“Like many, I have read with interest the recent suggestion that Castleisland’s main street be named after Daniel O’Connell,” – that’s the opening line of noted Kerry orator Dr. Tim Horgan’s response to the proposal of the name change put forward by the Castleisland District Heritage.
” While not a native of Castleisland, I have an interest in the ‘Cradle of Rebellion’ in Kerry from the days of the Earl of Desmond, the 1798 rebellion, the Whiteboys and Fenians, The Land Wars, the Wars of 1916 – 23, in all of which Castleisland played a seminal and pivotal role.”
“The paragraph below is from an oration at Ballykissane this Easter. The historical facts are true but largely hidden as the historical myth was constructed around O’Connell for anti-Republican reasons in the late 19th and early 20th century.”
The extract here is from an oration at Ballykissane last Easter by Dr.Horgan
Even God Can’t Change the Past
“It is said that not even God can change the past, but some politicians with divine aspirations will always try.
Better to forget the heroic historical sacrifices and create more politically acceptable myths.
This year on the 250th anniversary of his birth we will be instructed to remember that son of Kerry, the mis-labelled Liberator Daniel O’Connell.
Certainly O’Connell was a significant figure and for a time he gave hope to a broken and down-trodden people. His campaign allowed Catholics to sit in Britain’s parliament, with himself being the first to do so.
Ended Penal Laws ?
It is said that he ended the hated Penal Laws but these had largely been repealed before O’Connell’s time.
Prior to O’Connell, Catholics could vote in parliamentary elections, but by the time O’Connell’s bargaining had finished, far fewer and only the richer Catholics could cast their ballots. O’Connell was a landlord, part of that parasitic class that made serfs of their own people.
O’Connell drove a deep wedge between the republican Presbyterians and Catholics using religion as a tool to build a political base and exacerbating the sectarian divisions especially in the north, a still unhealed wound.
He Detested Republicans
He detested those enlightened republicans who would unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter in a free Ireland. O’Connell was a yeoman who searched Dublin for Robert Emmet.
The destitute millions gave their pennies to his political funds which went to God knows where. O’Connell refused to defend those Whiteboys who would hang in Tralee and Rathmore for seeking the rights of their people.
These were the men of no property and their cause was an embarrassment to him.
Distain for the Irish Language
But if the fee was right and it served his image, at other times he might appear in court. He had a disdain for the Irish language and far from being a separatist, he was a unionist by inclination.
He favoured the emancipation of slaves in America but not if they were the enslaved and starving tenants in Ireland, your ancestors.
O’Connell, we are informed, detested violence, but only the violence of resistance and not the violence of conquest.
And yet and yet, it has been declared by men in high places that all should honour him without question.
Elites in Society
The elites in society have declared him ‘The Liberator’ – this he was not, this he could never be. Ireland’s true liberators were the likes of Con Keating, Charlie Monaghan, Dan Sheehan and Castleisland’s own Jack Flynn, Richard Shanahan and Jack Prendiville and selfless thousands of ordinary people known and unknown, women and men, of little and no property, who picked up the torch of freedom passed to them here on Castleisland’s Main Street.
To whom should go the honour of remembrance?
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