Sir, I would like to make three points about the recent presidential visit to Britain.
First, it should be seen as part of a carefully thought out strategy, at work since the inception of the Good Friday agreement: the very visible coming together of “elites” in the hope that subalterns will do likewise. If Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness, the queen et al can have dinner together without smashing the place up, then perhaps, when a denizen of East Belfast encounters a denizen of West Belfast, they may resist the urge to beat the lard out of one another.
The South’s part in all of this is pretty peripheral: most of us here haven’t had any serious sense of grievance for some time; the release of the Birminghahm Six and the Guildford Four went some way towards atoning for the treatment of the Irish in Britain, who had been targeted by the security services for special treatment.
The difference between Ireland and Britain needs to be addressed. When I came back to Ireland from London nearly 30 years ago, Britain was in industrial spasm as the miners and the Thatcher governemnt fought it out up and down the land; Brixton and Liverpool had been set alight and the Dixon of Dock Green image of the bobby on the beat had been replaced by something that recalled an occupying army. Class war was the defining feature of British public life.
The Ireland I came back to was equally convulsed: men had been starving themselves to death in the H Blocks, people were on the march, and everywhere was overtaken by a grim and desperate anger; nationalism overrode every other political consideration. Or so it seemed. Coming from the class war to this was to be intensely aware of the difference between Ireland and Britain.
The extent to which class war has abated in Britain and nationalism has abated in Ireland is perhaps some indicator of the way the two places have converged, but different they are, and it would be an unwise person who discounted either factor in the political make-up of the respective polities.
Finally, there is the one subject you are never supposed to mention: religion. Roy Foster manages to write a whole article on Anglo-Irish relations and never mention it once. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a massive revival of Protestant confessional bigotry across Britain: Catholics were never going to be given charge of their own affairs; the rising Catholic Irish middle class, who saw themselves as every bit as civilised as their British counterparts, had backed constitutional campaigns for home rule; as Conor Cruise O'Brien said, the war of independence was led by the politically frustrated children of Parnellites. Not to put too fine a point on it: the British had it coming. However, I am told the dessert at Windsor was a bombe suprise : a shared sense of humour goes a long way. Yours, etc,
EOIN DILLON,
Mount Brown,
Dublin 8
Sir,- Declan Kiberd writes about the “narcissism of small differences” affecting the relationship between Britain and Ireland. However, observing the different reactions in either country to the events of last week one cannot but conclude that the aphorism, while a seductive line, has little basis in reality.
The Guardian newspaper gave only basic coverage to President Higgins's visit, as it would have with the head of state of any country with whom Britain had an insignificant official relationship. RTÉ Radio 1's World Report cited a local in Windsor who wondered if the tricolours flying in the area represented Mauritius. Conversely The Irish Times had a supplement covering the visit, devoted considerable editorial space to it and regarded the mooted presence of a British royal at the centenary celebrations of the 1916 Rising as important enough to warrant its main front page story.
It appears that – despite the official kind words – beneath the surface one country in this relationship remains at best witheringly aloof while the other betrays a classical post-colonial attitude in its desperation for acceptance as an equal. Unlike your editorial writer (“Sovereign and equal”, April 10th) some of us never needed acknowledgement from Britain that our state was their equal. Surely this is a given that Britain would readily concede without all the rí-rá? After all, is this not the same nation that a century ago went to the Great War to defend the rights of such small nations? Small differences indeed! Yours, etc,
MARTIN RYAN,
Springlawn Close,
Dublin 15
Sir, – Prof Diarmaid Ferrriter, who is a member of the Expert Advisory Group on the centenary commemorations tells us (Apri 14th) that he would be concerned with matters that “might give succour to those who believe the Rising was unnecessary”. It is to be hoped that the other members of this committee have a more balanced view of history and of the diversity of Irish opinion in 1916 and today.
Centenary events always risk becoming celebrations of myth rather than commemorations of complex historical fact. The example of Scotland is interesting. In a different time and place a degree of autonomy there has led to an agreed referendum procedure in relation to independence without a single shot being fired. Yours, etc,
SEÁN Mc DONAGH
Bettyglen,
Raheny,
Dublin 5
Sir, – I would remind John B Reid, who would have us be thankful for the “sacrifices” of the “patriots” of 1922 and 1916 (April 14th), which “made it possible for Ireland today to hold her head high on state visits to other nations” that Mohandas K Gandhi achieved more, for more people, and more quickly, through non-violence than was ever achieved by the violence of all the Irish patriots over many centuries.
Perhaps it was because he came from a non-Abrahamic tradition that Gandhi did not see the need for Padraig Pearse’s much vaunted “blood sacrifice”. I, for one – but I am sure I am not alone – will not be celebrating the 98th anniversary of the death and destruction of 1916. Yours, etc,
TONY McCOY O’GRADY,
Grangebrook Close
Rathfarnham
Dublin 16