Behold – the democrat! April 28, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History.trackback
Perhaps this is just mean-spirited, but this is from Stephen Collins overview of John Redmond’s career…
On the face of it, Redmond exemplifies the dictum that all political careers end in failure. Yet for all that it is arguable that modern democratic Ireland is far closer to his political dream than it is to the messianic visions of the 1916 leaders.
Is he sure?
This from Dr Rosemary Cullen-Owens, ‘in her talk in the series, A Decade of Anniversaries 2012-2023’.
“From 1910 the Irish Parliamentary Party, under John Redmond, held the balance of power at Westminster and Home Rule seemed assured,” she said.
Dr Cullen-Owens said Redmond and British prime minister HH Asquith were against women’s suffrage. This prompted the Irish Women’s Franchise League to respond militantly, she added.
Meanwhile, Brian Hanley has been fighting the good fight in the IT letters pages on the issue of Home Rule and how the reality is a fair bit more complex than is sometimes/often presented by some.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
fair play brian
those poking around the historic ruin of the Irish Publican’s Party will find a culture of corruption that would make ray burke’s fianna fail look like an enclosed religious order by comparison.
city and county managers were instituted by cumann na ngaedhal to try and cope with the IPP corruptionn culture in local authorities.
oh and also the IPP had their own armed wing (armed only with pickaxe handles 0 who enforced redmonds line at conventions
this armed wing was led by the MP for west belfast
plus ca change?
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Indeed. The AOH were a group of overtly Catholic supremacist sectarian thugs and the IPP were typified by a web of corrupt patronage networks that often operated in place of a branch structure. The FF comparison in that regard is apt.
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Somewhat different social groups (until recently the lines began to blur), but yes, not far off the truth.
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Is Hanley on the approved historians list? I seem to remember him, defending Peter Hart and his lies.
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Tell me, are you the keeper of this “approved historians list”? What are the criteria, pray tell? I do remember when Peter Hart’s death was noted on this blog, Brian posted a couple of comments remarking that Hart was a fairly likeable guy in person and that he should only be held responsible for things which he said himself, not for the claims made by the likes of Eoghan Harris. Is this a thought crime nowadays?
Only the other day I was reading John Regan’s article about Hart and the controversy surrounding the killing of Protestants in West Cork by the IRA: he was harshly critical of Hart’s approach to the source material but said more or less the same things about him as Brian did on CLR. If this is enough to get yourself blacklisted, so be it – personally I would much rather find myself on a ‘disapproved historians list’ with Hanley and Regan than get your tick of approval.
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Yeah, I was mystified by RW’s comment as well. Historical criticism and the poltically-inspired anti-Irish republican campaign know as ‘revisionism’ are two very different beasts, and Regan and Hanley belong to the first, not the second, in my opinion.
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I don’t believe Brian Hanley has ‘defended’ Peter Hart. It’s exactly as Ed said, that the waters had been muddied by the likes of EH, but that Hart while erring had done some good research even if the conclusions (and a few stops along the way) were problematic.
I like Regan too.
But, even if their BH and Regan’s view is very much one I’d share I’m very much agin approved lists too.
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but that Hart while erring had done some good research even if the conclusions (and a few stops along the way) were problematic.
This is something I can’t agree with at all, I’m afraid. Hart was a fraudster, pure and simple.
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He’s not ‘a fraudster pure and simple.’ There’s a lot of very interesting stuff in his Cork IRA book, it’s by far the best book on the subject. I’m far from a revisionist, when I wrote my own book one of my aims was to combat the narrowly anti-republican viewpoint of most books written about Ireland in the seventies and eighties. But, with respect EWI because I often agree with you on things, this stuff of damning people’s work completely because you disagree with them politically is a dead end.
Roy Foster is a revisionist who I would have nothing in common with politically. Tim Pat Coogan is a republican who I’d agree with on most things. But the first wrote better books because he was a better writer. It’s up to the reader to be sufficiently informed to know when political bias is coming in to the equation.
Personally I find ATQ Stewart’s unionist triumphalism, for example, to be well nigh on unbearable but it’s worth reading The Narrow Ground just to get an articulate and interesting presentation of his side’s viewpoint. If we read nothing but stuff we find politically congenial we end up like those American right-wingers who watch nothing but Fox News.
Anyone interested in the period, republicans included, would find Hart’s book extremely interesting, even if there is one section they should perhaps take under advisement. It beats the pants off reading My Fight For Irish Freedom and and the like.
I would personally disagree with all that ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ stuff written about the Dunmanway killings. But I’d agree with Brian Hanley that Hart’s name has largely been dragged through the mud because he found his work being used by others in an ancient and tedious mudslinging battle.
I remember reading the book when it came out and never suspecting that Hart would end up being portrayed as some kind of Kevin Myers figure. I’d hope anyone commenting on it has read the whole book and not just the various defences of and attacks on it on the web and in other places.
‘Approved Historians.’ That’s the kind of guff which gives any cause a bad name. Perhaps RW was joking, I hope so.
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I think that’s a crucial point you raise. We can’t just box ourselves into our own approved historians list and ignore the stuff outside. I’m no fan at all of Foster politically, but I’d fully agree about his writing, and I’d go further and say that it’s essential to read what he writes because it’s valid history – albeit with a political bias. It doesn’t make him right and all others wrong, or vice versa. Interpretation is up for debate, but even as an exercise it’s important to get to grips with revisionism and indeed all after becuase revisionism is getting very long in the tooth at this stage.
There are many potential reasons why some (note some) of Hart’s research went off the rails – which to be honest I’m not best placed to discuss, but he did good work in most else and that latter can be used to good effect.
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For me, the best bit of Peter’s work (and I used to know him very vaguely) was the work on social networks and their role in recruiting people to the republican army. Also (I think I’ve said this before), his paper showing that areas of the country that had a militant Land League movement during the Land War often saw the least IRA mobilisation a generation later. If the Irish Times reading classes wanted an historical alternative to the revolution we actually had, instead of misrepresenting the Home Rule party they could think about that. That would prevent them from drooling over landlord’s mansions of course.
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“If we read nothing but stuff we find politically congenial we end up like those American right-wingers who watch nothing but Fox News.”
You don’t have to go to America to find people who only get their news from one source / one viewpoint.
Having said that, I agree with you. It’s important to read books on history/politics/current events by people whose world-view you don’t share. Indeed, I come to this web site for just that reason: to be challenged, to be forced to consider other views, to be annoyed [ 🙂 ]
The worst part about reading these other viewpoints is that unlike when I was 20 I find I remember very little of what I read these days. I’m not sure if that’s due to age or the ‘interneticization’ of my brain. I fear the latter.
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@ EamonnCork
I agree with you on just about everything else, but this:
But I’d agree with Brian Hanley that Hart’s name has largely been dragged through the mud because he found his work being used by others in an ancient and tedious mudslinging battle
Not so, with all respect. His numerous and vital academic ‘mistakes’ were all in the same direction, any attempts to quiz him on this were met with obfuscation and lies (see the TG4 documentary) and he seemed *very* content to allow Harris et al draw the conclusions they did. My conclusion is that he was a professional contrarian who didn’t give a shit, so long as it furthered his career.
I’m sorry to say this, because I know that there are people here who knew and liked him personally.
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The Irish Times employee responsible for organising their flank of the “Decade of Anniversaries” FG/Indo/IT/RTÉ offensive managed to not mention 1916 once in a lengthy op-ed about the events to be commemeorated, the other day in the paper.
This should tell you what’s really going on here – the Phoenix is evidently correct that they mean to bury something so subversive beneath a deluge of promoting other anniversaries, no matter how trivial or irrelevant. If FF really want to find something to rally around, it’ll be fighting this deluge of BS. I’m not holding my breath, though.
p.s. I see in another thread that Bartley has demanded a reference on my figures about increments in the state sector. I’ll have a dig around for where I found them.
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Redmond was fully on board the British Empire project (the IPP just wanted a bigger slice) and endorsed a stupid pointless slaughter between this empire and a bunch of others, over purely sectarian differences.
Some ‘democrat’.
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Also, the major business of a Home Rule administration would have been to provide sinecures for the idiot sons of the upper-middle classes. It would have been a solution to neither the social question or the national question – and it would probably not have stopped the emergence of a mass physical force movement of some sort or another.
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@dr x
you have hit part of the nail on the head- maybe not idiot sons, but the clongownians and belvedere boys were lining themselves up as the home rule government in waiting.
They were in for a rude shock when the christian brothers boys beat them to it.
as to whether a physical force movement would have emerged-
the example of the UVF pushed things along – hence eoin Mac Neill’s article ‘the north began’
if you read desmond fitzgeralds memoir of the rising he writes that one of the forces propelling the rising was the belief that if nothing was done the tide of assimilation and anglicisation would be unstoppable.
so the architects of 1916 did not believe a physical force turn was inevitable
approved historians list? hmm
sounds like something from the china of the (deranged) great helmsman
hart was a concientious researcher – perhaps a bit sloppy with the sources and with a penchant for prissy moralising.
a more active and diligent thesis supervisor might have cured him of these habits
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My guess is that a Home Rule regime would have chuntered along until, say, 1968 or 1969 – when demonstrations and mass actions by those not allowed to stick their snouts in the trough would have started a cycle of general mayhem.
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Interesting. Though the stresses of WWII might have brought it down. Do you mean one with partition? And do you think there would have been eventually unity if so betwen the two parts of the island under a single parliament?
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Hmmm. Stresses of World War II? Maybe. Or the lack of full sovereignty might have left the state more exposed to the effects of the depression. . . maybe we would have had a Rising of 1932, which was crushed with the killing of Collins and Devalera at Beal Na Blath, inspiring future generations of radicals.
Has anyone ever done a comparison of Irish and Quebecois nationalism? I mean, there’s a lot of parallels – radicaliisalation via anti-conscription campaigns, an alliance between Church and Official Nationalism, and in the late ’60s (in our timeline, I mean) the emergence of a violent revolutionary movement.
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I’ve never heard of one, but it’s a great idea. Yep, it’s interesting to consider how it all would have worked. The thing is that almost inevitably advanced nationalists would have developed, even in the absence of 1916 and they would have put pressure on a HR parliament from within. Could that have been contained? And I’d wonder would partition have been a running sore throughout? I always think the Collin’s of the world underestimate how HR might have been seen as the most realisable option available at a given moment, but not the overall best possible option ie. independence would still have been the long term or even medium term goal even at the height of HR but people were willing to accomodate to it to achieve a measure of success (something perhaps echoed six or so years later with the Treaty). Perhaps I’m overstating things.
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as well as down playing the 1916 rising we could also trow the curragh mutiny in to it. that would be an interesting what if the papers of record don’t discuss.
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Just in from my monthly meeting at the lodge of approved historians! (I’m sure the Peter Hart discussion will arise again so I’ll leave it for the minute.)
I think it’s a mistake to see the Home Rule party through the prism of Redmond’s policies in 1914 and especially through Stephen Collins and John Bruton’s tunnel vision. At local level the party contained wings with links to labour, land agitation and particularly an affinity with the Fenian era. (Michael Davitt was a Home Rule MP remember). There were also marked regional differences in how the Home Rulers operated. That’s not the whole story of course but most nationalists I would suggest, did not see Home Rule as accepting limited self-government within the empire. For a lot of them it meant the ‘undoing of the conquest’ and all that went with it: which of course meant different things to different people.
Two really good books, unfortunately expensive:
Fergal McCluskey, ‘Fenians and Ribbonmen’ about nationalist politics in Tyrone.
Michael Wheatley, ‘Nationalism and the Irish Party’ about the Home Rule movement from Westmeath across to Sligo.
A good general survey of the various nationalist and republican currents prior to independence is Patrick Maume’s ‘The Long Gestation.’
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I just picked up McCluskey’s work for forty bucks on Amazon. Still pricey but much better than the jaw dropping cover price.
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Eoghan Harris has a piece discussing a collection of essays dedicated to the memory of Peter Hart.
http://lilliputpress.ie/book/144232480/david_fitzpatrick-terror_in_ireland_1916-1923.html
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/peace-means-casting-a-cool-eye-on-past-atrocities-3095054.html
The blurb on Amazon lists some of the authors, including Brian Hanley, and says that it discusses the use of terror by republican and government forces. If Brian or anyone could let us know if there’s anything on the north and the use of terror there by unionist forces, I’d be interested to hear.
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I think from the ideological point of view the concentration on Redmond and Home Rule by certain members of the elite is actually deeply damning of them and their politics. It seems nothing more than a celebration of mediocrity.
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Are there any other cases of a national bourgeoisie who deny the legitimacy of their own state?
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not really but I think also very many outside the uppers deny the legitimacy of the state. As a republican minded person I would feel much sympathy for that. I suppose little surprise then that it exists in the other end of the spectrum.
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I’d agree with Que. I feel I owe the state very little if any allegiance to be honest. The state which presided over the industrial schools, orphanages and Magdalen Laundries and the world’s most draconian censorship regime and was ever willing to see people emigrate and live in poverty wasn’t worth a tuppenny damn most of the time. It was better than remaining part of the Empire, but you can’t say much more in its favour.
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The level of bending over backwards is extraordinary and that’s why Brian’s letter to the Irish Times is such a good one. I mean, “The Irish Party were against violence, oh except for the most meaningless example of mass slaughter in history,” is one silly argument.
Seamus Deane wrote a good piece at one stage on how the very people who were quickest to denounce the ‘sentimental necrophilia’ of Irish Republicanism were the keenest to see the commemoration of the First World War.
There may be a case for ‘parity of esteem’ for the victims, not least because many of the people who volunteered did so in the belief that they were furthering Irish chances for home rule, not because they loved the Union. Who knows how many of the men who died might have followed the example of returned veteran Tom Barry had they survived?
But the pendulum seems to have swung so far that Myers and his ilk are close to suggesting that there was something glorious about the First World War, something I thought nobody has believed since Owen, Sassoon etc. gave their testimony on the appalling nature of the whole thing. Apologists for General Haig and the boys are in position to be complaining about the ‘militaristic’ nature of Irish republicanism. But they do so all the same.
Dr. X’s question is a good one. They’re a very ungrateful national bourgeoisie because they’ve done better than anyone else out of said state. I don’t see how a state founded by Redmond could have been any more right wing, disappointing and confessional than the one we eventually ended up with.
You can understand David Cameron and the likes ramping up the level of commemoration for the First World War because they’re keen to link it in with the current pointless conflict being engaged in by The British Army. Why this country would want to follow their lead escapes me. But then logic fled this argument a long time ago. What we’re largely left with is various axe grinders who view all these questions as opportunities to prove that they were right back in 1976. Back then the only TD from any of the main parties to take part in the Rising Anniversary events was the late David Thornley, who lost the Labour whip as a result. At least it won’t be that bad this time.
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While we’re on the history tip. Can anyone recommend a good broad narrative history of Europe in the eighteenth century? Something along the lines of Eric Hobsbawm’s trilogy which begins in 1789.
Also, what’s the best book on the Wild Geese.I remember my father having one when I was a kid which I think might be the one by one of the Cognac Hennessys that’s very hard to get. Are there others?
Thanks, I never got a bad tip on this site yet.
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George Rudé, who was a good friend and comrade of Hobsbawm’s (they co-authored a book together), has a history of 18th century Europe called “European in the 18th century – aristocracy and the bourgeois challenge”. I must admit that I picked it up second hand in Chapters about a year ago and it’s since been part of the ‘will get around to that in due course’ pile, but it’s said to be very good.
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I was going to suggest Rudé too. It is very good. Though about 40 years old by now.
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Is that the Seamus Deane who wrote the introduction to the copy of Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man that I happen to have out of the library? As a matter of coincidence i’ve been meaning to mention that on an Open Thread….
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It’s the same Seamus Deane. Fine novel that.
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As it happens the passage that is troubling me can be viewed on Amazon by entering Gissing as a search term to look inside this edition.
Looking at the long paragraph beginning “Dublin in Joyce’s writing” and ending “a place that is named”, my question is – what the fuck is Professor Deane trying to say?
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A question, ejh, I suspect you will not be the last to ask having drawn that to people’s attention.
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In the name of God. Perhaps the best paraphrase is, “Dublin in Joyce isn’t like London in Dickens. It’s not, so it’s not. Can I give a big shout out to Paul De Man and Roland Barthes and anyone else out there who knows me.”
Deane’s Reading In The Dark is a very good novel and has absolutely no sentences like those ones.
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There isn’t a specific essay on that subject Garibaldy, though I do reference the lack of much work on that subject at all in my chapter (which cruelly and to my devastation Eoghan Harris does not list as one of his favourites in the book). One of the best things I have read on the early 20’s in Belfast recently was Tim Wilson’s article ‘The most terrible assassination that has yet stained the name of Belfast: the McMahon murders in context’ in Irish Historical Studies (May, 2010). Unfortunately again not very available outside libraries and subscriptions.
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Thanks for that Brian. It’s interesting and a bit surprising that a book like this can lack a chapter on the north while being promoted as taking a wide (and by implication non-judgemental) view of the subject of terror in Ireland in the period. It must remain peripheral in many people’s minds.
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Thanks for the tip on George Rude. Looks like just what I was looking for. Interesting guy who to my shame I’d never heard of. The book on the Australian transportations looks like it might be worth a punt too.
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That peripherality (if that’s a real word?) does my head in – it’s almost as if a rigid duality has been set in place, at least from a southern perspective: 26 counties = War of Independence, 6 counties = pogrom and here be sectarian monsters so don’t even go there.
Only last week, History Ireland had one of their hedge schools in Cavan, on the subject of “Four glorious years or squalid sectarian conflict (The North)?”, one of a series of such sessions they’ve run around the country. One of the speakers was Fearghall McGarry from Queens, who pretty much dismissed anything that happened north of the border counties, saying the northern IRA was detached from the War of Independence.
I’d argue the direct opposite – it was the fact that, as late as May 1922, the northern IRA were still trying to fight the War of Independence, long after their southern counterparts had stopped with the signing of the Truce and the Treaty, that made them problematic for the fledgling Free State.
Just to add to Brian’s point about books on loyalist violence, Michael Farrell’s “Arming the Protestants” was pretty good, though I think it’s out of print now.
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I don’t think it’s conscious necessarily, just that a lot of people down below never really think about the north, and that feeds into the way they think about history.
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“the lack of much work on that subject”
(a) I’m telling on you to Jimmy!
(b) Yet 😉
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I meant on Loyalist/state violence specifically not on the IRA or republicans- who have been well served by Jim McDermott’s Northern Divisions, Robert Lynch’s book and I believe a forthcoming work on the story of one Belfast IRA officer! Sorry Doctor Nightdub : )
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Sorry I’m replying to Garibaldy’s question above.
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Hobsbawm has an entertainingly equivocal farewell to Tony Judt in the latest LRB, apparently a funeral tribute: one wonders what he would have written if he’d set out to be critical.
BTW the obvious level of historical knowledge, and interest in the subject, among contributors to this site makes me wonder what people think of the lamentable downgrading of history in the proposed new ‘ improved’ Junior Cert. Lack of emphasis on history seems to me an intrinsically right-wing phenomenon. I don’t just mean that class time currently devoted to history will be given over to subjects more ‘useful’ in the ‘world of work’, but also there’s the implication that there’s no point rehashing the struggles for independence, civil rights and all that atavistic stuff when we need to focus on technology and science, going forward.
‘Going forward’, indeed.
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Thanks a lot for that croc. Most entertaining. Hobsbawm continues to produce great stuff in various different forms.
As for history. The British right, and Michael Gove in particular, is taking the opposite attitude to the one you are talking about, and is seeking to make history more important in schools. The Daily Telegraph has had a few stories on it recently, including one on this report which makes for amusing reading. 1169 it seems is an unimportant date in English history, with Ireland only coming into view about 1640 I think, though I may be misremembering. I think the Tories see it as a means of combating multi-culturalism and the breakdown of a simplistic national identity.
http://www.politeia.co.uk/tombs/lessons-history-freedom-aspiration-and-new-curriculum
In northern schools there is a common history curriculum, which extends now as far as the civil rights movement and maybe into the early troubles. Doubtless makes for some interesting classes. I don’t know about others, but I got what you might call the story of Ireland at school, and I don’t see the harm in giving people that type of knowledge as long as you avoid what the British (and indeed the French) right are trying to do, and turn it into a hymn to imperialism and aggressive nationalism.
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Be careful what you wish for: you might get a JC History syllabus made up of Redmondite glorification of the First World War.
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Wouldn’t that fall under the hymn to imperialism and aggressive nationalism category? Not if you’re Kevin Myers, obviously, but for anyone with any sense.
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The danger to history in the JC seems to be that it won’t be a subject at all, but a bunch of modules mixed up with all kinds of bits of other subjects and called something like Social and Cultural Education. As far as teenagers are concerned, once something is not a ‘real’ subject ( hi, there, SPHE and CSPE) it can be safely ignored.
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You’re assuming that the people who would decide what gets taught have sense …
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Fair point Michael.
Croc,
It would be amazing to see it get cut as a subject given the popularity of history on TV, in bookshops etc. But I wouldn’t put it past them.
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You may, or may not, be interested in my experience of history teaching in UK schools. My lads were taught history to GCSE level. Some of it seemed great and very different from my day e.g. stuff about sources of historical information, primary and secondary and how you might evaluate them. The actual “history” though was very bitty, they learnt about particular periods in some detail but there was no real overview of British/English/UK history, let alone world history, so they still struggle to put things in context e.g. when were the Romans compared to knights in armour! My very old fashioned history classes to age 16 was all narrative (and pretty orthodox conservative imperialist) and no critique. Maybe you need both?
At 14/15 in the UK system you choose your GCSE (O level in my day) = JC subjects. I chose science so dropped history, which I liked, so I took a one year Social and Economic History (of the UK) O level. It was fantastic for me! Really opened my eyes (I was already a bit radical) about the class struggle – you just couldn’t deny it, it stared you in the face. Of course they didn’t want you to see it that way and it fizzled out in the 20th century (the syllabus that is) with everything apparently sorted out and no more conflict! Tons more interesting than kings & queens.
Back in the day Ireland was not mentioned in the UK history I studied at school. Even though the civil rights campaign had just started. The English population knew nothing about Ireland. I remmeber lesson on Elizabeth I though, where there was brief mention of Ireland (I was about 12-13, and the sneaky Irish were collaborting with England’s enemies, teh Spanish Papists) and that is when I suppose I first thought “I don’t agree with the teacher – there is another side to this”.
One of my lads did do the “recent” Troubles at school. Wasn’t bad actually, mostky about civil rights, and he did Irish Nationalism of the 19th and 20th century as part of his history A level. Again, not bad, very interesting. But again, no real context as they didn’t really learn about previous events that much or had an overview of Irish history.
A bit rambling I’m afraid.
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Fergus, far from being rambling it’s really interesting. My gran and mother were both from Birmingham and said much the same, that English people had very very little sense of Irish history, if any. That said there’s a parallel dynamic, albeit less pronounced that it took me years after leaving school to get a handle on UK history. The interaction was well covered, ie Britain in Ireland, but Britain itself not so much.
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Situtation summarized here by Daire O’Briain:
from 4:30
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