Peace at last this Easter

WHEN Patrick Pearse and James Connolly led their soldiers into the GPO in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916, they did so with the intention of killing.
Their aim was to strike a blow for Irish freedom but they believed they could not do that without killing. They had, of course, no mandate from the Irish people to do that. As a matter of fact, the Rising was opposed by the vast majority of the Irish people and when the rebels were rounded up at the end of Easter week, they were spat on and jeered by the ordinary people of Dublin.
There were some terrible things done in the name of Irish freedom in the years that followed the Rising.  Some of those things, including the shooting of people in their beds in front of their wives and families, were ordered by the man many believe was the greatest Irishman of all times, Michael Collins. And many of the people shot as spies during the War of Independence were anything but. They were innocent men and women gunned down on the slimmest of evidence.
Incidentally, the same thing happened in countries like France that were occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War as the Resistance pursued fellow-citizens they accused of collaborating with and spying for the enemy. Many of the people pinpointed as spies in France were nothing of the sort as terrible mistakes were made.
And the same happened in Northern Ireland while the armed struggle was taking place there over a period of 30 years. Innocent people were gunned down by the IRA and others as the struggle intensified with the passing of the years. Of course, hundreds of innocent Catholics and Protestants were blown to pieces just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But that’s a terrible consequence of war, especially in modern times. More innocent people than combatants are liable to be killed.
I have no idea whether Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness ordered any of those actions in which innocent people died. And I probably never will know. No more than I know all the details of all the killings ordered by Michael Collins and other IRA leaders of the past.
But that does not stop me from believing that Michael Collins was one of the finest Irishmen of all times. Nor does that stop me from believing that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are also good Irishmen.
I am not going to stand in judgement now over all the actions of Adams and McGuinness during the 30 years’ war in the North. No more than I am going to stand in judgement over the innocent deaths caused by Pearse, Connolly, Collins and the other leaders of the 1916-1921 period.
They did what they believed to be the right thing to do at the time.
Generations of young Irishmen and women joined various Republican organisations with only one basic aim and that was to get England out of Ireland and to allow the Irish people to govern themselves.
It started with the United Irishmen in 1798 and continued with the Young Irelanders in 1848 and the Fenians in 1867. And the torch was carried on again by the Irish Volunteers in 1916 and the IRA in the years that followed.
But there are those who say – and I believe they are entitled to say – that all those efforts were a disaster, that they caused more damage and trouble than if they had never happened and that people like Pearse, Collins and Adams were murderers. And there are other people who may praise Pearse and Collins but condemn Adams.
Those people, however, must know little about what was happening in Northern Ireland down through the years since the 1921 Treaty.
Catholics were treated like second-class citizens in a state that was established as a Protestant state for a Protestant people. The state was gerrymandered in a way that ensured that only Protestants ruled.
The best houses were reserved for Protestants and the best jobs for Protestants.
That was the situation because neither the British government nor, to their shame, any Irish Government, wanted to know what was happening.
And that was the situation when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness joined the republican movement.  They saw no other way of bringing about a democratic state in Northern Ireland. They did not join to feather their own nests.
And when they realised that further armed struggle was futile, they persuaded their followers to destroy their arms and fully embrace the democratic process.
You may not agree with Sinn Féin but I believe people like Adams and McGuinness should be praised for bringing about a situation where the IRA have gone away and peace now reigns.
Certainly, we should never forget the 3,000 who died during the years of struggle. But we should acknowledge that many more would have died but for the success of Adams and McGuinness in getting the IRA to lay down their arms.
And that is something I celebrated this Easter week. We may have a financial crisis but nobody died this week in the name of Irish freedom.