Commemorating 1916: Dublin and the Somme

On a recent Saturday, I travelled to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst for the Royal Irish Regiment's centenary commemoration of the Battle of the Somme where I paid my respects to the memory of the many Irishmen who died during that most terrible of battles.

That same day, I went to the London Irish Centre to speak at a special concert organised to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising, an event that paved the way for Irish independence.

A week later, I represented our Government at Britain's main Somme commemoration which took place in Manchester. Alongside representatives of many countries whose people were involved at the Somme, I laid a wreath at the City's Cenotaph and attended a service of remembrance at Manchester Cathedral.

Immediately after the Manchester service, I caught a train to Liverpool for the opening of the 20th Conference of Irish Historians in Britain, where I spoke at a session devoted to the 1916 Rising.

I am glad that we have reached the point where an Irish Ambassador in Britain can mark those two seminal events of 1916 on the same day. I doubt if such inclusive commemoration would have been possible in 1966 or even in 1996. In the past, there would have been some reticence on the Irish side about World War 1 commemoration and a good deal of sensitivity in Britain about the events of Easter 1916. Happily, we have now reached the point where we can view each other's historical narratives with curiosity and respect.

At the Somme service in Manchester, one of the readings featured a letter from a young British officer at the Somme who wrote to his parents on the 30th of June 1916 in anticipation of 'going over the top' the following day: "should it be God's holy will to call me away, I am quite prepared to go; and I could not wish for a finer death; and you dear Mother and Dad will know that I died doing my duty to God, my country and my King." Sadly, this young man was killed the following day aged just 20, and this makes his unalloyed faith and patriotism all the more poignant.

When I heard those words read at Manchester Cathedral I knew that I had come across that same patriotic tone before. I recalled words written by another young man on the eve of his death in 1916. I refer to Patrick Pearse's poem, The Mother, in which he imagines her patriotic pride and stoicism at the loss of her two sons in the Easter Rising.

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed.

This confirmed for me that members of the generation that flowered and died a century ago were all 'caught in that sensual music' of early 20th century patriotism, and that, whether they died in Dublin or on the Somme, they all deserve their place in our collective memory.

For Ireland, of course, the Easter Rising has pole position in our national story. As a student of history, I have no reservation about expressing admiration for the courage and idealism of those who strove for Irish freedom a century ago.

We are fortunate in Ireland that so many fine historians have over the years shone the light of scholarship on that vital slice of our past, enabling us to have a rounded picture of those turbulent events and the intriguing personalities that powered them.

I value the legacy of those times, in the form of the independent state I have served for the best part of four decades. It was necessarily a complex legacy, for there was no shared vision of the future and, what's more, the Rising's main architects did not survive to shape whatever future they had imagined a century ago.

This year's commemorations of the Easter Rising offer powerful testimony to the maturity of our public debate. The commemorations have been genuinely inclusive and respectful of the various approaches to the events of 1916. They were conducted sensitively and without a trace of national triumphalism.

Sharply different analyses of 1916 can fairly comfortably coexist in today's Ireland. On Easter Monday in Dublin, I was present for a talk in which the speaker engaged in a vigorous critique of the Rising, challenging its justification and its morality without anyone in the audience raising more than an eyebrow.

It seems to me that 2016 has been a year in which the events of 1916 have come into focus for many people in ways that have inspired interest and measured enthusiasm. The Proclamation of Irish Independence has come back into the picture in helpful ways, with a focus on its idealism and on the road that has yet to be travelled.

Irish nationalism now has a pluralist ethos and I, like so many others, am comfortable with a political identity that can be both Irish and European. I am proud to represent a fully independent sovereign state that is a member of the European Union, a unique partnership of sovereign states. It seems to me unfortunate, at a time when we have reached a historical understanding with our nearest neighbour, that the UK has resolved to part ways with the European journey we have shared with them for more than four decades. But we will, of course, continue to work together to cultivate our unique relationship in new circumstances where Ireland will be an EU member and the UK will not be.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London