Commemorations

Interesting short piece about the decade of commemorations we’re setting into in the second last issue of the Phoenix. The magazine notes that:

The Oireachtas Consultation Group on Centenary Commemorations – its unwieldily title reflects a determination to subsume 1916 into a plethora of other events – has had one meeting… to discuss its agenda since its creation early in 2011.

An intriguing mix of people are members of the group. Mark Daly and Mary White from FF, Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Senator Kathryn Reilly from SF, Maureen O’Sullivan and Catherine Murphy, both Independents. As the Phoenix also notes ‘nobody from FG or the LP has yet bothered to join it, the real agenda is being determined and orchestrated’.

It suggests that while newly elect President Higgins is clear on the ‘primacy’ of 1916, Enda Kenny and John Bruton are seeking ‘an entirely different emphasis, lumping 1916 in as just one more event alongside the 1913 lock-out, WWI and even the Somme’.

And it notes that ‘Political editor Stephen Collins [of the Irish Times] has developed a detailed treatise in the IT on what should be commemorated’.

Now what is interesting about this is that the Phoenix clearly takes a position that by introducing the other events the meaning of 1916 and after will be diluted. But one can make a strong case that that is far from inevitably being the case. Let’s consider what Collins has to say. He argues that there are ten main events – even if his concept of the decade seems to be a tad flexible.

1912-1922: A decade of change 
1. 1912, April, Third Home Rule Bill giving Ireland legislative independence published.
2. 1912, April, Ulster Volunteers established to resist Home Rule.
3. 1913, August, bitter Dublin lockout begins over trade union recognition.
4. 1913, November, Irish Volunteers founded as a nationalist response to the Ulster Volunteers.
5. 1914, August, outbreak of the first World War.
6. 1916, April, Easter Rising in Dublin and other parts of Ireland.
7. 1916, July, Battle of the Somme begins.
8. 1919, January, meeting of the First Dбil as newly elected Sinn Fйin MPs boycott Westminster.
9. 1920, November, Government of Ireland Act partitions the country and establishes devolved administration in Northern Ireland.
10. 1921, December, Anglo Irish Treaty establishes the Free State.
11. 1922, June, first general election in independent State endorses the parties supporting the Treaty.
12. 1922, June, Civil War begins with the shelling of the Four Courts.

And his rationale is intriguing.

For most of independent Ireland’s history, the 1916 Rising was given pride of place when it came to looking back at that crucial decade.
The First Dбil and the War of Independence were also remembered by nationalists, while the Civil War was widely regarded as an embarrassment.
On the unionist side the resistance to Home Rule, the Somme and the establishment of the Northern state featured prominently in an alternative narrative in which great pride was taken in the loyalty of the unionist population to the United Kingdom and the crown.

Note the use of the term ‘resistance’ to Home Rule. Of course that resistance took an overtly military form with the foundation of the Ulster Volunteers, and indeed one could argue that while militant action against British rule never died away entirely it was unionism which introduced it as a motive political force in the early 20th century.

He continues:

The acknowledgment of the sacrifice made by the Irishmen of both traditions who died in the war has begun to open up some of the deeper complexities of the 1912 to 1922 decade to proper recognition.
For instance the role of constitutional nationalism in the creation of an independent Ireland was still ignored by the Irish State until very recently.
The importance of the labour movement and the struggle for women’s rights in the making of modern Ireland were also generally overlooked in popular history. They too need to be acknowledged in the commemorative events in the years ahead.
The Government has established a committee to plan ahead for the decade of commemorations and Taoiseach Enda Kenny has made a commitment that the process will start with the acknowledgment of the First Home Rule Bill published on April 11th, 1912, which granted Ireland self-government within the United Kingdom.
That piece of legislation was overtaken by the outbreak of the war and the 1916 Rising but it marked a decisive step on the road to independence for the 26 counties.

Collins regales the reader with an odd little anecdote of the visit of British PM Herbert Asquith to Dublin at the invitation of John Redmond. Collins recounts how Asquith was attacked by suffragette Mary Leigh, wielding an axe which hit Redmond instead of the Prime Minister, and also that Dublin jarvey’s mounted a protest. The point being, according to Collins that ‘It is clear that in Dublin in 1912 the national question was by no means the only issue for debate.’.

But it is the earlier part of his anecdote which tends to undermine his broader argument.

He notes that Asquith received a ‘tumultuous reception’ from supporters of the measure and Asquith ‘ dismissed all idea of civil war and said he would not be deterred from introducing Home Rule. Replying, Redmond said Home Rule would be accepted by Ireland in absolute good faith as a final settlement of the quarrel between the two countries.’

As an aside one can critique the minimalism of Redmond’s programme. Did he genuinely think that Home Rule would be the ‘final settlement’? If so he was to be disabused of that illusion soon enough. But note that Asquith was unable to follow through on his promise. And the Third Home Rule Bill [not First, as Collins says in the text] marked nothing as a ‘decisive step on the road to independence for the 26 counties [sic]’. It was a cul-de-sac, as indeed was Home Rule as a movement, and within a few short years Redmond and his cause had been pushed aside by a much harder edged nationalism and republicanism.

Indeed it is striking how Collins does not appear to understand that Home Rule was a complete failure on its own terms and beyond them. It’s almost as if Collins just sees these events as representing that which he thinks they represent – albeit he sees that as being some sort of counter-narrative to previously prevailing narratives and with no particular implications beyond that. So the Third Home Rule Bill was essentially a positive, and let’s not think too deeply about what happened other than seeing it as something that led to independence.

Brian M Walker, professor of Irish studies at QUB, has a more recent article in the Irish Times which sees the commemorations as being valuable. He argues that:

Other [commemorations], however, will have strong resonances for some communities but not for others. This need not be a problem. We cannot expect agreement on the importance of all such events, given differences between communities and individuals in both their political positions today and people’s historical backgrounds. Still, people can seek to understand other perspectives and to explain their own position.
Events such as these show how commemorations can serve a positive and reconciliatory role and give reason for us to look forward to our major forthcoming decade of commemorations with optimism.

I don’t disagree, but while he appears to have a less constrained view of the events than Collins he doesn’t seem to see these commemorations as representing much more than themselves either or being much more than potential foci for reconciliation. But to my mind what is interesting is how these events are potentially, and actually, educative.

Consider how in two of the supposed key moments to be commemorated the lessons drawn are, arguably, profoundly different to those he might anticipate. The threat of political violence? Introduced by Unionism. The Third Home Rule Bill? An utter failure. And by the by there are a few events that are notable by their absence. How about the Curragh Mutiny where British soldiers offered an explicit challenge to constitutional authority? Hardly a good precedent and one that points up the fact that the tragedy of the Civil War in Ireland was hardly unique and that the potential for the sort of extreme division on these matters was to be found elsewhere.

The Ulster Covenant? This is being commemorated, I believe, although it is not on the list as a specific item, but what of those Unionists jettisoned in the three counties of Ulster which were incorporated into the Free State? Or shifting back towards nationalism and Republicanism why no examination of the reasons why both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael [and Labour in a minor key] reified 1916 over all else through much of the life of the new state? The expediency of this given the unfinished nature of the Irish revolution across a range of metrics was such that all sought refuge in the certainties of the events of that year rather than examining the broader context, troubling as that might be given the nature of the post 1922 dispensation on the island.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that this means that in some sort of intellectual maze one then must, per definition and predetermined arrive at a Republican viewpoint – an Unionist can clearly read all these events entirely differently, but it does make some of the claims of those who claim an heritage back to Home Rule and a partial sort of nationalism seem less than convincing. And ironically, or perhaps predictably, it points to the underlying reality, that the great project in this area now and ahead remains the engagement between Unionism and Nationalism/Republicanism and how both can retain their respective legitimacy on the island without diminishing the other.

In other words the Phoenix may be worrying unnecessarily, and indeed may be focused too much on the iconic significations of 1916, just as Collins appears to be eager to dilute any such significations. But the history is far too complex to allow one overly simplified narrative to be replaced by another that is in its own way equally simplified.

For more on this topic here’s Garibaldy’s take on another aspect of it from earlier in the year.