The 1916 series: This state not the republic proclaimed in 1916
by Peadar Toibin
Brian O'Higgins was born on 1st July 1882 into a strong Fenian family. During the 1798 Rising, his great grand father Sean O hUiginn, a travelling schoolmaster from Tyrone, fought at the hill of Tara.
He was a Kilskyre man, a Meath man, an poet, a 1916 revolutionary, a founding member of Sinn Féin, a Sinn Féin TD and Sinn Féin president from 1931 to 1933.
Brian was a prisoner in Frongoch Jail and in Birmingham. He was elected to the first Dáil in the Mansion House but was unable to attend due to being incarcerated in Birmingham.
He also spent time in Mountjoy and the Curragh after opposing the treaty. He was a Hunger Striker in the Curragh undergoing 25 days that nearly killed him.
He knew the importance of the Irish language and was a member of the Gaelic League. He taught Irish classes from Cavan to Trim.
Brian O Higgins also knew the importance of the GAA and the threat that it found itself at the hands of the British Army. He expressed the part that the GAA played in building the Irish identity and building the Irish Nation. He wrote the first rallying song:
Who says our country’s soul has fled?
Who say our country’s heart is dead?
Come, let them hear the marching tread
Of twice five thousand Hurling Men.
They hold the hopes of bye-gone years,
They love the past --its smiles and tears--
But quavering doubts and shrinking fears
Are far from Ireland’s Hurling Men
Brian O'Higgins was the publisher of the Wolfe Tone Annual which was suppressed on occasion by the authorities, a business man, a journalist, and a man of strong faith. He was a judge of the Republican Courts in County Clare.
In January 1919, he refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom. That policy of abstentionism is faithfully adhered to by Sinn Féin 100 years later.
Brian O’Higgins was re-elected as an anti-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) at the 1921, 1922 and 1923 elections. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and voted against it.
He was also a husband and a father of six children. He past away on 3rd March 1963.
There have been few republican activists who have invested so much into the struggle for Ireland as Brian O’Higgins. There have been few republican activists who have played so many roles as Brian O'Higgins.
I would like to extend solidarity to the families who are here who have lost relations and loved ones in the 1916 Rising and the conflicts since.
One hundred years ago the Union Jack flew over Kilskyre, Oldcastle, Kells, Navan and every other town in Co Meath. This flag or some version of it flew here for more than 500 years.
It represented the largest empire the world had ever seen and it must have seemed immovable. Yet, the Volunteers of 1916 living just a generation from a famine that wiped out half the country set about to remove it and replace it with a tricolour that represented Freedom, Equality and Peace. They did so even though they knew it could cost them everything.
They did not do it for a romantic pipe dream. They did it to achieve self determination. The men and woman of that generation had learned hard that if political decisions were made by a remote government that could not relate to the people nor be held to account by them then those decisions would be a disaster. The halving of the population through death and emigration in one of the worst Famines in human history had thought this lesson well.
Sinn Féin is not the owner of republicanism. Anyone whose objective it is to implement the proclamation can earn the right to be called a republican.
In these commemoration festivities its easy to get carried away and believe that 1916 was for this republic. That this republic equates to the republic in the proclamation. This is a very dangerous mistake. This state is not the republic proclaimed in 1916 and current efforts to pretend that it is does not do justice to the men and women who sacrificed their lives to build it.
The republic that was proclaimed is not a matter of debate or conjecture, it's written in black and white in the Proclamation. The difficulty for some is that the inconvenient truths of the Proclamation stand in direct contrast with the injustices of today. This is why the establishment seek to airbrush them out.
Equally, and to be fair to the signatories of the Proclamation we must be careful not to sneak additions into the document. The proclamation is not a political blank cheque that we can retrospectively fill in.
At his court martial in Richmond Barracks Thomas MacDonagh, speaking to the British Military Tribunal said of the proclamation:
“You think that it is already a dead and buried letter, but it lives, it lives.
From minds alight with Ireland’s vivid intellect it sprang, in hearts aflame with Irelands’ mighty love it was conceived.
Such documents do not die.”
The proclamation was the mission statement for that generation of Irish republicanism. So too it must be the mission statement of this generation of Irish republicans.
The Union Jack still flies in Ireland. 50 miles from here the Union Jack and all it stands for holds sway. It means that MPs in London determine what tax a family in Newry pays. MPs from Birmingham determine that oil, gas or gold royalties in Irish counties benefits the British exchequer. The actual wage of a family in Derry is determined by MPs in Northumberland. This is not the republic that Brian O‘Higgins struggled his whole life for. The republic of the Proclamation is a 32 county republic where all of the children of the nation are cherished equally. Any other republic is a counterfeit imitation.
100 years on from the Rising and 35 years on from the Hunger Strikes we still need to assert the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of all of Ireland and the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. Any commemoration by this generation of these events that does not include striving for full Irish independence is also a counterfeit imitation.
Commemorations often tell us more about the present than the past. To many amongst the establishment, the key elements of freedom and equality that the Easter Rising stands for are uncomfortable truths.
When Brian was born, native Meath Irish was still being spoken in Meath. It had been spoken unbroken as a community language for thousands of years in this county. Brian knew that Irish has had a long history of the highest quality literature, poetry, law and culture. He also knew that if the people lost their language that these cultural jewels would be invisible and worthless to them.
He knew that Irish had been the language of light in the European dark ages. He also knew that the language was a key marker of independence. The French would not be has French if they spoke English. The Italian would not be as Italian if they spoke German.
Brian O'Higgins knew that an Ireland where only English was spoken, where English newspapers were read, where only English sports were played, that had no sense of its deep rich cultural self would not a country at all but a simply a dependent province. Brian fought not only for freedom but also for the language, hurling and football and our culture.
The proclamation makes clear that the republic guarantees the religious and civil liberties, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens. This means we must oppose racism, sectarianism and any form of inequality and discrimination. It also means that we must develop equal opportunity for all our people.
How do we make the proclamation a reality? We simply what Brian O Higgins did. We get politically active. Every leaflet we write and push through the door, each door we knock, every conversation we have, every cumann meeting we attend, every constituent we help, every press statement we send, every policy paper we write, every campaign we create, every time we are truly active as republicans we build towards the proclamation.
As MacDonagh said of the Proclamation such documents do not die.
It lives in the actions of you and me.
Speech by Peader Toibin, Sinn Fein TD for Meath West, at the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate Brian O'Higgins in Kilskyre. 7th May 2016.