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The Blanket - A Journal of Protest & Dissent
The Real Betrayal?

 

 
Dr John Coulter • 15 February 2006

To the vast majority of Irish Protestants, especially from the Northern Unionist community, the 1916 Easter Rising coming in the teeth of the Great War was truly treason of the highest order.

However, with the hindsight of another nine decades and a generation of republican genocide, perhaps the real betrayal was not committed by the British Government who executed the organisers of the rebellion.

It is, indeed, all shades of modern republicans who should hang their heads in shame this Easter and ponder how they have betrayed the true meaning of the 1916 Proclamation of the Provisional Government.

Early 20th century republicans icons like James Connolly, Eamonn Ceannt, Thomas J Clarke, and P H Pearse must be spinning in their graves with embarrassment at how the various IRAs, INLA, and other assorted armed groups have strayed from their principles.

In fact, the best thing republicans could do this Easter to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Rising is to actually sit down quietly and take time to both read and understand the wording of the Proclamation.

The sectarian slaughter which republican terrorists have inflicted on the Protestant community along with the internal genocide they have unleashed on their own Catholic community during the past Troubles would be classified as treason by Connolly and company.

The Proclamation's signatories wanted a Republic which “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 of all of its parts”.

That guarantee seems to have fallen on deaf ears when the Provos butchered Orangemen at prayer in Tullyvallen in south Armagh, or when they incinerated people in the La Mon hotel massacre.

Where was that republican guarantee when the INLA under the evil disguise of the Catholic Reaction Force went into a Pentecostal church at Darkley and sprayed worshippers with bullets, killing three Christian elders?

And where was the Real IRA's resolve to pursue happiness when it blew up innocent civilians in the Omagh massacre?

Where was the INLA and IPLO's resolve on prosperity when it murdered more than a dozen of its own supporters through internal feuding and has descended a generation after its creation into nothing more than a front for criminals and hoods?

The Dublin signatories further penned: “... and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine”.

What about the 'cowardice' of those who became spooks and paid informers for the British intelligence services, yet did not emphasise to their handlers the need to prevent further shootings and bombings? How many lives could have been saved if they had not just taken the money and run, but tried to do something to stop the hits?

On 'inhumanity', what about the hundreds of people in the Catholic community who have been left physically and emotionally scared by republican punish squads dishing out beatings and knee-cappings to fellow nationalists? And what about the 'inhumanity' of the internal torture squads of the IRA's spy catching unit?

As for 'rapine' – the Oxford Dictionary defines this as robbery and plundering. Modern republicans, according to recent reports, are still up to their eyes in criminality.

I wonder what James Connolly would have said to the IRA's Army Council about the £26 million Northern Bank raid, or the racketeering involving intimidation of Catholic businessmen – or the shadowy criminal deals with former loyalist gangsters like the late East Belfast UDA crime boss Jim Craig?

The real kick in the teeth for Connolly and his comrades was the betrayal of another fundamental pledge by today's republican movement. The Proclamation stated: “... we pledge our lives to the cause ... of its exhaltation among the nations”.

For more than a generation, the modern IRA and its off-shoots made the word 'exhaltation' a term for mayhem, fear, destruction, and brutality. Connolly and his comrades invoked the “protection of the Most High God”.

It certainly was a blessing in disguise for them they died before they witnessed the laughing stock modern republicans have made of the Proclamation – it's time for anyone who believes in a united Ireland to indulge in some serious late night pondering.




 

 

 

 


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The Blanket - A Journal of Protest & Dissent

 

 

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Index: Current Articles



20 February 2006

Other Articles From This Issue:

Try separate the wood from the trees:
MI5, Sinn Fein/IRA and the intelligence war

Paul Maguire

Sinn Fein Set To Win … The Neanderthal Derby
Anthony McIntyre

21st Century Vision?
Mick Hall

The Real Betrayal?
Dr John Coulter

Cowardice on Cartoon Controversary
David Adams

Meeting Marielos
Anthony McIntyre


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2006 Ballymurphy Pogroms
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Policing
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Why Ireland is Unfree
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Time to Grow Up
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The Letters page has been updated:

Time for the End of an Era

 

Ballymurphy Being Attacked Within

 

Ballymurphy Slaying

 

More GEM

 

UCC Address

 

Shannon Airport

 

An Open Letter To Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri (Wherever You Are)

The Irish "Peace Process" Reality and Fiction
Fourthwrite announcement

25 Years On -Commemoration Says "We Must Be United!"
Chicago Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee

Café Vaudeville
Anthony McIntyre

 

 

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