IRISH MY ERSE!

LETTER PUBLISHED IN THE WEEKLY IRISH  WORLD (London) w/e 5 April 2008

It's a funny old world indeed where Michael Gove can be not only Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath, but also Conservative Shadow Minister for Families, Schools and Children; for he frequently presents like Private Pike, the "Stupid Boy" of "Dad's Army".

Take his latest effusion, in THE TIMES of March 18, where he describes the Insurgents of 1916 as "Squalid Gangs Who Betrayed Ireland." One might imagine that the Irish people were and are best placed to judge who served and who betrayed her.

Certainly the British Government thought so in 1916, for the Insurgent leaders were not charged with betraying Ireland, nor were they tried by a jury of Irishmen.

Rather were they tried, away from the public eye, by British Courts Martial, and shot.

Even Sir Roger Casement, (who had tried to have the Rising called off) - a Dublin man captured in Kerry, had to be sent to London for a jury to find him guilty of High Treason to England's King, not the bertrayal of Ireland.

Within three years of the Rising, its veterans were feted in Ireland, and in or out of jail were elected to Parliament, supplanting those Irish politicians who had urged tens of thousands of Irishmen to death in the Great War.

For decades thereafter, very few politicians were elected in Ireland who had not participated in the 1916 Insurrection or the struggle it had inspired .

But young Mr Gove would have us, and the rising generation of British children, believe otherwise.

We, and they, deserve better.

Donal Kennedy

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