provisional Government following the Easter Rising and the final meeting place of five of the seven signatories of the Proclamation. It is also where the O Rahilly - a leader of the Volunteers- was killed. The O Rahilly...

There probably has not been an Easter week quite like this one in modern Irish history. I have always liked Easter and although I have less connection now with the institution of the Catholic Church, Good Friday always is a special day for me. It is the one afternoon that I try to slip into a church to reflect on the life of Jesus and his execution by crucifixion all those years ago. This Good Friday the churches are closed. In fairness a church is not necessary for reflection. Any quiet place will do. But it will be strange nonetheless. For those of us who commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising this will be a strange year also. There were Easters when repression and imprisonment, north and south, resulted in only a handful of activists coming together at gravesides and republican memorials to lay a wreath, read the Proclamation and list the names of our Patriot Dead. These were the Easters when successive Irish and Unionist governments banned such remembrances and used brutal tactic...

All of us are adjusting to our new routines and trying to come to terms with the real threat posed by the Corona Virus pandemic. The thousands of deaths in Italy and Spain are grim reminders of what may be coming our way and a deadly incentive for us all to stop close contact with other human beings and to keep to the health directives which now govern how we live. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by all this. We all know someone who has the virus. We know we could be next. So we watch the responses of those in the three governments which rule us as we wait for the next news report or the next instruction. Don’t make this political some readers may say. Why not? It is political. I don’t want decisions about the well being of my family and friends to be made by a Jack the Lad in London who has vandalised the very health services which we are so dependent on. Neither do I want a caretaker Taoiseach without a mandate who did exactly the same thing when he was in power. Or his part...