No one is talking about the huge contradictions at the centre of centenary fanfare
At the centre of this year’s centenary fanfare rests a series of huge contradictions that no one is talking about.
It is not even clear what we are supposed to be celebrating. While the rebels acted bravely and with noble aims, the Rising set off a chain of events that would prove in many ways disastrous for the island of Ireland. We are still living with this fallout today.
It is high time that people got real about the legacy of the Rising, and about what it means for Ireland in 2016 and beyond.
The outcomes of the Rising were mixed to say the least. It would be tempting to view the struggle that started in 1916 as a ‘pyrrhic victory’, but that term does not capture the scale of the tragedy that ultimately followed the Rising.
Among other things, the conflict launched in 1916 was the catalyst for partition. What ensued was essentially the worst-case scenario for anyone who dreams of national liberation: leaving a chunk of the people you are trying to liberate in a worse situation than they were in before, in a hostile state behind a militarised border.
Creating a new state in the south while abandoning the nationalist population of the north to this fate must rank as one of the least honourable independence deals in history.
This is not to attribute blame to the rebels of 1916, 1919, 1920 or any other of these crucial years. The rebels faced life-or-death dilemmas without easy answers or easily predictable consequences — and they took desperate political and ethical gambles in those circumstances, from the first shots fired on Easter Monday to the end of the Civil War.
Hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing, of which the rebels, in taking their desperate gambles, did not have the benefit. We do, though, and thus we should use the occasion of the centenary to reflect seriously and sombrely on the Rising and its legacy, rather than take it as a cue for mawkish sentimentality or crass pageantry.
The legacy of partition is not just a problem for people in the North to deal with: The border and the one-party Northern Ireland regime were in large part the unintended consequences of the mostly southern independence struggle, and the Troubles its unfinished business. The south got its freedom — sort of — but it was northern nationalists who had to pay the price. That means that people in the south have a historic responsibility to do what they can to help clean up the mess.
The centenary should be an opportunity to think about how to do that, but that opportunity is being missed.
It is not even clear what people are ‘celebrating’. Are they celebrating 1916 as the foundation of the current Irish state? If so, this requires a remarkable leap of logic, since our attenuated republic — one that cannot even guarantee basic social needs such as housing and healthcare, let alone form a government — would almost certainly have been disowned by many of the visionaries of 1916.
Indeed, this state was not supposed to be formally declared a republic. De Valera had refused to do this when introducing the current constitution in 1937, precisely because he understood that the 26-county state fell far short of the republic proclaimed in 1916, and that to call the 26-county state ‘the Republic’ would be to normalise partition, drawing a line under the question of the North.
The circumstances in which the State formally did become a Republic were farcical, with Fine Gael taoiseach John A Costello (not known for his ‘republican’ credentials) making the surprise announcement at a press conference in Canada in 1948, apparently on a whim.
Formally declaring the 26-county state a Republic was a slap in the face to the tradition of Irish republicanism, and something de Valera had painstakingly avoided — but people have found it easier not to think about this.
The second possibility is that people do not see the current state as the rightful heir to the vision of 1916, and see the republican project launched in 1916 as an ‘unfinished revolution’.
There is a logic to this position — but there is also a catch. If one denies the legitimacy of the current state because of its partitionist nature, and desires a united Ireland, one must face an awkward reality: Waving the tricolour and turning the Rising into national hagiography is directly at cross purposes with that end.
Would northern Protestants ever go willingly into an all-Ireland state, under any conceivable circumstances? It seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
Would they ever go willingly into a state whose symbolic architecture is based on the Tricolour and the dead of 1916? No way. This would be about as likely as southern Catholics consenting to live under the Union Jack and celebrate the Battle of the Boyne every July 12. It’s simply not going to happen.
You can have a state and society built around the symbolic architecture of the Tricolour and the dead of 1916, or you can have a serious attempt at reconciliation with the northern Protestants. You can’t have both.
If the symbols get in the way of what the symbols are supposed to be for, it is time to change the symbols. When the ideological arsenal is obsolete, it is time to decommission it.
One does not have to be a ‘revisionist’ to see this argument. The Achilles heel of modern Irish nationalism and republicanism has always been a total failure to deal with the fact of about a million people north of the border who have as much of a claim to ‘Irishness’ as anyone else, but who spurn completely the sense of Irish identity associated with republicanism and nationalism.
Unfortunately, this is not even the elephant in the room: If it were, people would at least think about it in the back of their minds. In reality, people don’t think about it at all.
If we are content to keep not thinking about this, we should accept the idea (as many do) that ‘Ireland’ and the ‘Irish Republic’ are synonymous with the 26-county State. In this case, we should celebrate the 1916 centenary by all means.
But if we are not content with this, we should reject the national celebrations as a charade, and accept that if there is to be reconciliation on the island of Ireland, new ideas are needed.
Your move, ‘Ireland’.
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