Spring fever

Soon comes Easter. Pagan, Jew, Christian, Muslim, whatever yer having yourself, they’ve all marked the Spring turning point of the year for millennia.

And in their own way, they have looked to lengthening days, the first buds on trees and the tumescence of daffodil and birds alike, to signal the rebirth of the earth and to symbolise the great cycle of life.
They’ve tried to arrogate it to themselves and their mythologies of course. They have woven stories around it to support and incorporate their own theologies and creation myths. Like St. Patrick, they have lit their own fire and tried to pass it off as everyone’s.
On this island, Easter has another resonance. It too marks the colonisation of an older meaning and symbolism. It too marks the arrogation of multiple mythologies. On Easter in 1916 a fire was lit and the incendiaries tried to pass it off as everyone’s.
It wasn’t of course. The Easter rising was a wild, even anarchic, escapade that had little support amongst the general population. But in time things changed. If not everyone’s Rising, it was eventually claimed by many.
But for many years, since 1969 in fact, many have been uneasy about the rising. Its patently undemocratic nature worried many as did the subsequent consignment of the working classes to the back of the queue – Labour must wait, said de Valera.
Others fretted about the voice of the rebels. Their rhetoric of blood sacrifice, nationalism and militarism seemed redolent of the queasy cocktail that became fascism in other European countries. That the only fascist group in 1930s Ireland was drawn from the followers of the less militarist wing of the nationalist movement of the early 20th century is a delicious irony. That said, the Blueshirts were incompetent.
But most of all, there were people, especially those south and west of the border, who became increasingly tormented by the death and destruction brought to Northern Ireland by terrorists who took the Easter Rising as their lodestar, and who claimed to be the legitimate Government of the island as descended from those who launched the Easter rising…
That discomfort persists, notwithstanding the Republican rhetoric of rioters and the booing by Celtic fans of Rangers players. If anything, the more aggressive demonstrations of quasi-Republican intolerance have strengthened the unease, other than in areas of disadvantage.
And yet, for the first time in a generation it’s possible to seriously consider the Rising, to reflect on its meaning then and now and to set it more comfortably in a global context. It is even possible to acknowledge its importance and that of the war of independence that followed, in helping the world to cast off the burden of imperialism.
That what followed imperialism was often a far greater tyranny is not the fault of Irish rebels. That the rising ultimately partitioned Ireland couldn’t have been foreseen. That they showed no political understanding vis-à-vis Unionists is lamentable but, in the context of the times, not surprising.
And if their rhetoric now seems blood-curdling and chillingly close to that of Islamic martyrologists, we must remember that it was largely of a piece with contemporary mainstream European incantations on war.
It is true that the State created after independence was impoverished in thought and deed, narrow minded, priest-ridden and bigoted. In due course it also became corrupt. Millions of those whom the rebels claimed should be cherished turned their backs on the sorry mess and found redemption in the heart of the old empire against which the rebels had risen, or in the gold-paved streets of the American empire which succeeded it.
And irony upon irony, there was a time when there were more native Irish speakers in London than in Ireland…
But could they have foreseen these things any more than the strange turnaround of the last decade that has seen the Republic leap up the richness rankings to such effect that the descendents of the rebels are the elect of the earth? No, they couldn’t.
With time comes distance and the freedom to contemplate without anger or celebration. There will be marches, there will be speeches, there will even be an occasional rant. There will be froth, especially as the mainstream parties try to wrest ownership of the Rising back from the extremists. Whatever.
It’s okay. It happened. Let’s accept it and move on. We have a new nation to create and new myths to incorporate. Upwards of a quarter of a million people have moved into this State in the last five years, so many that we haven’t numbered them.
Many many more will follow. Within a decade we may be close to our pre-Famine peak. If so, as the centenary of 1916 is marked, half those on the island will not have been born here. As they and their children shape the new Ireland, the battles fought early in the last century will fade from view.
The 1916 Rising cannot be a unifying force for the Ireland that is to come. How the Irish of the future will choose to mark it in 2066 is their business. But how we present it to immigrants, and more importantly our beliefs, value systems, way of life and cherished notions, will determine how they integrate and how they shape and redefine what it means to be Irish.
History is a debate between the present and the past. So it changes. It should now be possible to deal with 1916 in a considered and rational way, so that in ten years time and beyond the centenary too, can be marked with the same nonchalance the French display on Bastille Day. Even by Celtic fans.