Sir, – Felix Larkin (Letters, September 4th) contributes some thoughtful points about the pitfalls of interpreting of Irish history through the lens of “colonial theory”. First of all, it is simplistic to see Ireland just as “colonised”. Yes, originally it was; but then, as part of the British imperial project, it also participated (often enthusiastically) in colonisation elsewhere – in India, Canada, Australasia and South Africa. Its missionaries – Protestant and Catholic – were facilitated through the spread of empire. Its soldiers fought in and its colonial civil servants ruled over the British Empire. Most of all, the Irish of all persuasions had a place at its centre – as members of the imperial parliament, participators in government. In that sense they were as much complicit in colonisation as its purported victims.
A second point worth mentioning is that when one drills down to everyday lives in late 19th and early 20th century Ireland, the sense of “colonisation” is much less evident. If it is the conventional wisdom that Protestants had their ghettos, so did Catholics – in such as church, sport and language. That provided a sense of meaning independent of the ruling power. By 1909, the land of the country was being busily transferred to the occupiers.
Outside Ulster, nationalists had captured local government and parliamentary representation. Reading newspaper reports of petty crime and disorder, it did not seem that the police were always seen as an alien force.
Third, Mr Larkin is right to highlight the tragedy of partition, but also that it was the least unworkable solution to the Irish question. Perhaps the real tragedy is that northern unionism actually got its “Home Rule” in 1920, when it didn’t even particularly want it; and it proved incapable of acquiring “loser’s consent” by squalid gerrymandering and institutional prejudice. The danger, though, is that the enthusiastic proponents of Irish unification (whatever that means) will not learn the lessons provided by Northern Ireland’s history. There is already the beginnings of a “not an inch” mentality when it comes to accommodating northern unionists in an all-Ireland state. A straw in the wind was the apparent popularity of the Wolfe Tones at Electric Picnic. Glorifying the IRA and its activities doesn’t seem to worry a lot of people. It should. It is anathema to those northern unionists and Protestants who had to deal with mangled bodies and deathly disablement in pursuit of a political objective that was capable of being achieved by less grisly methods. This side of the Border, the ex-southern unionists after 1922 provide an exemplar of how to manage acceptance. That journey, navigating the cloying Catholicity of Free State and Republic, was not an easy one. But through an “inevitability of gradualness” we can now see how successful it was. Not a bad template to use, if unification is to mean anything other than forced assimilation, violence and flight. – Yours, etc,
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IAN d’ALTON,
Naas,
Co Kildare.