Remember that appalling and irrelevant video the Irish Government rolled out to mark the Centenary programme of the Easter Rising? That same video that did not mention the Rising, the executed signatories to the Irish Proclamation and in actual fact, it had nothing at all to do with the Rising? Remember the state commemoration of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa last year, where it was wrongly and inaccurately claimed that on his death bed, he was a convert to constitutional nationalism and a supporter of Home Rule? Remember RTE’s Rebellion programme … Ok I could go on. The conspicuous nature of this revisionist mentality will continue to permeate through society as we approach the 100^th Anniversary of the Easter Rising. All this contrived political correctness has gone mad and in essence only served to try and rewrite the history of 1916.

Something as absurd has recently appeared. Dublin City Council have erected a banner at the Bank of Ireland building at College Green. On the 1916 centenary banner, uniquely, it emblazons the pictures of four constitutional leaders of Irish Nationalism throughout the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th century: Henry Grattan, Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond. What relevance do these four leaders have to the events and significance of 1916? These four constitutional leaders who were supporters of Home Rule at various stages, and had absolutely nothing to do with the 1916 Easter Rising. On the flip side, the leaders of the Rising had absolutely nothing to do with the four constitutional leaders, if anything their Rising was an assault on the constitutional politics they stood for. The same Easter leaders were disillusioned with, loathed and despised constitutional politics. The advocates of constitutional nationalism were viewed as traitors by the men of 1916. Of the seven signatories to the Irish Proclamation, their distaste for constitutional politics was so great only one stood for political office in their lifetime, Connolly’s unsuccessful attempt to be elected on Dublin City Council, that same council who seemed to have forgotten him. If anything, these four constitutional leaders would have been appalled by the events of 1916 as they were with other Irish rebellions. Can anyone make the assimilation between 1916 and these constitutional leaders? Nope! Nor can I! Why have these constitutional leaders appeared on a banner to commemorate 1916?

Home Rule and the ideology of 1916 were opposing traditions and it is historically wrong to link them and try to equate them through the Centenary commemoration. If anything, the 1916 Easter Rising was a repudiation of the Home Rule movement and the failed attempts by those who tried to achieve limited legislative independence, under the remit of British rule. Putting the 1916 Rising into context, and in the words of the Irish Proclamation it was in tradition with establishing national freedom and sovereignty by “asserting it in arms.” The same arms taken up by the United Irishmen in 1798, Robert Emmet in 1803, the Young Irelanders in 1848 and the Fenian movement in 1867 – all periods of militant revolution, that aimed like the leaders of 1916 to establish an Independent Irish Republic. Why does this banner not make reference to the militant tradition of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Young Ireland, the Fenians and even the 1916 Easter Rebels? Is Dublin City Council embarrassed with the 1916 Leaders and subsequent events, like the State are? Why are they choosing to airbrush and rewrite history? Surely, they claim the Easter Rising was a seminal event in the creation of the Independent state, yet their revisionist mindset is clearly redrafting the narrative.

I am not claiming that the four leaders of constitutional nationalism should not be commemorated, of course they should. But, perhaps this context is historically wrong and inappropriate. To connect them to 1916 is wholly ridiculous and revisionist injustice. Grattan had short term legislative success. He was a devoted constitutionalist who had witnessed the 1798 rebellion and the consequences it had on his Parliament. Once a member of the United Irishmen, O’Connell abhorred violence, “liberty is too dearly purchased at the price of a single drop of blood”, even though some of his rhetorical speech were quite militant in nature. His fallout with Young Ireland indicated his unwillingness to support militancy. Parnell, although linked to violence, was keen to bring revolutionary Nationalism under his control and into constitutionalism, with the New Departure. Redmond, the only constitutional leader of the four alive during the Rising was totally against the events of Easter 1916, referring to it as a “misery” and “heartbreaking.” Redmond condemned the actions of the leaders and supported the actions of the British, “It has been dealt with with firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the government to so deal with it.” The banner – I’m struggling to comprehend it’s purpose or reasoning – in those famous words of Diarmuid Ferriter, it is “unhistorical shite.”