When John Bruton gasped that the visit of Prince Charles to the twenty-six counties was the happiest day in his life, he was of course speaking for tens of thousands of us. And now that he’s spoken out about Easter 1916, you may be sure tens of thousands of us will pump the air and shout “GwanyehboyyehJohn!”
The former Fine Gael Taoiseach was speaking as part of a panel discussion at the Irish embassy in London. The meeting was to have been held at the home of the Commons Speaker John Bercow, but then Bercow discovered this would involve some Sinn Féin MPs attending so of course he refused to have a meeting at his place at all. So they took the second-best: the Irish Embassy.
What did John say? “If there hadn’t been the introduction of violence into nationalism in that demonstrably dramatic way in Easter Week..there wouldn’t have been a Civil War…I read what Pearse has said about the use of violence. He praised the Ulster volunteers…saying that this was a great day that they were armed. He couldn’t have been more wrong.”
Now I know that there are some nit-pickers among you out there who’ll say that Irish nationalism was well acquainted with violence over centuries and didn’t need any introduction from Easter Week. And I know there are other nit-pickers who’d say that if there hadn’t been the threat of violence from the Ulster Volunteers, there’d not have been equivalent violence in Easter Week. Others again would say that John Redmond did some pretty good introducing of violence when in 1914 he sent well over 27,000 Irishmen marching to their deaths in the war to end all wars, the Great War. But that as I say is to be picky picky picky. If it hadn’t been for Easter Week, as John says, there wouldn’t have been a Civil War. OK, you could say that if Ireland hadn’t been partitioned there’d have been no Civil War, either, but sin sceal eile. Fine Gael Minister Jimmy Deenihan contributed to the discussion by saying the Home Rule Act was a really significant piece of legislation and Daniel Mulhall the Irish ambassador said the discussion was part of ongoing efforts to look at the history of Britain and Ireland “in an inclusive way”.
Well indeed. What John And Jimmy and Daniel seem to be hinting at is that the Home Rule Act was banjaxed by Pearse and his crowd with their introduction of violence. The fact that the Act was passed and then shelved until after the Great War was beside the point. Pearse was wrong to use violence when he had the peaceful, democratic path laid out by Home Rule leader John Redmond.
As it happens, I’ve been reading a book on that period by Professor Ronan Fanning of UCD called The Fatal Path. Here he quotes from Bernard Lewis, a Middle East historian, about what motivates some revisionist historians:
“[They] would rewrite history not as it was or as they were taught it was but as they would prefer it had been. Their purpose of changing the past is not to seek some abstract truth…Their aim is to amend, to restate, to replace or even to recreate the past in a more satisfactory form”.
Fanning then tackles the question of whether it was necessary for Pearse and company to resort to violence, when the Home Rule Bill offered so much:
“There is no shred of evidence that Lloyd George’s Tory-dominated government would have moved beyond the 1914-styled limitations of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 unless compelled to do so by the campaign of the IRA. Indeed, as Charles Townsend has argued in his seminal work on the British campaign in Ireland, ‘on the British side some form of military struggle was inevitable before Irish demands would be taken seriously”.
Finally, Fanning points to a danger that some – nit-pickers all, I hasten to add, – that some might claim was in action in London the other day.
“Commemoration is an entirely laudable if somewhat utopian political objective. But it is not history. The danger is that its practitioners will propagate a bland, bloodless and bowdlerised hybrid of history, designed to offend no one, in the pious hope that it may command unanimous acquiescence. Theirs is but another variant of the propaganda branded by Bernard Lewis as ‘history not as it was…but as they would prefer it to have been”.
What’s that? I should send a copy of The Fatal Path to the former Fine Gael Taoiseach? Ah no. John has the look of a well-fed, happy man living in a well-fed, happy world. Sure what would I want to go upsetting him for?
John Britain’s views on the 1916 Rising are hardly news but I never cease to be amazed by his revisionist position. Could you imagine John Major or any former British Prime Minister holding a similar view about a key event which relates to the foundation of the British State?
” John Bruton gasped that the visit of Prince Charles to the twenty-six counties was the happiest day in his life,”
The way some people practically wet themselves in grovelling abasement and adoration when confronted with an inbred titled cretin, never ceases to amaze me.
Ach dear John , some months back, said it would do no harm if the working class had to live in austerity for a period,
Nice of him he has to survive on something like €200,000 per annum. that we know of.
Perfectly stated. I just can’t wrap my head around this type of thinking
Best not to mention the Blueshirts then, eh John? Violent and pro-fascist you say? That doesn’t sound very nice. Just keep tugging the forelock and say nothing, lest your Royal acquaintances find out about your party’s somewhat dubious past.
“I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.”
The Irish Embassy in London might well be termed ‘Iveagh House on Tour’ and so, it was with some arching of the Warbeckian eyebrows that I read where none other than Lord Paul Bew, no less, was a fellow speaker on the panel along with my old boss, the Bullock-befriending Bruton.
Gadzooks ! Talk about the Drones Club. There must have been some truly wonderful what-ho! as the intellectually challenging parlour game of ‘Inclusivity’, (already HUGE in the Free Southern State) was played out in the posh purlieus of Belgravia. This involved trying to squash as many Redmondites as possible under the bed, be it that the commodious Ambassadorial Four Poster is well suited for that kind of low jinks.
One’s surprise springs from the fact that surely Baron Bew would have been better suited to the ‘Iveagh Hostel on Tour’ (after all, one has a choice of innumerable Salvation Army dosshouses to choose from on Thameside). For in truth, does not the fall from grace of Lord Paul Bew mirror in the academic world the crash of Sir Anthony J. O’Reilly in the commercial field?
The similarities are striking. Both achieved their totally deserving Titles of Nobility in due recognition for their relentless, selfless pursuit of the Propaganda Campaign (The Nobs working by appointment with Her Nibs). And then there was the East Coast of America Connection, the Tea and Toast connection, so called, one suspects by some adman in Madison Avenue):the Tea referring to the banjaxed Boston College Project, the Toast to the fiasco of the kick in the Heinz quarters (how appropriate than Tone should be the Irish word for arse), thus reducing Him to beanz on toast, 24/7.
One must admit to not quite remembering what ever plain Professor (as he then was) Paul Bew ever had to say (and he had a lot to say,not least, on the airwaves) as one was never ever quite able to get one’s ears around those tones of his, that peculiar blend of the adenoidal and the aspirational towards Ascendancy. But one is quite confident it was all along predictable enough lines.
In fact, Professor Paul Bew was probably the best example in the Six Counties (the what?) of the Distinguished Historian who succumbed to his Inner Hack and deserted the dull Groves of Academe for the Brightest Mickey Dazzler of the lot, the Live Mike. Wiser commentators than Warbeck have likened this type of historian as one who has abandoned the slow drudgery of the Past Tense, for the quick fix of the Present Tense, thereby attaining in the process, all the credibility of the fellow or indeed Fellow who focuses on the Future , aka the Futurologist.
(Not quite sure what that means, Esteemed Blogmeister, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi about it and I do hope you choose to leave it in).
The Free Southern State has had its share of such historians or hysterions as some have chosen to dub them. Giant among them would be the dimunutive Corkonian, Professor Emeritus John A. Murphy. He is the doyen of the Emeritocracy and his two passions in life continue to be, even as he enters into the sere and yellow: hurling and the hurling of abuse at the Palestianians of his Cradle Days, Sinn Fein. Nothing gives the great 26 Countyite more pleasure still than whacking the shin-guardless shins of the Shinners with his ancient,iron-banded caman . For the committed hysterion the one rule always is: go for the man, forget about the ball.
His worthy successor is young Professor Diarmaid Ferriter,head honcho of History in UCD (allegedly). One uses the a-word in parenthesis, for in truth the callow Prof seems to have a camp bed in each and every radio studio in the Free Southern State, in which he appears to keep continually on the move from one to the other. At times you’d even imagine he was some class of OTR.
In truth,he is the Stockhusen of Stair: , stock phrases, stock attitudes. One can safely listen to Fifty Seven Symphonies of Stockhausen on the trot without once being in danger of actually hearing anything even remotely approaching a melody. So, it is with young Professor Ferriter.
God, there are times one wishes that Ferriter would take a leaf out of the great Freddy Starr’s book and produce a …..ferret from his trouser leg. At least, it would have the value of novelty.
Note the proximity of those two five-lettered words: Stair and Starr. Nothing at all coincidental about them, by the way. For those who are privileged to be unversed in the Lingua Franca of the Leprechaun, stair is the Irish word for ‘history’. So also, is the quoting of the following phrase from popular song: ‘Starry, starry night’.
For, the modern Irish historian who succumbs to his inner hack most certainly plants himself (firmly)in the ‘Van Gogh School of Engaged Hysteria’. In other words, he has an ear for one side of the story only. What the poor old Shan Van Vocht had to keen and caterwaul about is none of their business and not condusive ot boosting one’s hopes of bending the knee in the presence of Her/His Majesty. (Probably His, for the historians to come).
To finish where one started, with Baron Bew. Bew? Unusual name, certainly aristocratic in his rarity. Must be few enough Bews around.
Wonder what its origins are? Gaelic, perchance?
After all there is a word in the Lingua Franca of the Leprechaun, with the same pronunciation though a different spelling: ‘b’fhiu’.
It signifies: ‘It would be worth while’.
Would it be worth while delving into the clann hisotry of Baron Bew?
B’fhiu.
C’mon now Neill….where are you when we need your critical input .If you thought I was still tripping , what are you to make of the delightful controlled mesmerism and quixotic surrealism…nay …dadaism of our Perkin Warbeck? Imust say i’m still swimming like two birds in his perfumed slipstream of surrealistic bullshit…Delightful…..!
We’re all scholars of De Selby in our own way, eh? 😉
Exactly RJC….
Where do you start?
I left my youngest kid at his child minder today before he ran up to the door he gave me a big hug and said he loved me (he is only 4) and it suddenly dawned on me what happens in the political world or on the national level doesn’t really matter in the end the only thing that really matters is the love that your family bestow on you.
There isn’t any answers bar compromise we all know it yet we run from it.
That’s the bottom line Neill.. .I always say that children teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about life.
Excellently simple. (Kids are also brilliant revised history practicioners, they understand when an effort has failed miserably and a new spin on the facts at hand are called for.)
Well done again perkin, you manage once again to say everything without stating anything, bashing the opposition seems to your only forte, try coming up with something of substance.
Mr Bruton’s comments give the impression of a group of sentences desperately searching for an idea. Perhaps some elected representatives may accept they are past their sell-by date or as Brendan Behan once said, “People do not actually swim in Dublin Bay, they just go through the motions.”
Please somebody help me, like in the film Scent of a woman. I’m in the dark.
Norma
Jude ,you say Bruton looks like “a well fed happy man”.Could that possibly be connected to the fact that he comes from a family of cattle dealers, a noble profession if ever their was one!
The northern nationalists are the Palestinians of Ireland, abandoned and reviled. Treated like dirt, condemned for resisting foreign oppression, Bruton is a disgrace, Had he been around at the time of the Rising he would have gone running to the barracks squealing about bad men and women breaking the law. The new united Ireland will not be a mirror image of the free state but a country proud of it`s past and prepared to challenge injustice.
Another Jude,
So what are you saying here, that if you have an opinion that is different from the pack, you are a traitor, for the cause.
I do hope as you say this new Ireland will be more open and honest. Because I would rather have lived oppressed as a catholic, in the North, than to have suffered under the Church of Rome, in the South?
Young unmarried women, will testify to this, or the young boys petrified, and scared stiff of those priests.
Why, after all the countries hardships, to gain freedom and independence, did you give it away, in 1992. To be ruled from Europe.
You think the British were bad, and you are the Palestinians of the North, grow up, try Guatanimo Bay, a touch of the good old Americans, that you’s love so much.
I hope when this New Ireland comes, I don’t have to listen to all this crap.
Norma.
I will answer your points one by one, Norma.
1. I do not regard John Bruton as one of my `pack`, he is a free stater, a revisionist and it was because of attitudes like his the war raged as long as it did.
2. The new Ireland will be secular, unlike the north and indeed the UK. I am sure you would have rather suffered persecution as a Catholic in the north than as a Protestant under Rome Rule, the facts are Protestants played a full part in the twenty six counties.
3. There have been plenty of evil Protestant ministers, think of Kincora, think of the abuse carried out by all Church members, not just Catholic Priests.
4. The British were, sadly awful in their treatment of the Irish. They slaughtered non Anglicans as well when it suited them, including many brave Presbyterians. Of course, once the Orange card was played it was a different story.
5. I don`t know where you get the idea I support US foreign policy, it is atrocious and Guantanimo Bay, like Long Kesh, is an abomination.
I have read some nonsense on this site, but another jude, you should be a satirist. “The Palestinians of Ireland”, I’m sure you aren’t being serious here, as a drive around some of the so called republican strongholds and you will see more modern castles than anywhere in the country. Please, if you want to be taken seriously, then make valid points rather than roll out the usual drivel previously spoken by Adams and co.
Deprived of their national sovereignty….check.
Oppressed by foreign troops…..check.
Treated as second class citizens by religious fanatics and self appointed moral hypocrites…..check.
Am I talking about the northern nationalists or the Palestinians here? Take a guess and I will let you know if you are correct. Incidentally which of my points are factually `wrong`? Also, last time I checked Gerry Adams was leader of the most popular political party in Ireland so he must be talking SOME sense surely?
Well said William.
Theoretically, had the British not shot the rebels, in 1916. Things might have been different today, the same goes for the hunger strikers, had the shinners been more honest, and passed on the finer details from Mrs Thatcher, but they needed the sympathy of the people, and were willing to pay the price.
Norma
By the way I have every confidence in Scotland come September.
What the Scots do has absolutely nothing to do with you or me.
Any Irish person who thinks that the British establishment will ever
willingly behave honourably to any Irish person, be they Unionist or
Nationalist, is naive; and anyone who, through a prism of post-WWII
liberalism, shares such delusions really needs to get out more. The
British have rarely conceded any colonial territory without bloodshed,
other than Hong Kong recently when the military odds were so stacked
against them that they had little option.
The unadmitted angst for modern day Blueshirts such as the monarchist
Bruton is that they prefer to be British and stay in the Commonwealth
– Home Rule was all they ever wanted. The idea of living in a
Republican is too plebeian by half for any man who feels that an
hereditary monachy ‘represents all that we aspire to’ as Bruton once
gushed to Prince Charles (who btw is a much nicer bloke than Bruton).
It suited the British to offer – but, crucially, never actually give –
Home Rule (and any other cynical moonshine they could think of) at a
time when they were desperate for Paddy cannon fodder to put manners
on the upstart Germans who were looking like they may become dominant
in mainland Europe. However, whatever slim chance there might have
been of Home Rule being implemented was lost, not primarily by the
events of 1916, but by the mass mobilisation of hundreds of thousands
of well-drilled and openly-rebellious Unionists during 1912 and 1914
(Ulster Covenant, Larne gun-running, Curragh mutiny). Obviously, this
give added impetus to 1916 – since the British had caved in to UVF
threats, gun-running and mutinies in 1914, it may have seemed to some in 1916
that force was the only language that Britain took seriously.
There’s a material difference between Irish involvement in WW1 and
Irish involvement in WWII. The latter was for a justifiable cause –
defeating Nazism. The former had little to do with cynical sob-stories
about Belgium and everything to do with two bloodthirsty empires
striving for supremacy.
The typical revisionist Redmondite view of the people of 1916 is a mix
of moral superiority and cultural contempt. They moralise about the
‘depraved’ nature of anyone who opted to achieve independence through
violent means instead of pursuing a parliamentary course. They sneer
at Pearse’s alleged espousal of a ‘primitive blood sacrifice. According to the naïve Redmondite worldview, Britain would have been prepared to give up Ireland without a fight! However, while naivety (even naivety on that scale) is excusable, the hypocrisy of modern
Redmondites is not. Redmond’s strategy was based on an espousal of
murderous imperial violence that made the events of 1916 look like a
teddy bears’ picnic.
Redmond’s strategy for obtaining Irish independence was to curry
favour from Britain by encouraging Irishmen to butcher thousands of
‘Johnny-Foreigners’ on Britain’s behalf. In so doing, Redmond
(ironically) revealed himself to be not just a man committed to
mass-violence as a means of bringing about political change, but a
racist to boot – seemingly, violence was acceptable if it only
involved slaughtering (e.g.) the Turks.
Far from eulogising Redmond, it’s high time the Irish government
formally apologised to our European neighbours for the shameful part
played by brave but misguided Irishmen in a bloody imperialistic
debacle that had nothing to do with Ireland.