Madam, - Perhaps the key date in the history of ancient Ireland is Good Friday, April 23rd, 1014, the day of Brian Boru's victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf. The key date for modern Ireland is no doubt Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, the date of the Easter Rising.
But Easter is a moveable feast, and in 2008 we have had to commemorate the Easter Rising on March 24th, fully a month too soon. This fact may enable us to see that the Rising and Easter are only incidentally, if fortuitously, connected. Indeed, we may think that the Christian festival of Easter and an armed insurrection against the British (provoked, in my view, by the failure of the British to respect the democratic mandate for Irish home rule won by the English Liberals and the Irish Parliamentary Party in the general election of 1914) sit oddly with one another.
Palm Sunday teaches us that the ways of Christ are those of humiliation, suffering, and love, and Good Friday is the day of Christ's supreme sacrifice for the redemption of mankind. The religious devotion of the Irish must have made many patriotic Irish men and women uneasy at the thought of an armed insurrection, however justified, at that time of the year.
As is well known, Eoin MacNeill, commander-in-chief of the Irish Volunteers, countermanded the order for a rising on news of the capture and scuttling of the Aud. But his leadership was set aside at this crucial time - in my view unwisely so for the unity of Irish nationalism in the tragic years that were to follow.
It still remains our task to understand the complex nature of Irish nationalism, and to pay lasting and proper tribute to the struggle for a united and independent Ireland associated with the great names of Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond.
At this Eastertide 2008, I send my best wishes to the people of Ireland for a holy and peaceful period of renewal and reflection. - Yours, etc,
GERALD MORGAN (English Parliamentary Party), School of English, Trinity College, Dublin 2.