With the the abortion referendum result as tight as discretionary income in the Ireland of frugal comforts, Irish identity appears on the cusp of transformation, writes Eddie Holt.
Broadcasting on Radio Éireann on St Patrick's Day, 1943, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera delivered his famous/notorious "dream" speech. In the 59 years since, phrases from that speech - "comely maidens", "sturdy athletic youths", "cosy homesteads", "frugal comforts" and "dancing at the crossroads" - have become for many people a sneering idiomatic shorthand for the Ireland dreamt of by Dev. On the eve of St Patrick's Day, 2002, all has changed, if not quite utterly, at least substantially.
In the course of two generations, the maidens have metamorphosed into feminists, power-women and, in media-speak, at least, "stunning babes". The sturdiest of our athletic youths employ agents to haggle for outlandish loot in professional sport. A cosy homestead costs hundreds of thousands of pounds and is a dream many young adults can't afford. Frugality means joining the Government savings scheme and the crossroads are more likely to be traffic-jammed roundabouts.
As for dancing . . . it's now "clubbing", with ecstatic (or Ecstasised?) bare-chested youths and scantily-clad maidens lepping about and guzzling water instead of the furtive porter and chaste soft drinks that respectively fortified male and female céilí-goers in Dev's day.
Indeed, on the night of his "dream" speech, Dev and other members of government celebrated the national holiday at a UCD-organised céilí in the Great Hall at Dublin Castle. There was, reportedly, "enthusiastic applause", when Dev and his ministers joined in the dancing. A dancing Dev must have been a sight to see. After all, formality frolicking always has the riveting schizoid appeal of a car crash - you can't bear to look while at the same time you can't look away.
Some 19 years later, Dev celebrated St Patrick's Day at the Vatican. The Swiss Guard greeted him and his wife, Sinéad, when they arrived for a private audience with Pope John XXIII. For the occasion, Dev wore the collar of the Supreme Order of Christ which had been bestowed on him the previous day.
Although early hairline cracks would soon appear in the then practically monolithic Catholic Republic, Dev's displays of fealty to Gaelic culture and Rome characterised the country he led. Céilís and Catholicism were badges of Irish identity in De Valera's state. s far back as the 19th century, William Butler Yeats had been advised that if he wished to effect any significant changes in Irish public life, he would require the support of either the Catholic Church or the Fenians. Coming from a line of Ascendancy Protestants, Yeats was never going to get Rome's blessing, so he sought (for a time) to make common purpose with the Fenians.
That old rule-of-thumb about crusaders for change in Ireland needing the support of either the Catholic Church or the Fenians (ideally, of course, both!) remained broadly true throughout the 20th century. However, the recent abortion referendum placed both the Church and Fianna Fáil on the losing side (although the ultra-Fenians of Sinn Féin, like the Dana-ite "ultra-Catholics", advocated a "no" vote). Thus, at the start of a new century, Irish identity appears on the cusp - the abortion referendum result was as tight as discretionary income in the Ireland of frugal comforts - of transformation.
Even soccer in Croke Park, where, in Dev's Ireland, the now unfashionable Railway Cup finals used to fill the place on St Patrick's Day, seems increasingly likely. Being a primarily urban game - Gaelic football or hurling on concrete is too macho for even the Cúchulainns among us - and overpoweringly marketed, the popularity of soccer reflects the dramatic urban/rural divide evident in the referendum result. In such a context, David Trimble's bitter outburst last weekend appears signally ill-timed.
Is the Republic, as he claimed, "a pathetic, sectarian state"? It depends on your perspective, I suppose. But given the perspective of the North - that harmonious model of non-sectarianism, cosmopolitan tolerance and socio-economic dynamism - Trimble's rant seems not only insulting but incredible. Of course, he framed the substance of his rant in the context of "the United Kingdom state", an entity which arguably is experiencing a far more profound identity crisis than the Republic of Ireland.
"Contrast the United Kingdom state," said Trimble, "[it's a] vibrant multi-ethnic, multinational liberal democracy, the fourth largest economy in the world, the most reliable ally of the US in the fight against international terrorism, with the pathetic sectarian, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural state to our south." Well, we could make that contrast, bearing in mind the vibrant racism, the watermark stain on democracy of not being permitted to elect a head of state, and the "lap-dog-of-George-Bush" status of Tony Blair.
But what's the point? For Trimble, the UK context seems untranscendable.
(Mind you, when he called for a referendum on Irish unity, the electorate of England, Scotland and Wales - a mere 97.5 per cent of the UK population - were pointedly not invited to vote.) Anyway, the increasingly disunited United Kingdom is not an untranscendable context in this pathetic, sectarian Republic. Being next door, it's still significant, of course, but Europe, the US and even the fraught wider world are now the contexts within which Irish identity seeks to locate itself. The fluctuating influences of Brussels, Washington, Rome, London and of globalising economics continue to exert pulls on how we negotiate Irish identity. In 2002, Brussels and Washington have substantially supplanted Rome and London as the dominant forces. Though less intimate than the older imperialisms of Rome and London - consequently, there is less passion about their effects - Brussels and Washington (or Boston and Berlin in Síle de Valera's terms) produce the contexts which increasingly engage Irish people.
So, as we prepare to celebrate our national holiday in the aptly palindromic year of 2002, we can look backwards and forward with equal energy. We have lost, or perhaps more accurately, traded, some of our distinctiveness for material gains historically denied by London and aspects of liberalism historically denied by Rome. In those senses, the Republic is a better country than the anachronism, formerly true, outlined by David Trimble.
Then again, there is no such thing as a free lunch in international trade, including trade in identity. With affluence has come a vacuousness, which, if it defuses divisive, even bloodthirsty passions, is often welcome.
Unfortunately, in contemporary Ireland, too much of this vacuousness parades itself as "sophistication". Usually, it's no more than a sad, James Bond-ish notion of sophistication: expensive clothes, a little knowledge of wine, sexual romps, experience of foreign travel, style over substance - the staples of "lifestyles" supplements and materialism in general. Appropriately perhaps, it's marketing culture muzak - a kind of designer sophistication, sold (literally) as international cosmopolitanism.
The ease, for instance, with which the Republic adopted the euro is telling. It was another shedding of distinctiveness, probably made easier by the sense that the pound was an inbred relative of sterling, but a suspiciously cavalier shedding all the same. Likewise the prevailing political posture of Bertie Ahern. Unlike Dev and other Fianna Fáil leaders, Ahern, as has been recently remarked, has caused difficulties within his party by presenting himself to the FF faithful, not as a leader, so much as a manager.
In doing so, of course, he is representative of the economic imperative which shapes politics nowadays. Unlike Dev, for instance, who claimed to "look into his own heart" in order to understand "the Irish people", Ahern convenes focus groups, opinion polls and handlers before formulating policy.
Certainly, Dev's internalised strategy, while undeniably offeringleadership, was patronising, narcissistic and dictatorial. But Ahern's externalised version, while putatively more democratic, seems equally narcissistic and too cute to be wholesome.
The pendulum which swings between the isolationist old country and the integrationist new one swings to extremes and in Ireland's case, it has swung with alarming speed. The irony is that in embracing cosmopolitanism and designer sophistication, we have become, in many respects, more provincial than ever. On the eve of St Patrick's Day 2002, the Republic's core identity is as a minor province of European politics and US economics.
Whether we've actively integrated or passively been absorbed, time will tell. Either way, the dominant managerialism has little time for national dreams of identity or any such unquantifiable nonsense. A utilitarian mentality has become a part of who we are.