My Articles to the Newspapers

Cherishing the children of the nation equally

Soldiers embarking on a war come out with some of the best of idealism. One only has to listen to the speech given by Colonel Tim Collins of the Royal Irish Regiment to hear his British idealism spoken in the lead up to the war in Iraq. President Bush apparently keeps a copy of the speech on the walls of the Oval Office.

Commandant Padraig Pearse gave a similar rendition in the run up to the Easter Rising 1916 which became the Easter Proclamation of the Republic. It was full of fine sentiment and pure idealism as you might expect from a man brimming with Messianic virtue and longing to sacrifice himself for his people’s freedom.

But was it like Colonel Collins speech, full of fine intentions that never became the reality of life in the new republic. Indeed just as Iraq has been a disaster for the British and American soldiers, and their human rights violations have been there for all to see, Ireland’s cause became hampered by the fighting that ensued over the next decade.

The problem with being a self-sacrificing idealist like Pearse is that there are always those around you who think that you are off your head and who have altogether more realistic ambitions to achieve in the pursuit of a Republic. There were those who simply wanted to change the personnel in charge of the Republic and not the country itself.

Of course, they won the day and the idealism of Pearse was lost in the ruins of the GPO in Dublin.

The Proclamation became an “aspiration” which is read out each Easter without fail in republican circles as if they really want to implement what’s in it. But it goes to show that the participants in the Easter Rising were good, honest men who aspired to the highest ideals.

Pearse was a man of faith who aspired to being Christ-like in his sacrifice of himself. The Easter proclamation confirms that he had Christ-like virtues but his participation in the Easter Rising confirms too that he didn’t really understand Christianity. He never understood that he could not participate in killing and destruction and remain Christ-like.

He would be contaminated just as his cause would be contaminated and it would therefore never achieve the potential that was possible with the level of idealism they held. The War of Independence and then the civil war would ensure that the cause ignited by Pearse et al on O’Connell Street in 1916 would become nothing more than the changing of the guard. New faces would govern the republic in the same old ways.

There would be no cherishing of the children of the nation equally for one. That would challenge the core philosophical belief of the major nations of the Earth, including Britain, America and Germany, and lead Ireland into conflict with these powers.

There was no moral force in the Proclamation because the use of violence by Pearse at el rendered it just another speech for stoking up the army – like Colonel Collins’ speech – before it entered battle. Pearse didn’t understand that Christ was innocent when crucified, not the leader of a rebellion where innocent soldiers, some as young as fourteen, would die on both sides.

But I do believe in cherishing the children of the nation equally. I believe that Pearse was right about that. He was after all a deeply Christian man. And I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to find ways of supporting those of us who truly want to treat all of the children of the nation equally.

I don’t believe that that can be done with a gun, or that those who have yet to repent of using the gun can play any meaningful role in achieving it because they cannot truly understand the meaning of the ideal. You cannot cherish the children of the nation equally while aspiring to kill young soldiers from the poorest parts of a neighbouring country. You simply cannot understand the concept of equality.

Equality means just that, equality. There can be no child poverty, nor indeed any kind of poverty. There can be no pensioners in financial difficulty. The long-term unemployed and those on low wages must be given substantially more income to bring up their families. The sick and disabled must be catered for not with a begrudged safety net policy but with generosity of spirit that matches their aspiration to help where they can.

Moreover, there can be no £250,000 salaries for those GPs who pretend that they’re on the side of the community while cynically taking advantage of our generosity. In a just world anyone who earns more than the average wage should immediately be assessed for an Anti-Social Behaviour Order for that may be what they are guilty of. There can be no exorbitant salaries that contribute to a modern culture of inequality, one that has all the hallmarks of a return to Victorian inequality.

Cherishing the children of the nation equally means serving God not money, as Pearse would no doubt agree. It means that a society ordered by the precepts of inequality is ordered by money and not by God.

Serving the invisible hands of market forces, which ensures that the unemployed live on subsistence wages, is tantamount to serving the shallow hands of Satan, and not the fulsome, caring hands of our father in heaven, who wants us all to live happy lives.

For in my opinion equality is God’s wish for us and we must ensure that we cherish the children of the nation equally.

*John O’Connell is Derry-based author.

Back to articles