Tales and truths of the Troubles
Paul Bew
THE GPO AND THE EASTER RISING by Keith Jeffery Irish Academic Press, £50, £19.95, pp. 227, ISBN X0716528282 MYTHS AND MEMORIES OF THE EASTER RISING by Jonathan Githens-Mazer Irish Academic Press, £50, pp. 238, ISBN 071652824X THE ANGLO-IRISH WAR: THE TROUBLES OF 1913-22 by Peter Cottrell Osprey, £9.99, pp. 95, ISBN 1846030234 The commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916 is turning out to be an ideologically fraught affair. The Irish government of Bertie Ahern decided on a full military parade: the intention was simple and limited — to pre-empt any attempt Sinn Fein might make to exploit and take over the patriotic ‘moment’. So far, so good. But then the President of the Republic, Mary McAleese, weighed in with an original and controversial speech at a Cork conference. The Rising, it appeared, was required to smash the ‘glass ceiling’ for Catholics in Ireland: in fact the peculiarity of the Rising is that it was in large measure a revolt against those Catholics who had already gone through the glass ceiling. The result was an intensification rather than a relaxation of traditional animosities and a renewed cult of the gun — not yet extinguished, as the recent brutal murder of Denis Donaldson reminds us. The Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, insisted that we ‘can no longer have two histories, separate and in conflict’. But everything about the 90th anniversary celebrations confirmed such an opposition. Ulster Unionists of all shades turned down their invitation to attend the commemoration in Dublin why should they respect a violent assault on the symbols and political arrangements which they held dear? The mob violence in Dublin which met the ‘Love Ulster’ march of victims of the ‘Troubles’ in February seemed to suggest that, for all the talk about pluralism and tolerance, Ireland was stuck in the same old place: two histories, separate and in conflict.
Such an impasse gives a particular importance to the books under review. Jonathan Githens-Mazer’s clever and serious book argues that the Rising acted as a ‘cultural trigger’ which invited many in Ireland to tap into the pre-existing myths and symbols of a long-suffering IrishCatholic Irish-nation. He points out that the Catholic Church itself untypically did not act as a force for stability in the aftermath of the rebellion. He might have clinched this more effectively by drawing on Patrick Maume’s scholarly work rather neglected here — which has pointed out that not only did the previously secular Marxist commandant of the Rising, James Connolly, make his peace with the Church before his execution by the British, but he asked (successfully) his Protestant wife, Lily, to convert to Catholicism. It is no accident that the most politically important piece in Keith Jeffery’s excellent col lection of contemporary accounts is Father John Flanagan’s ‘priest’s tale’: based at the pro-cathedral in Marlborough Street, Flanagan became unofficial chaplain to the rebel garrison in Dublin. His account hails their stoicism, their discipline, their temperance, but, above all, their Catholicism. The O’Rahilly’s last moments are powerfully described:
When the word of command came for the charge into Henry Street, he turned to me, and, kneeling down, asked me for a Last Absolution and my blessing. ‘Father,’ said he, ‘we shall never meet again in this world.’ Then he calmly and courageously took his place at the head of his men.
There are a number of slips in Githens-Mazer’s book — Frank Healy was not Tim Healy’s brother but his cousin; ‘nobility’ appears for ‘mobility’ and ‘interment’ for ‘internment’. What does he mean by the amazing suggestion that in ‘the run-up to the Easter Rising of 1916, the British state had tried to suppress the practice of Roman Catholicism?’ But it is difficult to argue with his central thesis.
Peter Cottrell’s The Anglo-Irish War places these events in a broader perspective. For all the retrospective legitimation subsequently conferred on the Rising Sinn Fein decisively won the election of 1918 — it nonetheless opened up the road to a massive onslaught of Irishman on Irishman in Ireland between 1916 and 1923. It is this dimension — occluded by the phrase ‘Anglo-Irish war’ — which explains why the legacy of the Easter Rising was such a tricky one. Cottrell claims that of the 122 people executed by the IRA in Cork as British spies, only 38 actively were: most were executed because of what they represented (the small Protestant community), for example, rather than what they had actually done. This is still a bitterly contested claim, and many in Ireland prefer to remain in denial about the whole issue.
Cottrell’s book — which tends to be good on the military side of things and less strong on the political complexities — contains many dramatic photographs, including the Union Jack-draped coffin at the funeral in Glasnevin of District Inspector James Brady in Dublin, 1920. He might usefully have discussed the significance of Brady’s assassination by the IRA. Brady, a 22-year-old former Irish Guards officer, was killed by expanding ‘dum-dum’ bullets: infuriated, his police colleagues went on a rampage of reprisals against property in Tubercurry, which further alienated the local population from the British forces. The Chief Secretary, Hamar Greenwood, declared impotently:
I have a right to complain of reprisals, because I am responsible for the discipline of the Irish constabulary — but those men who supported the murder of DI Brady have no right to complain of reprisals.
But the interesting symbolic point is that Brady was the nephew of a Redmondite nationalist MP, P. J. Brady, who lost his Dublin seat to Sinn Fein in 1918. The Brady family, excellent Catholic nationalists of the old school, were politically and physically annihilated by Sinn Fein and the IRA, utilising a more militant variant in what in broad terms is the same Irish national story. It is the unease caused by these memories which explains the tetchy tone of the anniversary commemorations in Dublin.
The Redmondites by 1916 believed the northern problem should be solved by the principle of consent. They believed that once home rule was granted, the debt owed to history by Britain had been paid and could be replaced by a close, friendly relationship of equals. These are the policies of modern Ireland. That is why the British ambassador will be the honoured guest at this year’s commemoration. By what right does Ireland celebrate the destruction of the Redmondites — the British empire long survived 1916, as did the Ulster Unionists — while we practise the triumph of their political values?
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