Even if I wasn’t a history graduate I don’t think I could have grown up in this country and not realise how important history and the past is, particularly relative to the present and future. This is the case across the board - if we don’t know where we came from, how can we know where we’re going, etc - but especially in a society/culture/country where our history has both held us back and pushed us forward so violently (in the literal sense, and the figurative) it is especially the case that we owe it to ourselves to develop an appreciation of that past.
Which is why so much about modern Ireland absolutely disgusts me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have very strong feelings on Ireland and Irishness, and have been variously described as a nationalist, a republican, and most recently a ‘backward northern catholic’ (though being neither northern nor catholic that one really confused me!). That is precisely what leads me to this particular feeling of, for want of a better word, disappointment.
This weekend, and indeed this week, “Ireland” will “celebrate” the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. And it is frankly the most shameful and despicable act in a long list of pitiful acts perpetrated by a pitiful government. I didn’t watch the Late Late Show on Friday, because frankly I never do, but apparently Senator Shane Ross commented that the “90th” anniversary was entirely random and based purely on the fact of an upcoming election. The fact that Fianna Fáil seem terrified of an electorate finally challenging their inaction, and frankly their incompetence. Shane Ross was illuminating nobody in what he said, and that is the saddest thing about it. Anybody who has put a moment’s thought into it must realise what a cynical exercise this is - suddenly laying claim to a day which, in any other proud nation, would be marked annually, and not by releasing pathetic compilation CDs of supposedly Oirish music which will frankly only appeal to tourists drawn in by the chaos of it all.
But pride has nothing to do with it, and I mean that two ways. Pride has nothing to do with marking a day such as this. Celebration, as a concept, is inappropriate in the case of fellow countrymen dying and/or being killed for whatever reason and in whatever circumstances. We should mourn the loss of Irish men and women, on both sides. We should mourn the very fact that brothers fought each other, killed each other, died separated. For the love of all that is good and worthwhile, we should learn from it - we must learn from it. Yet here we are, 90 years later, deliberately constructing divisions within our society for no better reason than ignorance and an absence of the will to do otherwise.
A report this morning stated that some 33,000 children in this state are leaving primary school without basic literacy skills. I mention it because of the impressive PR work on the part of those launching the report (a man whose name escapes me for now, but I will return to amend this, fear not!). They linked this shameful statistic to the 90th anniversary celebrations, making the point that the proclamation of 1916 aspired to treat all children of the republic equally, and that that meant providing sufficient education for all. A point seemingly lost on the glorious government currently in power in this state. Evidently they were too busy selling off copies of the proclamation to go to the trouble of reading it.
Today, against the advice of both the National Library and the National Museum, the government, in their efforts to commemorate 1916, sold our national anthem to the highest bidder - literally. Apparently our national identity is worth around €760,000. Apparently our government didn’t see fit to invest that amount of money in something like a precious, irreplacable historical document. Apparently buying €18,000 worth of make-up for Bertie (per year) was more important.
I would love to be able to feign surprise but I can’t. We live in a country that sees fit to build Par 3 golf courses on the likes of Vinegar Hill (for bookings, call 054 35127), and a motorway through the Hill of Tara. Why not sell off flags, proclamations, invaluable documents. They’re only history after all. Our history. The history of our people, of our nation, of the world around us. In this glorious age of Celtic Tiger Mysticism, all that seems to matter is €€€€€€€€€. Nothing else is relevant. We can’t even seem to pretend anything else is relevant. Unless there’s an election involved.
So there they were, halfway through a cabinet meeting, realising that they were hated to the point that even people who have lived in “FF households” for generations were considering voting for the Greens. Panic set in. How on earth are we going to distract this lot from our long, long list of failures? How will we convince them that we’re their kind of people? Tell you what, we’ll cash in (literally) on the undercurrent of xenophobia by emphasising our past in a profoundly narrowminded way, while linking it to a celebration of our capacity for downright cynicism. Translation? Rewrite history. Sure wasn’t it Bertie’s grandad who ran things in the GPO that day? Honestly I’d imagine McDowell on the other side, he does seem more of an oppressor type…
I’m genuinely afraid of how this weekend will turn out. Will we have more riots? Will everyone stay home and ignore the commemoration, just as they did last year, and the years before? If it goes well, Fianna Fáil will maybe buy back the little pieces of history they sold off today. They have the cash. If it goes badly? Damn those republicans, should never have trusted them, always up to something. I only wish I could believe that the majority of the electorate won’t be blind enough to fall for it.
