Today we remember the founding father of Irish Republicanism, Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Wolfe Tone was the unrelenting voice of Irish Republicanism who saw the inextricable link between his nations division and exploitation and the British Empires occupation of Ireland.
Realising that equality, liberty and fraternity could only be achieved by insurrection, Wolfe Tone eventually set out to carry out a rebellion in Ireland. With the founding of the secret republican army called the 'United Irishmen' and seeking help from revolutionary France, Tone was instrumental.
Wolfe Tone was later captured when trying to land with French ship's in Ulster to support the rebellion of 1798. Tone was then captured and was denied a soldiers death as he had requested as a French officer and an Irish Republican. To avoid a criminals death, Theobald Wolfe Tone took his own life in his cell.
On a side note, the judge was condemned Wolfe Tone to death was to be later dragged from his carriage and hacked to death by the United Irishmen during Robert Emmett's 1803 rebellion.
We remember him today with Pride, and pledge ourselves to the continued pursuit of the goals for which he gave his life.
"Under the flag of the French Republic I originally engaged with a view to save and liberate my own country. For that purpose I have encountered the chances of war amongst strangers; for that purpose I repeatedly braved the terrors of the ocean, covered, as I knew it to be, with the triumphant fleets of that power which it was my glory and my duty to oppose. I have sacrificed all my views in life; I have courted poverty; I have left a beloved wife unprotected, and children whom I adored fatherless. After such a sacrifice, in a cause which I have always considered—conscientiously considered—as the cause of justice and freedom, it is no great effort, at this day, to add the sacrifice of my life." - Theobald Wolfe Tone.
