America, land of the planters

A 1914 painting of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony

I use the title ironically, since for zealous Irish republicans "planter" is the epithet and pejorative of choice for the unpersuadable and defiant unionists in Ireland. Yet, if Ireland's protestants are planters, what of America's white christians?

Christopher Hitchens said in a TV debate:

"It goes back as I said to the initial beginnings of Islamic fundamentalism. The first attack on this country was in 1788 by Muslims who said that, "The koran gives us the right to punish and enslave infidels.” That is Bin Laden’s ideology. Bin Laden wants the restoration of the Caliphate. The Caliphate is an empire, he’s pro-empire, not anti-imperialist… He’s for the banning of all music, all books, all philosophy. And this because he cares about the Palestinians? Any one who believes this is a fool."

Edmund Burke's "political testament to Ireland" (December 1796)

Edmund Burke behind and with hands on Richard B. Sheridan and Charles James Fox who bow before him. Burke says, "Behold the abettors of Revolutions, see the authors of Plots & conspiracies, and take cognisance of the enemies of both Church & State..."

Edmund Burke was called the "ornament of Ireland" by the Irish Magazine in 1808. He called the United Irishmen, as you can read below, "that unwise body". Wolfe Tone said:

Dublin's dentists wives

The Queen’s visit to Dublin with well dressed women in attendance, Merrion Square (1900) (more here)

Irish republicans of 2020 portray Ireland of the early 1900s as a deeply unhappy island suffering under the boot of Britain. This picture could not be further from the truth. Thanks to the social revolution - which included the huge transfer of land to the less well to do, the enactment of the 1908 Old Age Pensions and 1911 National Insurance Acts etc. (part of the wider welfare reformation that swept across the UK under Lloyd George) - the Irish were incredibly content and saw themselves at home in Union with the Scottish, Welsh and English people.

John Redmond on August 4 1914 said in the Commons:

"The sympathy of the Nationalists of Ireland, for reasons to be found deep down in centuries of history, has been estranged from this country. But allow me to say that what has occurred in recent years has altered the situation completely."

John Redmond said in late 1916:

"[Ireland has] its feet firmly planted in the groundwork and foundation of a free nation."

John P. Hayden, twenty-one years a Nationalist Member of Parliament for South Roscommon, said in May 1921:

Ireland's Capitalist Crown

Just as Ireland had a "parallel Monarchy" in the form of the imperial Roman Church, so Ireland now has a "parallel Crown" in the form of capitalist bonds and debentures.

Ireland's venerated martyr James Connolly wrote in 1914 that "Ireland has no war with Germany, it welcomes the German as a brother struggling towards the light", and went further than David Cameron by calling migrants to Ireland "hordes", a "swarm of locusts", "boys of the bull-dog breed" and "Brit-Huns", making Ireland "Rotten" with a "new plantation". James Connolly wrote in a 3 part essay series titled 'Slackers'.

Conor Cruise O'Brien - The church and school helps to encourage, exalt and extend tribal-sectarian self-righteousness

Cartoon of Conor Cruise O'Brien

[UPDATE - John Hume wrote in The Irish Times, May 18 1964, "Bigotry and a fixation about religious divisions are the first thing that strike any visitor to the North."]

Our parents are patrons of prejudice, bequeathers of bigotry. Churches and chapels inculcate hate. 

He was that Irish essayist and polemicist so "sorely deficient in Anglophobia". Conor Cruise O'Brien (who was satirised in the 'Gentle Black and Tans'), drew across the grain on so many issues. He was the arch-"revisionist", a charge he countered here. A controversialist and a man of irrepressible energies, we sorely lack his type today.

Ireland's Revolutionary and Fairyhouse traditions

Irish Grand National (1921) - Won by Mr A. Wills’ ‘Bohernore’ at Fairyhouse. 

Stephen Gwynn wrote an account of Dublin during the Easter Rising of April 1916:

"On Monday a very large proportion of the officers from the Curragh and the Dublin garrison were at the Fairyhouse races. In the Castle itself there was only the ordinary guard."

George Orwell on Ireland

Cartoon of George Orwell by famous American political cartoonist, Pat Oliphant

George Orwell wrote that the execution of the Easter Rising leaders was "a crime and mistake". He believed that the dispute over Ulster was caused by "the expansionist racist nature of modern republicanism." In a review of Sean O'Casey's autobiography by George Orwell in the Observer, Orwell wrote in 1945:

"Why is it that the worst extremes of jingoism and racialism have to be tolerated when they come from an Irishman?"

Remembering Ireland's "patriot dead" of 1916. Forgetting Ireland's unionists.

GPO in ruins after the Easter Rising in 1916

Edward Carson said that the ideals and ambitions of Ulster should be clearly understood by the people of England, Scotland and Wales.

I want to make something very clear - The ideals and ambitions of Northern Ireland unionists and Protestants should be clearly understood in Southern Ireland. For they are each and all, "fellow countrymen."*

Being a Protestant unionist does not preclude that person from being Irish. John Hewitt said it. Nick Laird said it. Sam McAughtry said it. Loyalist Gusty Spence said it. Edward Carson was Irish. He was British. He was an Irish Unionist. An Irish man who simply wanted to be Irish and remain part of the social, political and economic infrastructure of the British Empire. As he said:

"We’re both [Tom Kettle, Home Rule nationalist] Irishmen, and that is what matters."

Edward Carson, who opposed Home Rule was an Irish unionist and wanted Ireland united. In a

The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd Heaney and O'Brien

Conor cruise O'Brien knew in the 1990s that it was a matter of moving beyond nationalism and unionism. Fintan O'Toole explained O'Brien's philosophy for Irish politics in The Irish Times here:

"He does not accept that the really important challenge at the moment is not to move from nationalism to unionism, but to move beyond both."

Seamus Heaney said the same thing in a 1997 interview with The Paris Review here:

"But listen to what I’m saying! Protestant, Catholic—the point is to fly under or out and beyond those radar systems."

My earlier posts on Heaney here and here. My earlier posts on Conor Cruise O'Brien here, here and here.

Conor Cruise O'Brien - Marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself

Fintan O'Toole cited Conor Cruise O'Brien in the Irish Times in May 11 1996 after he announced he would run for election as a unionist candidate in Northern Ireland. Conor Cruise O'Brien said:

"I feel that unionists are essentially besieged. They're under a pan-nationalist siege, of which the main stimulus is being supplied by Sinn Fein. So I don't see it as my job to get out and annoy unionists. I think they're been annoyed quite enough. I have, in an Orange context at an Orange House, urged them to see that marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself or for the unionist community."

The article 'Cruiser's new voyage provokes 'no qualms, no heart-searching'' can be obtained from the Irish Times archive here.

Conor Cruise O'Brien said the challenge was to move beyond nationalism and unionism

Cartoon of Conor Cruise O'Brien by Martyn Turner

Fintan O'Toole wrote of Connor Cruise O'Brien in a feature for the Irish Times in May 11 1996:

"His [Conor Cruise O'Brien] disavowal of Irish nationalism is based on his belief that it is ultimately inseparable from Catholicism."

Fintan O'Toole explained O'Brien's philosophy for Irish politics: "He does not accept that the really important challenge at the moment is not to move from nationalism to unionism, but to move beyond both." Fintan O'Toole then quoted O'Brien: "The main pressure is coming from the nationalists. It's dangerous not just for the North but also for us. In that context, I'm more useful taking a stand with unionists than I would be on some kind of neutral ground."

The article 'Cruiser's new voyage provokes 'no qualms, no heart-searching'' can be obtained from the Irish Times archive here.

Being Irish is about more than being an uber-Gael

There is no such thing a model Irish person. Cultural nationalism may have created an mono-type set ideal, but these notions are incredibly dangerous. As Conor Cruise O'Brien said, it's "recklessly idiosyncratic." Fintan O'Toole has said that Irish cultural nationalism has created "a prison for the Irish people which [has] crippled their true identity. To be Irish was not enough. To be Irish you had to be not British."

This is the status quo. A perverse ideal that seeks a prelapsarian Irishness. And if you can't reach this, you're denounced as a "west Brit." You can't win. As Fintan O'Toole said, "the choice was to hate England or to be a West Brit." The supreme irony Anglo-Irish relation is, as Michael Kirke said, that "The Irish constitute Britain’s biggest ethnic group and vice-versa."

Going forward, said Fintan O'Toole, "[A] new identity has to be positive rather than negative. But it also has to find a way to include Britishness." As Brian O'Connor said: "Being Irish involves a lot more than some uber-Gael, Provo-lite, pub-patriot wet-dream. It always has."