This article is from page 9 of the 2011-04-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 9 JPG
WHEN Labour’s Michael McNamara was elected to Dáil Éireann in the recent General Election, the spirit of the workers’ revolution was evoked by former party member Christy Curtin when he quoted James Connolly by saying “the cause of Labour in the cause of Ireland”.
The same clarion call was sounded out by Deputy McNamara when giving the keynote address at the 1916 Rising Commemoration in Kilrush on Easter Sunday as he called on “all true Republicans gathered here to renounce murder that so besmirches our tricolour”.
“It is hardly surprising that as a Labour T.D. I propose to focus on one sentence on the Proclamation in particular: ‘The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally…’
“It is also perhaps unsurprising that I would choose wish to focus in particular on the role of James Connolly.
“Connolly wrote: ‘Whenever the clergy succeeded in conquering political power in any country, the result has been disastrous to the interests of religion and inimical to the progress of humanity.
“And indeed the clergy succeeded in conquering political power in the State that followed from 1916, and the consequences, as we can now see, benefited neither the Church nor citizens.
“The religious liberty guaranteed in the Proclamation provides not just for all religions to be able to operate freely, for all parents to be able to bring up their children in a religion of their choice, but also freedom from religion.
“To those parents who wish to have their children educated in a school with a religious ethos, the establishment of a national forum on school patronage which was welcomed ‘very much’ by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, poses no threat,” added the new Labour Party deputy.