A Terrible Beauty is Borne

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Thursday December 30, 2010 03:04 by Rebels YELL - 'That great and respectable class, the men of no property'

The Demise of Revolutionary Irish Republicanism is Greatly Exaggerated

In contemporary British Occupied Ireland, there is much revision and censorship of traditional Irish republicanism. Indeed there are ex-republicans such as Anthony McIntyre from Belfast who spent years imprisoned in Long Kesh concentration camp, who co-authored a book titled, Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism,

A Terrible Beauty

In contemporary British Occupied Ireland, there is much revision and censorship of traditional Irish republicanism. Indeed there are ex-republicans such as Anthony McIntyre from Belfast who spent years imprisoned in Long Kesh concentration camp, who co-authored a book titled, Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism, in which Anthony, like many former republicans before him, has written prematurely of the death of Ireland's soul and the relevance in our modern world of the fight for Self-determination in small countries like Ireland.

Rather than get involved in another of those many polemical squabbles, that are unfortunately all too frequent with revisionists, that divides resistance, I present an article by Chris Hedges demonstrating that the question of self-determination is certainly valid and relevant, along with being a matter of real urgency today.

I also present some historical evidence as Mark Twain might have put it, that the rumour of the demise of Irish republicanism, has been greatly exaggerated, by persons who should know much better.
[Read more at Rebels Yell blog]



Achusla, Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
- WB Yeats, "September 1913"


"We are going out to be slaughtered"
The fight in Ireland has been one for the soul of a race
- that Irish race which with seven centuries of defeat behind it
still battled for the sanctity of its dwelling place.
- James Connolly, 1915

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
- WB Yeats, "Easter 1916"

Caption: Video Id: RJPRNdc8yiA Type: Youtube Video
Aldous Huxley