Easter Rising and the Sommer
Published in Issue 4 (July/August 2015), Letters, Volume 23Sir,—Re joint remembrance of the 1916 Rising and the Battle of the Somme and the issue of imperial atrocities (Dr Tadhg Moloney, Letters, HI 23.3, May/June 2015). As late as the 1950s, thousands of Kenyan men were tortured, castrated with pliers or brutally flogged, sometimes to death, in British concentration camps in that country. As I write, two survivors from that period are taking the British government to court in Britain, seeking damages for castration. Do we really want to jointly ‘celebrate’ this imperial heritage? Dr Moloney refers to discussions in the GPO about a possible post-Rising monarchy. Entirely appropriate if they occurred; a newly independent country has the right to choose its form of government—monarchy, republic or whatever. That is a different debate. And as far as that goes, a monarchy would have been at least as much in keeping with the Irish tradition as a republic.—Yours etc.,
GERRY McALISTER
Canada
