Harris decries violent republicanism at Liam Lynch commemoration

THE state should avoid “waving the green flag” and “glamourising the gun” when commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016, former senator Eoghan Harris has said.

Mr Harris issued a blistering denunciation of physical-force republicanism — and those who had condoned or fail to condemn it — in Cork yesterday.

He was speaking at the annual commemoration in Kilcrumper to honour Liam Lynch, the IRA chief of staff killed during the Civil War.

Traditionally seen as a Fianna Fáil event, Mr Harris’s criticism of republican failures was too much for some of the crowd of about 100 who gathered for the event.

Although he railed against both republican and unionist violence, and the “cult” of Michael Collins as well as Lynch, a handful of those present walked out in protest towards the end of the speech while a couple more booed and heckled.

Mr Harris said that Lynch, though a brave and humane man, had been wrong not to walk away from the civil war and, above all, “wrong in believing that the basic problem was between Ireland and the UK” when the real issue was “how to create a connection with Northern Protestants”.

In particular, republicans were still “in denial” about the flight of Protestants from the Free State in the 1920s and some of the atrocities committed against them.

Centenaries are looming on both unionist and republican sides, he pointed out, but neither was cause for celebration or glorification.

Next year would see the centenary of the Ulster Covenant opposing home rule, while 2016 would see the centenary of the Rising, in which Mr Harris’s grandfather participated.

“Both states on this island have flawed and bloody title deeds,” Mr Harris said. “The treasonable actions of Edward Carson in 1912, and the gun-running of 1914, both fed the blood sacrifice blasphemy of Patrick Pearse. And 1912 and 1916, for all their physical bravery, ended the prospect of a peaceful evolution to home rule and an all-Ireland parliament... This twin legacy of Pearse and Carson was a moral and psychological disaster. Because once they turned on the tap of physical force, the blood never stopped flowing.”

Sectarianism remained the “biggest barrier” to a better future in Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday Agreement, “although an amazing grace”, had made no dent in the divisions between the two traditions.

For that reason, Mr Harris urged republicans to “finally step up to the mark” or stop claiming to be followers of Wolfe Tone.

“We should not use 2016 to cover up past abuses,” he said. “Republicans should admit their historical responsibility for much of the murder and mayhem on this island since 1916. A public admission that republicans failed to honour their high calling would put pressure on unionists to review their past actions.”

He also said that, approaching 2016, a “new platform” was needed to facilitate “a continual public conversation, not within Northern Ireland, but between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

“The lack of public and popular interaction between the two states is striking. Belfast is only 104 miles from Dublin, two hours by road. Yet the majority in each society seems as indifferent to the lives of others as the old East and West Germany... A civil conversation between the two major traditions could only do good.”