President of Ireland's foreword to True to Ireland

Michael D Higgins, the President of Ireland has very kindly written the foreword for this book. As the author I feel very humble and privileged that such a great and highly esteemed person would take the time and effort to write such beautiful and eloquent words about the relationship between Ireland and New Zealand and how this book forms a part of the global Irish diaspora. In 2017 I was fortunate in being able to meet Michael D Higgins and briefly tell him about the book. I am sure that the Irish men who feature in True to Ireland will be feeling equally honoured and proud that their efforts and love of their native land has been recognised by the President of Ireland. I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of Ireland's Ambassador to New Zealand, Peter Ryan who approached Michael D Higgins to write the foreword.

 

Foreword

by Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

We Irish have, for long centuries, been a people formed by the experience of migration. Our culture was forged through the influence of successive waves of settlers, conquerors, and colonisers. Over the past three hundred years, generations of Irishmen and Irishwomen have left our island, fleeing famine, war, poverty and persecution, or simply seeking the opportunities denied to them at home. Some were banished, either for resisting oppression or for committing crimes of desperation.

Irish people first landed in New Zealand in the decades before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. They may have been escaped convicts fleeing the penal colonies across the Tasman Sea. For them, and for the tens of thousands of Irish people who followed, New Zealand would become a symbol of hope and opportunity, a great experiment in social progress in the southern oceans.

Those who left Ireland never forget their homeland, and the support and solidarity of the Irish abroad was to be vital in the great struggle for Irish national freedom. In the early decades of independence, the new Irish state and its people were susta·ined by theremittances of sons and daughters in foreign lands.

This year, we in Ireland and Irish people across the world are commemorating the commencement of our War of Independence and celebrating of the establishment of the legislative assembly of the revolutionary Irish republic, the First Dail Eireann. All those who lived in Ireland during these foundational events could not but be caught up in the spirit of the age, or deeply affected by the great struggle underway in Ireland.

This volume, meticulously and lovingly researched and chronicled by Peter Burke, tells the story of six men - including his father Matt Burke - who lived through those years and who later emigrated to New Zealand in search of a better life. It is a tale of extraordinary moral courage demonstrated by Matt Burke and his comrades in following their principles during the Second World War. The very public stance that those Irishmen took was not popular, nor was it easy. Yet it was deeply admirable, and, as this wonderful book shows, understandable in light of the lives and ideals.of those six Irishmen.

May I commend Peter Burke for not only recovering the memory of his father and his comrades, but for deepening our understanding of the shared history of Ireland and of New Zealand. Though we are separated by a vast distance, we are countries with a shared destiny, one founded on our common past and upon our commitment to the United Nations, to peace-keeping and to the great cause of world disarmament. The publication of'True to Ireland' will further our understanding of one another, and through that, expand our already deep and abiding friendship.