This
is a tedious work to contend with. Not conceptually
daunting - the author is clear enough - but the reader
still sweats to get through it. Some books are just
crafted that way. Maybe the subject matter, if it
is to be covered thoroughly, leaves little room for
a touch of zest and a few trimmings of colour. The
work lacks the panache of Fionnula OConnor when
writing about northern nationalists, but then it is
a much more tightly detailed construction, robustly
grounded in a dry academic 'episteme' rather than
lively journalism.
The
key question of course is does it merit recommending
that Fortnight readers go out and buy The
Nationalists of Northern Ireland? The answer can
only be yes. For the student of history it is compelling,
for the researcher, indispensable. In it Enda Staunton
applies himself to the task of tracing the contours
of northern nationalist development in the period
1918-1973. Its major components are examined - constitutional,
republican and the more left wing labour tradition.
Linked to these three strands are the activities of
the wider overarching bodies within the nationalist
socio-political ensemble - the Catholic Church and
the Irish Government. How northern nationalism engaged
with unionism takes up much of the work. And the wild
card status is given to the British state which
does not wriggle off the hook as easily as it might
have wished.
A
large portion of this book addresses itself to the
career of Joe Devlin who wins sympathetic treatment
from the author. Looking through the window that this
work constitutes it emerges that no figure within
Northern nationalism in the 65 year period covered
looms as largely as this man, although the events
of the last thirty years may allow historians to ease
him out from that pole position. So one wonders just
how definitively the focus will transfer from Devlin
to Gerry Adams when a book covering the hundred years
from 1918-2018 comes out, as it most likely will.
Staunton
also covers all the main events and organisations
including the formation of the state, the Craig-Collins
pact, the anti-Catholic pogroms; the Nationalist party,
the IRA, the Omagh Group and the Anti Partition League.
While space and intellectual purpose denied him the
means to micro analyse any of these he nevertheless
presented a lucid account of the dynamic governing
the relationships between each of them. Most crucially,
a picture emerges in which northern nationalism exists
as a largely autonomous force. This has far reaching
consequences in the attitudinal sphere which in turn
helps determine the scope of vision and the type of
political strategies that would grow out of that.
Of
special interest is the role of republicanism and
in particular Belfast republicans. In 1933 An Phoblacht
reported that nowhere was the Treaty supported more
scurrilously and venomously than in the six counties.
The paper also complained that more from there joined
the Free State Army than from other regions. In 1922
and 1923 a couple of thousand Belfast republicans
left the city to join the Free State Army. Up until
the early 1920s the number of active volunteers in
the Belfast IRA was infinitesimal. One
republican veteran described many of the Belfast volunteers
as little more than Hibernians with guns.
Belfast delegates at the first meeting of the Provisional
Governments North East Ulster Advisory Committee
complained about how Sinn Fein in the city had grown
to a membership of 1,000, many of whom were
not in the firing line during the War
of Independence but who were now - once it was over
- prepared to die in the last ditch. As
radicalism decreased and the movement became more
right wing the belt and boot brigade moved
in and enforced discipline along the lines of
the European fascists. More and more republicanism
came to be presented as no different from nationalism
- articulated by Moss Twomey the organisations
chief of staff.
The
point is that these attitudes and behaviours are present
today within republicanism as it has moved over the
years to take up the gradualist position of constitutional
nationalism before it. In drawing attention to the
existence of two Catholic Norths Staunton could have
been more vigorous in prosecuting this logic to the
point of concluding more clearly that any attempt
to have one Catholic North means that republicanism
and any radical vestiges attached to it become subsumed
within a more conservative nationalist project. Republicanism
has never been able to radicalise northern nationalism
but in it flirtations with it has compromised its
own essence.
Ultimately,
as the author claims, that Provisional republicanism
managed so easily, internally, to take up the position
it fought so long against is not to be wondered at
given the cultural and historical background
which it operated in.
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