'Break the Connection' - Mobilise for Bodenstown '07

kildare | history and heritage | event notice Tuesday June 12, 2007 17:57 by Croppy - Ógra Shinn Féin osfnational at yahoo dot ie

This year’s commemoration at Bodenstown, County Kildare will take place on Sunday 24th June, with people being asked to assemble in Sallins at 1.30pm. The main speaker will be Sinn Féin Party President Gerry Adams.

"That the influence of England was the radical vice of our Government, and that Ireland would never be free, prosperous, or happy, until she was independent, and that independence was unattainable whilst the connection with England existed."

So wrote Theobold Wolfetone over 200 years ago in bold defiance of British tyranny in Ireland.

Often considered the founding father of Irish Republicanism, Wolfetone although a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, struggled for Catholic Emancipation, and strived through his organisation the United Irishmen to ‘Unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.’

Wolfetone led the brave, yet tragic, 1798 rebellion against the might of the British Empire, it was a case of peasants with pitchforks facing down cannon and cavalry, as Seamus Heaney wrote,

“Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.”

The United Irishmen, Wolfetone and the sacrifice of all who fell in 1798 is a continuing inspiration to Republican’s today. Their ideals and bravery leads us to remember that Sacrifice every year at Bodenstown.

Indeed Padraig Pearse delivering an oration at Bodenstown in 1913 said,

“Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that have died for Ireland whether in old time or in new. He was the greatest of Irish nationalists. I believe he was the greatest of Irish men. And if I am right in this I am right in saying that we stand in the holiest place in Ireland and that the holiest sod of a Nation's soil is the sod where the greatest of her dead lies buried.”

So it is with great pride that Ógra Shinn Féin will march out again this year 2007, to commemorate Wolfetone, paying tribute and honour to his sacrifice, and pledging to continue to fight until the aspirations for which he died, are achieved.

Shortly before his death Wolfetone wrote,

"From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted, this country would never be free or happy.”

Let us mobilise at Wolfetone’s grave, gathering inspiration from this great father of Republicanism, and strengthen our resolve to ‘break the connection with Britain’ and to unite the people of Ireland, ‘Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter!’