BELLTIME
Why the values of Ireland ’ s 1916 Easter Rising inspire people around the world today , and why they are so needed .
By Padraig Pearse ’ s great grand-nephew Ben Phillips ( an Englishman )
This Easter , people across Ireland are proudly commemorating 100 years since Padraig Pearse and his comrades led the Rising against British Imperial rule . The rebels were not universally welcomed in 1916 . They saw that in the struggle for justice you cannot wait till everyone is ready , and that to endure defeat is part of eventual victory . Time proved them right and confirmed their place , and the relatives of the rebels were welcomed to a series of events by the President and Taoiseach . I attended on behalf of Padraig Pearse ’ s family . And I am English . It is a great tribute to the values of the freedom movement that I have never met an Irish person for whom this matters . This is partly because Ireland is a nation of emigrants , its sons and daughters spread across the globe , from Canada to New Zealand and everywhere in between , and so the Irish sense of national family is broader . But it is also because the values that drove the Rising transcend both nationality and time .
In March I attended the beautiful St Patrick ’ s Day celebrations hosted by Ireland ’ s Ambassador to Kenya , where I now live and work for the international NGO ActionAid . The Ambassador spoke some very moving words about Pearse , and so I found myself in a series of wonderful conversations about the Rising . Listening to Irish expatriate NGO workers , diplomats , business people , as well to the most inspiring Irish nuns who work in Nairobi ’ s toughest slums , I was struck by how the values of Ireland ’ s rebels still inspire such a broad swathe of Irish people today . But I was also struck at the event at how Ireland ’ s Rising resonated with
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Kenyans – they too had had been denied their land and their culture , they too had had to win their freedom ; indeed , it can be said that Ireland ’ s freedom movement was the first to show that a people colonized by Britain could defeat the colonizers . But what struck me most from all the conversations was that what inspired people about the Rising was not a narrow nationalism but a love of justice , with people moved by a 100 year old call for “ equal rights and equal opportunities of all , cherishing all children equally ”. For the Rising to inspire beyond one country is not new . Indeed , we know from the history that even the British officer who chaired Pearse ’ s court martial could see the justness of cause , commenting : The idealist poet Pearse , the workers ’
“ I have just done one of the hardest tasks I have ever had to do . I have had to condemn to death one of the finest characters I have ever come across . There must be something very wrong in the state of things that makes a man like that a rebel .
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