When it was founded in 1922, the Irish state adopted a monolithic notion of identity, built on the twin pillars of nationalism and Catholicism. Irish society locked itself into a theocratic state, in which the Catholic Church had far too much power. The country struggled to find a place in the global economy. And it had to deal with the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and all its deadly consequences of unresolved anxieties about history and identity.
Ireland took a long time to come to terms with these problems, but they have been more or less settled through an open economy, membership in the European Union and the Belfast Agreement of 1998 that ended the Troubles and, in the process, redefined Irish identity as flexible and plural. As a consequence, Ireland’s relationship with Britain has been more amicable and apparently serene than at any time in modern history.
Then along came Brexit, an upheaval powered above all by English nationalism. The problem with English nationalism is not that it exists but that it is incoherent, inarticulate and immature. This underground torrent has always been there, but it was buried for centuries beneath two powerful constructs: the British Empire and the United Kingdom. With the empire gone and the union under strain from rival nationalist movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland, English nationalism has flooded to the surface with great destructive force.
So, in the interests of balance and history, let me remind myself why unionists see cause for the commemoration of an event in 1921.
Some years ago, the wife of the president of a southern university told me she was astonished on reflection that she and her fellow southerners accepted for so long the predominance of the Catholic Church in almost every aspect of their lives.
Politeness prevented me from savouring the irony by reminding her that my forebears had warned that Home Rule would be Rome Rule. And so it proved.
Partition also allowed northern Protestants to escape the fate of the southern Anglo-Irish, who in the Free State, for one reason or another, shrank in numbers from 10% of the population to 3%.
Would the fate of northern Protestants have been different had they joined a united Ireland severed from Great Britain? Who knew, or wanted to take the risk? It was, after all, payback time in parts of the south.
Was partition, indeed, necessary in order to head off the greater catastrophe of a full-blown civil war in Ireland? Ireland in 1919-21 was at a very dangerous crossroads.
The partition that kept unionists British meant for me - and thousands of other northerners from both sides - liberation from the urban industrial working class (in my own case), or agricultural labouring classes, through the 1947 Education Act brought in by the unionist government, making higher education in principle available to all.
Kept back, and keeping back, for decades, McLaverty's people, through the Education Act, quickened into life from the late 1960s.
Within a generation there was a Queen's-educated Nobel prizewinner, Seamus Heaney (above), from down the country, who greatly benefited from McLaverty's wise counsel.
Now, their grandchildren are the dominant social and ethnic formation in the two northern universities, gateways to professional standing on either island.
Finally, partition allowed unionists unfettered participation in their British heritage. That heritage included a rich national narrative, constitutional monarchy instead of republicanism, secular democracy instead of, effectively, theocracy. What was at stake was no small beer - and only the latter threat has receded.
And it mustn't escape our attention that those on both sides of the border who deplore partition have nevertheless since the 1950s freely availed themselves of British culture and society to enrich and advance their lives; many thousands, indeed, living, working and flourishing across the water. The cultural headwaters for nationalists are now as much in London as in Dublin.
- John Wilson Foster, here: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/many-countries-have-it-much-worse-than-the-soft-bordered-irelands-with-great-britain-at-their-cultural-beck-and-call-39543236.html
Ahead of the 2021 centenary, Michael Kelly told us on this page last Saturday that most nationalists regard the creation of Northern Ireland
I grew up in what was a theocracy in all but name. Hell and heaven and purgatory were places real and certain we would go to after death, dependent on the Judgement. Churches in my part of Ireland were so crowded that children and old people who were fasting to receive Communion would regularly pass out in the bad air and have to be carried outside. Not to attend Sunday Mass was to court social ostracism, to be seen as mad or consorting with the devil, or, at best, to be seriously eccentric. I had a genuinely eccentric school-teaching cousin who was fond of declaring that she saw God regularly in the bushes, and this provoked an uncomfortable nodding awe instead of laughter. In those depressed, God-ridden times, laughter was seen as dangerous and highly contagious. The stolidity of the long empty grave face was the height of decorum and profundity. Work stopped each day in shop and office and street and field when the bell for the Angelus rang out, as in the Millet painting. The Rosary, celebrating the Mysteries, closed each day. The story of Christ and how He redeemed us ran through our year as a parallel world to the solid world of our daily lives: the feasts of saints, Lent and Advent, the great festivals of Christmas and Easter, all the week of Whit, when it was dangerous to go out on water; on All Souls’ Night, the dead rose and walked as shadows among the living.
John McGahern
(Here:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview30?client=safari)
The Blessing of the Colours (1922), Sir John Lavery
In this painted sketch, Sir John Lavery – who was an official war artist for the British Royal Navy during the First World War (1914-18) – depicts the first blessing of the Irish tricolour. The Belfast-born artist conveys the solemn nature of this historic occasion as the Archbishop of Dublin stands in benediction over the flag in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. Kneeling in prayer before the flag is an officer in the uniform of the Irish Free State army. Thus, the moment of blessing symbolises the union of Church and State at a decisive time in Ireland’s history. Lavery uses a limited palette of green, white, and orange hues throughout to bring harmony to his rendering of this important contemporary event.
