Here in Dublin, Ireland is busy marking 100 years since the Easter Rising of 1916. It is being celebrated, but with far less chest-beating and bombast than met the 50th anniversary in 1966. And this is a good thing entirely.
The Rising lasted for six days. Its leaders seized key buildings around Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. It started a series of events that led to an independent Irish state in the south, but also to the partition of Ireland and a bloody civil war which claimed between two and three thousand lives.
Emblematic of this year’s commemoration was an event on Good Friday, at a Unitarian church on St Stephen’s Green. The names of all the dead of the Easter Rising were read out: 70 rebels, but also 116 British soldiers, 30 policemen, and 40 children under 17. Between 488 and 550 altogether. Another notable event was a play performed by students in a national school in Balbriggan, where 85 percent of the pupils have immigrant parents.
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