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This
collection of essays arose from a conference in May
2002 that considered the place of republicanism in
modern Ireland and deals with a wide range of themes
with varying degrees of success and effectiveness.
This variety, however, indicates some of the strengths
and weaknesses of our current understanding of republicanism,
both as an historical force and a contemporary political
movement. Central to these essays is the issue of
historical continuity and the power of tradition in
republicanism. One dominant academic reading of Republicanism
is of as an historically driven ideology with a self-referential
framework of thought; how far can we take republicans’
own insistence on the historical continuity of their
politics at face value? Following Conor Cruise O’Brien,
Bowyer Bell and Toolis, how important is the mandate
of the dead generations and ancestor worship in the
political practice and ideology of actually existing
republicanism in the post-Good Friday Agreement era?
In
considering aspects of these questions most of the
contributors avoid the easy parallels and the simple
definitions and point up both the problems and potentially
fruitful areas for further research and discussion.
Anne Dolan, for example, looks at Republicanism, monuments
and commemoration as a way of understanding the popular
base for republicanism and the complicated relationship
between mainstream Fianna Fail politics and what she
describes as ‘the men and women known only by
the vague term republican’. She argues that the
attendance and participation in commemorative activities
is due to a variety of factors beyond clear political
commitment and that we need a more subtle reappraisal
of the divisions and varieties of republicanism ‘beyond
the higher and more documented echelons’.
R.V.Comerford
also examines the relationship between the political
mainstream and republicanism; he explains the historical
tendency for republicans from the Fenian New Departure
onwards to be incorporated into the state as part
of a gateway process giving outsiders entry into the
constitutional power game. However by joining the
game they contribute to new rules of constitutional
propriety becoming not only slightly constitutional,
but also only slightly Fenian as well.
In
discussing actually existing Provisional Republicanism
Comerford avoids a simplistic historicism and believes
that the acceptance of the post Good Friday dispensation
is a ‘spectacular case of the old trope of republicans
coming to terms with democracy…albeit it one
with several original twists.’ Amongst the original
twists considered are the unwritten rules of the new
order which tolerate what Comerford describes as ‘localised
mafias’ that confirm the social and political
power of the republican leadership over its bases
of support.
It
is this theme of control, and repression that forms
the core of Anthony McIntyre’s discussion of
what he describes as ‘Provisionalism’s internal
politics, inequities and modes of repression’.
Drawing on a unique form of participant observation
as a former IRA prisoner and republican activist,
he charts the process as one of bureaucratisation
where the Republican movement cannot function without
the routinised exercise of structural power. McIntyre’s
account deals not only with the treatment of dissidents
and potential political challengers to the leadership,
but also with wider issue of social control of the
nationalist community. In some illuminating interviews,
he traces these structures back to the republican
experience in the gaols and shows how the military
conspiratorial ethos of some activists and an appeal
to collective loyalty can be used to create a culture
of conformity and control. McIntyre’s analysis
is structural and focuses on power rather than ideology
or individual careerism as the motive for this ‘pattern
of repression’. In this reading Provisionalism
takes on some of the functions of a pseudo-state,
both mediating between the British state and sections
of the nationalist community and carrying out some
law enforcement and social control functions in its
own interest.
Some
of the most challenging essays deal specifically with
the problems of defining republicanism and placing
its ideology in a wider analytical framework. Fearghal
McGarry's introduction poses some of the questions
concerning the relationship between republicanism
and democracy. He sees a degree of continuity within
republican tradition and political practice and believes
that tradition is still a significant source of legitimation
for the leadership; however he also argues that historically
republicanism has been marked by ideological incoherence
and political flexibility in working within constitutional
structures that fall short of the movement’s
aims and expectations. In this introduction and in
other essays McGarry and others point towards possible
tensions between aspects of this tradition and the
allure of electoral politics and constitutional legitimacy.
In
discussing these issues McGarry et al also reflect
a wider crisis of contemporary politics and political
discourse. This concerns not just the nature of the
legitimacy and authority of political power, but calls
into question the underlying frameworks of post Enlightenment
political thought.
This
crisis of politics is best illustrated by Eugene O’Brien’s
consideration of the republican imaginare. This densely
argued essay draws heavily on Lacan’s psychoanalytical
perspectives as a way of understanding the basic framework
of republican thought. Comparing a political ideology
to the development of the individual ego O’Brien
defines republicanism as an attachment to an ideal
image of the nation. The movement attempts to find
meaning through the creation of the ideal, but since
this rests on the ‘false fixities of an imaginary
world’ it is doomed to failure and disappointment.
To O’Brien the invention of historical narratives
and the impossibility of matching ideal identity with
hard reality are evidence of the essentialist, irrational
nature of nationalism and republicanism. Whilst O‘Brien
has some interesting things to say on the construction
of particular aspects of the republican tradition,
the broader implications of his description of the
mystifying and debilitating impact of the ideal seem
to deny the possibility of any concept of political
imagining or project of social change. Above all his
approach seems ahistorical in that it ignores the
significance of the contingent on the development
of republicanism and of the depth of the ideological
shifts that have taken place in Provisionalism since
the late 1980s.
Brian
Hanley also takes up themes of continuity in his look
at the rhetoric of republican legitimacy. He finds
common elements and notable similarities between the
arguments deployed by republican leaderships in the
twentieth century to defeat and marginalize opposition
to their new political directions. From Cosgrave’s
attack on ‘Trucileers’ through to Gerry
Adams’ contemporary comments on ceasefire soldiers
these justifications have an all too familiar ring.
Above all Hanley performs a valuable service in bringing
to our attention the career of a previously unsung
hero of the republican movement, one Clarence Edward
Biggles or Cathal de Bigleas.
Lying
behind many of these essays is an attempt to challenge
a number of unspoken assumptions and pose some usually
unasked questions. In particular how can we accurately
define a republicanism that stretches from Fianna
Fail-the republican party- through to the Thirty-Two
County Sovereignty Committee? Surely, such a broad
spectrum of organisations and political positions
is impossible to define in terms of common elements
and, as such, the word has become so devalued as to
be meaningless as either a description or an analytical
tool? Perhaps all we can conclude is that it is easier
to talk of republicanisms and that both spatially
and temporally republicanism is like Bishop Berkley’s
river in that we can never jump into the same movement
twice.
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