REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE CARLOW WORKMAN’S CLUB THURSDAY, 12 NOVEMBER, 1998
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE CARLOW WORKMAN’S CLUB THURSDAY, 12 NOVEMBER, 1998
Just yesterday I was at a very significant event at the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines in Belgium. It was to commemorate the men of the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division who had died there during the First World War. They were working men who had come from every corner of Ireland. Among them were Protestants, Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, their differences transcended by a common commitment not to flag but to freedom. Yesterday we gathered in Belgium to put their memory at the service of another common cause, put so well by Professor Tom Kettle, himself an Irish Nationalist and proud soldier who died at the Somme, “the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain”.
This afternoon, at the Carlow Workman’s Club we are marking its one hundred years of service to the working people of Carlow. We are also honouring Michael O’Hanrahan who with his brother founded this Club in 1898, and who was executed for his part as QMG of the Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Rising. Michael is one of the many heroes that we remember with pride, and he joins with a whole gallery of others who made great sacrifices for their country in the turbulent opening decades of this century. As I said yesterday, for so long we were forced to chose between loyalties. In choosing between loyalties, we also chose between respects. What we are trying to do today is not to ask people to change their loyalties, but to remember the past differently so that they create respect for those who died in such terrible times – so that Ireland acknowledges all her children.
In Ireland as in every other country in Europe, this century has been one of profound change. Changes in society which today we take for granted. Conditions and facilities for working people have greatly improved. We have a comprehensive welfare system. Our education system, which now sees far greater access to people of all ages, has its roots in earlier decades when people with vision saw the downstream benefits of investment in Education. Today that wise investment is paying off with the economic success that is transforming communities throughout the country. Much progress has been made in breaking down the barriers to equal access by women to jobs and the professions. And I’m glad to note that in recent years women have been allowed to become full members of the Workman’s Club – and that you now have a woman on the Committee. Clearly we have come a long way in one hundred years!
That prosperity which I spoke of has brought with it a new self-confidence in ourselves – a new belief in what we have done and where we are going. With that self-confidence comes the maturity to look closer at the reality of the present as it was shaped by our past, and to move forward with a wider vision of what we are and where we should be going.
I said yesterday in Belgium that for much of the past eighty years, the very idea of such a ceremony would probably have been unthinkable – that those whom we were commemorating were doubly tragic because, while they had fallen victim to a war against oppression in Europe, their memory had fallen victim to our war for independence - where respect for the memory of one set of heroes was often at the expense of respect for the memory of the other. As Sean Lemass said thirty years ago-
“In later years it was common - and I was also guilty in this respect - to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the war, but it must in their honour and in fairness to their memory, be said, that they were motivated by the highest purpose.”
Today Michael O’Hanrahan is equal in death with those tens of thousands of Irishmen who perished in that terrible war. You rightly honour his memory by acknowledging his contribution to Carlow and to Ireland. As we embrace the memory of those others who died on those foreign battlefields, we are keenly aware they too are Ireland’s children as are the dead of recent decades - their children’s children - who have not known the peace for which they yearned.
We are now in the digital age – where one TV channel now caries eight stations without any loss of clarity. In our homes we can get parallel streams of culture, entertainment and information. In a sense we have to digitalise our memory – to take a set of parallel memories along with us. In the past you were asked to make choices – to take one set of memories with you, while you regarded the others with some degree of suspicion and contempt. As all of us look to a new century and a new millennium we owe to the memory of those who fought for freedom in Ireland and in Europe to work towards a society that recognises the links of history that should bind us together rather than separate us. If we are to build the culture of consensus promised by the Good Friday Agreement then we need to create mutually respectful space for differing traditions, differing loyalties, for all our heroes and heroines.
I am very honoured to be with you in celebrating one hundred years of the Carlow Workman’s Club and in remembering its founder. That the Club has survived and prospered over the last century is a reflection of the dedication of its members to their own community – to the men and women who work and live in this beautiful town. I commend all of your members on keeping this unique Club alive and I wish you well for many more centuries of catering to the needs of the working people of Carlow.