Since I cannot buy the hard copy of the Irish Times here in London I may have the opportunity to clear some of my clutter. I keep copies for months, meaning to separate the chaff from the chaff and comment on the most silly chaff, and keep the well written pieces for reference. In practice chaff accumulates and I delay. So I have accumulated mountains of chaff hoping that, going into labour they will produce not quite ridiculous mouse-size ears of wheat.
Today I recovered both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent for Easter Monday 1966. The Irish Times reported that 900 insurgent survivors of Easter 1966 were at the GPO, approximately half of all those who were “out” in the Rising. It suggests to me that they, and the civilian survivors
who knew Ireland before, during and after the Insurrection, were better qualified than Fintan O’Toole (born 1958), Fergal Keane (born 1961) Seamus Murphy SJ, and other “experts” who know diddly squat about the world before they were born. Keane is a regular mine of disinformation, Murphy
a blundering ignoramus about Ireland’s history and a supercilious belittler of men whose bootlaces he would not have been worthy to tie, and then there’s O’Toole ( God Save Us and Our Native Land!),whose point of departure for a study of 1916 begins with his memory of its celebration in 1966 and whose point of arrival goes no further back. “Send in the clowns? Don’t bother -they’re here.
But out from the 1966 papers fell a cutting, brown and crumbling, an editorial from THE IRISH TIMES of Wednesday, July 9th 1969, when Douglas Gageby, the first (or perhaps the only?) Editor of that paper to give his allegiance to Ireland, was in the Chair.
It was headed
“MINUS ONE”
“There are not many Protestant Nationalists in the North today. The very term has an old-fashioned flavour about it – with memories of men in mustard tweeds, of teas with Mrs Stopford Green and piping evenings in Frank Bigger’s house.
If there are few of that ilk, there are assuredly fewer Catholic Unionists (though many tolerate the Unionist regime)’ and the number is now further diminished by one,since Mr. Louis Boyle’s defection of yesterday.
A Catholic might find himself in the Unionist ranks for two reasons.The first is Mr Boyle’s: quite simply that he is a believer in conservatism and the Union. A second line of reasoning might bring a Catholic to join the ranks – namely, that if he wanted to move things in the North, the only big earth-moving
machine is that belonging to the Unionists, and that he perforce must go where his energy might be expected to bring some results.
(In this part of the country, many young men, who, like most of us, can hardly tell Fianna Fail from Fine Gael, have joined the Government party just as much because they wanted to get things done and saw in that party the logical channel rather than for any great reason of personal gain.Later they may find that patronage is sweet, and that it is still not a crime.)
Mr Boyle is to be commended for having the courage of his convictions and there will be no shortage of friends to tell him that he might have known it all along.The point is that, at a time of apparent thaw, his case has once again demonstrated that the Unionist Party does not want Catholics. Indeed, it cannot have them; for Unionism, like its Siamese twin, Orangeism, is wholly a sectarian and racist duality.
This week, with its orgy of genuine religious and deadly earnest political activity, is the reality of Unionism.
Unionism cannot afford to have a crossing of the religious boundaries by such as Mr Boyle. If it is embarrassed by an accretion of Catholics, it is equally unforgiving of Protestant deserters. Mr. Ivan Cooper, a Protestant who stands for the Civil Rights cause, has been the subject of a quiet smear campaign by some of his former colleagues. (He was at one time a member of the Young Unionist organisation.) Things must be, if not black and white, eternally Orange and Green.
There has recently been some hope that this deadlock might be even partially relaxed by the success of the Civil Rights movement. Some of the people involved therein see the solution only in terms of class war; all of them have done something to jolt the sectarians and to deg????rise? the old factional stances. Republicans of the strict tradition have a mission here,but are till chasing other gods.
Mr Boyle can congratulate himself that, among the sighs of relief that will go up from many Unionists at his resignation, there will be just one or two blushes,and here and there, perhaps, a man of some independence, who will resolve to stand out just a little more against the tide of ill-will and perversion.
It is a small hope, but one worth cherishing.
I was friends with Louis Boyle when we were at the Abbey CBS Newry together. I was a republican and Louis a unionist.While we often disagreed we realised that we had more than enough in common to overcome political differences. After leaving the Abbey our paths never crossed. Until last year when I received a Facebook friend request from Louis, which I immediately accepted. Since then we have met a few times, and
convoked a reunion of some of our surviving classmates. I am happy to say that Louis has moved well to the left and is now a member of the SDLP and also I think of the British Labour Party. I reman a republican (unaffiliated) and have also moved well to the left.