‘Revolution Papers’ isn’t without omissions

The Revolution Papers’ efforts at providing a critique of the 1916 Proclamation, in its much-heralded first issue are pedestrian, biased and lacking in historical perspective.

Tasked with ‘reading between the lines’ of the Proclamation, reviewer Ronan McGreevy focusses exclusively on what he sees as its apparent contradictions. In the process, he manages to miss entirely the grand sweep of this profoundly inclusive, egalitarian, modern and, in the main, beautifully written, state-founding document of the early 20th century.

The reviewer ignores the opening words of the document, ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen’, probably the first time in history that women are addressed directly as equals in a political manifesto. The same fate is meted out to the pledge to establish a government ‘elected by the suffrages of all its men and women’. Constance Markievicz, who is believed to have been the first to read aloud the Proclamation (at Liberty Hall, on Easter Monday morning) went on to become one of the first women in the modern world elected to parliament. She would become the first to wield a ministry. The dismissal, by omission, of the Proclamation’s historic gender equality significance, on the part of the ‘The Revolution Papers’ reviewer, is astonishing.