JOYCE’S MARTELLO TOWER REVISITED (BY THE TIMES) by Donal Kennedy

Those of us who read the first few pages of Ulysses may remember how Buck Mulligan and Stephen Daedalus played host in the Martello Tower at Sandycove to a visiting Englishman whom they concluded was a gobshite and, if I recall correctly, a source of beer money. The gobshite had formed the view that England had wronged Ireland (in the past) and that “history was to blame.” So he presumed to lecture Daedalus and Mulligan on Irish history.

I’m reminded of this by David Aaronvitch, a columnist with THE TIMES of London, who has made a flying visit to Dublin, stood outside Joyce’s Tower, looked across the Bay to Howth and contemplated history. He seems to believe that Ireland has wronged England and that a misunderstanding  of history by the Irish people of its history to blame.The headline instructs us – “Don’t romanticise the bloodstained past.”

He says – ” The received version of the Easter Rising, as taught at mother’s knees, in comic books and films, is of a brave band of patriots, whose only sin was impetuosity.”

He mentions the Howth gun-running  of 900 rifles in July 1914 and claims that at the time the British Government  was for Irish Home Rule. He doesn’t refer to the Ulster Volunteers preparing to resist Home Rule nor their  landing of many thousands of rifles at Larne in April 1914. Nor the challenge by British Army officers, backed by the Comservative Party, when in March 1914 when they said they’d resign their commissions rather than challenge the Orangemen.

Nor the editorial comment by The Daily Telegraph at the time – “The Army has killed Home Rule.” The Daily Telegraph’s reading of the situation was precisely that of Lenin.

Nor does Aaronvitch mention the shooting dead of unarmed Dubliners by the British Army on the day the rifles were landed at Howth.

God help the man’s ignorance, but the comics I saw in Ireland were virtually all English and a few American. The films in our cinemas were British and American. The newseels we saw were British Pathe  and some other British ones showing, for instance, their Queen opening a flower show. There was no Irish film industry nor an Irish TV station until the last days of December 1961. And for many years Radio Eireann didn’t come on the air until 5.00 PM.

As for what I heard at my mother’s knee. Her younger brother went out to loot sweets in Easter Week. His mother was sending him back, when she took up his gigantic packet and felt the weight. It had been in the shop window and merely for show. The poor child was unlucky in his choices. He later joined the British Army and was killed at Singapore in February 1942 when I was 6 weeks old.

I think that the Dubliner, William Howard Russell, who reported from the Crimea for THE TIMES did a wonderful job.

But, when THE TIMES sent Aaronovitch to report from Dublin  somebody clearly blundered.

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