Right to reject nonsense of a ‘shared history’

Posted by Jim on January 18, 2016

By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)

William Faulkner wrote: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’
How right he was and nowhere is that remark better exemplified than in
Ireland. James Joyce said: ‘History is a nightmare from which I am
trying to awake.’ He meant Irish history of course and like some
nightmares it recurs again and again always with the same ending.

The two governments, but particularly the Irish government, hoped that
by developing a load of claptrap about a ‘shared history’ they could
somehow exorcise the nightmare of Irish history 1912-22. In the flawed
concept of a shared history first enunciated by Brian Cowen in 2010 both
sides in the northern conflict would be encouraged to participate in
each others’ commemorations joined by the Irish government. They had to
be ‘inclusive’ and ‘shared’ as in that awful Americanism, ‘I share your
pain.’ It’s a desperate unhistorical attempt to read the political
correctness of 2016 back into the history of that decade a century ago
and it’s nonsense.

‘Rogues and renegades’ Foster is absolutely correct to have nothing to
do with it. Yes of course there’s an election on May 5 and she would
look daft standing with a stony face at some commemoration of 1916 just
after Stormont shut down at Easter to prepare for the election campaign.
She’s not doing it, not even contemplating it, not because of the
election but because it would be an exercise in hypocrisy. She shares
nothing about the 1916 Rising its aims, its motives, its beliefs.

Her remarks show she knows nothing about history a century ago either
but she knows what she doesn’t agree with and that’s republicanism in
any shape or form. She said the Rising was ‘an attack on democracy’ and
added, ‘I believe in the democratic will.’ Well yes, up to a point Lord
Copper. First, democracy in our terms didn’t exist in 1916. Only 700,000
men in Ireland had the vote but no women. It wasn’t for want of trying.
In 1912 a suffragette, Mary Leigh, got five years for throwing a hatchet
at Asquith as he crossed O’Connell Bridge in Dublin in a carriage. She
missed and it hit Redmond harmlessly on the arm. Was that ‘an attack on
democracy’?

Secondly as many people have pointed out to Foster, the first attack on
‘democracy’ as it existed in those days was the unionist rebellion
against the third Home Rule Act of 1912 including importing 25,000
rifles and three million rounds of ammunition from Germany in 1914.
Curiously no interviewer has asked Foster if she endorses that rebellion
involving tens of thousands of UVF paramilitaries threatening the
British government. A rebellion incidentally which inspired Home Rulers
to establish the Irish Volunteers as a counter force.

None of it matters. It’s all stupid stuff. You can’t transport the
standards of 2016 back a hundred years. Suffice to say the Rising stands
for everything ‘Rogues and renegades’ opposes, including the concept of
an Irish Ireland. Her objection is political. At least she’s
straightforward about it unlike republicans trying to ‘share’ the
commemoration of the Somme when republicans a decade before 1916 were
already making speeches objecting to people joining the ‘Crown forces’
which included the RIC. In 1915 Sean MacDiarmada, the main organiser of
the Rising, got himself arrested in Tuam and jailed for making a speech
opposing recruitment for the British army.

For unionists joining the British army en masse was their way of
demonstrating loyalty to Britain and they got a separate division, the
36th as a reward. They didn’t anticipate it would turn into their blood
sacrifice. It has nothing to do with republicans. Claiming they share
ownership is just daft and embarrassing and politically correct and that
goes for the Irish government muscling in on it too.

Incidentally talking about attacks on democracy such as it was in 1916
you hear a great deal about the fact that the organisers of the Rising
had ‘no mandate’, a modern expression and a modern concept. Here’s a
question. What mandate did the British government have for ruling
Ireland in 1916 considering that for nine successive elections since
1885 the Irish had voted for Home Rule. Was it the Act of Union? Very
democratic.