The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Let’s talk about the Queen… April 20, 2011

I guess it’s worth addressing the issue of the Queens visit. I have to admit my attitude has been one of broad indifference. My own preference would be that if this is necessary at all, and there’s arguments for and against given the dispensation on the island, it would be best that it was very very low-key.

I was talking about this to someone recently who pointed out that one of the most irritating tropes about this is the ‘demonstrating our maturity’. I think they’re right in their criticism of the ‘maturity’ line. ‘Maturity’ is the litmus test? We must embrace this?

Can’t see why.

On the other hand the appetite for protest seems limited. Perhaps that is token of a ‘more than pity than in anger’ approach.

It’s hardly worth making a fuss over except for the bizarre itinerary. Croke Park? Seriously? The Garden of Remembrance, well that raises even more contradictions but ones which might be educative for the Queen. Perhaps it would be better if there was no public/semi-public component at all. An helicopter flight into the Aras, an helicopter out to Dáil Éireann or wherever and then a hop skip and a jump back to the UK. And in a way that wish is borne of the feeling that no more should be made of this than any other visit by an head of state, and perhaps in some ways a little less given the sensitivities.

And yet. And yet. In truth there’s another part of me that almost relishes the idea of the Queen having to go to a memorial of Irish Republicans [and here I'd echo the thoughts of Séamus as expressed here] and having to visit a site where the British Army opened fire on an unarmed crowd and murdered people and to do so in the company of Irish men and women who are citizens of an independent state – however flawed, and not subjects of her own.

There’s a duality to the itinerary that is telling and that in some ways has been overlooked. Seen from one angle it can seem like an affront to the memory of those who fought and died for Irish independence. Seen from another it seems completely different, something where she and all she represents must pay respects to those who fought and died to climb out from under the British monarchy and administration, something that comes close to a rebuke to the monarchy because this island did something remarkable in the early 20th century when it managed to shrug off a global superpower, at least in large part, and sometimes the fact that that was unfinished overshadows the fact that it happened at all.

And so it goes. The Queen will hardly find a square foot of Irish ground that doesn’t bear witness to the contest between these two islands across centuries, can hardly walk a pace without some reminder of this. It’s built into the very fabric of this city and this state, from the bullet marks that still can be found on our buildings, the names of the streets to the competing architecture of our towns and cities and the pattern of enclosures on the land. And likewise across the island.

Think about this all a bit more and one begins to wonder who comes away from it with greater advantage. The Queen visits a memorial to Republicans. How does that play with the Dudley-Edwards, the Harris’s, the Myers of this world, some of whose number refuse to recognise the legitimacy of 1916 let alone anything that came after [and note how 1916 and it's legitimising dynamic is coming back into their focus. Of course they're nervous. That's an anniversary with some potency]? How does that play with Unionists? If she [or the British state] can very publicly recognise the legitimacy of our Independence struggle against that which she is the most public expression of then what of them – what can they and should they recognise? In other words if some think that the traffic is all in one direction, some ‘gain’ for the monarchy, they may be incorrect. And if one says, well who gives a toss what she thinks/represents, or the significance of this visit [not of monarchy per se, but as representative of Britain], then why the protests in the first place?

And she has to face three days of this? A small exchange in the scheme of things, I guess.

Of course that doesn’t mean that lessons are learned, or that suddenly everything is different, but some small changes will occur and not necessarily for the worse from a left Republican position.

There’s no denying that since we do have an unfinished revolution that’s why this is still unsatisfying. Her presence merely points up that fact. But, and by the way I’m no two nationist, perhaps that was always going to be the case given the demographics of the north east, that there would never be a clear cut end point to the process of independence and instead it would remain truncated and contingent, something that rolls on into the future, with messy overlaps and competing identities.

All that said, the visit is going to happen one way or another.

So tone matters. Let’s hope that Enda Kenny has a somewhat more nuanced reaction than the cringe-inducing rhetoric John Bruton assailed us with in the mid-1990s when Prince Charles arrived in Dublin. Let’s hope.

President McAleese has always, so it seems to me, got the tone mostly right. As the elected head of this state and someone who has a grasp of the contradictions and paradoxes implicit in living on this island so she should, but… again, tone matters, particularly when the representatives of a Republic meet those of a monarchy, even a monarchy that exists in the context of a representational parliamentary democracy.

Perhaps indifference is then a better default option. But that’s simply my take on it.

There’s a whole bunch of other issues which collide here.

Issues of class. One of the most pernicious aspects of the monarchy (and this goes almost everywhere it is manifested) is the embedded nature of class distinctions that it generates. The UK is little different in that respect. The Guardian around the turn of the century had an eye-opening (for some) series on the wealth of the Royal Family. That in turn linked into societal positional power exercised by them and those around them.

Monarchs are obviously anathema to republicans, but then again we also have to take consideration that different states organize themselves as they see fit. There were no protests as far as I know in relation to the Monaco crowd. And I doubt there’d be any if the Dutch or Belgian or Spanish monarchs visited.

Which of course relates directly to the situation and history in the North, but then again the Good Friday Agreement underpins much of the framework that now exists on and between these islands and that was validated – at least in part – by democratic polls, however flawed. There is the history of the conflict, but to be honest it’s difficult for any single group to claim a moral high ground in relation to that. There’s also the fact that those with executive power, the British government are in and out of this state on a regular basis with no protests at all [and that is people with executive power].

There’s a further problem. A large tranche of those who we share the northeast of the island with and who most of us consider Irish actually self-identify with that monarch. This goes beyond a simple political allegiance, though that is part of it, into cultural/socio-political aspects. For a republican, or perhaps particularly as a republican, that makes the situation more complex in terms of how one responds to that identity. I don’t like monarchies but… how to engage with those who don’t merely like them but see them as core to their own outlook?

Ironically that makes it more difficult for us than say Republicans [in the sense of British Republicans, or English Republicans] in the UK. We’ve got to deal with the issue not merely in the concrete of the monarchy, and in the slightly more abstract aspect of a generalised affection/identification with them, but also with another concrete aspect in terms of a stronger adherence on the part of unionism to them.

I think that calls for some nuance. Not necessarily acceptance, certainly not approaching this on bended knee or a servile and subservient approach (though the contemporary monarchy doesn’t do subservience in quite the way it did – at least not in public displays), but something that recognizes that there’s this deserves a complexity of approach.

So what’s my solution? I don’t have any.

I think that this is going to remain a hugely tangled issue right into the future. That we – particularly left republicans – on this island are going to have to probably come to some sort of modus vivendi with those who hold radically divergent views on the issue. That some of that is going to involve looking the other way while holding fast to our views.

But some of it will probably involve reworking narratives to our benefit. And remembering that meanings aren’t fixed or only operate in one direction.

Because Unionism is not going anywhere, and in the longer term if and when there is a move towards a united Ireland, or even after the introduction of that UI, it will more than likely be necessary to see the political expression on some level or another of Unionism in an East/West context, perhaps by representation in reformed political institutions in London, say for example a truly reformed House of Lords. Without question it would necessitate – for example – allowing the Union flag to fly in the North (in parity with the tricolor) for a prolonged period. Like everything else all this works both ways.

That’s the sort of refashioning of relationships that will require significant thinking on our part as to how they can be manifested in the future in a world where the list of issues we’d like rectified, such as an English/British Republic, may simply not come to pass, or at least not on timescales that make much difference.

Hence my caution at this point. There’s a long hard road yet to go and while that won’t deter people from speaking their mind or protesting, and nor should it, it could at least provoke some consideration as to what the future holds and what has to be negotiated and who with further down the line.

This isn’t a particularly original argument, and for some the points won’t be of any great importance.

But taking this line requires no one to do anything other than that which they’ve already done, or intend to do. Reciprocity to whatever the British do in this context is not compulsory – quite the opposite. As I’ve said above, this visit is going ahead anyhow. Let’s just see how the narrative of the Myers et al can now be reworked.

IRSP election rally in Derry April 19, 2011

Many thanks to the person who forwarded these links.

This is taken from an IRSP election rally in Derry held on the 13th of April. Chaired by IRSP founding member Terry Robson it features Derry IRSP candidates. The third part is particularly interesting for the comments of a close friend of Seamus Costello, Tommy McCourt, on Costello’s attitude to elections.

As was put to me, it’s of particular interest in regards to their foray back into electoralism.