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Radical
changes in the political sphere have a way of sneaking
up on us. Who in 1929 could have envisaged that within
a mere decade the globe would be engulfed in the fire,
atrocity and horror of the Second World War? And if
anyone had been foolhardy to suggest, in 1980, that
within 10 years the Berlin Wall would come down, Eastern
Europe would throw off the Stalinist yoke, and the
Soviet Union would be on the verge of peacefully dissolving
itself, they would have been laughed out of court.
Likewise
who, during the triumphal 1903 Irish tour of Edward
VII, would have predicted that a mere 18 years later
a Treaty would be signed granting 26 counties freedom
from the British Crown?
I
have a suspicion that those who suggest that any change
in the constitutional status of Ireland is decades
off, if ever; and that any such change will be driven
in the end by the (in my view morally and intellectually
bankrupt, not to mention sectarian) “demographic
argument” may well find themselves standing stunned
as the tide of history sweeps by unheralded and unlooked
for.
It
has always been my view that, when viewed against
the vast sweep of Irish history - 8,000 years of it
- the centuries of the Occupation are but a blip,
a passing phase, a temporary (if unpleasant) phenomenon.
And it is my firm conviction that this is precisely
how future generations of Irish men and women will
view the whole sorry episode. Even if the nay-sayers
and pessimists are correct, the Occupation is unlikely
to reach the grand tally of 900 years - in 2070 or
thereabouts. And barring some catastrophic natural
disaster, I think even the most pessimistic of us
would concede that Ireland, and the Irish, have a
good deal more than 68 years remaining to them!
Everywhere
I look I believe I can detect the faint (green!) shoots
of a New Spring in Ireland, a new cultural renaissance,
a renewed national self-confidence. The grim decades
of self-loathing inflicted on us by the Revisionists
are over. The highly insular - even incestuous - and
claustrophobic clerical society of De Valera has crumbled.
And the people are beginning to quietly reclaim their
own heritage. Of course, these three phases of any
post-colonial society were well described by Frantz
Fanon and should come as no real surprise to any student
of our own colonial conflict.
Having
survived the contrived, defensive, ersatz paddywhackery
of De Valera’s Ireland, and the blindly destructive
backlash of Revisionism, we are now in a position
to construct (better, reconstruct) Ireland with a
fuller, more complex and yet much more satisfying
understanding of who and what we are. And of necessity
this mature understanding has to come to terms with
the presence of those Children of the Occupation amongst
us. For they are Children of the Nation too.
When,
as John Waters puts it, “remembering the future”
- as any postcolonial society at this phase must do
- we could do a lot worse than to leave aside the
Occupation blip for one moment, and consider the other
7,000 years of history, culture, and politics on this
island. Could there be some benefit to considering
how our illustrious ancestors - the educators of Europe
in the Dark Age, the oldest literary tradition in
Europe, the proud originators of the second-oldest
Code of Law in human history - organised their affairs?
Some small insight that may be of use to us in reconstructing
Ireland, in remembering the future?
Far
from the myths of the 19th Century “Celtic Twilight”
writers, Ireland has always been a diverse island
- in its landscape and its peoples. The notion of
an ancient pure Gaelic race, sole rightful heirs to
the whole island, is nonsense. Most modern scholars
tend to think that the Milesian Gaels, who became
the dominant culture to such an extent that “Gael”
is now synonymous for many people with “Irish”,
actually only arrived here shortly (in historical
terms) before the time of Christ. And the peoples
they found were hardly a homogenous lot - a blend
of tribes, different types of Celt, many of which
spoke different forms of the language (the P-Celtic
and Q-Celtic forms), who had begun to arrive in Ireland
scarcely 3-400 years before the Milesians; and also
the descendents of the ancient Mesolithic race who
built Newgrange, those small dark folk known to legend
as the Fir Bolg.
The
long-running wars in Ulster, from roughly 400 to 1000AD,
between the Milesian Uí Neill, their P-Celtic
vassals of the Airgialla, and the Q-Celtic Cruthinic
Ulaidh tribes will perhaps be the example most familiar
to many readers. On occasion these wars are elevated
to a spurious mythic status in a vain attempt to “prove”
that “Ulster” has always been “different”.
But such dynastic struggles went on in every corner
of the country, for example the long struggles by
the Milesian Eóganachta in Munster to subdue
the likes of the Déisi, Múscraige, Corco
Duibne and others and assert the primacy of Milesian
rule.
And
so, what initially appears to be a bizarre political
structure - the entire island divided into anywhere
between 80 and 150 tuatha with a weak and largely
symbolic position of Ard Rí - is in reality
no more than a highly sensible solution to the problem
of a hugely diverse population, especially where differing
populations tend to be geographically concentrated.
The common thread was the fénechus,
the common law of all Ireland, that ancient, hugely
complex, and progressive codification of the rights,
responsibilities, privileges and duties off all Irishmen
(and, notably, Irishwomen) that has become known as
the Brehon Law.
This
system was both highly tolerant of local peculiarities,
and highly flexible. It withstood all shocks thrown
against it (not the least of which was the arrival
of the Milesians!) and more-or-less calmly took all
in its stride. When the Norse and Danes started to
settle and build our costal cities, the Brehonic system
adjusted the boundaries of various tuatha, and the
brehons went to work incorporating Viking trade custom
and law into the fénechus. To claim there was
no friction would of course be lunacy - the point
is that the system was more than capable of handling
the change. Only with the rise of Brian Borúma
were the tensions inflamed into all-out war - and
Brian is an exception, a unique event in Irish history.
Nonetheless, when the dust had settled at Clontarf
things went on much the same as before, much as they
had done after any other dynastic or political struggle
between Irish kings in the past. Whatever else Brian
may or may not have achieved, “driving the Vikings
out of Ireland” was not one of them.
After
the initial shock of the Norman invasion, much the
same happened. Within a few generations, as every
schoolchild knows, the Normans had become “more
Irish than the Irish” and had largely adopted
the Gaelic system (with, naturally, a few modifications
of their own in the areas they controlled). In fact,
it was not until the overwhelming military might of
the Crown was brought decisively to bear that the
ancient system, which had survived all crises for
thousands of years, finally crumbled after the Flight
of the Earls in 1607. Think about that for a moment,
in light of the full tapestry of Irish history. 1607.
I
think anyone who has been following my more recent
ramblings will see where this is going. We need a
system of Government, post-Occupation, that can easily
cater for the differing identities of the rich tapestry
of the Irish peoples. We especially need a system
that caters for situations where particular distinct
groups are geographically concentrated. We need a
system that affords a common rule of law, a common
definition of citizenship, a common understanding
of the basic rights and wrongs of society but which
allows local customs, beliefs, traditions and downright
peculiarities space to flourish. And a system that
is flexible enough to run itself over the long term.
Who amongst us wants to keep re-visiting constitutional,
institutional and cultural issues, problems and conflicts
ever few years because the system we choose is rigid,
inflexible, incapable of accommodating change?
We
need all of this, and the conventional wisdom, the
“what everybody knows”, is that it isn’t
possible, it can’t be done, it’s too complex.
Funny
thing is, we already have it. It’s right there
in front of us, always has been. Sometimes we humans
have an amazing tendency to overlook the elephant
in the living room. Our ancestors specifically designed
their system to cater for all these very problems.
Now,
obviously the world has moved on. I am not some misty-eyed
sentimentalist mourning a mythical Golden Age, nor
some extreme form of Luddite that wants us all to
return, Pol Pot-like, to Year Zero and forget everything
that has happened in 800-odd years. But neither is
the past ever a truly foreign country, and many interesting
things can be learned there. Our ancestors were no
fools - but we would be, if in some mad dash towards
a shallow, consumerist “modernity” we spurned
the opportunity to learn from the past, and build
on what has gone before.
Éire
Nua? I think I’ll pass. Ireland Renewed
(or Éire Nua a Fhail?) on the other
hand….
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