Some fellas on here would have butchered that opportunity, you’ve a lovely way of finishing off a blindside move.
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My fellow county man is indeed a horrible piece of shit. Most arrogant man I ever dealt with.
Cork Mayor (FF naturally) not attending now too stating
““A commemoration kind of implies a celebration of achievements and I don’t think that is appropriate given our history. For that reason [I] won’t be attending.”
Again - I presume there’ll be no commemoration off any of the anti-state civil war dead on the basis that it would be “celebration of achievements” though I’m somewhat surprised FF types now broadly support that position
RIC COMMEMORATION WRONG
For the government of this country to celebrate the memory and the actions of RIC and DMP officers who implemented martial law in Ireland and attempted to suppress the Irish Freedom Movement as authorised by the First Dáil of Ireland in 1919 is quite frankly both egregious and outrageous.
I will not be attending any such commemoration and make no apologies for it.
By attending such a commemoration, I would be directly dishonouring my great grandfather and great-grandmother, Michael & Margaret Healy of Upperchurch.
During the Fenian Rebellion of 1867, my great grandfather Michael Healy was convicted, along with his brother-in-law Thomas Whelan and many neighbours, for their part in the burning of Roskeen RIC Barracks. My great grandmother Margaret Healy, (nee Whelan of Shefferoy) along with other women walked the 30 miles to Nenagh and back each week to bring them provisions while they were jailed there.
Therefore, I will certainly not be participating in any such commemoration on behalf of my family and neither will I be doing so as the elected representative of muintir Tiobraid Árainn to the 32nd Dáil Éireann.
This commemoration must be seen for what it is: A deliberate attempt to redraw and rewrite the history of the Irish people and the birth of the Irish state and it must be resisted.
To participate in this sham commemoration is to support the blatant political revisionism behind it.
The political parties of the Ireland of today would have a different version of Irish history taught in Irish schools to Irish children; one that is more palatable to their conservatism but one that does not reflect the truth of the Irish Freedom Movement or the full-bodied sentiment and intellectual rigour of the Irish patriots, men and women, who were behind it.
Unbelievably, it puts our oppressors, the RIC, the DMP, the Tans and the Auxiliaries in the same category as those who died for the creation of the Republic.
Dr. Brian Murphy, OSB, Glenstal has rightly criticised Minister Flanagan for representing the RIC as a normal police force carrying out normal police duties. But the RIC were no “guardians of peace”. The RIC was in fact an armed, para-military, highly politicised force, implementing martial law to defeat the outcome of the 1918 election. It is very difficult to accept that in the Ireland of 2020, a mere one hundred years after the War of Independence, that the RIC, who were described in the Westminster Parliament in 1919 as a “semi-military organisation” who as such could not join the National Union of Police Officers is to be commemorated by any Irish government.
Leaving the cause of Irish freedom aside, neither were they the guardians of the Irish workers. The Dublin Metropolitan Police, also to be feted by the blue-shirt Irish government of today, baton charged worker’s rallies and in August 1913, caused the deaths of two workers, James Nolan and John Byrne by doing so. Over 300 more were injured.
Thinking Irish people must ask themselves; why are such people to be commemorated?
The Fine Gael-Independent Alliance government of the 32nd Dáil want to reframe the War of Independence as a war between two equal and legitimate powers. They want to reframe the War of Independence to focus on the atrocities of war committed on both sides. They want us to equally weigh the might of the colonial British empire against the Irish pillars and columns and safe-houses. They want to rewrite the revolution out of our story so that we might begin to believe that we are a conciliatory people.
But when the might of the British empire reigned down upon Ireland, Irish people did not merely “roll over”. We fought back and none more so than the people of Tipperary. We stuck it to the British empire and in doing so lit a flame that burned so bright it could be seen as far away as colonial India.
I call on all Tipperary people and other invitees to boycott this ceremony prepared by our government to commemorate our oppressors.
To do otherwise would be to dishonour our patriots who fought and died for the Irish people in the War of Independence, those pioneers of freedom who inspired a nation and the world.
-Seamus Healy T.D.
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Excuse me, @Fagan_ODowd has served his country with enormous distinction by turning up at every commemoration going over the past 5 years or so, presumedly at enormous personal financial cost, he may have mentioned once or twice
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A decade ago there were people moaning about commemorating British Army World War I veterans like Tom Barry
I wouldn’t have attended but sure each to their own
I expected somebody would run along to kick the ball through the net but I didn’t expect @Fagan_ODowd would fall for the bait so easily.
Christ.
Good man Seamus.
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Actually served in the defence forces as well.
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Please keep on topic, typical blueshirt tactic.
How else would the people of Tipp know what day it is?
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What year it is.
He’s a man keen on looking to the future as well as the past.
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Which one? For which country?
Irish Naval Service
i remember the recruiting slogan
“join the naval service and be home every night for tea”
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