Nationalism gave us our own Maginot Line

THOSE iodine tablets sent to every household some time back were never meant to protect us from nuclear meltdown, but they could have captured the thermal traces of our DNA for posterity.

Such pills would be time capsules of our very existence, eloquent testimony to the fact that we once had our roots on this island - and oblivious to the conceits of the 1916 Proclamation, for example, which was steeped in warped notions about who was ‘entitled’ to be here and, indeed, who was ‘entitled’ to our allegiance.

In the middle of the First World War, the Seven Samurai of Irish nationalism - Plunkett, Connolly, Pearse, Ceannt, MacDonagh, MacDiarmada and Clarke - appealed to their “allies in Europe”, the German/Austro-Hungarian alliance, as the rest of Europe, including Ireland and Britain, France, Russia, Belgium and Italy, was fighting for its life.

Kaiser Wilhelm II couldn’t even command the respect of his own people, so it’s a mystery why the men in the GPO thought such a ruthless expansionist would help solve the eternal problem of Irish national self-determination.

That brand of physical force nationalism was always too narrow, too pious, and too dogmatic to appeal to the imagination of Irish people at large. Without it, there was a chance that our north/south Border today would be as irrelevant as the Maginot Line between the north and south ridings of Co Tipperary. And we wouldn’t have needed to give so much artificial respiration to the “effing” peace process, as John Bruton so eloquently put it.

Richard Dowling

Coote Street

Mountrath

Co Laois