Scarcely
a week goes past without someone in the Irish
News, columnist or contributor to the letters
page, misusing, misquoting or misrepresenting
the words of Theobald Wolfe Tone.
It
would seem that as we approach yet another sectarian
head count, we can expect more of the same as
former republicans attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Just
last week in the letters page a Lower Falls contributor
lauded the efforts of the Provos who, bringing
together Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter to
administer British rule in Ireland had “brought
some honour back into Republicanism”, an
honour that had been absent since the era of the
United Irishmen.
To
equate the radical and noble intentions of United
Irishmen with the unseemly spectacle at Stormont,
where right-wing Protestant Unionism will, after
this election, be hitched to right-wing Catholic
nationalism in a Shotgun Wedding is perverse in
the extreme.
Wolfe
Tone was very clear about his intentions; “To
subvert the tyranny of our execrable government,
to break the connection with England, the never-failing
source of all our political evils and to assert
the independence of my country- these were my
objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland,
to abolish the memory of all past dissensions,
and to substitute the common name of Irishman
in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic
and Dissenter – these were my means”.
It
is worth pointing out also that for his efforts
Tone was sentenced to death by the English and
died a sad death in a prison cell before his execution.
There
is little or no chance that anyone involved in
the Stormont charade will offend their political
masters sufficiently to warrant a similar end.
Their
dotage instead will more likely be spent in that
retirement home for good servants of the crown,
the House of Lords.
