When was Ireland Great? by Michael Lagan

When exactly was Ireland ‘great’?

An raibh sí mór le rá nuair a bhí muid faoi chois? Was it during the centuries of colonisation when England raped our land? Was it during the Famine, An Gorta Mor, when our people starved and fled by the million to foreign lands, where they built new nations and helped build others? Was it when Irish faces lined the docks of Liverpool, Boston, and New York, desperate for work and a semblance of dignity? A dignity taken away by our own governments, both North and South.

 

Was it the mass emigration of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, when families were torn apart piece by piece and entire towns emptied out because the government, filled with upper class and landlords destroyed our island? Because that’s our history! Stair lán le cruatan, bochtanas, agus misneach.

 

So, when the far right chant about ‘making Ireland great again’, whose greatness are they talking about? It sounds a lot like a red cap and a green mask situation. We know that slogan and propaganda. We’ve seen what it means across the Atlantic: it means scapegoating, exclusion, fear, domestic terrorism against their own democracy and worse.

 

But Irishness, Ireland? Fíor-Ghaelachas? That’s not about walls and borders. It’s about fáilte. It’s about the céad míle fáilte. It’s about a people who know what it means to be turned away, to be excluded, used and abused and came out on top, and who vowed to be better.

 

Ní neart go cur le chéile. You don’t make Ireland great by turning inward. You make it honest, proud, and decent, by remembering who we are and who we swore never to become.

 

They talk about ‘Ireland uniting’ while they stand with Loyalist terrorists in NEI who killed us for just being Irish, for speaking our native tongue, who carried out pogroms to rid us of our own land.  They called us ‘terrorists’ for daring to defend ourselves.

 

No, you make Ireland great by being strong, proud, honest, and free.