{"id":64383,"date":"2025-09-14T23:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T23:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/64383\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T23:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T23:28:07","slug":"micheal-martin-do-pearses-words-incite-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/64383\/","title":{"rendered":"Miche\u00e1l Martin: do Pearse’s words incite violence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How far has Fianna F\u00e1il fallen when their current leader is condemning the \u201ctype of language\u201d that was used by P\u00e1draig Mac Piarais as \u201ctantamount to an incitement\u201d to violence?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIreland, from the centre to the zenith, belongs to the Irish. Our forefathers believed this and fought for it,\u201d Pearse wrote, adding: \u201cnothing that has happened or that can ever happen can alter the truth of it\u201d. Yet Miche\u00e1l Martin, in his latest<\/a> in a series of egregious attacks on what it means to be a nation, condemns the use of such words.<\/p>\n

The Fianna F\u00e1il leader has been in politics a long time, and is no fool. His comments on Irish sovereignty, on the flying of the national flag, and on rising nationalism, are deliberately made, and are therefore revealing. He epitomises the thinking in the party which has led to the quiet sidelining of the second part of Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s name: the Republican party.<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s identifier as An Parta\u00ed Poblacht\u00e1nach came about after the Civil War, though the addition was not formally adopted until much later, and it signified that freedom, sovereignty, and identity were key to the party whose name is based on the warriors of ancient Irish myth, Na Fianna. But, in truth, they have travelled a long way from their founding ideals \u2013 and that path has led them, not only away from electoral success, but from the fundamental principles of the preservation of the Irish nation and opposition to foreign rule.<\/p>\n

Irish republicanism traditionally meant support for self-rule in free and a united Ireland, and was used interchangeably with nationalism to describe those who supported that goal. Yet, in common with their civil war adversaries, Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s dogged support for an ever-encroaching and federalised European Union led a slow, sometimes imperceptible transfer of power that should have been anathema to any one concerned with Irish liberty. Sinn F\u00e9in also eventually jumped on that gravy train in time. But while Irish sovereignty was being diminished by the handover of\u00a0 70% of lawmaking to Brussels<\/a> and the imposition of a swathe of directives, the rapid and unprecedented changes to Ireland\u2019s demographics in recent years have led to a public awakening of sorts \u2013 a recognition that Ireland seems to be losing its Irishness, and that these changes are happening without the people\u2019s consent.<\/p>\n

The facts are incontrovertible: as my colleague Matt Treacy has consistently pointed out<\/a>, some 24% of the people now living in this country were not born here. The numbers arriving are staggering: 125,000 arrived in the year to April 2025, with net immigration of 59,700 people. In the 12 months to April 2024, 149,200 immigrants arrived\u00a0 \u2013 a 16-year high, with net inward migration of 79,300.<\/p>\n

Since the 2022 Census, the number of people living here with other than Irish citizenship has increased by 256,615, Matt\u2019s analysis found. And at the same time, the number of Irish people emigrating to Australia and elsewhere\u00a0 \u2013 many of them young and at an age when they could be preparing to start their own families \u2013 is bring driven by the cost of living crisis and the feeling of desperation that comes from being unable to buy or even rent a home.<\/p>\n

In the past five years, the number of asylum seekers also exploded \u2013 and the population surge has strained already enormously stretched housing and services beyond breaking point. The flat-out denial from the political and media establishment in regard to those negative impacts of immigration has led to the public perception that they are fundamentally dishonest and not to be trusted.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just simply about housing, however: it\u2019s about a growing sense that when the number of people coming to live here \u2013 who are all entitled, by the way, to adhere to and admire their own cultures \u2013 reaches a certain proportion of the entire population, then the idea of an Irish nation starts to shift from its foundations.<\/p>\n

According to Eurostat, 9.9% of the 449.3 million people living in the EU on 1 January 2024 were born outside the bloc. With 24% of our residents foreign-born, we are 2.4 times the European average, a devastating difference which spells catastrophe for the Irish nation unless action is taken. The public knows this, partly because they can see the evidence of their own eyes, and partly because publications and platforms like this one refused to be part of the ongoing deception that passes for public debate in this country.<\/p>\n

Faced with growing public unease, Miche\u00e1l Martin, and Simon Harris et al seek to stymie the long overdue public debate by taking positions that, in my opinion, make them unfit to represent the Irish nation and her people. Flying the tricolour is the right of every Irish man and woman \u2013 not a matter for the garda\u00ed. Our \u2018backward-looking sovereignty\u2019 is actually a recognition that we are a distinct, ancient, and highly-cultured people with no desire to become a dumping ground so that multinational corporations can import labour at a price that best suits their profit margins.<\/p>\n

Nor are the Irish people \u2018mongrels\u2019 \u2013 a remark that would have caused a furore if it had been made about any other people. A nation is a people bound by generations of shared history \u2013 and by bonds of culture and identity and love for same. A melting pot is something else entirely.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been here before, of course, and this brings me back to Pearse and to a time when to speak of the Irish nation, or to fly the green flag of freedom, or to organise against oppressive colonisation, was likely to lead to charges of sedition and suppression and imprisonment.\u00a0 The 1916 leader and organiser, Se\u00e1n Mac Diarmada, was locked up by the British authorities for fiery speech in 1915. That same oppressive attitude to free speech in defence of nationalism is alive and well today. Thomas Francis Meagher was arrested for treason \u2013 and sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation \u2013 after he raised the Tricolour in Waterford in 1948 in a show of support for the nation. No politician will tell us when we can raise it now.<\/p>\n

Pearse understood that decades, nay centuries, of forced transportation and emigration, famine and land clearances, poverty and dispossession was leading to the erosion of the country\u2019s\u00a0 Gaelic past and its identity. He worked and taught, and wrote and strove, and fought and died, to save the nation and his memory is cherished for that sacrifice. His writings are revered, he is a towering figure amongst historical leaders. Fianna F\u00e1il, the Republican Party, have long tried to claim him for their own.<\/p>\n

Now Mich\u00e9al Martin says an almost identical phrase to the words used by Pearse are tantamount to an incitement to violence.\u00a0 He has lost sight of what the Irish nation is, and what it should strive to be \u2013 and he seeks to vilify those who have not, because the belief that Ireland is a nation primarily for the Irish people has sustained the majority through centuries of trial, and will not be unshaken by the machinations of politicians and their agents.<\/p>\n

Pearse wrote that, \u201cIreland, from the centre to the zenith, belongs to the Irish. Our forefathers believed this and fought for it: Hugh O\u2019Donnell and Hugh O\u2019Neill and Rory O\u2019More and Owen Roe O\u2019Neill: Tone and Emmet and Davis and Mitchel. What was true in their time is still true. Nothing that has happened or that can ever happen can alter the truth of it. Ireland belongs to the Irish. We believe, then, that it is the duty of Irishmen to struggle always, never giving in or growing weary, until they have won back their country again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nothing that Mich\u00e9al Martin can say will undo the power of that sentiment. It is for the people to determine \u2013 just as sovereign people across Europe and the world are also determining \u2013 whether they will confront the rapid change that might make the Irish a minority in their own country. That is as true for the Ireland and the Irish as it should be for Palestine and the Palestinians and Ethiopia and the Ethiopians. It is not, despite what is claimed, an expression of xenophobia: just because you love your own country and her traditions it doesn\u2019t mean you hate others. An effective immigration policy allows others to come and work here, and some controlled number of those to become citizens. But a multicultural society is not a nation.<\/p>\n

It is inconceivable that Miche\u00e1l Martin does not know what Pearse wrote, or the importance of his sentiments. Yet he asserted that claiming Ireland should be for the Irish was tantamount to incitement to violence. His attempts to control speech will not be successful. The leadership of the ever-shrinking Fianna F\u00e1il party may want no part in preserving the Irish nation, but they will not compel the rest of us to be silent or to abandon our history and our heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How far has Fianna F\u00e1il fallen when their current leader is condemning the \u201ctype of language\u201d that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,45481,11,12,15,16,5765,5,45482,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-64383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-ireland-belongs-to-the-irish","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-micheal-martin","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-pearse","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}