“Gerry Adams does not have a monopoly on the theology of republicanism.”
There was an interesting clash between Máirtín Ó Muilleoir and Kevin Toolis on Monday’s Talkback with Máirtín denying he was putting forward the Sinn Féin point of view on those other republican paramilitaries. As Máirtín repeated at CommentisFree, that point of view could be paraphrased as – don’t mention the ‘R’ word. And no wonder. There’s a harsh reality here for Sinn Féin to face, as Eamonn McCann points out in the Daily Mail
The working-class anger that gave rise to the emergence of the Provos as a major player in the 1970s did not represent a new flowering of Republican ideas, a long-repressed tradition suddenly gushing forth again through the cracks caused by the seismic impact of the 1960s civil rights movement. It would be truer to say that the tiny Republican movement of the time, embodied in Belfast in a few families, including the Adamses, provided an organisational framework, a channel for expression and a readiness to fight that matched the sudden mood of the Catholic masses and offered a ready-made ideology to lend their travails an historical resonance at a time when their communities were under siege by loyalist mobs, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army.
Adams and his associates have gradually, surreptitiously, denying at every stage that they were embarked on any such enterprise, sloughed off this Republican tradition and bargained the war conducted in its name for advancement for themselves and their community in the here-and-now. But the core idea which they espoused was elevated in the course of their struggle, and, as Saturday night’s killings illustrate, it hasn’t gone away.
Kevin Toolis, writing today in the Times
But Ireland is no more united than it was in 1922. And Sinn Féin, sunk into insignificance in the last elections in the South, is unable to articulate how the current Stormont settlement leads to a united Ireland and something more than jobs for Mr Adams’s boys.
In West Belfast, the republican heartland, his political machine is slick, suffocating, thuggish and ready to isolate all those within the “republican family” who question the long betrayal. No one is immune from the leader’s wrath if they dissent and ask – what was all the sacrifice of the 1970s and 1980s for? Did Bobby Sands starve himself to death so that Martin McGuinness, a legendary IRA man, could become a minister of the British Crown in Ireland?
Even Brendan “the dark” Hughes, Mr Adams’s old Long Kesh cellmate, was cast out into the wilderness. “I would have taken a bullet for Gerry Adams but perhaps I should have put a bullet in him,” said Hughes despairingly.
By their latest killings, the republican dissidents are reminding us all that Gerry Adams does not have a monopoly on the theology of republicanism. They intend to go on with the killing until they are stopped. Like the poor, Ireland’s Troubles are always with us.
The Irish Times, which also has a couple of excellent background articles, has a blunt, related, editorial today
Above all, though, there is the challenge of ridding Irish culture of the last vestiges of the sneaking regard for their crude ideology and the murderous methods that flow from it. A part of the price that has been paid for the peace process, and for bringing paramilitary killers in from the cold, has been a reluctance to challenge too strongly the notion that violence was ultimately vindicated. We must acknowledge that paramilitarism achieved nothing for the Irish people over 30 years except blood and tears. It was, and is, a dead end. Those who would revive it must be treated by everyone, of every political persuasion, for what they are: the enemies of democracy, decency and Ireland.
That’s another legacy issue that’s been ignored so far..
Rory (South Derry)
Are you excluding police from that total?
What was the split between UDR and Mainland Soldiers.
How did you feel about the policy of shooting retired or off duty members of the security forces sometimes in front of their family?
Listen Picador
I am not on here under any other guise!
As for threatening you – your on a computer – not standing in front of me – what you afraid of???
You call me names and “you are more a raving lunatic than I could ever be”!
The Simple face is hat I dispise EVERYTHING that PSF do – they have hoodwinked many in their own community and privately many former Provos would tell you that if knew any!
From now on I only answer sensible questions from you
There will alway be resistane until the Brits go -that is as sure as the sun in the sky!
Oíche mhaith
Go mbeannaí Dia duit a chara
“Republicanism is a democratic ideology but for historical reasons the Irish version has had a tendency to be conspiratorial, authoritarian and anti-democratic. ”
The adoption of the Republican creed by Catholic Nationalists was simply because it was expedient at the time, not because Catholics were theologically disposed towards it. Republicanism in its Hiberno-Catholic conception owes its genesis more to the failure of the Jacobite attempts to regain the Crown than to any passion for revolutionary doctrine. Irish Catholics were rarely ever averse to monarchism. Louis XIV had all the Catholic churches in his kingdom raise funds for Tyrconnell and the exiled Gaelic nobility and gave land to them. The founder of Hennessy Cognac was one such Irishman given land by the King. The Spanish King was similarly kind.
Republicanism was convenient for most Catholics. Unlike France and Spain where the aristocracy was of the same faith as the peasantry, in Ireland the aristocracy was Protestant, most Catholics consequently felt alienated from them. Add that the bitterness over the land dispossessions, the closure of the monasteries, the harsh proscriptions of “popish” priests and bishops, the use of a different tongue, the perceived theft of churches to a heretical body; all these were naturally imputed to the governing class and made the commoners feel alienated from it. With the failure of Jacobite movement, Republicanism was seen as the most expedient remedy.
Very interesting CO,
There is this debate about what constitutes ‘true’ republicanism / who are the legitimate inheritors of Pearce, Connolly, etc but what is often defined as ‘true’ republicanism, e.g. complete rejection of the democratic will, is a very warped version of republicanism indeed, which owes more to agrarian secret societies of previous centuries than the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité.
Exactly right CO.
Republicanism is a shorthand for extreme nationalism in Ireland.
And as for Pearse and Connolly being republicans! Pearse was a Gaelic Nationalist and Connolly was a socialist.
Republicanism was a flag of convenience, it still is.
CO,
one of the most important reasons why Irish Catholicism is different – radically different in many ways – than continental Catholicism is its different historical relationship to state power. At its best it has made Irish Catholicism genuinely rooted in the community, committed a real faith rather than form (which could not always be openly expressed), and committed to social justice and the rights of the underdog. (Modern outworking: the Catholic hierarchy in NI, almost uniquely in the world, supporting legal recognition for gay civil unions.)
At its worst it has made Irish Catholicism suspicious of outside influence, power hungry, conspiratorial and hostile to the state even when it’s an Irish Catholic one. (Modern outworking: Fr. Brendan Smyth.)
Fascinating observation. Thanks.
PS – I’m not so sure that you can say in Spain that the peasantry shared the faith of their masters. Rural Spain was massively undersupplied with priests from, as far as one can tell from the historical record, the reconquista; and as rural Spain became riven with class warfare, the Church tended to universally side with the rich. On the eve of the Civil War, only 20% of Spanish Catholics were regular Mass attenders, surely the lowest proportion in the world in the 1930s. Hence much of the Spanish peasantry was only too happy to poke priests’ eyeballs out and impale their skulls on spikes when the Civil War broke out. Not that the Church had did too much to be proud of during the Civil War either.
lol Rory Carr – had a good chuckle about the Viz comment – spot on.
regarding the other one – i didn’t realise they were allowed computers in mental facilities.
This thread makes me think that it’s long past time we took the handbag out of irish politics.
TAF,
Maybe, but great stuff above from picador, the two sammies, rory carr, catholic observer, et al.
More power to your elbows, gentlemen,
As for the other Rory (SD) somebody above (picador?) suggested that he was borderline psychotic. For me, you can scratch “borderline”.
Rory(South Londonderry)
I love people like you. Every time I waver and start to think that a United Ireland might not a bad Idea, someone like you comes along and I automatically think… Shove YOUR republic as far up your jaxi as it will go!
You and the rest of the republican movement which came into force 40 years ago are the main reasons why Unionist’s will always reject a U.I.
Wise up and accept the will of the majority of your fellow countrymen and women.
Alan is correct. The dissidents are doing nothing to advance the cause of a united Ireland. They’ll only cause mass mayhem and repel FDI, making NI even more economically dependent on Britain and hence less likely to ever be able to join a united Ireland. One of the greatest impediments to a united Ireland now is the high level of economic dependence on the (British) civil service. If these dissidents had any cop-on they would engage their energies into creating a buoyant economy so that unification would not be as economically unviable as it currently is. They should also try to disestangle the Irish nationalist movement from its traditional tribal associations and its negative connotations (much like the Tories are endeavouring to do with Unionism) so that nationalism could appeal to a broader electorate. Trying to bomb people into submission will only alienate the people they should be attempting to attract. If they truly believed in the merit of a United Ireland they would not scruple to advance it on that basis.
Alan, I’m 100% with you. I am a Protestant and a unionist with a very small ‘u’ and have thought that a United Ireland for this generation could be managed.
However when I read the comments of the noted serial poster on this thread I think; no way, is that the mindset that lurks behind the public face of present-day Republicanism?
Such people so obsessed with hate and bitterness, so focused on their reading of history would gut the likes of you and I like fish for the “crimes” of our fathers.
They lead me to think that a united Ireland would be similar to Zimbabwe, so much hope at independence only to disintergrate into hatred and victimisation a few short years later.
So no thanks, I’ll stick with the UK.