Trust Your Leaders! (UNCENSORED) ~ Ní Síocháin go Saoirse!

In 1915, James Connolly proclaimed the immortal words

“Trust Your Leaders!”

Nearly a century later, traditional Irish Republicans are re-iterating and pondering over the very same words, but with a fundamentally different tone!

In many republicans’ minds, the exclamation mark has now been replaced by a question mark. Irish history has shown that our embattled people have always placed our leaders on pedestals during extenuating circumstances, investing their time and energies believing and implementing their ideologies. During conflict we have idealised them to the point that any form of criticisms or protest was perceived as derisory and near sacrilege to the cause. However, when upon realising that these heroes were but mere mortals, we were guilty of quickly turning the same level of adoration, in equal measure, into ferocious condemnation and contempt, leading all too often to tragic consequences.
However, undeterred, our illustrious leaders have always by tradition, professed to inspire faith and purpose in our people through out our history of decimation and adversity at the hands of British Imperialism. From Charles Stewart Parnell to Michael Collins, their British counterparts of their time could not undermine their forth-rightness and remarkable steadfastness to their cause. Their principle over riding goal was always not to remake society but to remake government. Of Parnell, William Ewart Gladstone, described him as the most remarkable person he had ever met, whilst a future Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, described him as one of the three or four greatest men of the nineteenth century! Of Collin’s, Winston Churchill, who was actively involved in the British negotiating team of the 1920 Anglo-Irish Treaty spoke of his adversary,

“He supplied those qualities of action and personality without which the foundation of Irish nationhood would not have been established."

However, will such comments ever be bestowed upon our current SF leaders in this, the 21st century?
Any history book on successful conflict resolution will unequivocally tell you that a revolutionist who surrenders the initiative to the enemy is already defeated before any negotiation takes place! To many traditional republicans involved in the current struggle, this surrender of the initiative was remonstrated in both Decommissioning and the provision of Articles 2 & 3, to be used as bargaining chips. In return, The Good Friday agreement and all its complexities, was designed to herald a time for momentus change, i.e. a complete break from the past and those dark days. However, to accommodate this grand meeting of minds Adams & McGuinness had to follow a similar path to that of their predecessor Michael Collins. And like Collins, the current Sinn Fein leadership has accepted institutions and ideas which leave a bitter taste in the mouths of traditional republicans. Through self-professed extenuating circumstances, Sinn Fein has in effect accepted a two-state solution, agreed to take part in partitionist Stormont and in essence succumb to adhere to British rule. Yet, in many of their addresses to rally support from their party faithful pre-Good Friday, they strenuously vowed such conditions would be unequivocally unacceptable as an outcome to any negotiations.
However, unfortunately, that is where the similarities between Collin’s negotiations and those of the current SF leadership abruptly end! Back then Collins assumed leadership of a fledgling state (FREE of all British forces) and took command of a national army into which many of his IRA comrades could be absorbed into. In effect, he was given the platform on which to build a new Irish state based on the principles of

‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’

, and in his own words the republican movement of that era had fought and died and WON

“the freedom to achieve freedom”

. Au contraire, given such a platform and mandate, the current SF leadership cannot boast of such lofty successes. Instead, all we seem to have achieved are a few seats in Sunningdale Mark II, no commitment from the British government to remove their troops let alone a withdrawal date. Furthermore, we as a society are faced with the yet unknown future consequences of rumblings of discontent and dis-satisfaction within the republican movement itself.
If only our current leaders could use such inspirational language as Connolly, Collins, Pearse et al. Much has been made recently about Martin McGuinness's comments regarding the description of dissident republicans as

“traitors to the island of Ireland”

. Leaving aside the whole hypocracy debate that ensued, it is very important to fully understand the meaning of the diction that our leaders use especially if it is to be deemed in some quarters as inflammatory and provocative. Therefore, we must ask ourselves what exactly is the true definition of a traitor? According to the online dictionary provided by Farlex (www.thefreedictionary.com) a traitor is described as ‘One who betrays one's country, a cause, or a trust, especially one who commits treason’. As Deputy First Minister, it is perfectly legitimate for him to point out the futility of an armed struggle and to do so will not advance the cause of a United Ireland. However, for all our sakes, he thankfully stopped short of accusing them of the latter word treason, which in itself is defined as a ‘Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.’
For many republicans the current political situation continues to throw up a volley of unanswered questions rather than answers. For example:

Will the unravelling of future events unveil that the current SF leaders valued their own personal political power or other interests over the cause?

Did they too, unwittingly become ravaged, as the IRA did in the mid 90’s, by infiltration by British Intelligence agents, which would have undoubtedly, seriously compromised their future bargaining position?

Or, ultimately, will this generation of Irish Republican voters have been deemed to have overestimated the ambition and underestimated the current SF leadership’s conviction to the cause?