Tom Cooper, in his BLOG (September 7) answered the assertion in THE IRISH EXAMINER by Maurice Manning that Sinn Fein had hijacked the commemoration of the 1916 Rising, Manning apparently thinking that the “Reclaim the Vision of 1916 ” parade, promoted by Tom Cooper and The Irish National Congress, was a Sinn Fein Initiative.
In a BLOG of my own I have found fault with an Irish Times piece by Maurice Manning trying to associate Fianna Fail with fascist ideas. Manning is a former Fine Gael TD, and a former Fine Gael Cathaoirleach of Seanad Eireann. I have met representative members of the Fine Gael party and read the utterances of others, whose ignorance disgraces not only their party and their country, but every descendant of Adam and Eve. But Manning is a professional historian and Chancellor of the National University, a post held by such intelligent men as Eamon de Valera and Garret Fitzgerald, and ought to know better. Besides, he’s the author of “The Blueshirts” a study of the only significant fascist-inspired offshoot of the Irish national movement. (Edward Carson’s Orange Freikorps was a proto-fascist movement before Mussolini or Hitler or Eoin O’Duffy were heard of.)
In July 1961 I had the privilege of being one of a 101 man Guard of Honour for the President of Ireland when the yacht Asgard returned to Howth, for the first time since 26 July 1914 when Erskine Childers sailed in with 800 or so 1871 vintage, single shot Mauser Rifles, the main armament of the 1916 Insurgents. This was a commemoration of broad national involvement, government and opposition TDs and Senators, many of whom had unloaded the arms in 1914 and discharged them in Easter Week 1916, and Irish Citizens, whose very citizenship was determined by the Asgard’s cargo, flocked to Howth in great numbers.
In 2014 I determined I’d be in Howth for the Centenary of the Asgard’s first visit, hoping that I would meet survivors of our FCA Presidential Guard of 1961, a full fifty-three years earlier. So, at some expense, my wife and I travelled from London. But nowhere could I find any information of the State’s plans for the Centenary. Thus I missed the State occasion and the opportunity to meet comrades and friends of over half a century before. I got diverted to another matter.
The day following the State Commemoration I appreciated the commemoration put on by Sinn Fein sympathisers, but I knew none of them personally. So, not for the first time, did I reckon that the State establishment, of which Maurice Manning is a polished facet, has jettisoned all self-respect, and can hardly expect our respect in its lieu.
It cannot even imagine that private citizens such as Tom Cooper and others take pride in our history, without necessarily being paid-up members of Sinn Fein.
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