I don’t feel any sense of antipathy towards the airing of so many details about the centenary of the signing of the Covenant on this day 100 years ago.
As someone always lusting for knowledge I cannot get enough quality information which accurately reflects what exactly happened historically.
Come 2016 needless to say our television screens will also be awash with the history of the 1916 Easter Rising.
Republicans will be taking to the streets to celebrate and who knows we may have a corresponding re-run of the current stand-off about where people march.
Exhibits from an exhibition exploring Home Rule and the Ulster Covenant at the Ulster Museum, Belfast
What is unsettling about this gush of information flowing from programmes about the Covenant has been the unvarnished unmasking of militant revolution not against an Irish administration which didn’t obtain then, but against the British Government of the day.
Despite being knowledgeable about that era the threat from Protestants to the State is still shocking.
The declaration by constitutionalist Edward Carson to Fred Crawford that he’d personally go to gaol in support of his decision to bring guns into Northern Ireland from Germany was remarkable.
The importation of arms has been a common feature in Irish history. We had the IRA’s Marita Ann, The Valhalla shipments etc.
All this talk of gun running and revolution will dominate our screens again in 2016.
This begs one question: with so much glorification and admiration for militant action fired up by our forefathers on both sides of the community what impact is this having on today’s dispossessed jobless generation?
Will they think that ‘violence’ pays?
Exhibits from a new exhibition exploring Home Rule and the Ulster Covenant at the Ulster Museum.
Exhibits from a new exhibition exploring Home Rule and the Ulster Covenant at the Ulster Museum.
