Marching for a mission: A line of Color Guards representing Irish-American organizations marches through Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon at the 2014 Easter Rising commemoration. The annual event will return on April 12 with a program of readings and prayers. PHOTO COURTESY OF TOM KEENAN
Thousands of Irish and Irish-for-a-day marched through Center City streets on Sunday in Philadelphia’s annual celebration of Irish-American heritage and culture, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
But a more select group of revelers had a more earnest and poignant mission on their minds. In a few weeks, they will commemorate the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the seminal moment in the creation of an Irish Republic free from foreign rule.
It will be the 99th anniversary of a series of events sparked by the reading of a proclamation of sovereignty by teacher, attorney, poet and nationalist Patrick Pearse outside of Dublin’s General Post Office, an exercise that hearkened to the public readings of the United States’ own Declaration of Independence 140 years earlier.
Organizers of the annual commemoration will gather for a program of readings, lectures and prayers on April 12 at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, where prominent locally based Irish patriots Joe McGarrity and Luke Dillon are buried. Then for the ensuing year, they will continue planning for what they want to be a centennial befitting the revered historical epoch.
“We’re hoping that people will realize that if you learn the history, you won’t repeat it, people will realize that the home rule that (the Irish) fought for in 1916 is still an issue right now,” said Bob Dougherty, co-chairman of the Irish Easter Rising Centennial Committee. “It wasn’t like a whiskey rebellion. It was a revolution.”
“We’re emphasising education in the Philadelphia area,” agreed Jim Lockhart, who co-chairs the committee. “Joe McGarrity was a huge part of the 1916 Rising. He was a big financier. He and Luke Dillon were the stalwart Irish Republicans in Philadelphia at the turn of the (20th) century. We don’t want that history to be forgotten.”
Like much of history, facts and interpretations seem to vary depending on the source. But by all modern accounts, the plight of native Irish under British crown rule for most of four centuries was one of land confiscation and colonization, subjugation, religious oppression and famine.
“They would come over and criminalize you for owning land. They would kick you off your land and give it to their people and give them a royal title. They’d call him lord or whatever,” said Dougherty, a Broomall resident and leader of Tar Anall America, a group that assists former Irish political prisoners and their families while seeking justice for the persecuted.
The disfranchised Irish revolted in 1641 and again in 1798, but were suppressed each time in bloody fashion. Republicans failed to sustain further violent rebellion attempts in 1803, ’48 and ’67.
That was the backdrop when Patrick Pearse and James Connolly authored the proclamation of a new Irish republic in 1916. Its seven signatories were leaders of the armed insurrection, a force of some 1,200 that took control of the GPO on Easter Monday, April 24, hoisting the new Irish Republic and tricolour flags.
Pearse read the document, which began: “Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.”
“It’s probably more progressive than the Declaration of Independence but it was written 150 years afterward, too,” said Lockhart, a Port Richmond resident and president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians Division 87. “Like our Declaration of Independence, it talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It also talks about Ireland’s exiled children in America. The Irish population in America was getting big back then.”
“The big idea that comes out of both, it’s the equality thing,” Dougherty said. “In fact, with the equality part, the Irish were more advanced with women, who fought side-by-side with the men.”
Hundreds died during the insurrection, which lasted six days and spread on smaller scales throughout the countryside before the leaders, facing insurmountable odds, declared an unconditional surrender. The British forces arrested thousands of men and women nationalists and executed 15, including the seven signatories.
The courage of the defeated rebels and the heavy-handed response by the British galvanized public support and advanced the nationalist movement, leading to the creation of the Irish Republic in 1919. But the victory was incomplete, as the nationalist movement factionalized and opened the door for the British-orchestrated political partition of the island.
As one might expect, planning for the centennial has been a big topic of discussion for the Irish communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. But perhaps surprisingly, there has been much disagreement on how to commemorate it in the Emerald Isle. Last month, members of the Republic’s leading political party, during a national conference, debated how to highlight the centennial without glorifying the bloodshed of the last century or inspiring more.
“Did the American government shrink from the bicentenary of the decisive moment in the birth of the United States because that state was born out of war,” asked University College of Dublin Professor Emeritus Ronan Fanning during a gathering of Fine Gael delegates last month. “Does the French government shrink from the annual celebration of Bastille Day notwithstanding the appalling bloodshed of the French Revolution?”
Fanning called for a “shameless celebration,” according to a report published by the Irish Times.
Conversely, another delegate cautioned that activities should commemorate but not “celebrate,” while another spoke of “nervousness across many political representatives and community leaders” in the partitioned six counties, which remain a constituent state of the United Kingdom.
A leading opposition party in both the north and the republic, Sinn Fein — an organization founded in the republican movement of the early 1900s and associated with the militant Provisional Irish Republican Army throughout the latter half of the century — has long turned to Irish America for support and encourages Americans to share in the important historical milestone.
“If it wasn’t for America, the rising wouldn’t have happened in the first place because it was the children of the Great Famine, the children of those who actually came to this nation who funded the rising,” said Pearse Doherty, Sinn Fein’s financial spokesman, during a visit to Philadelphia late last year. “It was they who sent the money to the leaders of 1916 to buy arms, to prepare the rising, which took on the biggest, mightiest empire in the world at that time.”
Some of Northeast Philly’s own political leaders already have a strong interest in Irish affairs. The city’s Irish Society organized November’s visit by Doherty, who one night earlier had accompanied Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and about 600 of their supporters at a fundraising dinner in Manhattan.
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, state Reps. Kevin Boyle and Mike Driscoll and City Councilman Bobby Henon were among those to greet Doherty on his side-trip to Philly.
“(Doherty) is the equivalent of a member of Congress from Ireland visiting our city and I want to make sure any foreign official is treated well here and greeted,” Brendan Boyle said. “It lets him know that we have a community here in Philadelphia that cares strongly about what happens over there.”
“My district, the 172nd district, is the second-most Irish-American House district in the entire commonwealth,” Kevin Boyle said. “It’s 36 percent of Irish descent.”
“I have three AOH divisions in the 173rd district,” Driscoll added. “And believe me, when I go there, they want to hear about Irish issues.”
In planning for 2016, Philadelphia’s commemoration committee welcomes support from the political community but will be cautious to protect nonpartisanship. In forming their committee, they extended invitations to all known Irish groups around the city.
“We have Irish from Ireland and people who wish they were Irish, I guess. We have all types,” Dougherty said. “Most of the groups who fought in 1916 were very socialist. We have people on our committee who are active in the (American) Republican party, but they still see the need for a united Ireland, so it crosses over that. The everyday politics that affect us are different from the big picture.”
“It’s important to have the broadest representation as possible, people with different ideologies,” Lockhart said. “People who are drawn to this have an interest in what’s going on in Ireland now and have been involved in Irish organizations for decades.” ••
For information about the Irish Easter Rising Centennial Commemoration Committee, visit www.irisheasterrising.com and visit their Facebook page.
