Unhappy the Land by Kennedy Liam;

Author:Kennedy, Liam; [Kennedy, Liam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785370472
Publisher: Merrion Press
Published: 2015-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

The Joyful Mysteries of Rebellion

The claim to sovereignty is rooted in history and asserted in arms, according to the Proclamation. The rosary beads of rebellion – 1641, 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1916 – gives a simplified anatomy of Irish political history, with a teleological thrust that sees the Easter Rising as the inevitable outcome of centuries of resistance.60 In none of these instances can it be truly said that the ‘Irish people’ were asserting national rights and the degree of participation and sympathy for these risings varied across space and time. The valorisation of taking up arms – almost as if it was an end in itself – is given emphasis through repetition. The sense of continuity is also questionable: the Fenian brotherhood bore little relationship to the United Irishmen of the 1790s, not least in the sense that only one ethnic category was now involved. The Fenians were almost exclusively Catholic and nationalist, whereas the United Irishmen had brought together, albeit sometimes in uneasy alliance, Presbyterians and Catholics, and even some Anglicans. The strangest inclusion, however, is the 1641 rising, given that it was ostensibly in support of the autocratic Stuart monarchy and that it inaugurated a sectarian bloodbath in Ulster.61 This was a less than reassuring historical precedent for a movement that might seek a republic composed of northerners and southerners, of Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters.

The claim that, in every generation, the Irish people had asserted their right to freedom is baseless, though one might argue that in the modern period in each generation there was widespread sympathy, among nationalists only of course, for some notion of ‘freedom’, however inchoate at times.62 Counterpointed to Irish nationalist aspirations were Irish unionist celebrations of ‘liberty’ (another elusive term). The nationalist hopes ranged from monarchist leanings to demands for the restoration of the old Irish parliament, and from republican separatism to forms of federal and devolved government. Whether the claim also meant that each generation in the previous three hundred years had risen in arms is unclear. It is best perhaps not to take that apparent implication literally. We do know from other writings, though, that Pearse was preoccupied with generational assertiveness and the reproduction of claims to sovereignty. ‘There has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure of the last generation.’63 Not even the experience of the Great Famines of the 1740s or the 1840s, one is tempted to ask.

The ‘Irish people’, the Proclamation lays down, have a right to the ‘unfettered control of Irish destinies’. This and other claims to sovereignty are axiomatic for a republican of any hue. But who has the right to decide on these matters? One might have thought it was not a clique that could have contested elections but met secretively in backrooms instead.64 Equally troubling is an understanding of who constituted the Irish people. Most who cared to notice knew that Irish society was deeply divided. Whether one argues the divisions were primarily communal, ethno-religious or national is less important

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