Coming Soon: 1916 (the elephant in the room) It is a happy accident of time that we are now hurtling towards the centenary celebration of the 1916 Declaration of Independence. It is no coincidence that we will also be gearing up for the most eagerly anticipated general election for generations. It is scheduled. It has to happen. We must not allow any of the political parties to exploit the emotion generated by our communal connection to the memory of 1916. Successive governments have misinformed, misrepresented and misunderstood millions of Irish men women and children across generations of state mismanagement. Decide now how this will end. All the political parties will try to blind you with sentiment and seduce you with tenuous, overplayed or simply jaded connections to a moment in our history that should be as aspirational as it is inspirational. It is not their 1916. Aspire to make 2016 as inspirational as 1916 – reclaim for future generations the nation that is yet again not in our hands, but in theirs. When Fianna Fail declare the soldiers of destiny to be a party of the people, historically proven defenders of the nation, remember their betrayals. Remember that instead of punishing the behaviour of a handful of their deceitful, well connected friends and associates the government burdened the people with a bailout that has shattered your communities. When Fine Gael insist that the problems are and always were caused by everybody else but Fine Gael, remember the lies and misrepresentations they rode into government. Remember every broken promise. Remember their cowardice in the face of external pressure. Remember their detachment from the public, their ignorance to the reality of existence for all but a precious few in the Ireland Fine Gael helped to create. When the Labour Party tell you that they are anything other than a slur on the memory of Larkin and Connolly do not listen to their grovelling and their spin. Consider the failure of the Labour Party to provide the workers of Ireland with a viable, coherent vehicle for representation. Remember their time in power with a supposedly idealistic antithesis and their collusion with the overpaid over-privileged hierarchies of a deliberately weakened trade union movement. Remember the Ireland they helped to create and the state they’ve conspired to uphold. When Sinn Fein decide that they know best, remember that their ignorance of the character and tenaciousness of the grassroots, front-line activists that carry the leadership at shoulder height will push them always further from the party they claim to be and only ever closer to the party they want to be. Without an identity of their own, Sinn Fein can never provide an identity for the nation. Sinn Fein can only succeed by turning the “big three” of Irish politics into a “big four”. When Sinn Fein declare themselves the only alternative remember that they are now jumping at the carrot of power. You are the only alternative. You are Ireland. Show the state the problem it has created – we, the people, are more informed, more vocal, and more agitated than we have ever as a nation been before. We have started our resistance to this never ending programme of austerity. We must organise now. We must denounce this government and the fools it harbours as worthless and untrustworthy. Withdraw your consent to governance. We must reclaim ownership of this nation. Know now that the problem is not just those who govern but also how we allow ourselves to be governed. Any combination produced from within the established parties will result only in the continued prioritisation of debt repayment. The opportunity is coming to take a step that the signatories of the 1916 Declaration were not allowed to take. We can cross a finish line that they could but dream of – we can make the citizens of this nation once more the masters of the destiny of this nation. I submit that as a moment in our history we can all aspire to. Think. Organise now. Produce your own representatives from within your own communities. Inform yourselves. Know better and expect more. Make your own history. Join the protests. Be the resistance. You are Ireland, and together we can finish this and we can start again…
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:58:12 +0000
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