The revolution of 1916 remains unfinished business

An official centenary calendar which commemorates members of the imperialist RIC and British Army alongside the martyrs who died in the 1916 uprising is a further example of the collaborative nature of the 26 County state, writes RSF National PRO Sean O Dubhlain.

It has come to the attention of Republican Sinn Fein yet another instance of Free State historical revisionism which needs placed on the public record for the purposes of highlighting the Irish Republican position in line with the objects of 1916.

In the “1916-2016 Commemorative Calendar” from An Post, the postal service of the 26 County State we see commemorated not just those who gave their lives for Irish freedom but also side by side, as if one and the same as the Republicans, collaborators with British rule and members of the British Army and RIC. In total there is one member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, a British Army Soldier and a woman decorated for bravery by King George V.

We are not surprised by these actions as An Post is an arm of a State which even sought to bring members of the British Royal family to commemorate 1916! The 26 County Free State was set up in 1921 by the British Government with the aid of willing recreants under the threat of ‘immediate and terrible war’, it is not the inheritor state of the legacy of 1916 and what that rising represented. As such it is not in line with the sovereign first and second Dail Eireann.

This inherently imperialist, collaborative and corrupt statelet has had the brass neck to accuse Irish Republicans, who have no allegiance other than to the Republic Proclaimed in arms in 1916, of attempting to hijack the legacy of 1916.

Let us consider the fact it was under an oath of allegiance to the British monarch that the Free Stater’s murdered and executed former comrades in the Republican Movement. That they hijacked the flag of the Irish Republic, the Tri-Colour. That they stole the national anthem and all the trappings and emblems of the Republican Movement to rewrite history and quell the revolutionary aspirations of true Irish Republicanism.

But a greater example could not be given of Free State hypocrisy than that on this day in 1922, Liam Mellows who could be described as a true disciple of James Connolly was lined up and executed by the 26 County State with three comrades, Rory O Connor, Richard Barrett and Joseph McKelvey. For those who know the words and life’s work of Mellows and compare him in contrast to the words and work of the quislings who today govern Ireland at the behest of international imperial demands, it is indeed hard to digest that they have an Army Barracks named after him in County Galway, Dun Ui Maoiliosa. This is from essentially the same Army serving the same State, whatever flag, anthem or emblems they have hijacked.

Irish Republicans have not and never will forget the establishment of this State which now seeks through whatever avenue to paint the Easter Rising of 1916 as some sort of domestic dispute ‘on these islands’.

Truly, as we near one hundred years from the Rising, the words of James Connolly’s are a wake-up call from the grave, a call to action that every self respecting Irishman and woman must rally too:

“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

“England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

“England would rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.”

The revolution of 1916 remains unfinished business, and no amount of historical revisionism will deflect from the truth of the present situation and the truth of history. We call on the Irish people not to be ignorant of the real business of 1916, to aid ending the occupation in the Occupied Six Counties and to support Sinn Fein Poblachtach towards the goal of a United and Independent Irish nation.

Urgent Appeal