Reclaiming Republicanism

As the Soldiers of Destiny gather in Killarney for the Ard Fheis this weekend, their leader has announced that the party will reclaim the spirit of the 1916 Easter Rising and has ordered the reinstatement of the traditional parade involving the Army marching past the GPO.  It's now considered safe to be republican again.  Also there is the matter of seeing off major electoral competition from Sinn Féin.

Ahern's initiative is not without the taint of accusations of opportunism and it seems that the Department of Defence was not consulted in advance.  Nor were the Fine Gael and Labour Parties.  Does any of this matter?  Every nation celebrates its founding and it's not unusual to give expression to this in an officially sanctioned annual ceremony.  Ahern was being opportunistic in the timing of his announcement but that doesn't invalidate the notion of celebrating our founding as a republic.  I think it was a good thing that most of Ireland managed to detach itself from that jaded ancien regime state called the United Kingdom.  There is much to be said in favour of republican principles when the alternative is to be continually bemused by the worn out pageantry of a state whose power structures  until recently were largely unchanged since the settlement of the Glorious Revolution. 

Being grateful that we live in a republic does not mean that we endorse the conspiratorial methods of the Irish Republican Brotherhood whose members kept the tradition of radical separatism alive.  Still less does it mean acquiescing in the rhetoric, ideology and methods of those who have insisted that they are the sole repositories of the spirit of 1916. 

Of course the fact that the IRA has now officially ended its armed struggle against the state authorities in this island means that such ceremonies can be largely de-politicised.  The state will always try to mediate between historical memory and contemporary political exigencies.  It's interesting to compare the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Easter Rising in 1966 with the much more muted 75th anniversary in 1991.  After 1969 revisionist historians had the upper hand in revising the rising almost out of the picture and the parliamentary tradition of O'Connell, Parnell, Redmond and Dillon was given greater prominence.  But we are all post-revisionists now and a proper understanding of the fluctuating fortunes, the tensions and the overlap between radical separatism and constitutional nationalism needs to be properly developed. 

1916 obviously boosted the radical separatists, though largely as a result of the stupid way the British state tried to deal with the aftermath of the rising.  Home Rule would no longer satisfy the aspirations of a majority of Irish nationalists and the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party became associated with the practise of compromising with a British state that was prepared to be repressive to continue its domination.  Some of the remnants of the old IPP tradition after independence found a home in Fine Gael.  This strand was recently articulated by John Bruton when he questioned the War of Independence.  It was just this that led to the creation of his own party and ultimately enabled him to become Taoiseach. 

Comments

[aidanmcnamara]

I thought we became a republic in 1949. Let's celebrate a date that nobody can claim and send a portion of the defence budget to protect children from having to enter sweatshops in other republics.

[marcais]

"Also there is the matter of seeing off major electoral competition from Sinn Féin"

Not "also", this is the only reason that Fianna Fail and the PDs are courting Republicans. If Sinn Fein were not gaining ground with sound local political policy, 1916 would still be a four-letter word.