What might have happened?
The options that Taoiseach Jack Lynch faced forty years ago this month are very similar to the options that Pádraig Pearse faced fifty three years before. Both men had charge of an army that was greatly inferior to the British Army. On both occasions Britain occupied our country or a section of it. And both periods saw Britain’s armed police force involved in attacking nationalist communities while cultural, educational, housing and employment rights were been denied.
The difference between these two men and the paths they chose was that one was a hero, the other a coward. One defended Irish citizens, the other abandoned them. Ones decision led to the freedom of the 26 counties from British rule the other left young men and women who were ill equipped, poorly trained and with no experience or expertise to defend nationalist communities and wage a war with the British army, a war that thirty years later the British acknowledged that they could not win.
Who knows what may have happened if Lynch gave the order. But if Pearse didn’t give the order would anyone today believed that, if he did, within five years that the 26 counties would have secured its freedom from Britain?
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Maith thú Pearse. Succint but absolutely on the money.
ReplyDeleteAm on my way up to RTE to demand my TV license fee back! What a terrible programme!
ReplyDeletebailifidh fidh a phiarais. Da mbeadh suim ar bith ag railtais na hÉireann sa tuirsceart bheadh i bhfad nios mo daoine beo anois na mar atá. Tá ar dtire uilig faoi brú an siling mar bhí le tamall rofhada, choir a bheith naoi gcéad bliana. Ar an drochuair tas sé níos tabhachtaí daoifa a bheith i ngnó leis na sasanaigh na ar dtire féin a reiteach. Tá sé in am anois a dul ar aighaidh leis ar dtire féin gan a bheith ag smaoineamh ar sasan. Bhí crógachta acu uilig a bhí i mbaint leis na sasanaigh a dhuiltiú ach ní raibh ag ar rialtais iad féin. Tomás.
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