The Wind That Shakes the Barley Page #6

- "A truce has been declared."

- Give us a look.

"Hostilities cease from midnight.

God bless you all. Finbar."

- You're joking!

- Jesus Christ!

Is that right?

- It's a truce, lads.

- Is that right?

"A truce has been declared."

- It is Finbar's writing?

- It is, yeah.

- "God bless you all. Finbar."

- Jesus!

- What is it?

- A truce.

Yes! Yes!

"Sinn Fin

and Government Delegates meet

and everybody hopes for

a happy settlement."

"Success! British

and Irish leaders sign Peace Treaty."

"The Agreement will establish

a new Irish Free State."

"It will have full control of customs,

tariffs and economic policy."

That's it, boy.

"The Irish Delegates

who signed the treaty..."

"The new state will remain within

the British Empire as a dominion."

As a dominion?

"Members of the new Parliament will

swear an oath of allegiance to..."

You see this?

"Splendid news says the King!"

What kind of peace can you have

with a king?

They're in the wrong.

- I don't have any fecking king.

- Feck off!

What? No way! No way!

Is this what we fought for, is it?

Is this what we fought for, is it?

A betrayal of 1916.

Look at this, boy. It's all true.

"Lmmediate and terrible war."

Those were the exact words.

The threat promised

by the British Cabinet

if we didn't ratify this treaty.

Lloyd George, Churchill, Chamberlain,

Birkenhead, Hamar Greenwood.

A bunch of more vicious bastards

in the one room you can't imagine.

They have just watched 17 million

men, women and children

die in the Great War.

You think they'll give a damn about

a few thousand dead Republicans?

Bluffing. They're in a dirty war

and they can't win.

- Oh, I see. Fair enough.

- I agree.

They're not going to lose face in

America. And the rest of the world.

- They're not going to risk that.

- It's costing them 10,000 a day.

They've a lot more after that,

don't you worry.

Lads, you're not hearing

what Teddy's saying.

"Lmmediate and terrible war."

Think about it.

We've 3,500 rifles in the country.

How's that going to work for us? Huh?

Lads, we have freedom

within our grasp.

We're that close. It's just one inch

but it's still out of reach.

And if we stop now, we will

never again... regain the power

that I can feel in this room.

I can sense it in this room today.

And if we stop short now,

never in our lifetime

will we see that energy again. Ever!

So I'm begging each and every

one of you to just go that inch.

We cannot stop until we've

complete freedom from Britain!

Remember this? Remember this?

Each one of us

swore an oath of allegiance

to the Irish Parliament of 1919.

This treaty flies in the face of it.

It insults it by asking us

to swear another oath

to the King that we're trying

to get out. An oath!

And maybe if I was a politician,

like yourselves,

I could say whatever I want,

but I'm not.

I'm a Republican. And the only

question I want you to answer is,

are you men of your word?

Do you expect me to answer that?

- Are you a Republican?

- Of course I'm a Republican!

- I need to say something in answer.

- Bloody liar.

Absent faces.

But they're still present in here.

It's Kevin, Johnny, Colum,

murdered in the barracks.

There's Benny,

shot in the back while cutting turf.

Aidan, tortured and then hung.

Micheail.

Jesus, I could go on all day,

but we can't forget Micheail.

He was beaten to a pulp

in front of his mother.

And I cannot, I will not...

...spit on the graves

of our dead martyrs

by swearing an oath of allegiance

to the British Crown!

If you really want to desecrate

the graves of those boys,

if you want to insult their memories,

you go ahead and reject this treaty.

Because this is what they died for.

And because a lot of you

are too stubborn!

You're too stubborn!

You're too stubborn to...

Talk about Michael Collins.

Michael Collins is a hero.

He went down there to London. He was

seduced by the wining and dining.

- He did not negotiate a proper treaty.

- Bloody surrender.

More of a surrender

than what the British are doing?

Think of the concessions

they've made.

Lloyd George is in a coalition

with die-hard Tories.

As far as they're concerned,

Ireland is this tiny dot

in a much bigger picture.

Do you seriously think they'd let him

give the green light to nationalists

in India and in Africa

and the whole f***ing empire

by giving us complete independence?

It was never going to happen

that way, and you all know it.

If we ratify this treaty, we will

destroy the two most precious gifts

that we won with this last election.

One, being a mandate for complete

freedom, not a compromised freedom.

The second, being a Democratic

programme in which is enshrined

the priority, the public welfare

over private welfare.

This treaty will copper-fasten the

hold of the powerful over the poor

because there will be

a governor general

who'll have our puppet parliament on

a leash. It'll be business as usual,

with workers tied to a shift at a

factory and fellas begging for jobs.

It's the partition of the country.

The alienation,

the abandonment of our brothers

in the top of this country.

You say the Brits are leaving?

They're going 300 miles up the road.

Men, women and children being burned

out of their homes.

It's true, boy. It's true.

My cousins are on the streets

of Belfast.

Burned from their homes by Loyalists.

There's refugees all over Dublin.

You know what this treaty means

for them?

Instead of sectarian gangs,

they'll now face those same thugs

armed and uniformed

by the British state.

Read the treaty, Sinead.

There's no certainty.

We'll have a divided Ireland.

There is certainty. Read the treaty.

Read the treaty. There is certainty.

Dan?

My dad was a nawy.

He worked in London,

digging holes for tuppence ha'penny

until it killed him.

I had two sisters I never got to know

because they died in infancy

for want of a doctor.

Now, what I signed up to, when I got

involved in this, was part... Here.

I have a piece of paper here.

It's from the Democratic Programme

of the First Dail.

It's a short quote. I won't keep you.

I'm going to read this out to you.

"The nation's sovereignty

extends not only to all the men

and women of the nation,

but to all its material possessions,

the nation's soil

and all its resources. All the wealth,

and all the wealth-producing

processes within the nation."

That means, all of us in this country

own every bit of this country.

And that's what we all signed up to

when we voted for the Dail. Right?

If we pursue this,

every child in this country

will have an equal chance.

If we don't,

they won't have a chance in hell.

If we ratify this treaty,

all we're changing

is the accents of the powerful

and the colour of the flag.

That's not true! That's not true!

Thanks be to God, it was a great day

to see the back of them.

Jesus Christ,

I thought I'd never see the day.

- You can say that again.

- Not before time.

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