Who is 'Everyone'? Inclusion and Exclusion in the 1966 and 2016 Official Commemoration of the Easter Rising
Abstract
The central aim of any national commemoration is to create a shared sense of mutuality by finding common, often symbolic, ground. It is thus a powerful tool for bridging cleavages within a society.
Nevertheless, the character of these cleavages changes in time, and so does the collective identity that the commemoration seeks to normalise. When Minister Heather Humphreys said that the 2016, the year of the Easter Rising centenary, would be 'a year for everyone', her notion of 'everyone' apparently differed from that of Seán Lemass or Éamon de Valera when they addressed the 'nation' during the 50th anniversary of the Rising in 1966.
This paper focuses on the shift in the Irish state perception of who exactly are the national commemorations intended for. It analyses what cleavages the two official commemorative programmes attempted to heal and whether 'everyone' necessarily coincided with 'Irish'.