Buried Lives

by Bury, Robin;

  On 26 May 2016 the deaths of British soldiers during the Rising was remembered with a wreath-laying ceremony followed by a minute’s silence and the raising of the Tricolour to full mast. The British ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, laid a wreath in remembrance of British soldiers who died and members of the British and Irish armies were present. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charles Flanagan, was anxious to promote reconciliation between all political traditions on the island and wanted mutual respect for ‘the different traditions and the multiple narratives across our islands’ and wrote:

  The Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme includes events that reflect on how Easter 1916 was experienced by those who participated in, and were affected by, the Rising; not only the experiences of the men and women that mobilised during Easter week, but also those of civilians, of children, of the Irish diaspora and other groups involved in that seminal moment in our country’s path to independence.56

  However, there was an incident during the commemoration. A protester, a member of the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association, was grabbed and pushed away by the Canadian ambassador, Kevin Vickers, a national hero in Canada who had shot dead a terrorist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, in October 2014 outside the Ottawa House of Commons. The protester found it ‘unpalatable to be commemorating British soldiers killed in 1916 … He also wanted to highlight the case of the “Craigavon Two”, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton, jailed in 2012 for the murder of PSNI officer Stephen Carroll who was shot dead in Craigavon, Co Armagh, in 2009.’57

  According to Kevin Myers, the Canadian ambassador’s action was ‘gallant’. He attended the commemoration:

  It wasn’t much, surely, to expect that such a ceremony could be allowed to pass off without incident, even if almost no one from Dail Eireann had the decency to attend. The only reason that the demonstrator was prevented from creating more havoc was the timely intervention of the Canadian ambassador.

  What if the protester had been armed? He had the drop on everyone yet not one single state firearm was drawn as he rose, shrieking slogans. Contrary to popular myth, some republicans have screamed abuse as they attacked. I was seated just behind him, and I thought a serious attack had begun, with the British ambassador and the half-dozen uniformed British Army officers as possible targets.

  What was the subsequent response of Official Ireland? Not criticism of An Garda Siochana and its commissioner for allowing such a protester to evade security. Oh no. Instead, Kevin Vickers, the hero of the hour, was turned into a comic turn on RTÉ. Soon, the letters page of The Irish Times pullulated with complaints about his prompt and gallant intervention.58

  What was the reaction to the military nature of the commemorations by Protestant church leaders? After all there were no less than thirteen separate military ceremonies, emphasising the violence as politics nature of the insurgency, arguably excessive in the context of an Irish Republic as an enthusiastic member of the post-nationalist EU.

  The head of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Revd Brian Anderson, called for an attitude of ‘viewing the future inclusively’.59 He hoped the two major commemorations in 1916, the Rising and the Battle of the Somme, would no longer divide ‘our two communities’.60 A similar note was struck by the Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Clarke, who said 1916 had to be commemorated ‘well and properly and constructively’ but people need to remember the Somme ‘North and South because we tend to think of it as a Northern Irish thing’.61 Both Archbishop Clarke and his counterpart, Archbishop Eamon Martin, visited Glasnevin cemetery and the Irish Peace Park in Messines and the Somme in the summer of 2016.

  However, controversy arose over the announcement that the Dublin Church of Ireland Cathedral, Christ Church, might have to close its front gates to avoid the large crowds using the grounds as a picnic site, even a public toilet, on Easter Sunday, 27 March, and six other inner Dublin Church of Ireland churches also closed due to traffic restrictions being imposed during the commemorations. The parades were planned to last over two hours. All Roman Catholic churches in the city centre, in contrast, held Easter Sunday masses, partly because their priests lived close to their churches, unlike Church of Ireland rectors, and partly because their congregations lived near their churches, unlike Church of Ireland parishioners, only 5 per cent of whom live in the inner city.

  There was no consultation with any churches likely to be effected by the parades when the plans were being drawn up. It was not until January 2015, that it became clear that the route of the various parades between the two canals would be cordoned off to prevent traffic entering the city centre. The Church of Ireland Archbishop, Michael Jackson, asked why the parades could not take place on Easter Monday, as the Rising started on Easter Monday, 24 April, not on 27 March, the day it was commemorated. There appears to have been no official response but suggestions have been made that the government feared Sinn Féin would make the running if the state did not mount major commemorations on Easter Sunday.

  The former Taoiseach, John Bruton, wrote to Minister of Justice Frances Fitzgerald and the Garda Commissioner to complain about the proposed closure of seven Church of Ireland churches, stating ‘Easter Sunday is the most important day of the Christian year’ so ‘access to Christian services should be prioritized over other events’.62 John Bruton’s hostile views on 1916 are well known but this was a helpful intervention which had effect.

  Consultations with the government, the Garda, the Archbishop and Archdeacons of Dublin followed and arrangements were made to open Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Sunday for the celebration of the Eucharist at 10 a.m. and at midday the bilingual liturgy was said to commemorate the Rising. ‘During the service the parade is passing the Cathedral, the congregation will pray for the country and its leaders and remember those who died in the Rising.’63

  The government had stated that it was ‘its earnest wish … that people would be able to attend their usual places of worship on Easter Sunday if at all possible’.64 But this was not to be. Four Church of Ireland churches had no services on Easter Sunday and Archbishop Jackson and senior clergy ‘remain of the view that, given the large numbers of people expected to watch the parade, it is not practical to have every Church of Ireland church in the city open on Easter Day’.65 Archdeacon Pierpoint was quite clear that the traffic cordons would make it very difficult for Church of Ireland parishioners to ‘battle’ their way to church. He emphasised that the Gardaí did ‘all in their power’ to help the churches to keep open’ and there was no ill will during and after Easter Sunday.66

  The rector of one of the four churches that closed, Canon Mark Gardner, decided he could not go on foot from one of his churches, St Audeon’s, and back again to his other church, St Catherine and St James ‘in the time available’. On the commemoration of the Rising, he wrote:

  I feel no affinity with the commemoration of the rising and my own memories of 1966 and what I have learnt about those events a hundred or so years ago convince me that it was a series of ghastly mistakes compounded by one government after another. I feel the loss of the Public Record Office particularly keenly. In 1966, every school had to display a copy of the Proclamation and even as a child I felt it intrusive. The destruction of the pillar added to an already oppressive atmosphere.67

  On the Proclamation, John Bruton argued in his address at Iveagh House, Dublin, on 28 March 2016 that it was not based on consent and ignored the wishes of Ulster Protestants who wanted to stay in the UK, being British, not Gaelic Irish by choice and not because they had been subject to ‘careful fostering’ by ‘an alien government’.68 Bruton thinks 1916 put gunmen in charge ‘as dictators with powers of life over death over many areas … there was no law but the law of force’ quoting P.S. Hegarty in The Victory of Sinn Fein. The deaths of 488 people would have been avoided if patience had been exercised. After all, Home Rule was on the Statute books and Westminster would have ‘freely granted’ Dominion status in 1931 under the Statute of Westminster when Canada and Australia
obtained Dominion status. Professor Geoff Roberts supported John Bruton in his letter to The Irish Times of 31 March 2016, believing there would have been ‘a peaceful and democratic transition to Irish independence’ in the course of time.

  The ex-attorney general, Paul Gallagher, came out strongly against the Rising following the 2016 commemorations. He believes the insurgents had ‘no legitimacy whatsoever’ and the leaders were ‘a self-absorbed group of brave idealists who had never represented anybody’. More seriously, perhaps, 1916 held back Ireland as ‘for over 70 years following 1916 we were a country that did not realise our potential. We were obsessed with the past, we were obsessed with who did what in 1916. It itself was used to discriminate between people. I regret greatly the lost years and I believe that Ireland between 1920 and 1980, perhaps even 1990, was a wasteland for so many people.’69

  He also made it clear that 1916 had an influence on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, stating: ‘all of these thugs and murderers claimed they were doing this in a cause that deserved to be revered, in a cause that they said justified anything, in a cause they said was going to improve the lives of all the people who undoubtedly were being discriminated against’.70

  Professor Ronan Fanning disagrees, believing 1916 was a just war as there was no evidence of Home Rule being brought into effect before 1916, if indeed ever. John Bruton, as we have seen, takes a different view, as does the biographer of John Redmond, Dermot Meleady, who thinks that Fanning’s belief was proved wrong in 1916 when Britain did try to introduce the Home Rule Act unsuccessfully. He also wrote about the consequences of the 1919–21 IRA violence for many Protestants, something that few historians have highlighted.

  Precious economic resources that had made Ireland a richer country than most in Europe were lost in the exodus of up to 40,000 of the southern unionist population due to burning of houses and lesser forms of intimidation.

  It is worth mentioning that Bulmer Hobson thought that it was the First World War and the Irish Volunteers that moved support to Sinn Fein away from the Irish Parliamentary Party, rather than the blood sacrifice and the executions of the 1916 leaders.71

  There was much debate in the media and at various conferences around the country about the Rising commemorations. RTÉ covered the centenary on radio and television, arguably to excess, presenting near hagiographies of the seven men who signed the Proclamation. However, RTÉ did organise a balanced debate which took place in the GPO before Easter Day which gave an opportunity for an exchange of views between those supporting and opposing 1916.72 In addition, the permanent interpretive centre exhibition in the GPO, which was the headquarters of the Rising, is balanced and well designed ‘with the government reflecting the present mood of a mature society sick of violence’ especially thirty years of Northern Irish violence.73

  On Newstalk FM Sir Bob Geldoff attacked 1916 in an interview with Ivan Yates on 24 March. The academic Seamus Murphy S.J. wrote eloquently about the theological and liturgical nature of the Rising, stating: ‘The lack of democratic legitimacy is no mere legal technicality; it is precisely the thing can never be fully part of us … the Rising represented nobody but its leaders.’ He believes it was the liturgy of the Rising that captured the imagination and support of the people:

  The sacrament is a sign that effects what it signifies; the Rising’s liturgy was indeed effective … in the preface to Ghosts, Pearse remarked ‘There’s only one way to appease a ghost. You must do the thing it asks you’. The command of Pearse’s ghost has been obeyed in this centenary of the Rising, and his bloody sacrifice reenacted sacramentally. It will not be without effect.74

  Journalists Patsy McGarry and David Quinn argued that the rebellion did not meet the criteria for a just war. McGarry believed the Rising was ‘immoral, undemocratic … the only begetter of and justification for the Irish republican violence since then.’75

  Kevin Myers, a longtime, well-informed opponent of 1916 wrote:

  It is surely blasphemy to associate the days of Easter … with an unprovoked violent rising in which hundreds of innocent people were killed. The belief that the April insurrection was in resistance to British oppression is still widespread. It is completely inaccurate.76

  Myers has enlightened many people on the treasonous nature of 1916 with its attempt to imperil Britain’s war efforts and strategy. He pointed out that the German strategy was to attack the British not only in Ireland by sending 20,000 rifles for the insurgents, but also to attack the British ports of Great Yarmouth and Lowerstoft. Both plans failed. The German ship carrying arms to southern Ireland, the Aud, was captured by the Royal Navy and scuttled while the German battleship SMS Seidlitz hit a mine on its way to attack East Anglia and had to return to its base at Wilhelmshaven. The remains of the taskforce then half-heartedly bombarded their targets of Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and though destroying some 200 houses, killed only three people.’77

  There is agreement among some historians that 1916 led to the Treaty in December 1921 when the twenty-six counties became the Free State and substantially more independence was forthcoming than under the terms of the third Home Rule Act. Indeed, Declan Kiberd has argued that the Rising ‘blew away the world of haut-bourgeois parliamentary nationalism’ and there had been ‘a frustrating postponement of Home Rule after years of teasing foreplay’.78 ‘Foreplay’ it hardly was, more it was determined, long, peaceful work to secure devolved government democratically. However, it is hardly disputable that the Anglo-Irish guerrilla war from 1919 to 1921, rather than the 1916 Rising itself, brought about the negotiations which concluded with the Treaty in December 1921. Perhaps, then, it is at least arguable that it is incorrect to attribute the founding of an independent Irish state primarily to the rebellion in 1916. One legacy seems certain, however, dying for Ireland ‘… is out of fashion; the young want to live for it.’79

  Various forms of nationalism gave rise to a history of conflict in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ireland was unexceptional, north and south, where identity by blood, religion and land led to intense hatreds and unbending prejudices. Though much has changed, the island is still profoundly divided, as journalist Eoghan Harris pointed out in an article in the Sunday Independent:

  People in the Republic have as little interest in Northern Ireland politics as they have in Northern Ireland’s football team. The reverse is also true. And thereby hangs a huge tale of hypocrisy. The Republic is profoundly partitionist in practice. All we really want in Northern Ireland is peace … in spite of the peace process, we are still politically bigoted about Northern Protestants.80

  Also many are unwilling to admit that leaving the UK proved to be a disaster in many ways. Ireland was strong in 1921. It had a system of local services, old-age pensions, universities, free primary education, an excellent network of railways and farm prices were good. In this positive environment mythical and mystical interventions came to violently drive a move for independence. In the words of Conor Brady:

  Poets and the pamphleteers invented a mythical land, peaceful, once ruled by Gaelic kings and queens. Before the advent of the rapacious invader, it was peopled by hero warriors, gods and mystics. Its laws were just, its rulers wise. Once we could get rid of the Brits, a 20th-century version of this idyll would be re-attained. Ireland would be ‘a nation once again’.

  He went on:

  In reality, what we got was not a golden age or a land flowing with milk and honey, but a Free State that was scarcely self-sufficient, that fell progressively behind European living standards and that failed to provide a livelihood for more than a million people, who were forced to emigrate.81

  Though much progress has been made in improving Anglo-Irish relations, partitionist attitudes remain firm. In the context of the EU and its influence in an Irish context, particularly following the economic crash, it is indisputable that the Irish Republic lost much sovereignty, even seeing an end to its sovereignty.

  Anglicanism shows toleration, doubt, the importance
of individualism, and a willingness to allow debate. But perhaps in practice Irish Protestants have been ‘one of the most inarticulate minorities in the world’82 (‘inarticulate’ is questionable; ‘quiescent’ is perhaps nearer the mark).

  As we have seen, those who stayed on, the great majority being unsympathetic to advanced Irish nationalism, understandably kept their heads below the parapets. Perhaps they should have been more critical, but we can ask, to what avail? The few that were outspoken went unheeded as we have seen. And they had their livelihoods and ways of life to protect, embodied in their schools, hospitals and sports. Many prospered. If they found Irish nationalism alienating they had a friendly country to go to across the Irish Sea, or further afield in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

  It is, however, a tribute to their inner strength and resilience that those who stayed on quietly survived against the odds, retaining both their sense of Irishness and patriotism. The signs are that their long winter of isolation, and even suppression, is now ending. The ice is melting. From 1977 until the early 1990s there was only one Protestant TD in the Dáil. Today two members of the Cabinet are Protestants, there is one other Protestant TD and the Chief Justice is a Protestant. There is a sea change in attitude towards those who fought in two world wars. There is still much room to go, as we have seen, but recent improvements serve to underline how narrow the situation was before.

  The Protestant tradition seems to have been laid aside as of little consequence in this debate about what constitutes Irish nationality, Roman Catholicism taking centre stage. This Protestant tradition is northern European in nature. It rejects ‘an authoritarian, centralist mindset: an unwillingness to make individuals accountable for performance; and an anarchic character with a mistrust of authority – frequently well founded’.83