Sir, – The spirit of Pádraig Pearse can be pictured smiling kindly at Richard Irvine pointing out that “an inclusive Ireland must have room for Britishness; it must recognise it, even embrace it . . . and build an Irish identity that can include it,” (Opinion & Analysis, January 3rd). Pearse himself gave de jure status to such an identity, or at least strongly indicated it, when he named Thomas Davis as a father and evangelist of Irish nationality, shortly before the Rising.
In support of O’Connell’s campaign for repeal of the union, Davis put forward his own concept of a new Irish nationality . This was one which “must contain and represent the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic, it must not be Saxon – it must be Irish.” Of noteworthy significance, especially in relation to the endemic bigoted sectarianism in Northern Ireland, and the unfinished business of the 1916 Rising, is the requirement that it must “not [be] a nationality which would prelude civil war, but [one] which would establish union and external independence”. Does that not imply that creating “internal unions” must be the means to an independent Ireland?
Davis had a dream that internal union might be brought about by love — the only force which, as Martin Luther King later pointed out, “is capable of transforming an enemy into a friend”. Since “cherishing” is akin to “loving”, the resolve that Pearse wrote into the Proclamation for “all the children of the nation” to be cherished equally can be interpreted now as a first step in establishing as de facto the Davis-conceived new inclusive Irish nationality.
What better time to begin that nation-building, and respond to the legacy of Pearse, than this year, 2014, which brings us, on October 24th, the bicentenary of the birth of Thomas Davis. – Yours, etc,
JAMES McGEEVER,
Dublin Road,
Kingscourt,
Co Cavan.