A past to remember

'The rulers of Southern Ireland are as keen today as rulers everywhere to play down the notion that radical, revolutionary or violent struggle can bring about change'

Gerry Adams was the guest on an edition of the Irish Late Late Show shown on Channel 4 just after the IRA ceasefire. In response to a whole set of hostile Irish politicians and journalists who kept condemning men of violence, Adams very calmly responded by pointing out that the Southern state they represented was founded on violent confrontation with the British, and that both the main political parties in Ireland, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, were themselves horn out of those who had carried arms against the British.

This fact is one the ruling class of Southern Ireland would like to forget. They are not the first ruling class to deny that revolutionary struggle had anything to do with their power or the dominance of their system.

The problem for the Irish ruling class is that their revolution was within living memory. indeed until relatively recently it was proclaimed loudly by the political establishment.

I remember in 1966 the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising against the British in 1916. There were parades and functions, widely sold postcards and ribbons, postage stamps and newspaper supplements all commemorating the event.

The president, Eamon De Valera, had taken part in the rising, and the Taoiseach (prime minister), Erskine Childers, was the son of a Republican hero shot in 1922 in the civil war that followed the war against Britain.

Now we approach the 80th anniversary, but there appears to he no fanfare, no postage stamps, no big parade. When I was a child, practically every school had on its wall a copy of the Republican proclamation read out on the steps of the Dublin Post Office by the leader of the rising. Patrick Pearse. We were taught the names of the seven signatories. We knew how the British responded with violence to this relatively bloodless attempt to seize power.

We learnt how they exacted their revenge, bombarding Dublin, executing the leaders in cold blood. We may not have been told that one of those leaders, James Connolly, was not a nationalist, but a great revolutionary socialist, but we certainly knew that the British strapped this severely wounded hero to a chair in order to shoot him.

We knew that on that Easter Sunday the notion of an independent republic had been born and that in a few short years the overwhelming majority of the country would be voting for, and a sizeable minority waging a violent armed struggle for, that birth to be officially registered.

Today's leaders want all this forgotten. They encourage patriotism, but of a specific Southern Irish sort--a nationalism which stresses pride in the nation's entrepreneurs, the high level of graduates, sporting heroes. If De Valera had Patrick Pearse, John Bruton and his immediate predecessors had Jack Charlton.

The rulers of Southern Ireland are as keen today as rulers everywhere to play down the notion that radical, revolutionary or violent struggle can bring about change. They have, though, an added pressure. For the formation of an independent Ireland came in the cruel and deformed form of partition, the setting up of a six county sectarian state in the north of the country.

Within that state a minority Catholic population was subject to disenfranchisement, discrimination and repression. For them the incomplete national revolution was a disaster, and when peaceful change proved impossible, a minority took to armed struggle.

All this is not to the liking of the Southern Irish ruling class, who, whatever their verbal commitment to Irish unity, want that unity as much as they want a hole in the head. The notion that violence played a part in the foundation of their state is something, therefore, they wish to erase from the memory in order to denounce those who wish to complete the national revolution with violence today.

So they will keep very quiet this Easter about their founding fathers, and will seek instead to prove that John Major, David Trimble, and even, given half a chance, Ian Paisley, are reasonable, honest men with whom new Ireland can live happily side by side.

Unfortunately that task will be made all the easier if the IRA insist on continuing down the road to nowhere. The problem is not violent struggle per se--Adams was right, without it the southern state wouldn't exist--but it would be a disaster to return to a never ending military campaign punctuated by disasters and human tragedy.

However to resolve that conflict today requires following the tradition of Connolly, not Pearse, requires united mass action, not individual heroics, requires the overthrow of both the Northern and Southern states, not armed action against one, and an attempt to link arms with the other. Bruton may wish to forget his country's past--we shouldn't let him--but the IRA and their supporters would do well to forget the notion that 'being Irish anyhow' is enough.

For the future of Ireland lies with its workers North and South, Catholic and Protestant, rather than trying to find some latter day Pearse amongst the Southern Irish rulers and bosses of today. For they, every bit as much as their British counterparts and good ol' Bill Clinton, are tied to a system that opposes change, abhors revolution, and opposes all forms of violence except that which protects and serves their interests.
Pat Stack