Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Unionism… the Armstrong and Miller approach…

It’s rubbish, it can’t work…

But if it did work…

It won’t…

It might do

But it can’t…

Yes but if it did, you’d have to admit it’d be brilliant…

Armstrong and Miller…

Watching comedy on cable is a surprisingly good way to unwind. Sure, I know Conor of Dublin Opinion and others of you prefer Big Brother. That’s fine. I’m a pluralistic kind of guy. To each their own poison. I’m getting reacquainted with the final seasons of Frasier, avoiding MASH at all costs, checking out the Fast Show and recently caught the oddly nostalgic Armstrong and Miller. This is timely, if only because they’ve decided to reform after six or seven years (interesting too since I’d forgotten there was a Smack the Pony crossover – now there was a show, bar for the grim comedy ‘pop’ interludes. Top tip: not everyone can become a pop star, nor should they even try).

Anyhow, in a recently rebroadcast episode of the so-so, but often quite funny, A&M there was a sketch based around the above exchange where a scientist a cosmetic company proposed a de-aging device that would suck ‘age’ out of people making them young again. When the obvious response was made the point was made…

‘… but if it did, you’d have to admit it’d be brilliant’. Indeed it would.

Which brings me to Ruirí Ó Brádaigh. I’d said I’d write a few more words about the biography, and so I will. First, I’d still recommend it. He comes across quite sympathetically – and this is in spite of as much as because of the authors own sympathy.

It’s a fascinating read and a genuine insight into a character that was there during much of the travails of Republicanism during the later half of the century. One can only wonder what the meetings of SF and other organisations that he attended were like. To have been there with Costello, Goulding, McGuinness and so on must have been remarkable, and R Ó B seems at least somewhat aware of that.

There are a number of issues which the book glides over. It’s not entirely clear that the issue of political violence is dealt with comprehensively enough – or the contradictions between the aspirational and the achievable in real terms (for example one of the more recent jibes from dissident Republicanism is the idea that the armed campaign wasted lives of volunteers and this is an indictment of Adams and McGuinness. If so then it is also a crushing indictment of Ó B and others who must have realised by the mid-1970s that there would be no unilateral British withdrawal).

I can’t help feeling that somehow he is politically a diminished figure and not merely in the sense that RSF are completely marginalised. The project which he infused so much genuine and sincere energy has moved on to pastures new. It’s not the same. Not at all the same really, yet I can’t help but feel that there is something of an old Fenian looking on with a degree of incomprehension as the IRA supplanted the Repubican ground after 1916. Things would never be quite as they were, and the principles might actually change somewhat. Never a happy proposition.

Ed Moloney’s preface, which I critiqued some time back enlarges upon, exaggerates perhaps, but also reflects a genuine thread in the book which is the palpable tension between the old guard of R Ó B and the younger Northern based leadership. Well Seamus Costello, indeed Cathal Goulding some time earlier, could have told him about those sort of tensions. And realistically, it’s curious to see the incomprehension that developed over that issue when Ó B and others had used precisely that dynamic in the late 1960s to split away a component element of SF. In a way this is the one failing of the book, Ó B is presented as almost a naif figure – steadfast in principle but permanently let down by those around him.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness come out – well, not exactly covered in glory (incidentally there are a few entertaining bits of writing … for example on p.257 it is stated that ‘Adams… in the late 1970s, with his full beard and shoulder-length hair… looked and acted more like a hip young college professor than a wild eyed terrorist’… truth is that many many young Irishmen at that point looked exactly the same and it had no connection at all with ‘hip’ academics). But in truth it’s hard not to see this as a reading based on a flawed analysis, one which supposes that the only valid or legitimate strand of Republicanism is one that holds an almost theological adherence to the tactics and strategies developed in the 1922 to 1990s period.

I find that a most unlikely reading. I also find the idea that Ó B was a naif unconvincing. Whatever else he is and was Ó B strikes me as a remarkably shrewd individual, clearly quite likable on a personal level, but very very astute on the political.

Although… there are one or two stories which point to a certain detachment borne of a deep rooted idealism. And in addition to that a certain lack of interest in Unionism as an entity and a wish to paint it as something quite distinct from its actuality. Indeed if there is one thing that comes through very loud and clear it is an almost total lack of engagement with actually existing Unionism. The federal arrangement of Éire Nua might well be logical – by some lights (although why Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan would elect to go into a regional parliament has never really been addressed satisfactorily) – but it seemed so adrift from the political reality as to be almost pointless. I don’t want to overstate that. There were serious efforts to establish parallel networks, not unlike those of the First Dáil, but despite considerable enthusiasm they never took deep root. And a sense of genuine ‘negotiation’ and engagement seems to have been entirely lacking. This was the plan, all would have to follow it, not merely within the party, but far beyond it.

That wasn’t a viewpoint restricted to Ó B by any means, but it was symptomatic of an inability to come to terms with Ireland as it was, rather than as he and others wanted it to be.

And hence my reference to Armstrong and Miller at the start of this post.

Take this anecdote…

“In Boston, on a second trip in April (1972), Ó Brádaigh met William Craig. They were participants in a televised debate on Northern Ireland. At a reception afterward, John Hume, introduced Ó B to Craig, who offered his hand. Ó B shook it and the crowded room went quiet. After some small talk the discussion moved to politics. Ó B asked Craig what would happen if the British suddenly withdrew from the North. “Unilateral Declaration of Independence is on,” replied Craig. It was not a surprise; Craig, Paisley and others had been threatening UDI for months. What, Ó B asked, would happen if that was not feasible, if the Six Counties could not make it alone? Craig then brought up a system of regional governments ‘with the richer areas helping the poorer ones’. Although Craig saw things in a British context and Ó B saw them in an Irish context, they agreed that regional governments might work. They also agreed that there was too much violence in the north and that a civil war would be a disaster for everyone”

It continues…

“The conversation with Craig was satisfying because it suggested that some Unionists might take the Republican political initiatives seriously including Dáil Uladh”.

But how seriously? If one was seeing things in a British context and the other in an Irish context realistically they weren’t seeing anything similar at all. And there is an element of … what if this happens, and then what if that happens, and then what if the other? Each step moving to an ever more unlikely point simply in order to arrive at the pre-arranged destination.

The next sentence after the Dáil Uladh reference is even more telling. It continues…

“Unfortunately, IRA activities made continuing the dialogue highly unlikely as conditions deteriorated and some volunteers engaged in attacks that were contrary to Republican ideology”…

What is strange is the way in which Ó B can seemingly – from the evidence of the book – detach himself from the ramifications and effects of what was happening on the ground and appear oblivious to how these events impacted on his theoretical structure, a structure which was based on a frankly hypothetical series of events…

…you’d have to admit it’d be brilliant…

…it can’t work…