In all the tens of thousands of words written recently about Samuel Beckett, no one mentioned that he was a republican. I can already feel the growing bewilderment of readers reaching my telepathic antennae, so let me explain.
When the Spanish Civil War was at its height, a political magazine asked the leading writers in Europe to say what side they were on. The response was illustrative of the times. Seán O'Casey's reply was predictable enough. He was, he wrote, resolutely opposed to the "steel-clad slug of Fascism". Others launched into long essays to explain why they supported the elected government or why Franco was their man or why they didn't really care. Beckett, however, phrased his opposition to Franco with a certain panache, perhaps because of his connections with France. There was a strong Irish resonance in his reply too. He lumped three words together to make a single word. ¡UPTHEREPUBLIC! he declared in bold capitals His belief in the idea of the republic, in Spain in that war and in France where he fought as a résistant, was beyond question. Samuel Beckett was a republican, just as Douglas Hyde was and Wolfe Tone was and Éamon de Valera was and John A Costello was. Monarchists, in this Republic, are as thin on the ground as olive trees in Inishowen. They exist, of course, and, thanks to republican values, are entitled to their eccentric neo-colonial views.
In the village in southern France where I spend part of the year, the Republic is referred to with pride. The main street is Rue de la République. The main square is Place de la République which is dominated by a statue of Marianne, the republic's embodiment in bronze. There is a Rue de la Bastille and a Rue de la Marseillaise and a Rue Rouget de Lisle after the man who wrote the Marseillaise, with its bloodcurdling lines "Marchons, marchons qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons" in which the wish is expressed that an impure blood shall water our furrows.
There are no calls for a new national anthem as there are in Ireland to replace Amhrán na bhFiann, which is considerably less hair-raising. Republican values - les valeurs républicains - are held in the highest esteem. Even the thoroughbreds, the purs sangs, of the French Republic, such as Dominique de Villepin and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, men of impeccably aristocratic background, will stand proudly to attention when those words are played in public.
Italy's best newspaper is proud to call itself La Repubblica, once imperial Austria is a republic with a military neutrality every bit as firm as that of its neighbour, the Swiss Republic. The Republic of Finland, through its industry and the transparency of its political system, could serve as a model for the republic which covers five sixths of this island.
In that other great republic to the west, the most powerful country on earth, the citizens stirringly sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic when the occasion arises.
The members of the Democratic Party are republicans with a small "r" just as their opponents are Republicans with a capital R. In Germany, Christian, Social Democrats and Free Democrats alike are loyal to the Bundesrepublik.
There are very few, even among the aristocracy, who long for a new Kaiser, just as hardly anyone in Russia hankers for the obsolete idea of the Orthodox Tsar.
In this country, though, the word "republican" has suffered from that laziest form of journalism, the sticking of labels to political groups. It's much easier to apply a political tag of a single word than to strive for accuracy in a more complicated phrase. But this "convenience journalism" has surrendered the idea of the republic exclusively to Sinn Féin and the IRA and to dissident splinter groups thereof. Here, if a bomb goes off, or a bank is raided or an unfortunate man such as Denis Donaldson is murdered, the evil deeds are automatically attributed to "republicans". This on the one hand devalues the meaning of the word and on the other surrenders the idea of the republic to those who claim it as their exclusive preserve.
But true republicanism is the antithesis of exclusivity. Most people on this island are citizens of a republic and if that citizenship is accepted, then they are by definition republicans. Fianna Fáil proclaims itself as "The Republican Party" and it was the Fine Gael leadership of the inter-party government that proclaimed the Republic of Ireland in 1949. The Labour Party cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be deemed monarchist and the Progressive Democrats, in the form of the Minister for Justice, have forcefully declared their adherence to the ideals of a republic. The republicans of Sinn Féin and those of "Republican Sinn Féin" and the "Real IRA" that continue to wage war and the "Unreal IRA" that has ceased to exist, have at last won a war.
They have, as the spoils of victory, taken, or rather been given, the exclusive use of the term "republican" by most of Ireland's media.
Were Beckett to make his celebrated statement in today's Ireland he would be attacked by lesser writers as a murderer and a beast or a "sneaking regarder" of murderers and beasts.
The slogan ¡UPTHEREPUBLIC! should not be surrendered to that minority.