SF view of 1916 is Stalinist, says Martin

MICHEÁL MARTIN last night launched a scathing attack on Sinn Féin’s claims to be the direct successors of the 1916 volunteers, a claim he likened to a Stalinist whitewashing of history.

The Minister for Enterprise, in a hard-hitting address on the legacy of the Easter Rising, also excoriated what he described as the other extreme faction who had pursued an anti-republican and anti-1916 agenda and dubbed anyone who expressed admiration for the Easter Rising as “crypto” or “fellow-travellers”.

Identifying RTÉ as one of the main conduits for this “exceptionally powerful lobby” during the 1970s and the 1980s, he said: “I hope that one day the public will receive a full account of how our public broadcaster came to be so under the influence of one particular faction during a substantial part of that time.”