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Ireland's lost republicans

This article is more than 17 years old
Celebrating the Easter Rising is a sign of confidence in Ireland. But can it broaden its appeal enough to attract Ulster Protestants?

In the Republic of Ireland, the Easter Rising of 1916 is fundamentally successful as a founding myth. Garrett FitzGerald argued on Irish radio (audio file) recently that Ireland had long been an anomaly in western Europe since its largely Catholic population had little cultural expression under the aegis of a fundamentally Protestant and English speaking British state. Its timing at Easter was intentionally and for most it remains a celebration of sacrifice and the individuation of a Catholic Irish nation.

Less than a year after Ireland's rising, Finland published its March Manifesto asserting its independence from Russian rule. It was followed by a short bloody civil war between the red and whites. In a matter of months 30,000 Finns died in the struggle. Although the lines of red and white remained until the early sixties, they largely dissipated in Finland's renewed battle with the Russians. A common enemy sank all differences.

In terms of Northern Ireland it has been much less successful. For those who fall towards it (to different degrees the Catholic population), liberation remains an uncompleted task, an aspiration. For those who fall away from it (by and large the Protestant majority), it remains a profoundly foreign myth. This is ironic, since the founders and shapers of the original Irish Republican project were Ulster Protestants, and for whom Cicero's maxim Salus populi suprema lex esto, remains the basis of their contractarian commitment to a British constitutional monarchy.

Indeed as an early Unionist commenter on Slugger O'Toole put it: "...most Unionists in Northern Ireland give their loyalty to the government but feel free to withdraw it if they feel the government does not repay that loyalty." But they remain sceptical about the professed values of their markedly diffident Republican suitors. As one uppity Orangeman put it recently: "If you wish to persuade the Orange majority that joining you in your country is a good idea, I suggest you start by living up to republican principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

And the feeling in the south towards the re-integration of what was considered, right up to the signing of the Belfast Agreement, the national territory is ambivalent to say the least. As Dublin based writer Simon McGarr argued a few years back:

It was only when killing was happening in our name that we in the Republic were forced to realise that we had been lying to ourselves and everyone else about what it was we really believed in. Given the choice, we quietly abandoned the fourth green field to save the three we had worked so hard to make from being dragged half a century into the past.

The bitterest irony for those who fought so long for their fantasies, and the people who supported them, must come when they realise that while the British Government in 1922 may have drawn the Border, it was the IRA who made it real. That's something we're only just coming to terms within our discussions in the Republic.

For now, simply celebrating the national myth for the first time in forty years is probably an important step forward for the republic. As Eoin Ryan suggests (subscription needed): "It is a sign that we are finally throwing off our burden of doubt about our worthiness as a nation; a nation worthy of celebrating its independence."

Time will tell if the state can broaden its appeal enough to attract back Ireland's original republicans.

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