Easter I916 Commemorative Military Parades to return to Dublin
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Bertie announced that the Easter I916 commemorative military parades are to return to Dublin starting next year. I believe, this is great news.The military parade will add great pomp and colour, yet an air of solemnity and dignity to Dublin city. This will be great for the city and tourism too.
I agree. Will look very impressive past refurbished GPO and O’Connell Street.
Shame we have no jets for a fly past!!!!! 😡
I am sure that the army could polish up an old Allouette helicopter for a bit of a rumble past.
About time though that we showed our confidence as an independent state and celebrated our nationalism as most other states on the planet do, rather than suppress it as an act of apologetic politeness to the Elizabethan squatters north of the border.
JEEZ, PDLL you cannot be serious (about the news, that is!) What a pathetic idea, Banana republicism at its best. Will El Berto take the salute on the podium? What weaponry has the army/navy/aircorps to show off? Niall, are the Fouga Magisters grounded? I though a couple of them were still capable of limping into the air! Maybe they could be towed along on trailers by the 40 year old Panhards? I can just imagine Col. Myars, ” the grey stone of the pillars outside the GPO contrasted nicely with the deep walnut burl of the rifle stocks”
Come back Myles……………The Fouga Magisters are long retired and have been replaced by the ”state of the art ” Marchetti propellar aircraft. Very hi-tech indeed! The Allouette helicopters have been retired too and have been replaced by the Gazelle. Wooden rifle stocks are long gone too, replaced with the Steyr machine gun. 60 new MOWAG APCs replaced the Panhards in 2002.
The Irish Armed forces are still very much ”Dads Drmy” but a military parade will be great for the city, all the same.
Many countries partake in such, the Brits with countless parades , Trooping the Colour, etc… the French with Bastille Day; the Champs Elysee bedecked in French tri-colours. O’Connell Street, newly repaved will act as great backdrop for the occasion. Too bad as said by Niall we don’t have an air-force to perfom a fly past , painting the sky in green, white and orange.(Besides next year will be 90 years since the 1916 rising. Better the government do it rather than the Shinners in their black balaclavas and Doc Martins.)
@KerryBog2 wrote:
JEEZ, PDLL you cannot be serious (about the news, that is!) What a pathetic idea, Banana republicism at its best.
Gadzooks. Will you give my best to the Queen at the next Trooping of the Colour parade, KerryBog2. Isn’t she looking radiant of late? Top ho, old being.
Fortunately I will have the joy of looking at 198 of the Austrian army’s finest Panzers rolling through Vienna this Wednesday – I must tut-tut them for their display of nationalism – how could they (you would think they had enough of tanks rolling through their streets – oh, I forgot – it is to celebrate their 50 years of statehood following the withdrawal of Allied occupying forces. I just hate it when countries actually celebrate momentous occasions in their national history – how cheap and cliched.
I don’t see what’s to celebrate about nationalism. It’s basically a form of mild xenophobia presented as some sort of moral virtue. I find all nationalistic displays off-putting – not just American and British flag-waving and pompous smug self-congratulation but also the Irish version of it.
While mild nationalism has been used as a tool for some liberation movements to create popular support for independence, I don’t know of any other positive contribution that it has made to humankind. On the other hand I can think of many many instances when modern nationalism (i.e. the form which emerged in Europe in the early 19th century) was (and continues to be) used as a tool to create human suffering on an unprecendented scale.
I’d consider myself a human first and an Irish person second. I can’t deny the appeal of nationalism, having gone through a phase of being quite nationalistic myself for a few years but I actually hate it now. You don’t have to have militaristic displays, etc. in order to appreciate Irish history, culture and identity.
Suggesting that celebrating nationalism will be a sign of our self-confidence as a nation makes little sense to me. It seems to me that it’s a lack of self-confidence which encourages people to turn to nationalism. Historically this has been the case anyway (think of Germany between the wars). It’s almost and admission that there’s little or nothing to celebrate about Ireland except the fact that we happened to be born here. Everyone in the world was born in some country – there’s nothing unique about been born anywhere. When we had no self-confidence as an independent country, we seemed to spend considerable energy “celebrating” our nationalism. Thankfully these days, people expend their energies on more productive and socially rewarding persuits. You still have the option of following a football team if you need a dose of flag waving, emblems and feeling part of an arbitrary group.
@PDLL wrote:
Gadzooks. Will you give my best to the Queen at the next Trooping of the Colour parade, KerryBog2. Isn’t she looking radiant of late? Top ho, old being.
The Trooping of the Colour is quite a different ceremony, one that has taken place in most armies down through centuries and only as late as 1700’s England became associated with the Monarch’s birthday.
@jimg wrote:
You still have the option of following a football team if you need a dose of flag waving, emblems and feeling part of an arbitrary group.
You make some salient points, jimg. As regards your last remark regarding football – most cultural commentators see the fanaticism of some football supporters as a modern expression of a primitive need to belong to a coherent and like-minded social group. In short, it is modern tribalism (that occasionally leads to low-scale violence in its own right). From the sociological point of view, most would agree that the concept of the nation is a social construct that is considerably more sophisticated and complex than the tribe. Personally, I would rather submit myself to the basic human desire of identifying myself with a larger social grouping on the basis of my socio-cultural and ethnic identity than on the basis of which team wears a red-shirt.
@KerryBog2 wrote:
The Trooping of the Colour is quite a different ceremony, one that has taken place in most armies down through centuries and only as late as 1700’s England became associated with the Monarch’s birthday.
In that case, KerryBog2, I am sure that the Queen would love to welcome along the newly disarmed Belfast brigade of the IRA. Since Trooping the colour has nothing to do with nationalism and is just a harmful little symbolic display of Britain’s military (read imperial and oppressive) history, I am sure she would love to have a little bit of ethnic diversity in the bash. It is interesting to see that just because some military parades have taken place for centuries they are somehow ok. In that case, if the 1916 parade goes well and it is repeated for the next 200 years it will have your seal of approval?
I think people are getting a little too deep about this. I don’t think you see the civic side to this which is what I am stressing. Public parades and pageants go hand in hand with the built civic environment since the dawn of civilization and good to see Dublin partaking in this.
(Anyway, sure why nor celebrate our nationality or history? whether how un-PC it may seem today. Why always cower and be ashamed of what we were and are today. Besides our society is not militaristic like our neighbours across the water, where a love of the army and war is more gung ho. On many occasions we have seen the Royal Marines marching band with bayonets fixed and the like, at sporting events and such simple things like village fetes etc. )
The parade to celebrate the UN Irish forces serving abroad a few years back was a great event for the city.
Its only right that 1916 is reclaimed by the 90 odd% of the voters in this country who wouldnt touch Sinn Fein with a bargepole. Hopefully now the tricolour can be reclaimed on election result days – the flag belongs to everyone not just SF who wave it when they win and begrudge (as they did to an FG candidate) when someone else does.
@jimg wrote:
I don’t see what’s to celebrate about nationalism. It’s basically a form of mild xenophobia presented as some sort of moral virtue. I find all nationalistic displays off-putting – not just American and British flag-waving and pompous smug self-congratulation but also the Irish version of it.
While mild nationalism has been used as a tool for some liberation movements to create popular support for independence, I don’t know of any other positive contribution that it has made to humankind. On the other hand I can think of many many instances when modern nationalism (i.e. the form which emerged in Europe in the early 19th century) was (and continues to be) used as a tool to create human suffering on an unprecendented scale.
I’d consider myself a human first and an Irish person second. I can’t deny the appeal of nationalism, having gone through a phase of being quite nationalistic myself for a few years but I actually hate it now. You don’t have to have militaristic displays, etc. in order to appreciate Irish history, culture and identity.
Suggesting that celebrating nationalism will be a sign of our self-confidence as a nation makes little sense to me. It seems to me that it’s a lack of self-confidence which encourages people to turn to nationalism. Historically this has been the case anyway (think of Germany between the wars). It’s almost and admission that there’s little or nothing to celebrate about Ireland except the fact that we happened to be born here. Everyone in the world was born in some country – there’s nothing unique about been born anywhere. When we had no self-confidence as an independent country, we seemed to spend considerable energy “celebrating” our nationalism. Thankfully these days, people expend their energies on more productive and socially rewarding persuits. You still have the option of following a football team if you need a dose of flag waving, emblems and feeling part of an arbitrary group.
i think maybe the issue is patriotism not nationalism.. I think despite our problems we have a huge amount to be proud of. What is wrong with celebrating the event that helped set us on the road to independednce and at the same time deprive the shinners of another publicity stunt. As for ireland as a Banana republic, well its one I am happy to live in!
The Marchetti’s have also been all withdrawn from service by the Air Corps, after c 25 years in use.
– perhaps you are thinking of the Pilatus training aircraft GregF ?
Ah yes dc3, thats the one. Good one, Cheers!
(the fiercely frightening weapon of war the Pilatus training aircraft with propellars and all)
@aj wrote:
i think maybe the issue is patriotism not nationalism.
This from an An Taisce book from 1982 called ‘Ireland’s Architecture- a shared heritage’, on conservation north and south of the border:
“Are we in Ireland suffering from too much nationalism and too little patriotism? … We are so proud of the colours (orange and green) that we have painted our house that we have forgotten to be proud of the house itself.”
(John Lewis-Crosby, Chairman of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society.)@PDLL wrote:
on the basis of my socio-cultural and ethnic identity
I don’t think you can equate Ireland with homogeneity any longer I’m afraid, PDLL (if you ever could). You’d find more commonality in football, where choice operates more than in the arbitrary area of nationality, which is only an accident of birth. As jimg says, human first, Irish second.
Have we forgotten what the three colours in the Tricolour represent?
Did anyone find it ever so slightly nauseating that Bertie was proclaiming his party’s ‘true’ nationalist credentials, as being ‘true’ protectors of this island, in light of the damage being done through his planning policies?
Indeed if the Ard Fheis’s host town was deliberately chosen as being what he deems suitably representative of this nation, I think it best we all get our coats.It’s strange you should mention the Elizabethians up north PDLL, they’re equally fond of them down south as it happens – indeed Bertie need only look out of his bedroom window at the latest fortified erection guarding the entrance to Killarney:
Not being old enough to remember the last parade in 1969/70 (is anyone?:)), I’m in two minds about it. If nothing else a militaristic display in a modern, fairly homogenous Western society, along a commerical city street seems rather bizarre in 2005 – it’s so alien to us. And exactly what and whom is being celebrated/commemorated and for what reason is also something that needs clarifying in the public consciousness – i.e. 1916 needs clarifying.
We’ve avoided it for the past 40 years.Might as well give the parade a lash at least, see how we react to it – we can always airbrush it out of history should it prove disasterous.
We’re good at that.PDLL – you seem to have lost the plot a bit, I never mentioned the Queen, oppressors, the Ra or implied anything else. I simply pointed out that the Ceremony of Trooping the Colour was done from the Middle Ages (if not before that) by regiments in many armies. Its purpose was to help the largely illiterate troops become familiar with the flags and standards to follow in battle. The Irish army had (and possibly still has) a similar ceremony called the “The Blessing of the Colours,†same sort of thing with a religious overtone.
I have no problem with a parade for troops returning from UN duties, but I’m strongly opposed to a repeat episode of the 1916 commemoration a la Cliabh Solais, the crap and gombeenism that surrounded the 1966 affair, with various old farts trying to outdo each other in expressing their devout version of Republicanism, re-naming streets, etc. We should be big enough to move on and put that clap-trap behind us.
Graham H – Aaaah yes, the Brehon, a superb representation of the architectural merit on display in South Kerry. I’ve been trying to make up my mind if the window arches are Mogul, Vegas Gothick or copied from the menu cover at the local Indian take-away.
KB2Ireland, Mother Ireland, you’re rearin’ them yet!
@KerryBog2 wrote:
or copied from the menu cover at the local Indian take-away.
lol 😀
We nearly crashed the car driving past it during the summer.
It’s probably more Jacobean than Elizabethian – I’m sure there’s hoards of architectural historians swarming their way over as we speak to pick over the minutinae of its design.
Either dynasty, they’d be rightly offended with that erected in their name.The 1916ers must be rolling in their graves with the resurrection of the oppressor’s aesthetic – the icing on the cake would’ve been if FF hired out its facilities 🙂
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