Should we fear to speak of 1916?

In the last issue I wrote about the commemoration of the 1916 rising, how it has become more acceptable to discuss it and even celebrate it after a generation of shame aroused by the murderous campaign of the IRA in Northern Ireland.
In the article I pointed to the changes now afoot in this state as hundreds of thousands of people with no connection whatsoever with 1916 come to live amongst us and how the challenge for the future will not be to realise the republic envisioned in another age but to construct one relevant to the new Ireland that is taking shape even as we speak.
Of course, commemorations have the useful function of stealing the thunder of fascists and extremists and discussions allow us to speculate and elaborate inclusive visions. But Irish nationalism, especially as embodied by hoop-shirted ranters, has within it a very intolerant streak.
That Sinn Féin has adopted an inclusive and anti-racist position is to its credit and to everyone’s benefit.
Recent revelations show just how inclusive the Ireland of 2016 will have to be. Apparently more than 10,000 immigrants are entering the State every month. And research from National University Maynooth shows that more than 167 languages are being used in Ireland.
To date much of the debate about 1916 has revolved around old scores and old sores. As is almost always the case in Ireland, the discourse has been backward-looking and blame-setting.
Those who have felt unable to talk about it for a very long time have relished their release from silence. There is also evidence of designer republicanism as the chic and shameless chatter and blather about things they know nothing of. It’s a fashion thing. They did the same with soccer.
All this is necessary, predictable and will pass. This, the 90th anniversary, will be the time when all that has been pent-up – the anger, the ignorance, the passion, the pride, the shame – will course through the public bloodstream. Soon, next year even, people will at last begin to look realistically at what we are and what we are to become. Perspective will emerge.
That debate will be fuelled by the outcomes of the forthcoming census. Some will be missed by this – some will not wish to be enumerated – but by and large it will tell us what we are becoming.
The Irish of 2006 are nothing like the Irish of 1916. We are wealthy to a degree our forebears could not have foreseen, much less contemplated. We are also prey to many of the ills of affluence so familiar to other wealthy countries.
What is the stuff of majority conversation now? Our media and shops are largely British. We talk of little other than property prices (domestic and foreign), food, fashion, technology, business… In 1916 these were the domains of the few rich against whom the Volunteers, and especially the Citizen Army, rebelled.
Now they are the domains of everyone. We have become what (some of) our grandfathers rose against.
Well, not everyone. But the exceptions are usually quiet, unobtrusive people. With respect, their republicanism doesn’t need an excess of alcohol to liberate it. Nor does it necessarily flourish in a tent at the Galway races. The late Mayo fishmonger Jackie Clarke is a perfect example.
Clarke entered the national imagination in the last week when it emerged that he had accumulated a treasure trove of republican memorabilia that included many artefacts relating to the 1916 rising. And what’s more, valuable as this trove is, he left it to the State.
It is instructive of our changing values that many have been so astounded by this generosity and have wondered why he hadn’t cashed the items in. Most of us would have.
In his act of generosity Clarke challenges us to revaluate. But by providing the material for what will become the Jackie Clarke Library in Ballina he has also seeded the establishment of a centre that will enable people in the west to show the new Irish something of the events that have, for better or worse, shaped the way we are, that will help establish a bridge to the future that they, just as much as we, will build.
And that’s more true to the spirit of 1916 than all the pubby rants of hoop-shirts put together.