1916 Rising was 'tyranny, rape and murder', says Orange Order at Dublin Poppy Day ceremony

THERE has been uproar online after the Dublin and Wicklow Orange Lodge Remembrance Sunday 'Poppy Day' event in the Irish capital at the weekend described the 1916 Rising as “a rebellion which was aimed at replacing constitutional government with tyrannical government; and civic peace and harmony with rape and murder of life and property”. 

At Mount Street Bridge, Orange Lodge 1313 was holding “an act of remembrance to those [British soldiers] who paid the ultimate supreme sacrifice in putting down the 1916 Rebellion”.

Members of the Dublin-based neo-unionist Reform Group also took part in the event, which remembered one of the bloodiest battles of the Rising.

A small detachment of only 17 Volunteers under the command of Lieutenant Michael Malone made a heroic stand against a force of 2,000 fully-equipped British Army soldiers on Wednesday 26 April 1916.

After the battle, the British listed 236 of their soldiers and officers as killed or injured, accounting for almost one third of their total casualties for Easter Week. Four Irish Volunteers were killed and another captured.

The comments from the Dublin and Wicklow Orange Lodge are at odds with its support for the Orange Order in Fermanagh which has just published a document titled Good Relations which, it says, aims to create “a new beginning in a process of mutual understanding and discovery between all community organisations and individuals”.

Recently, a number of prominent members of the the unionist tradition, including a member of the Orange Order, have written articles for An Phoblacht as part of the Uncomfortable Conversations dialogue and reconciliation initiative.

In his contribution, Presbyterian Minister and lifelong Orangeman Brian Kennaway writes:

“You cannot achieve reconciliation on a human level by continually poking your opponents in the eye.”

• Pictured: The British Army's Sherwood Foresters regiment on Northumberland Road in Dublin during the Easter Rising. This unit would suffer huge casualties at Mount Street Bridge.