For 80 years the bodies of 10 men executed by the British during the War of Independence lay buried within the walls of Mountjoy Prison. Next weekend their bodies are to be re-interred in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin. It is right that they should receive a State funeral and that their memories should be celebrated. The funerals should not be claimed for any one party, group or movement.
We have already witnessed some predictable commentary, asserting that as these men killed in the name of Ireland, that it is somehow wrong to celebrate their memory today. This is a flawed argument and one hopes it gains little credence.
For 80 years we shamefully disregarded the memories of tens of thousands of Irish men who fought and died in the British Army during the first World War. Should we now consign the memories of those who fought and died to secure the independence of this State to that same fate? Just as the State should be represented at memorial ceremonies to those who died on the fields of Flanders and just as the State was right to support the establishment of a Joint Island of Ireland War Memorial at Messines in Belgium, we should also have no qualms whatsoever in mourning the 10 men executed by the British in the War of Independence.
People died cruelly in both conflicts. Was it somehow more acceptable for Irishmen to bayonet port workers from Hamburg or peasants from Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein conscripted into the German army during the first World War?
Was there more morality in shunting thousands of ordinary Irishmen into the deadly path of machinegun fire because of an altercation between the three royal cousins, Nicholas of Russia, George of England and Wilhelm of Germany?
How then is it right to mourn and celebrate the one and not the other? While it can be claimed that the actions of those who fought in the Irish War of Independence led to the establishment of a stable democracy, the needless deaths of Irishmen at the Somme led to the Treaty of Versailles and the roots of future conflict.
Kevin Barry and the other nine to be re-interred, like those who fell at the Somme and in the GPO alike, should be viewed in the context of their time. In the early part of the 20th century the use of violence was glorified to the extreme. Fredrich the Great's old observation that "Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments" still informed the day.
All over Europe, groups were seeking out goals through the means of violence. This acceptance and glorification of violence informed unionism and nationalism in Ireland alike. This very State was born out of this violence, the militaristic dream of an initial minority.
Should the violence of our founding fathers, the norm of their days, lead us away from celebrating our State? Of course not. Should the violence of the 10 men to be re-interred lead us away from celebrating their lives or vision? Again, of course not.
If the global shock and reaction to the September 11th atrocity in Manhattan has taught us anything, it is that violence is utterly unacceptable in the 21st Century. It is plainly obvious that things have changed. Yet this altered situation will not, I presume, stop Americans celebrating their War of Independence, or the French celebrating their revolution which, after all, were forged in circumstances of extreme violence. Nor should it stop us celebrating our own violent War of Independence.
The story of Kevin Barry is the story of different age, of different norms, of a different struggle. An 18-year-old medical student who had just failed his first-year exams in UCD, he helped ambush a group of British soldiers collecting bread from Monk's Bakery on North King Street. One soldier died, two were wounded but later died. Barry was captured at the scene of the ambush, court-martialled, sentenced to death and hanged.
In Kevin Barry's Ireland there was no peace process to justly address the needs of the parties to conflict. There was a norm of violence and the threat of violence throughout Europe and beyond. We should not feel threatened or made somehow insecure by the State mourning these 10 men.
There is nothing wrong with mourning those who fought and died for Ireland.
dandrews@irish-times.ie
