January 2nd 2016

Today’s papers are full of fillers. Big glossy adverts extending the New Year wishes to all their customers and suchlike. Predictable rubbish. An unexpected quantity of column inches devoted to the fact that this New Year is unlike any other in one particular respect. This is of course the 100^th Anniversary of the Rising. Another occasion when platforms all over the country will be adorned by people pretending to be politicians extolling the virtues of our great leaders and founders of the ‘Free State’ where nothing is free. The spouting will be as widespread and pointless as the spray from a recycling fountain.

I had occasion within the last five years to ramble to a local hostelry close to closing time. I happened to come upon an assemblage of patrons who made up the membership of the local Sinn Fein Cumann who had held a party meeting earlier. The warbler of this merry troupe was belting out the ballad of James Connolly ‘The Irish Rebel’. When the song was thankfully finished one of the company remarked “Ah lads, sure isn’t it for certain that Connolly and De Valera were the two greatest Irish Catholic freedom fighters since Wolf Tone. A telling statement, and none of his audience disagreed with him, indeed there was a ‘hear, hear’ all round. The fact that de Valera was an American, born in New York and Connolly was a Scotsman who had served seven years in the British Army was of no import. Wolf Tone was as much Catholic as any of that assembly was Republican in the true sense of the word.

I joined the merry troupe as I knew them all and provoked a discussion on the plans of the ‘party’ predicting that the future of Ireland was in good hands as long as men such as themselves were prepared to stand by the cause. Backslapping and yahooing and “sure you’re one of our own”. My political sympathies would certainly be of a republican persuasion but there seemed to be a distinct lack of leadership in this crew and the ‘cause’ seemed to be the entity that gave these chaps a place in common bondage. The cause was supporting them in terms of identity instead of the other way round. I have no reason to believe that they would be any worse at running the country than the collection of imposters we have in power at the moment. Still, we deserve the politicians we vote for.

Just for the crack I asked one the most loquacious of these gentlemen to tell me about the founder of Sinn Fein and some of its history. One gent informed me that the Party was founded by Michael Collins, another suggested Eamon de Valera while a third informed me that it was James Larkin himself who established Sinn Fein. The fact that they disagreed on such a basic point didn’t seem to faze them at all. I suppose it’s reasonable to suggest that the one who suggested de Valera wasn’t that far off the mark. Poor auld Arthur Griffith wouldn’t be too pleased.