John F Kennedy's speech to Irish parliament the greatest ever says Enda Kenny

Rebel: President Kennedy's speech to the Dáil was merely a reflection of the prevailing Partitionist policy among most members of that chamber at the time. Ironically JFK spoke of the Battle of Fredericksburch, one of the fiercest contests in the war that reunited the divided American nation and abolished slavery. Kennedy's Dáil speech was made at a time when Nationalists in the British-controlled part of Ireland were being treated as second class citizens and the victims of vicious discrimination.

Dear God ! Is there No Slice of Toast Edna Kenny will not Butter !

And Why Not ! The Kennedy` were every bit the Bourgeois Crook of Dublin`s Edna Kenny !

The most conspicuous thing about President Kennedy's speech to the Irish Parliament was it's glaring ommission of any mention of the issue of the undemocratic partition of the island of Ireland. It should be remembered that in 1963 Northern Ireland was still very much a "Protestant State for a Protestant People" and Ireland was just six years away from the start of a bloody civil uprising that would convulse the North and leave over 3,000 people dead and tens of thousands more wounded. In historical retrospect, JFK's flowery talk about sending Irish soldiers to keep the peace in places like Congo and Gaza and ignoring the issue of Irish partition and the north sounds politically naive and clueless.

JFK stated "Ireland's influence in the United Nations is far greater than its relative size." This portion of the speech still resonates in today's world. JFK'S Dublin speech certainly ranks up there with some of his best. I look at this speech in detail on my podcast US/Irish relations at MatthewJshow.com-thanks

When President Kennedy addressed the Dáil in June of 1963, I heard part of his speech at the U.S. navy base in Subic Bay in the Philipinnes, where I was stationed as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps and was proud to serve under my Commander-in-Chief JFK. The Battle of Fredericksburg mentioned above was fought on 13 December, 62, not 13 September of that year. The Irish Brigade advanced to within 25 paces of the Confederate lines and many of them were shot by a Georgia unit that were also Irish. The America of the early 1860s was a divided nation as was the Ireland of Kennedy's time, also this present day. In all probality the Irishmen who fought on both sides in the American Civil War would never want their beloved homeland to be permanently partitioned.