We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

Three out of five children growing up in Ireland in the 1950s were destined to leave at some point in their lives, mostly for the shelter of the old colonial power, England.

‘What matters is that we will disappear as a composite race. We will add our name or names to those of the races that assimilate us; but as an entity, we will cease to exist.’32

One thing for which the IRA had not lost its capacity was the production of martyrs, and martyrdom had a powerful emotional radiance in a culture shaped by the fusion of political myths of blood sacrifice (especially those of the 1916 Rising) with the religious drama of Christ’s death and resurrection. Dying for Ireland imposed on the survivors a moral obligation to mourn.