By John Spain

NEXT Monday, Easter Monday, is the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, and a major celebration of that historic event is planned here this coming weekend. Which may seem a little strange.

After all, what’s so special about the 90th anniversary? Surely it would have been better to wait for another 10 years for the centenary?

The answer, of course, is that it’s all about politics. The motivation for making such a big deal out of the 1916 Rising this year, after virtually ignoring it for the last few decades, is political and pragmatic. Mainly, it’s all about stopping the Sinn Fein hijack of the Rising.

Fianna Fail, which still subtitles itself the Republican Party, resents the way today’s Shinners claim that they are the true descendants of the men of 1916 and objects to the way today’s IRA uses the Rising to legitimize the carnage of the last 30 years. Above all, with an election on the way next year, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern was determined to reclaim the 1916 legacy from today’s Shinners and to stop them monopolizing it.

And so, Ahern came up with the idea of reviving the dormant 1916 celebration, which used to be an annual event here, built around a parade through the center of Dublin on Easter Sunday by the Irish Army.

I can remember being brought to see the parade in O’Connell Street as a kid and the excitement of watching real live soldiers with real guns and real tanks (in fact the army vehicles on show back then were mainly clapped out armored personnel carriers that looked like they predated the Second World War). But we were impressed.

All that changed, of course, when the Troubles started in the North. Running a military parade in Dublin when the North was in flames would have sent out all kinds of wrong messages and could have been interpreted by the Unionists as a threat. So the government of the day, wisely in my view, cancelled the parade after 1971 and it has remained cancelled ever since.

But this year, since the IRA has declared that it’s war is over and we are into a new peaceful era on the island of Ireland, it is possible to revive the military celebration. So for the first time in more than 30 years the Irish Army will parade through the center of Dublin in memory of the men of 1916, just like they used to do every year before the Northern Troubles began.

And this year, the revived parade will be a much more impressive one than it used to be in the old days when the Irish Army was more like Dad’s Army. Today’s Ireland is a different country, the land of the Celtic Tiger, and the sophistication of the commemoration will reflect that.

The day of remembrance will begin on Easter Sunday morning with ceremonies at Kilmainham Jail where many of the 1916 leaders were executed and where Ahern will lay a wreath.

More than 1,000 dignitaries (the president, ambassadors, political and church leaders, etc.) have been invited to the VIP viewing stand which will be erected in the middle of O’Connell Street opposite the GPO for the parade at noon.

Before President McAleese takes her seat she will review an honor guard, the flag over the GPO will be lowered to half-mast, the Proclamation will be read and she will lay a wreath at the front of the GPO building.

The military parade will involve several thousand troops as well as the Air Corps and the Irish Navy, but most attention will be on the hardware being displayed by the modern Irish Army, now a serious player in international peacekeeping (UN veterans will take part).

That night there will be an official state banquet at Dublin Castle to complete the day of celebration. And there is expected to be a holiday mood across the city.

Giant screens will be erected in the city center so that the tens of thousands expected to view the parade will be able to see the official ceremony at the GPO, and the whole event will be broadcast live on RTE.

Ahern has called on people to come on to the streets of Dublin on Sunday to join in the commemoration. “The men and women of the Irish Defense Forces (in other words, not today’s IRA) are the descendants of 1916,” he said. “People should commemorate what they (the Irish Army) have done for this country and for the United Nations all over the world.”

Ahern also called for a public renewal of the ideals that led the men of 1916 to take their historic action. But he extended his remarks to go far beyond the concept of dying for Ireland. Living well for Ireland is more important, in his view.

“Few of us will ever be asked to die for our country. We should remember our parents and grandparents, the living generations who succeeded that of 1916. They honored their country by the lives they lived and the sacrifices they made.

“It is our calling as citizens to honor our country in the way we live and in the esteem we attach to achieving the public good over purely personal satisfaction,” the Taoiseach said.

The implication in all of this is clear. Yes, we are going to reclaim 1916 and we are going to commemorate those who played a part in founding the state. But there will be no glorification of violence, no anti-British propaganda, no “Wrap the Green Flag Around Me” simplifications.

No one will question the idealism of the men of 1916, even if most of us now agree that it was a foolish and flawed idealism that was later used to dignify what came to be called “the physical force tradition.”

We can celebrate the sincerity of the 1916 leaders and the contribution they made, even if we know now that that the reality at the time would have been better served by a different form of action.

Time and the process of nation building turned the 1916 leaders into mythical figures. In fact they were dreamers who carried out a hopeless and inept rebellion that had little or no support among the population at large and therefore no democratic legitimacy.

We all know what happened after the Rising. But what tends to be forgotten sometimes is that the British were leaving anyway and that the freedom that is attributed to the men of 1916 had already been won by the non-violent nationalist movement in Ireland.

Home Rule, at least in the south, was coming. When the War of Independence was over that is, in effect, what we ended up with.

Having said that, it is still right that we should celebrate the men of 1916, even if the greater understanding that we have today of the events of those painful years enables us to see the bigger picture.

And of course there is another reason to reclaim 1916 — to take it away from today’s IRA and their bogus claim that the retrospective respectability given to the men of 1916 somehow gives legitimacy to the IRA campaign of the last 30 years. In IRA speak the lack of popular support for their recent campaign was the same as the lack of popular support at the time for the 1916 Rising.

But this does not stand up to any reasonable analysis. There is a world of difference between the two situations. In 1916, Ireland was still a colonial state and (in spite of imminent Home Rule) it could be argued that a revolution that would be legitimized later by the people was justifiable.

No such argument can be made to support the campaign waged by the IRA over the past 30 years and the death and destruction it caused. The vast majority of the people in the south opposed this campaign, as did many nationalists in the North, and their freely expressed view should have been respected.

Today’s IRA men and their brothers in Sinn Fein sully the name of the men of 1916, who may have been misguided but were certainly honorable.

The status of today’s IRA in the legitimacy and honor stakes can be judged by what they got up to this week, when a Œ300,000 truckload worth of vodka was hijacked by three IRA men on a road in Meath. Fortunately they were nabbed by the Gardai (police).

All are well known supporters of the Shinners and the peace process. One of them, in fact, got early release from jail here under the Good Friday Agreement. Yet they still think it is acceptable to engage in this kind of “fundraising.”

No doubt they will now be disowned by Gerry Adams. But how seriously are we supposed to take that? And this week’s heist is just one incident in a long list.

Last week we had the murder of Denis Donaldson. Adams, of course, has no idea who murdered his former sidekick Denis, although he is willing to speculate that the Brits might have been involved. The fact that the IRA murdered every tout they ever caught is only a coincidence.

Of course the IRA have denied that they murdered Donaldson. But then the IRA also denied that they murdered Robert McCartney, that they robbed the Northern Bank and that they murdered Detective Garda Gerry McCabe in Limerick. And Slab Murphy is just your average poor small farmer!

All of this seedy criminality and warped republicanism besmirches the name of 1916, which Sinn Fein and the IRA claim as their legacy. Once again Ahern is right both to reclaim 1916 from today’s corrupt and criminal republicanism and place it back where it belongs — in the ownership of the Irish state and the law-abiding people of Ireland.