Tag: Irish entertainment

A niece of Aidan McAnespie, whose murder produced a historic guilty verdict against a former British Grenadier after 34 years, has called upon incoming Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to charge Britain in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) if Westminster passes its pending amnesty legislation. 

Una McCabe, McAnespie’s niece, made the public appeal during a webinar broadcast hosted by the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) on Saturday, December 10, where she was joined by Fergus O’Dowd, chair of the Irish parliamentary Committee for the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), leading Belfast civil rights lawyer Niall Murphy, and Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice.

McCabe also appealed to the Biden administration as British officials move ahead with their Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, designed to take away legal rights to get criminal prosecutions, inquests, ombudsman reports, or civil suits in legacy killings.

You can watch back on the AOH webinar on the McAnespie verdict and Amnesty Bill, which was live-streamed on December 10, here:

Aidan McAnespie was shot in the back by British Grenadier Michael Holden, firing a machine gun, on February 21, 1988. McAnespie, walking to the local Gaelic football grounds, had just been passed through the Auchnacloy British Army checkpoint, near the Monaghan border. 

Holden claimed his “hand had slipped.” Trial Justice O’Hara called his claims “a deliberately false account of what happened” and found him guilty of manslaughter on November 25 of this year.

Holden became only the fourth British soldier convicted of killing Irish civilians during the entire period of The Troubles. No British soldier was convicted for the Bloody Sunday murders or the Ballymurphy Massacre. The McAnespie verdict also refuted claims by British officials that criminal prosecutions for Troubles killings were now impossible because of the passage of time.

McCabe said she wanted to speak for her mother, Eilish, and other family members who did not live to see the verdict, and was making a special appeal to the Irish government and America for hundreds of other families who have also been fighting for the truth about the murder of loved ones, but now fear British amnesty legislation.

Her uncle Aidan had to pass through the notorious Auchnacloy British Army checkpoint almost daily, either to work or play Gaelic football, and was repeatedly threatened. The family had tried to protect him by highlighting these threats to the press, political parties, and Catholic Church officials. A Sunday World Newspaper headline shortly before the murder described him as “Ireland’s most harassed man.”

McCabe was seven years old when her mother’s brother Aidan said goodbye to her and left to play Gaelic football. She remembered cars coming up the road and shouting for family members to come at once. As she was driven to the murder scene, her mother kept banging her fist on the dashboard and shouting “they got him…they got him.” 

Because of the proximity to the Monaghan border, her family was able to get support from the Irish government which commissioned a special investigation and had the state pathologist perform a second autopsy. McCabe’s mother campaigned ceaselessly, became a founder member of Relatives for Justice, and spoke about the case in America, Downing Street, and Strasbourg. 

McCabe said Aidan’s murder had not only robbed her of her uncle but also robbed her of her mom, who died from cancer at age 50. It is believed that Aidan’s murder played a major role in her mother’s death.

During the trial, she and other family members had to pass members of Northern Ireland Veterans holding banners and supporting the killer.

Following the guilty verdict, McCabe visited the graves of Aidan and of her mother and thought “they were finally at peace.” She said, “Peace with the past will only come from getting the truth through a fair and accountable judicial system.” 

McCabe said she wanted this verdict to be a platform for all of the victims’ families still hoping for truth. She appealed to Varadkar and the Irish government to take a case to the European Court on behalf of all of these Irish victims.

She also said in September 1998, her mother had handed President Bill Clinton a letter with the names of hundreds of victims murdered by the British Army directly or in collusion with loyalists. Clinton had promised full support for justice and she hoped the Biden administration would keep that promise.

Niall Murphy, a leading civil rights lawyer on legacy cases, described the British amnesty bill as a “legal horror story” that “would close the courts to victims’ families.” 

He said the Stormont House Agreement and European Court cases had set out mechanisms through which the British government said it would comply with European Law on the right to life. Instead, the British government will shut down inquests, ombudsman reports, civil lawsuits, and criminal prosecutions.

Families would fight the law but it would take at five years to go through the British courts before they could begin any case in the European Court. A case by the Irish government would go directly to the European Court and could get the amnesty law set aside in 8 months.

Fergus O’Dowd, a Fine Gael party member of the Dáil from Co Louth, chairs the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement Committee (GFA Committee) which includes Irish Dáil and Seanad members, plus British Parliament MPs elected from the six counties. The GFA Committee has made this issue “an absolute priority” and fully supports Ireland taking a case to Europe.

O’Dowd, with approval from the full GFA Committee, made two formal written requests calling upon Attorney General Paul Gallagher to examine the British amnesty bill “with a view to taking an interstate case should you determine that the legislation contravenes the U.K.’s obligations under Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

The GFA Committee will ask the Irish foreign minister to appear before the committee in the New Year and will raise the issue directly. 

Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice described a meeting last week with Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, attended by Maureen Rafferty, age 90, whose son was murdered 50 years ago. Mrs. Rafferty said that unless the Irish government takes a case to Europe, she did not expect to see any chance of justice.

Meanwhile, the British government continues to push ahead with the amnesty bill despite Irish opposition.

*This column first appeared in the December 14 edition of the weekly Irish Voice newspaper, sister publication to IrishCentral. Fergus O’Dowd is brother to Niall O’Dowd, founder of the Irish Voice and IrishCentral.

It is the most frightening question of all: Who was responsible for the Troubles? Who drove the conflict onwards, year after year, until the death toll reached almost 4,000 and more than 45,000 were injured in Troubles-related incidents, some horribly so?

Examining in turn the history of the dozen or so major organisations involved in the Troubles – from the British Army to the Official IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries – author Liam Kennedy comes to the clear conclusion: The organisation primarily responsible for the “Three Decades of Terror” was the IRA, aided by its political wing Sinn Féin. 

The following is an extract from Liam Kennedy’s “Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? The Northern Ireland Conflict”

The “Troubles” is the somewhat euphemistic title for three decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland. This book started off in a small way in 1999, the year after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which set a formal end to hostilities and promised new political beginnings. It was sparked by a curious incident that is explained in chapter 1, but, to cut to the chase, the central question I am posing is a deeply disturbing one, indeed one which most of us would prefer to avoid. It is this: who was responsible for the Troubles? When I gave a preview of the thesis some ten years ago a young woman in the audience, almost beside herself with agitation, burst forth, “You are a disgrace. Are you really employed by a university? I can’t believe it.” Her reaction, and that of some others, did not encourage me to rush to publication. 

The early chapters discuss the role of the British and Irish states during the Troubles, though the major focus is on nonstate actors such as civil rights campaigners, the Official and Provisional IRAs, loyalist paramilitaries, Paisley and Paisleyites, the Democratic Unionist Party, and the churches. Which collective historical actor, if any, was primarily responsible for staging thirty years of intense conflict? The term “responsibility” is of critical importance, so it is as well to specify its meaning as employed here. The criteria invoked to establish responsibility included the following: those held to be responsible must have been committed to using violence to advance a political agenda; they must have been responsible for a significant share of the killings and wounding; they must have been prepared to use violence in the long term, irrespective of popular opinion; they must have had command of the resources – people, armaments, budgets – to engage in such protracted conflict. Both state and non-state actors come into the frame.

Many of the themes in this volume speak to a wider world. In a very real sense, the Troubles is a world-class problem in miniature. The Black North went global in the later twentieth century, attracting disproportionate international academic attention. Ironically, one of the unintended consequences of the Troubles was an efflorescence of Irish studies at home and abroad.

The decades of conflict in Northern Ireland were characterized by national, ethnic, and sectarian passions – the hallmarks of a deeply divided society. Parts of the contemporary world are disfigured by similarly divisive forces. Multiculturalism may be fashionable, national conflicts may be less prevalent, peace processes may be in train, but that is only part of what is a largely Eurocentric story. Even within Europe, ethnonational tensions still simmer in Belgium, Spain, the Ukraine, the Urals, Macedonia, and the Balkans. Symbols, language, culture divide as well as unify. Beyond Europe but touching Europe also, the rise of Islamist extremism has brought politico-religious terror in its wake. There are many dissimilarities of course, but Northern Ireland in the later twentieth century, far from being an outlier or a throwback to the religious wars of the seventeenth century, finds its place all too easily within the modern world. 

The Troubles are often conceived in terms of the headline events, the bombings, the killings, funerals, imprisonment, and hunger strikes, as in the first two chapters of this volume. But this is an impoverished agenda. To redress the balance and to aim for a more holistic account, two further chapters are devoted to a rebarbative aspect of the Troubles, that is, the practice of paramilitary “punishments” which is sometimes dignified with labels such as “informal policing” and “informal justice.” The scale and severity of these attacks – orange-on-orange and green-on-green violence – has been largely obscured, in part because there has been so little media coverage down the years. To take but one example, Ed Moloney’s A Secret History of the IRA is regarded by many as a brilliant achievement, and rightly so. A fine sense of history informs the narrative. It is psychologically acute, and the writing has the momentum of a good thriller. There are many insights and revelations, especially in relation to the “high politics” of Sinn Féin. Gerry Adams, the long-time president of Sinn Féin (who was “never a member of the IRA”) emerges as an orchestrator of genius within the theatre of republican intrigue and is never far from center stage. This undoubtedly gives the work coherence but at a cost. While my admiration for A Secret History remains undiminished, I have to say the approach misses out great swathes of IRA activity, quite possibly the most common forms of activity for so many IRA volunteers. There is only a single paragraph, that on page 153, mentioning paramilitary beatings and shootings in a book that is more than 700 pages long. Loyalist “policing” and intra-community terror, if anything, has received even less attention, yet these activities were intrinsic to the conduct of the Troubles. 

For many republican volunteers, their active service was that of maiming fellow nationalists, particularly so from the mid-1970s onwards. The same was true on the loyalist side where brute force also ensured neighborhood compliance. Perhaps we need to reorient our understanding of the Troubles in some basic respects, particularly as to understanding the relative autonomy of social enclaves within society under conditions of conflict. Patterns of fear and terror persisted, and still persist, long after “peace” has been declared. More rounded treatments of the recent past would integrate the “Troubles from below” into the grand narrative. As also argued, social scientists (less so journalists and writers) tend to underestimate the degree of power over people’s lives exercised by paramilitary organizations at the neighborhood and community level, perhaps because of a disciplinary tendency to fetishize the powers of the state as well as a reluctance to delineate the limitations of state agencies.

On the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement of 1998 many commentators expressed surprise that the degree of polarisation in Northern Ireland was as pronounced as it was back then. If anything the spirit of mutual accommodation was weaker. Yet there had been two decades of relative peace. What could have gone wrong? Political scientists naturally parsed the various agreements, from the Belfast Agreement onwards, and made varying, often conflicting diagnoses. Perhaps it was the architecture of the agreements, perhaps it was their implementation (or non-implementation), or perhaps it was the indifference of London and Dublin. The list goes on, and some of the explanations presumably have some validity. But the burden of the thesis developed here is that more fundamental problems beset the peace process. It is necessary to go to a deeper level.

The final chapter explores briefly, perhaps too briefly, ideological evasions, issues of conscience and the possibilities of atonement. The guiding principle, which is much influenced by varying European experiences in the aftermath of World War II, is that without an honest acknowledgment of the ugliness of the decades of terror, the possibilities of reconciliation across the communal divide in Northern Ireland are limited. If we look at present-day Northern Ireland, there is a (relative) absence of violence, what might be called a “negative peace,” but this is not a society at peace with itself. What we have is an unstable equilibrium, the outcome of competing communal demands on the part of the two major ethnonational blocs in the North. 

In the end, in seeking release from the past, we come back to responsibilities, which include the making of responsible history. But engaging critically with one’s own culture and taking responsibility for its sour fruits is about as painful as a barefooted ascent of the stony slopes of Croagh Patrick or one of the other holy mountains of Ireland. Fifty years after the outbreak of armed hostilities, is it not time to face the mountain?

You can learn more about “Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? The Northern Ireland Conflict” by Liam Kennedy here.

The Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022 has officially become law in Northern Ireland after the bill received Royal Assent on Tuesday, December 6.

The Irish language now has official recognition in Northern Ireland for the first time ever.

The bill will create a new office for an Irish language commissioner in Northern Ireland who will develop best practice standards for public authorities, alongside repealing the 1737 Act of Justice (Ireland) legislation which banned Irish from courts.

Conradh na Gaeilge, the democratic forum for the Irish-speaking community, has welcomed the news that the Irish language legislation promised in the New Decade New Approach has received Royal Assent and will officially become law.

The bill previously passed through the House of Lords and House of Commons, where it completed its legislative journey at the end of October.

In the absence of an Executive in Northern Ireland, the responsibility for implementing the legislation will now remain with the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Office, beginning with the setting up of the various offices and the appointment of an Irish language Commissioner. New powers added to the bill will allow the Secretary of State to implement all aspects of the legislation in full. 

Bill ➡️ Act

“Westminster Irish Language Legislation receives Royal Assent – Another historic staging post as the Westminster bill officially becomes law, but immediate implementation is paramount.” – @CnaG

Release in full: https://t.co/uJPztwYLkv pic.twitter.com/B2nk48pCFQ

— Conradh na Gaeilge (@CnaG) December 6, 2022

Paula Melvin, President of Conradh na Gaeilge, said on Tuesday: “The Irish language community has been fighting for these rights for decades and in that regard to see the Irish language be afforded official recognition here [in Northern Ireland] for the first time is indeed historic.

“We want to pay tribute to all of those activists and community pioneers who have been advocating for language rights down through the years. Today is but another historic staging post in this ongoing campaign for equality. 

“This Bill, however, is not our final destination. We have pushed hard on several important amendments to the legislation and we now turn our attention to both implementing and to strengthening the bill and bringing it up to international standards of language legislation in the future.

“But let’s be clear, we now immediately enter the implementation phase of this legislation. Painful experience with the British Government has taught us to take nothing for granted. Until we see this Bill fully enacted and indeed implemented in practice, we will continue to push ahead with the campaign.”

Conchúr Ó Muadaigh, Advocacy Manager with Conradh na Gaeilge, said: “Today’s milestone is testament to the 20,000 people who stood with us on the streets of Belfast in May and actively called on the British government to honour their word on bringing forward Irish language legislation.

“From today on, the Irish language will exist in law for the first time in a state which historically discriminated against the language and marginalised its community of speakers. The significance of this should not be lost on anyone.

“However, having legislation is one thing. The implementation of that legislation is another. In the absence of a functioning Executive, this bill gives concurrent powers to the Secretary of State to operationalise and implement the bill in its entirety. The British Government must exercise these powers without any delay. The Irish language community have waited long enough. The appointment of an Irish Language Commissioner is the first step in that process. The Irish language community will look upon the appointment of the Commissioner as a litmus test for the British Government. The Irish language community will wait in earnest to see how this legislation will bring the legitimate, long overdue change they require to facilitate them living their lives through Irish.”

Conradh na Gaeilge noted that commencement regulations signed by the Secretary of State will stipulate when each aspect of the legislation officially comes into effect.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Tiarnaigh, spokesperson for the An Dream Dearg campaign for Irish language rights, said on Tuesday: “Today is another historic day on our long-running campaign for language rights and equality here as the Westminster bill becomes a Language Act and officially becomes law.

“This significant and historic milestone stems from the pioneering work of the Shaws Road Gaeltacht over 50 years ago, where the seeds of the modern Irish language revival in the north were first planted. From those small beginnings, an Irish language community has flourished and grown. Today that community has succeeded in bringing legislative change for the Irish language here. That is historic. For years Irish speakers have challenged the state as the language was marginalised and ridiculed. Today we take another step forward on our journey towards comprehensive Irish language rights.

“But we also have to take stock of where we are on that journey. This Act is only another milestone, another staging-post. It does not deliver the change we need, nor the change we were promised. Tomorrow the work begins to ensure this Act is fully implemented without any delay, and the campaign to strengthen the legislation remains ongoing. We now hope to see the appointment of the first Irish Commissioner in the history of the northern state early in the New Year.

“To all those who walked this path with us, today belongs to you. For all those willing to continue the work we have started, let us walk that path together. Ar aghaidh linn le chéile.”

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Acht……. INNIU 🔥

Tá an Bille anois ina Acht oifigiúil 🚨

⭐️ The Irish Language Legislation has TODAY received Royal Assent and officially becomes law!

🅾️ 6.12.2022 – Lá eile iontach stairiúil. 🅾️

Now, @chhcalling @SteveBakerHW, let’s get it implemented 🫵 pic.twitter.com/jqHenH5onv

— An Dream Dearg 🅾️🦸🏽‍♀️🦸🏻‍♂️ (@dreamdearg) December 6, 2022

Jonathan Swift, the Irish writer behind “Gulliver’s Travels,” was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667. Here is a look at his life.

It just so happens that I live around 10 miles from a place called Lilliput. This brings to mind a fantasy of four parts regarding one Lemuel Gulliver, written by perhaps the greatest Irish writer of them all, published in 1726. “Gulliver’s Travels” is the most famous work of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and is a satire on both human nature and the “traveler’s tales” that were then in vogue. 

Born in Dublin on 30 November 1667, Swift was the son of English parents. His father, a lawyer, died before Jonathan’s birth and his childhood was partly spent in the care of a nurse, his paternal uncles, and, most likely, in the absence of both parents. Some parts of his life appeared like satire, which is entirely appropriate for a man who became a leading satirist himself, forever poking fun with the tools of irony, humor, exaggeration, and ridicule. Swift admitted himself that he’d written his most famous work to “vex the world”, which it probably did.

Swift started his education at Kilkenny Grammar before entering what was then Ireland’s only university, Trinity College Dublin, continuing his studies in Latin and Greek and adding Hebrew, and deepening his knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy.

After four years, he graduated with the degree of BA ex speciali gratia – a term that Swift later glossed to imply that he had been a poor student, but which most likely did not have the negative connotations Swift would later mischievously suggest. It is certain, though, that Swift was not an outstanding undergraduate, and having left Trinity College in 1686 he was perplexed as to a choice of career. Despite the help of his uncles, Swift had no easy entry into a profession such as would enable him to retain the status of gentleman, so important in his age.

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Protestants William and Mary took the throne off the Catholic-leaning James II, and the subsequent disorder in Ireland, Swift headed for England and relative safety.

Family connections assisted him in starting a career as secretary to the esteemed diplomat and essayist Sir William Temple, who was resident in Farnham, Surrey. Now aged 22, Swift quickly set about acquainting himself with the big, wide world and it was here that he first met Esther Johnson, then aged just eight years old. Johnson was the daughter of Temple’s housekeeper and went on to become a mix of pupil, friend, and possible lover to Swift. 

While sources vary over the status of their relationship, Esther was eventually immortalized in verse tributes, most notably “Journal to Stella,” and was undoubtedly important to Swift. Debates about the nature of their relationship continue to rage with some scholars believing the two were secretly married as early as 1716 and others denying all possibility of a romantic relationship between the two.

In 1694, Swift switched careers and trained to become a protestant clergyman, serving in parishes in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim. After Temple’s death, Swift was given the vicarage of Laracor, a town in Co Meath. Swift hoped to eventually rise through the ranks of the church to become a bishop or even an archbishop. However, his outspoken nature had earned him enemies which stunted promotion. The scandal over his private life did him no favors either when during a 1708 visit to London he first met Esther Vanhomrigh. This second Esther was seven years younger than Esther Johnson and after returning with him to Ireland became Swift’s lover and correspondent for over ten years. She was eventually cast aside for Johnson and went on to die a broken-hearted woman later that same year. Despite the scandal, Swift did indeed climb the ranks and in 1713 he was appointed Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

In 1704, the publication of his satires “Battle of the Books” and “A Tale of a Tub” saw Swift back his late patron in the quarrel between Ancients and Modern. The quarrel was a fervent literary dispute raging in both England and France as to whether classical literature (ancient Greece and Rome) was impeccable or whether it could be challenged by modern works. The debate had been started by Temple years before after he argued against the modern position in his essay “On Ancient and Modern Learning” and was subsequently picked up by Swift and his circle of writer friends, often called the Scriblerus Club.

Swift’s visits to London were mostly political but he also took advantage of the opportunities afforded to him through travel and explored many friendships, both literary and noble. Swift supported the Whigs (today’s Liberals) initially but switched to the Tories because of his loyalty to the English Church. 

His friendship with Robert Harley was pivotal in this switch, which was confirmed in 1710 when Harley returned to power, firstly as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then as Lord High Treasurer. Swift was recruited as Editor of The Examiner, the official mouthpiece of the Tories. 

Swift’s “Four Last Years of the Queen” set out the intrigue and campaigning of that period. At the time, the Tories wanted to keep the establishment secure and bring war with France to an end and so Swift’s “On the Conduct of the Allies” supported this aim, whilst also lambasting the Whigs. 

The death of Queen Anne, in 1714, disappointed Swift and the members of the Scriblerus Club, presumably because they’d lost patronage and favor. Swift returned to the Deanery of St Patrick’s Cathedral, in Dublin, and largely remained there until his death, where he fought strongly for Irish liberties, which were being denied by the then Whig government. Swift’s “The Drapier’s Letters” formed the most famous part of this pro-Irish activity. Swift focused on the English government’s restrictions on Irish trade, e.g. in respect of wool and cattle. His vigorous campaigning on Irish issues, plus his charitable efforts for the poor of Dublin, revived his reputation and he became something of a modern-day celebrity.

It was during his 1726 visit to London that Swift published “Gulliver’s Travels,” his best and most famous satirical work which is split over four parts. The book was an immediate success and has remained so ever since. Although published in London, much of the book was written at Woodbrook House in Co Laois. 

Completing “Gulliver’s Travels” seemed to release Swift’s energies for the light verse that followed, having previously only employed this particular talent for the amusement of the ladies. Poetry of this genre included “The Grand Question Debated” (1729) and “Verses on His Own Death. “Swift particularly liked “On Poetry; a Rhapsody,” which he rated his best verse satire. 

Swift died on 19 October 1745, aged 77. He was buried at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where he’s oft referred to as “Dean Swift” due to his having been Dean between 1713 and his death.

Taken from the July / August 2020 issue of Ireland of the Welcomes magazine. Subscribe today!

On November 4, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed this Thanksgiving proclamation which asked God “to guide and sustain us in the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all men and nations and of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.” 

Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated just 18 days later in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, making his plea to the United States people to come together all the more poignant.

Today, while political and social division remains, JFK’s words resonate as strongly today as they did at the height of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

President Kennedy’s proclamation begins “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving.”

Kennedy then enumerates what our forefathers gave thanks for – their safety, their fields, their children. He ends by noting “the love which bound them together.”

In the proclamation, Kennedy quotes George Washington, who in his inaugural call for a thanksgiving, asked the citizens of the new republic to beseech God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.”

The President was referring to the Bay of Pigs invasion, after the first “military advisers” had arrived in Vietnam, and only two months after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered four African American girls. 

As Elliot Ackerman wrote in the New York Times “Maybe I’m overanalyzing Kennedy’s proclamation. Perhaps it was just a few paragraphs drafted by a staff member. Yet it reads as if it wasn’t. It reads as if Kennedy was asking the country to do one last thing: Take a break from divisions. It reads as if Kennedy could foresee the fractious decade ahead as if he knew the cost of the division was blood.”

The President pleads: “Let us, therefore, proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings–let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals–and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.”

This is President John F Kennedy’s Thanksgiving Proclamation 3560 in full:

Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.

So too when the colonies achieved their independence, our first President in the first year of his first Administration proclaimed November 26, 1789, as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God” and called upon the people of the new republic to “beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue . . . and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”

And so too, in the midst of America’s tragic civil war, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as a day to renew our gratitude for America’s “fruitful fields,” for our “national strength and vigor,” and for all our “singular deliverances and blessings.”

Much time has passed since the first colonists came to rocky shores and dark forests of an unknown continent, much time since President Washington led a young people into the experience of nationhood, much time since President Lincoln saw the American nation through the ordeal of fraternal war–and in these years our population, our plenty and our power have all grown apace. Today we are a nation of nearly two hundred million souls, stretching from coast to coast, on into the Pacific and north toward the Arctic, a nation enjoying the fruits of an ever-expanding agriculture and industry and achieving standards of living unknown in previous history. We give our humble thanks for this.

Yet, as our power has grown, so has our peril. Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers–for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.

Let us, therefore, proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings–let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals–and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.

Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of the Congress approved December 26, 1941, 55 Stat. 862 (5 U.S.C. 87b), designating the fourth Thursday of November in each year as Thanksgiving Day, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 28, 1963, as a day of national thanksgiving.

On that day let us gather in sanctuaries dedicated to worship and in homes blessed by family affection to express our gratitude for the glorious gifts of God; and let us earnestly and humbly pray that He will continue to guide and sustain us in the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all men and nations and of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this fourth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-eighth.