A proclamation for 2016 - Opportunity to rekindle our idealism

This weekend saw one of the first of many celebrations to mark the centenary of events that culminated in the Easter Rising of 1916.

The Howth gunrunning, when a modest 900 rifles, relics of the Franco Prussian war of 1870, and 29,000 rounds of ammunition were brought to Ireland by Erskine Childers, best-selling spy novelist and socialite skipper of the Asgard, to arm the Irish Volunteers who had sworn to defend the idea of Home Rule for Ireland. This was an attempt to counter the earlier, April gunrunning at Larne when a far, far greater quantity of munitions — 25,000 rifles and something between 3m and 5m rounds of ammunition — were openly landed to arm the Ulster Volunteers.

These, and the other events that will be marked in very different ways and for very different reasons on both sides of the border, are the history of our island but, if those facts cannot be changed, then how they are used today can be — and may yet be.