The marching bands came from all across the Globe to take part in our St Patrick’s day Parade. It was, as usual, a magnificent spectacle of colour and a cacophony of sounds. Even the cold sleet and an icy east wind could not dampen the enthusiasm of the throngs who lined the streets of Dublin in particular, and Ireland in general. But for me something very important was missing, and I could not muster up even the smallest amount of national pride. I can remember as a boy being entranced by this wonderful occasion and swelling my chest out with pride as my Mam, Rose pinned on my golden harp badge with its green, white and gold ribbons flowing in the wind above a clump of fresh green shamrock. So I watched half-heartedly, trying to feign some sort of national pride…it is after all our national holiday. Even the pyramids of the Sydney Opera House, the White House and the Arc de Triumph were going green in celebration, I reminded myself. Where was the much hyped global advertising campaign, THE GATHERING? Oh, sure our country was flooded with all nationalities, but I couldn’t help feeling the campaign should have been titled THE SCATTERING, because that is what was missing. The heart of our country, our youth, was absent.  That is one of the many reasons why I could feel no sense of pride. Once again, our greatest export was our youth leaving behind broken-hearted families because there just was no hope for a future for them here with unemployment at approximately 40%. I come from a long line of passionate freedom fighters. Both my dad and his dad and many of my great uncles were highly decorated soldiers in two World Wars…some died in those wars. My Grandmother, Anne Sexton, fought against the infamous BLACK AND TANs, soldiers if you could call them that, when they ransacked her little cottage while looking for some of my uncles. They were all staunch republicans in the truest sense of the word, not the politicized version of it. They beat her up and she lost the child she was carrying but she never gave any information and never gave up. Despite her troubles, she reared her family and saw them all safe into adulthood… a major achievement in a country racked with civil war, starvation and the many fatal diseases rampant in the country. Against all these odds and more, she won… why?  Because she had what is sadly lacking in the Irish psyche of today;  she had absolute determination and guts. Only a few short years ago, Ireland was regarded as a very affluent country and in 2002 to around 2008 the country was flooded with many foreign nationals looking to get a piece of the action. Fair enough. I mean, during the famine in the 1860s, we Irish flooded America, Canada and Australia and many other countries. So by and large we welcomed the influx. I personally felt that we were far too parochial a nation and believed, as I still do, that the amalgamation of races and cultures would make us a Global race with a healthy economy. We could well have been, had it not been for one element that has dogged us for generations… GREED. It is political greed, political corruption, political arrogance, and also political ineptness bordering on, and sometimes drowning in, a sea of bureaucratic stupidity. Add to that furnace speculator greed… the greed of financial institutions and of our banking system… and you have an economic inferno that even Dante could not have envisaged. Our state is less than a hundred years old and not since the formation of the state has there been a government of the people, for the people or by the people. We have been cowed as a nation with eighty odd years of dictatorships masquerading as democratically elected Governments. Would we, as a nation, allow children to be taken from their mothers and sold by Nuns to wealthy clients in far flung corners of the world? Not if we knew that it was happening… did we know… were we informed of this atrocity? NO WE WERE NOT! As a matter of fact, successive Irish Governments in the 1920s, 30s, 40s 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s not only knew of the sale of children but also were complicit in the arrest of such mothers as fallen women. They supervised their delivery into the hands of the religious orders to be used as unpaid slaves simply because they found themselves with a child out of wedlock. This is the ultimate hypocrisy from the holier than thou clerics who, in many cases, fathered children and lived in sin with mistresses… a clear case of “do as I say and not as I do”. Now, we as a nation, begin to find out the real truth after generations of lies and deceit through the Mahon tribunal and the various other tribunals. We’ve found that previous governments, religious orders and even the very pillars of our Nation, our financial institutions and banks, have lied, cheated and been involved in insider trading and corrupt activity by approving loans for journalists and those in their evil cliques. Is it any wonder that the national broadcaster RADIO TELIFIS EIREANN has been accused of tailoring news reports to suit their own and Government ends? There certainly is not a balanced reporting of the financial crisis as it truly is, instead we get diluted versions of facts…nothing new there. Our newspapers, to a large degree, do not cover the extent of the rot and corruption. Instead, a few sacrificial lambs are slaughtered and pointed to in any disagreement over the imbalance of their reportage. Ireland is no longer a Sovereign State. Our Government has raped our natural resources so much so that we have very little left to call our own. Our rich fishing zones have been given to Tsars of Europe as indeed has our gas and oil and much more. At present, our government is in the process of trying to sell our forests and wood. Our National Airline hangs in the balance [no pun intended] financially speaking whilst the autocrats decide what to sell next. Brendan Behan, the famous Irish wit and Playwright once said “WE SHOULD GIVE IRELAND BACK TO THE BRITISH AND APOLOGIZE FOR MAKING SUCH A MESS OF IT.” He said that over FIFTY YEARS AGO and it is as apt now as it was then, in a satirical sense of course. On Easter Monday 1916 a band of poorly armed men walked into the GENERAL POST OFFICE on O’Connell Street, Dublin and issued a proclamation for an IRISH REPUBLIC. In so doing, they declared war on the Empire of Great Britain. What hope had 1500 volunteers against an entire Empire? But that was not the point of this military exercise and proclamation. It was understood by Connelly Pearce Plunkett and the other leaders that they most likely would be killed in action but that a strike now for freedom might inspire future generations to fight for Irish freedom. Little did they know that the British would capture the leaders, try them by military courts in secret, and under the orders of General Maxwell, slaughter them all behind the walls of Kilmainham Gaol. The names of these brave men were emblazoned on my young mind as a child when I did occasionally go to school. They filled my young and forming mind with feelings of absolute loyalty to my Irishness. The pride earned by their blood filled me with a sense of strength as determination coursed in my veins. It was earned by blood that did not run red but ran Green like the grass in the yard in Kilmainham as it lapped up the milk of our martyrs. Where is the pride of my nation now? Where are her martyrs? Where is the outrage of a nation bled dry by greed and corruption? True, there were many honest men and women politicians over the last eighty years, but not enough to outnumber the tyrants, and never in positions of any real power. Those who were silent were just as guilty. So where are our saviors? Why are they silent? Why do they not flood the streets in outrage and take the GPO or Government buildings, not in violence but in protest? Yet, nothing but silence! One wit said to me once “it’s an awful shame that those who could run the country are too busy cutting hair, pulling pints or driving taxis”. I guess that just about sums up the real reason for the silence of the masses that dreaded word, APATHY. Have we as a nation become so cowed that we will put up with anything? I suppose the answer is “Yes”. In three years’ time, the Centenary of the 1916 uprising will occur on Easter Monday 2016.  Will my beloved country be free of the yoke of the debt of the corrupt banks? Will my country ever really be free of corruption? Not until we have a political party that truly stands for the people of Ireland… formed by honest and decent people who truly love their country and are really concerned for the future of Ireland and her people. ]]>