Authors: Gabriel Doherty
Fianna Fáil did dominate the anniversary but this was in a large measure due to a lack of initiative on the part of the opposition leaders. Few ideas seem to have come from them other than how to lambaste Fianna Fáil. The Labour party, for example, accused Fianna Fáil of exploiting the commemorations for party-political purposes. Lemass’ party did have impressive connections with the Rising but the policy was not to exploit this fact in an overt way. A letter written by Lemass to the Minister for Defence (Aiken) a month before the jubilee events gives a clear indication of the party’s stance:
As a matter of general policy I have been most anxious to prevent any possibility of an allegation that the ceremonies were being exploited by us for party advantage, or for personal advantage of a political kind. For this reason all local committees were discouraged from seeking the attendance of ministers at their parades, and I said I would ask a minister to attend only where the desire to have one was unanimous. In such cases I have nominated ministers who have no connection with the constituency concerned.
93
In his capacity as President of Ireland, the former leader of Fianna Fáil, Éamon de Valera, carried out his role impressively throughout the ceremonies. As we have seen, his speeches and activities during the jubilee were generally of a conciliatory tone. It was only in his final speech during the last ceremony of the week-long activities, when he referred to his hope
for an all-Ireland parliament in the near future, that some controversy was aroused. The
Irish Times
commented mildly afterwards on de Valera’s ‘over-simplification’ of the issue.
94
On the following day Terence O’Neill made a statement reminding unionists that the north and the south were ‘poles apart’ politically, socially and economically and ‘totally rejected’ de Valera’s proposal.
95
Sinn Féin also quickly issued a statement firmly rejecting his approach on the grounds that ‘if it were done it would still be possible for a pro-British regime to operate its vicious system of gerrymandering in elections, discrimination in jobs and housing and the whole elaborate system operated to keep an ascendancy element in control.’
96
Regardless of such criticisms de Valera had remained clear and consistent in his aspirations to a united Ireland. Similarly, Seán Lemass’ views on partition were unambiguous; while accepting the reality of partition he repeatedly stated that unification was a key aspiration of his government. Lemass was also consistent in his aims for the jubilee. He was determined to ensure a fitting commemoration of the 1916 rebellion. Republicans were given no opportunity to monopolise the 1916 legacy within the Irish state. The prospect of such an occurrence could have had dangerous implications. It is interesting to consider what might have happened had Lemass taken a minimalist approach to the commemorations. Nationalist feeling was very evident in this period and republican-dominated events staged by a new and radical organisation could have had a powerful effect on Irish society.
Through careful planning, however, and with an obvious dedication to its job, the events organised by the state-sponsored Coiste Cuimhneachán won popular approval, indeed acclaim. As a result the golden jubilee of the 1916 Rising was not, contra Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘the greatest orgy ever of the cult of the Rising’ (though it could have been) but a sincere, meaningful, and well-organised commemoration with considerable educational potential for anyone with an interest in the 1916 Rising – a complex but intriguing and vital event in twentieth century Irish history. The scale of the commemoration in 1966 is unlikely ever to be equalled, nor the level and quality of historical scholarship produced at the time to be exceeded. The high level of nationalist feeling in the period was generally harnessed in a very positive fashion, whereas republican militant sentiment was effectively curtailed. With much state ceremony the ‘ghost’ of 1916 was laid to rest in a dignified and respectful tribute. It was now time to move on.
I
NTRODUCTION
‘Enjoy the conference, and the rows it will surely rise.’ Thus concluded the scripted remarks of President Mary McAleese at the end of her opening address, on the evening of Friday 28 January 2006, to the conference ‘The long revolution: the 1916 Rising in context’. She then added, in an off-the-cuff remark, ‘I think I may have started a few myself.’
She certainly had. The forthright nature of her speech, with its unapologetic defence of the Rising, galvanised a debate on its significance, and the appropriate manner of its commemoration, that had been slowly gathering momentum for some time. Over the following months, up to Easter weekend itself (15–17 April) this debate broadened rapidly to encompass all media forms (real and virtual). In so doing it touched on a wide range of contentious issues, both historiographical and political. It was, without doubt, the most engaged public discussion of modern Irish history for many years – at least since the release of the feature film
Michael Collins
a decade earlier, and possibly since the much discussed (and widely misinterpreted) fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the Rising. Moreover, no sooner had these particular embers of Easter started to cool than the debate flared back into life, inspired by the critical and commercial success of another film,
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
,
set in west Cork during the revolutionary period and winner of the Palme d’Or for best film at the Cannes film festival in May.
The aim of this paper is to document and assess this debate. To this end it is organised into three parts. The first considers some of the factors that explain why this ninetieth (and thus rather unorthodox) anniversary
was the occasion for such interest; the second seeks to chronicle the varied forms taken by the debate (with particular emphasis on coverage in the national newspapers); while the third contains an assessment of some of the principal historiographical points of this extended ‘national conversation’ (to borrow a phrase used by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the course of a speech, itself controversial, delivered when opening an exhibition on the Rising at the National Museum).
1
Quite clearly such an assessment, undertaken so soon after the event and before the dust of argument has completely settled, labours under the same liabilities that beset all efforts at ‘instant history’. By the same token, however, it is hoped that the summation will convey to readers the immediate atmosphere of the debate and provide pointers for more considered assessments in future.
F
ACTORS BEHIND THE COMMEMORATION
One of the most important, but least discussed, reasons for the protracted public deliberations over 1916 in the year of its ninetieth anniversary was the fact that large quantities of original source material relating to the Rising had only recently been made available to academic researchers and the general public. Without doubt the single most significant example of such material came in the form of the holdings of the Bureau of Military History, housed in the Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin (with duplicates of the collection also available at the National Archives). This collection, which was gathered together in the decade following the establishment of the Bureau in 1947 by the Minister for Defence Oscar Traynor, aimed ‘to assemble and co-ordinate material to form the basis for the compilation of the history of the movement for independence’ from the formation of Volunteers in November 1913 to the ceasefire in the Anglo-Irish war in July 1921.
2
The backbone of the collection was over 1,700 written testimonies (‘Witness Statements’) from surviving members of the republican movement of the period (from all parts of the country and of varying degrees of seniority), who recounted their experiences of political and military developments of the time. These were augmented by large quantities of contemporary documents and more limited collections of photographs, voice recordings and press cuttings. While individual elements of the collection had previously been made available (primarily to relatives of those interviewed), the decision, announced in 2002, to open the collection to the general public gave a fillip to researchers of the period,
the first fruits of whose labours could be seen in many of the academic works that have appeared in the last year or two.
3
In addition to these historiographical developments, two other long-term factors both facilitated and influenced the debate about the Rising. The first was the phenomenon of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, that is, the transformation of the Irish economy, from the mid-1990s onwards, into one of the most successful in Europe. Falling levels of unemployment, double digit growth figures, reduced levels of national debt, low inflation, record job creation, and unprecedented levels of inward migration, all contributed to the creation of a sense of confidence, pride even, in the national economy which was unthinkable only a decade before. While there is as yet no consensus on the precise causes, extent, ramifications and distribution of this new-found prosperity, it undoubtedly has helped to ameliorate in the public mind many of the criticisms of the performance of independent Ireland, both economically and otherwise. To the extent that the Easter Rising was a catalyst for this independence, such a benign contemporary economic environment undoubtedly formed a more favourable context for the 2006 commemoration than had been the case, for example, for the seventy fifth anniversary in 1991.
4
The principal cause of the muted commemoration of the Rising on this latter occasion was not, however, the depressed state of the Irish economy, but the anguish – indeed shame – felt by many regarding the violence in Northern Ireland, which at that time gave little public sign of abating. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that there were, even then, straws of hope in the political wind that presaged the subsequent peace process. Among the other elements of the ‘peace dividend’ that flowed from this process (which included the final decommissioning of the weaponry of the Provisional IRA in late 2005) there emerged both an opportunity and a determination to re-assess the Rising more thoroughly in its own right and with less regard to the identification of the event with the Provisional movement.
5
This identification had been championed by revisionist historians from the 1970s onwards and, ironically, was embraced by that movement as part of its rhetorical and ideological arsenal. This re-assessment was interpreted by some merely as a crude and transparent effort by Fianna Fáil to challenge Provisional Sinn Féin for the republican constituency in the upcoming general election.
6
More subtly it offered all political parties the opportunity to re-assess their pedigrees in light of the aims of the revolutionary generation.
7
While this ‘northern’ dimension certainly had a bearing on the commemorative process (most notably in the days
following the riot in Dublin city centre on Saturday 25 February, which prevented the ‘Love Ulster’ march from proceeding as arranged down O’Connell Street), it failed to eclipse the 2006 event as had been the case fifteen years earlier.
8
There were two other developments in the winter of 2005–6 that ensured that the ninetieth commemoration of the Rising would be the object of intense public interest. The first was the announcement, by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in the course of his address to the Fianna Fáil árd fheis on the evening of Friday 21 October 2005, that the anniversary would be marked by a military parade – the first such parade since the early 1970s.
9
In the short-term this announcement was over-shadowed both by the death of the controversial former Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor in a Moscow car crash (news of which began to filter back to Dublin on the morning after Ahern’s speech) and by the publication in the week following the árd fheis of the ‘Ferns report’.
10
After Christmas, however, and most especially in the run-up to the weekend of the parade itself the decision was the subject of concerted media attention.
Two questions formed the core of this discussion. First, whether the Taoiseach, by announcing the parade at a party political event, had compromised its function as a symbol of national unity and pride; and second, whether a military parade was the most appropriate manner in which this national pride could be expressed. Both points are considered below. One of the more interesting aspects of this latter issue was the explicit manner in which the Taoiseach, in his address, went out of his way to identify the Irish army as ‘the only legitimate army of the Irish people’, ‘the true successors of the Volunteers’ who participated in the Rising who thus alone had the right to style themselves Óglaigh na hÉireann – thereby, of course, both repudiating the claim of the Provisional IRA to be the linear descendants of the Volunteer movement in its 1916–21 incarnation, and challenging the broader Provisional movement’s proprietorial attitude towards the Rising.
Such developments – the availability of new source material, the impact of economic prosperity, the peace process, and the reinstatement of a military parade – would, on their own, have been sufficient to ensure that the ninetieth anniversary of the Rising would be marked in a manner not seen for some years. As indicated above, however, it was the speech by President McAleese at the end of January, and the wide exposure it received (primarily as a result of being reproduced in full in, and the lead story of, the following morning’s
Irish Times
)
11
that transformed what might otherwise
have remained a rather elitist debate into a national colloquium that was prolonged, extensive and searching – the principal aspects of which form the remainder of this paper.