WHAT is the one thing, I wonder, that a section of Irish people really do not like to hear. This is the Irish 2014, remember, not 1950.
This is no longer a country where being disrespectful about religion leads to people being socially ostracised. We’ve had Dave Allen, after all, and Father Ted’s priests in a lingerie department.
Of course the Church has also been exposed by scandal after scandal but it has long ceased to be something that is beyond reproach. To be honest, it’s open season on the Church and people of faith will just shrug and bear it, and thank God for that.
That is what a free, open society is like. We can say things we want to say, deeply critical things, and a proper, democratic society creates and gives that space.
So I have written about Ireland for 15 years in a decidedly bias, decidedly left-wing, decidedly son of Irish immigrants way. In my own mind it has been in a decidedly appreciative way too, though others might disagree. So I admit to having given the country something of a rough ride at times. But that is because I love the country and believe in it and believe that we should always interrogate the idea of Ireland and highlight its failings and avoid fooling ourselves.
I’m sure many people disagree with the things I say. Fair enough. I’ve probably been wrong many times. Opinion is opinion and mine is just mine. So I’ve been harsh on all the political parties, on the Irish arts scene, on Irish sport and the Irish Catholic Church. I’ve probably given offence but that is the nature of saying what you believe to be the truth in a way that allows others to disagree.
The only thing I have ever written about though, and received in response an almost enraged reaction, is when I have written critically about Irish Republicanism. And that is not meant as a whinge but as a reflection about us as Irish people and what seems like the last holy thing that cannot be called in to question.
When it comes to Republicanism we seem to have our own Irisher-than-anyone-else-green-Taliban. For them, anyone who disagrees with their ideal of the Republic is a traitor or a servant of British imperialism. For them, not wanting to justify the killing of people makes someone an apologist for the British Empire, which is more than odd considering how many people the British Empire killed.
So the objections they make to any critique of Republicanism have the flavour of the inquisition. They will sniff out any heresy. They will, for instance, insist that the shooting of unarmed Irish policemen between 1918 and 1921, shot whilst unarmed though the RIC was an armed force, doesn’t really count because these men were not Irish but ‘Irish born British colonial policemen’.
And so, in this way, we line up the tragic dead, shot coming out of Mass or family homes, men who just wanted employment in a poor country rather than men committed politically to the British Empire, men caught out by changing circumstances, and we find their ‘Irishness’ lacking.
They will insist that there is still something noble and pure about ‘those who take up arms to achieve the Republic,’ presumably hinting that the shooting dead in 2009 at Massereene Barracks of two unarmed soldiers taking delivery of a pizza brought a glorious, united Ireland we can all be proud of that small bit closer.
And they will say that criticism of Republicanism ‘is a disservice to Irish Patriots who gave their lives in the ongoing struggle for a united Ireland,’ which is a cul-de-sac that leaves us forever in thrall to those who died in the past, which is a cult of death and which is the justification for anti-peace Republicans even now, who insist that because Bobby Sands died on Hunger Strike that the laying down of arms is to betray and besmirch his name.
And most of them, most of those who cannot abide any critique of Irish Republicanism, who insist anyone who does is just a lackey of British imperialism, do so with names or labels proudly in the Irish language because they are oh so much more Irish than the rest of us.
So I would like to just ask them this, I would like to ask them, as an old-fashioned socialist who would dearly love to see a genuine 32-county Irish socialist Republic: which of the dead was it okay to kill and who will it be okay to kill in the times to come so we can sit around the cosy fires of the future and tell our children how the beautiful Republic came into being?
