‘We are always going to have a bit of controversy. We want to be more than a dusty dull ceremony,’ the Celtic League’s Bernard Moffatt told nationalists gathered at Hango Hill.
But as Illiam Dhone commemorations go, this one was a rather restrained affair.
There were none of the fiery denouncements of government from the Hill that we’ve heard and expected in previous years.
Indeed the English oration was given by new Minister for Policy and Reform Chris Thomas, who spoke about how Illiam Dhone would have welcomed all the measures on the economy, equality and the living wage being promised by the new administration.
A good crowd of about 125 gathered at Hango Hill to mark the anniversary of Illiam Dhone’s execution near that spot on January 2, 1663.
Among those attending were Tynwald president Steve Rodan and Garff MHK Daphne Caine, whose eight-year-old daughter Jemima was quick to volunteer to lay the wreath at the end of the ceremony.
Proceedings were delayed by the late arrival of Mec Vannin’s Mark Kermode, due to give the oration in Manx, who was held back by the roadworks in Foxdale.
Mr Moffatt said he couldn’t even blame former Infrastructure Minister Phil Gawne, unseated at September’s general election, who was in the crowd.
Illiam Dhone, aka William Christian, is hailed as a martyr by Manx nationalists for negotiating a peaceful surrender to Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War – securing the island’s unique position and preventing a massacre.
Giving his oration, Policy and Reform Minister Mr Thomas admitted he was no expert in Manx 17th century history and would not presume to comment on the differing views of Dhone’s character and motivation.
He said he was still trying to understand why Dhone is still regarded as significant and relevant 354 years after his executuion.
And he quoted Irish president Michael Higgins on the need to distinguish between ‘truthful language and illusory rhetoric’, and asked his audience to consider whether our island society was becoming ‘post-truth’.
Any suggestions that the event had been hijacked by the establishment, however, were answered by the front page of Yn Pabyr Seyr, the newsheet published by the Manx Nationalist Party Mec Vannin, which was distributed among those at the commemoration.
With a headline that screamed ‘Anti-Work permit? Anti-Manx!’, it railed against the government’s proposed relaxation of the work permit system, accusing it, and the Chamber of Commerce, of ‘treachery’ and ‘betrayal’.
It noted: ‘Forget any nonsense about encouraging economic growth – the sole objective of even further relaxation of the already pathetically weak work permit regulations are to exclude Manx people from anything but menial and physical, low paid work.’
Anyone who supports relaxation must be ‘prepared to branded as anti-Manx’, it added.
It seems Manx nationalists have not lost their voice, after all.