by Dermot Keogh
After the war, banks and government offices continued to close on St Patrick’s Day, while the wearing of the shamrock remained popular and the tradition of presenting it to the Irish regiments abroad continued. Catholic churches still observed it as a special feast day and the Ancient Order of Hibernians organised parades and demonstrations as before. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Northern Ireland prime minister, Lord Brookeborough, used the occasion of St Patrick’s Day to issue public addresses to Ulster people abroad, while members of his cabinet spoke at dinners organised by Ulster associations in Great Britain.35By the mid 1950s, however, these attempts to match the political use made of St Patrick’s Day by the southern government had mostly ceased. In the late 1950s a government information officer urged the cabinet that it might be wise to ‘quietly forget’ St Patrick’s Day and abolish it as a bank holiday.36The suggestion was rejected, but it is clear from newspaper reports in the 1950s that for many people St Patrick’s Day was ‘business as usual’. Many schools dropped it as a holiday and shops and businesses remained open.37Correspondents in the unionist press denounced the political overtones of the day in the south and elsewhere. One letter on 17 March 1961 stated that ‘the day is now chiefly memorable to the average Ulsterman as the day on which repeated threats against his stand for constitutional liberty are pronounced in the Republic and on which Ulster’s position is vilified throughout the English-speaking world.’38
Nonetheless, it should be noted that there were some in unionist and Protestant church circles who believed that more attention should be given to the event. From the mid-1950s the editorial in the Belfast Telegraph often urged that the day should be a full public holiday, a request backed by the Church of Ireland diocesan synod of Down and Dromore.39In 1961 a resolution of the Young Unionists’ Conference deplored the apathy in Northern Ireland towards St Patrick’s Day.40In the 1950s the Church of Ireland inaugurated an annual St Patrick’s Day pilgrimage and special service at Downpatrick and Saul, which was well attended. Such events were still strongly limited by denominational barriers although small elements of change were occurring. In 1956 the nationalist members of Downpatrick council refused an invitation to participate in a joint wreath-laying ceremony at St Patrick’s grave on the grounds that the Catholic Church ‘had arranged adequate celebrations for the Feast and they could not add anything to them’. Eight years later, however, when the Archbishop of Canterbury was the special guest at the St Patrick’s Day service at the Church of Ireland cathedral in Downpatrick, nationalist councillors turned up to greet the archbishop at the entrance to the cathedral, although they felt unable to enter the building.41
Commemoration at Eastertime of the 1916 Rising was low-key and without much public notice in Northern Ireland until 1928 when well-publicised ceremonies were held at republican plots in Milltown cemetery in Belfast and in the city cemetery in Derry. In the following year and throughout the 1930s, the government, using the Special Powers Act, prohibited these commemorations. In support of the ban the Minister of Home Affairs, R. D. Bates, stated that those involved were ‘celebrating one of the most treacherous and bloody rebellions that ever took place in the history of the world’ and claimed that there was IRA involvement in the commemorations.42The nationalist leader, Joe Devlin, challenged this view in parliament in 1932 and argued that the ban on the commemorations was a denial of people’s right to free speech and referred to one such event in Newry as simply ‘an annual commemoration for all those who died for Ireland’.43
Every Easter during the 1930s, commemorative meetings were announced and then declared illegal by the government, but there were often attempts to get round the ban.44In 1935, for example, about five hundred people gathered on Easter Monday some fifty yards beyond the cemetery gates at Milltown graveyard where they recited a decade of the rosary, while in Derry, republicans held their commemorations a week before Easter to get round the ban at Eastertime.45On a number of occasions in Derry and Armagh wreath-laying ceremonies were performed on Saturday night, hours before the ban came into operation on Easter Sunday.46Tension arose frequently over the flying of the tricolour and the wearing of the Easter lily. The most serious confrontation between the police and republican organisers came in 1942, when active IRA units became involved in the commemorations, leading to shooting in both Dungannon and Belfast, and the murder of a Catholic police constable in Belfast.47
By 1948, the government had decided not to impose a general ban on Easter commemorations of 1916. From this time on commemorative events were held in a number of centres by a range of organisations. In 1950, for example, the main event at Milltown cemetery in Belfast was organised by the National Graves Association.48This was followed by a separate service organised under the auspices of the Republican Socialist party, addressed by Harry Diamond MP, who referred to ‘the shadow of a foreign occupation of a portion of their country’. Finally, there was another ceremony held by the ‘Old Pre-Truce IRA’. In Newry a commemorative service was followed by a large parade, led by members of Newry Urban Council, and including members of the Catholic Boy Scouts, the Foresters and the Hibernians. There were also Easter commemorative events in County Armagh and County Tyrone and Derry city. Similar events occurred during the 1950s with few problems, although sometimes there was conflict between organisers and police over the flying of the tricolour, as for example in Lurgan in 1952 and 1953 when the Royal Ulster Constabulary confiscated flags and made arrests. In Newry in 1957, arrests were also made over the flying of the tricolour at the Easter commemorations, and in the following year a parade to commemorate 1916 was prohibited in the town, although the ban was ignored.49
In the new Irish Free State, St Patrick’s Day quickly took on special significance. By 1922 it had been made a general holiday and from 1925, thanks to the Free State Licensing Act, all public houses were closed on that day. In Dublin, an annual army parade now replaced the processions organised by the Lord Lieutenant and Lord Mayor. Throughout the country there were parades, often involving army marches to church for mass. Dances, sporting activities, theatrical events and excursions were run on the day. The Irish language was specially promoted on the day, frequently with events organised by the Gaelic League. In 1926 the southern premier W. T. Cosgrave made the first official radio broadcast on St Patrick’s Day. He called for mutual understanding and harmony and declared that:
The destinies of the country, north and south, are now in the hands of Irishmen, and the responsibility for success or failure will rest with ourselves. If we are to succeed there must be a brotherly toleration of each other’s ideas as to how our ambition may be realised, and a brotherly co-operation in every effort towards its realisation.50
In his St Patrick’s Day’s speech in 1930, Cosgrave declared that ‘as we have been Irish and Roman, so it will remain’, but he took care to preface his statement with the remarks that he was speaking for the majority of people in the state.51In 1931 in a St Patrick’s Day broadcast to the Irish in America, and reported in the Irish press, Cosgrave again sought to make a reconciliatory gesture ‘whatever be your creed in religion or politics, you are of the same blood – the healing process must go on’.52
With the accession to power of Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil in 1932, St Patrick’s Day took on added significance. Links between Church and State were publicly stressed with the annual procession on St Patrick’s Day of de Valera and his Executive Council, complete with a cavalry troop, to the Dublin pro-Cathedral for mass.53The Patrician Year of 1932, which included the Eucharistic Congress, gave an opportunity for large demonstrations, with considerable official involvement, emphasising connections between Ireland and Rome.54This religious aspect was taken up again by de Valera in his St Patrick’s Day broadcast of 1935 in which he reminded people that Ireland had been a Christian and Catholic nation since St Patrick’s time: ‘She remains a Catholic nation,’ he declared.55De Valera now used the St Patri
ck’s Day broadcasts, which were transmitted to the USA and Australia, to launch vigorous attacks on the British government and partition. These speeches reached a peak in 1939, when, in Rome for St Patrick’s Day, de Valera declared how he had made a pledge beside the grave of Hugh O’Neill that he would never rest until ‘that land which the Almighty so clearly designed as one, shall belong undivided to the Irish people’. He urged his listeners to do likewise.56At the same time, however, the links between Catholicism and Irish identity as expressed on St Patrick’s Day were not absolute. For example, the Protestant President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, attended a St Patrick’s Day service in the Church of Ireland cathedral of St Patrick’s in Dublin in 1939.57
During the war, celebrations on St Patrick’s Day were low-key although de Valera continued to make his annual broadcast. In 1943 he spoke of the restoration of the national territory and the national language as the greatest of the state’s uncompleted tasks. He also talked of his dream of a land ‘whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens’.58After the war St Patrick’s Day became a major national holiday once again. In 1950 the military parade in Dublin was replaced by a trade and industries parade. In their St Patrick’s Day speeches in the 1950s, heads of government, Eamon de Valera and John A. Costello, continued to use the event to make strong denunciations of partition. In his St Patrick’s Day broadcast in 1950, Costello declared that ‘our country is divided by foreign interference’.59
By the 1950s, government ministers and spokesmen, such as Seán MacEntee, were also making public speeches on the day at a range of venues in Britain and the USA, usually concentrating on attacking partition.60In 1955 a rare discordant note was struck by Bishop Cornelius Lucy of Cork when, in his St Patrick’s Day address, he suggested that emigration was a greater evil than partition.61Irish leaders in their speeches continued to emphasise links between Ireland and Rome; by the mid-1950s, it was common for the President or Taoiseach to be in Rome on St Patrick’s Day. The 1961 Patrician celebrations marked a high point in this religious aspect of the festival. It began with the arrival on 13 March of a papal legate, Cardinal MacIntyre, who in the words of the Capuchin Annual was ‘welcomed with the protocol reception given only to a head of state’. This included a welcome at the airport from the Taoiseach and a full military guard.62
Annual commemoration of the Dublin Rising of 1916 proved a very contentious issue in the new Irish state, reflecting some of the political divisions which had emerged over the Anglo-Irish Treaty and also personal concerns about any such event.63During the commemorations in 1922, a number of prominent politicians from both the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty sides addressed large crowds in various places, but the event was not marked publicly the following year, owing to the Civil War. On Easter Monday 1924, the government organised a ceremony at Arbour Hill (burial place of the executed rebels) for a specially invited list of guests, including politicians, soldiers and relatives of the deceased.64Few relatives of the deceased turned up, however, and in this and following years the event was marred by disputes about who should be invited. Also in 1924 republicans organised a march through Dublin to Glasnevin cemetery for the laying of wreaths on the republican plot. Subsequently, large parades to Glasnevin were organised and attended each Easter by republican groups, including Sinn Féin and (after 1927) Fianna Fáil. The Cumann na nGaedheal government did not participate in these marches, although there was some official remembrance of the Easter Rising in 1926 and after, in the form of broadcasts on the subject on the new Radio Éireann.
When de Valera came to power in 1932, the situation did not change greatly. In Dublin, there were two parades, the first organised by the semi-official National Commemoration Committee and attended by de Valera and members of Fianna Fáil, which marched to Arbour Hill, and the second run by other republican groups, including the IRA, which marched to Glasnevin.65The Fianna Fáil government changed the guest list to the Arbour Hill ceremony but also ran into difficulties with relatives of the deceased about who should be present.66In 1935, there was a large Irish army parade on Easter Sunday to the General Post Office where a statue of Cúchulain was unveiled and speeches were made by government ministers. This statue, supposedly symbolic of the Rising, had in fact been sculpted between 1910 and 1911 and purchased much later for this purpose.67The twentieth anniversary of the Rising saw some additional measures of commemoration, in particular radio programmes during Easter week on Radio Éireann. The event continued to be commemorated in Dublin principally by the two rival marches to Arbour Hill and Glasnevin. Outside Dublin the Rising was commemorated at Eastertime by competing republican groups. For example, in Cork the Old IRA Men’s Association marched each Easter to several monuments and graves of their dead comrades.68
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1941, major celebrations were held in Dublin. On Easter Sunday a military parade, described as the largest ever held in Dublin, took place.69There were speeches at the GPO from President Douglas Hyde and members of the government. De Valera also made a broadcast from the GPO calling for improvements in the armed forces and for vigilance in preserving Ireland’s independence. For the remainder of the Emergency public celebrations were severely limited. After 1945, rival parades recommenced in Dublin, with no special government involvement, apart from the appearance of Fianna Fáil ministers at Arbour Hill. In 1949, no doubt for symbolic reasons, the official inauguration of the Irish Republic occurred at one minute past midnight on Easter Monday. Only from 1954 did a military parade at the GPO in Dublin at Easter first become an annual event. It was part of the An Tóstal celebrations of that year but was continued in following years.70The fortieth anniversary of the Rising was celebrated extensively in 1956. President Seán T. O’Kelly, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello and other government ministers were on the saluting platform at the GPO; there were many radio programmes on the Easter Rising; and various groups in different parts of the country held parades.71After this, the commemorations returned to the practice of a military parade in Dublin and other marches in Dublin and elsewhere organised by various groups.
During the First World War an estimated two hundred thousand people from Ireland, a majority from the twenty-six counties which became the Irish Free State, served in the British armed forces. On the first Armistice Day, on 11 November 1919, in line with a papal decree, mass was held at all Catholic churches in Ireland to mark the occasion.72A two minute silence at eleven o’clock was observed widely. Subsequently, with the War of Independence and the setting up of the new Irish Free State, commemoration of this event became very controversial. As Jane Leonard has commented: ‘division rather than dignity surrounded the commemoration of the war in Ireland’.73The civil unrest of the early 1920s restricted public expressions of commemoration. From 1923 onwards, however, Armistice Day was marked not just by a two-minute silence but also by parades and assemblies of ex-servicemen and their friends and families which were held in Dublin and in other parts of Ireland. Such events were organised by several ex-servicemen’s organisations until they were eventually brought together under the British Legion in 1925. War memorials were erected in many places and the poppy was sold widely.74
Official attitudes were ambivalent but generally tolerant in the 1920s. Conscious of nationalist and republican susceptibilities, members of the Free State government looked askance at ideas to build a large war memorial in central Dublin, and insisted that it be erected at the outskirts at Islandbridge.75At the same time, conscious of the many Irish people who had died during the First World War, including members of their own families, the government sent representatives to the wreath-laying ceremonies in Dublin and London. The message on the wreath laid by Colonel Maurice Moore, the Irish government representative, at the temporary cenotaph cross in College Gre
en in Dublin on 11 November read: ‘This wreath is placed here by the Free State government to commemorate all the brave men who fell on the field of battle.’76In 1923, W. T. Cosgrave and some cabinet colleagues attended an Armistice Day mass in Cork.77
Early Armistice day commemorations in Dublin met with a certain amount of opposition, expressed in actions such as the snatching of poppies. From the mid-1920s, however, the intensity of this opposition grew, with various republican groups organising anti-Armistice Day rallies to protest against ‘the flagrant display of British imperialism disguised as Armistice celebrations’ and with physical attacks being made on some of the parades.78In 1926, this led to the main ceremony being moved from the centre of Dublin to Phoenix Park. De Valera spoke at one of the anti-Armistice Day rallies in 1930, and the formation of a Fianna Fáil government in 1932 led to a further downgrading of the commemorations. Official representatives were withdrawn from the main wreath-laying ceremony in Dublin from November 1932, although the Irish government continued to be represented at the Cenotaph in London until 1936. Permits for the sale of poppies, previously allowed for several days in the week before 11 November, were now reduced to one day only.79Those taking part in the annual parade to Phoenix Park in Dublin were prohibited from carrying Union Jacks or British Legion flags which featured a Union Jack. Work on the National War Memorial Park at Islandbridge was completed and handed over to the government in early 1937, but the official opening was put off a number of times by de Valera, until the outbreak of the Second World War led to its indefinite postponement. The official opening of the park occurred only in 1988 and without the direct involvement of the Fianna Fáil government, although at a later ceremony in 1994, Bertie Ahern, then Minister of Finance, declared the work on the memorial to be finished.80