From The Blanket:

Remembering the Future

Ciarán Irvine

Radical changes in the political sphere have a way of sneaking up on
us. Who in 1929 could have envisaged that within a mere decade the
globe would be engulfed in the fire, atrocity and horror of the
Second World War? And if anyone had been foolhardy to suggest, in
1980, that within 10 years the Berlin Wall would come down, Eastern
Europe would throw off the Stalinist yoke, and the Soviet Union would
be on the verge of peacefully dissolving itself, they would have been
laughed out of court.

Likewise who, during the triumphal 1903 Irish tour of Edward VII,
would have predicted that a mere 18 years later a Treaty would be
signed granting 26 counties freedom from the British Crown?

I have a suspicion that those who suggest that any change in the
constitutional status of Ireland is decades off, if ever; and that
any such change will be driven in the end by the (in my view morally
and intellectually bankrupt, not to mention sectarian) "demographic
argument" may well find themselves standing stunned as the tide of
history sweeps by unheralded and unlooked for.

It has always been my view that, when viewed against the vast sweep
of Irish history - 8,000 years of it - the centuries of the
Occupation are but a blip, a passing phase, a temporary (if
unpleasant) phenomenon. And it is my firm conviction that this is
precisely how future generations of Irish men and women will view the
whole sorry episode. Even if the nay-sayers and pessimists are
correct, the Occupation is unlikely to reach the grand tally of 900
years - in 2070 or thereabouts. And barring some catastrophic natural
disaster, I think even the most pessimistic of us would concede that
Ireland, and the Irish, have a good deal more than 68 years remaining
to them!

Everywhere I look I believe I can detect the faint (green!) shoots of
a New Spring in Ireland, a new cultural renaissance, a renewed
national self-confidence. The grim decades of self-loathing inflicted
on us by the Revisionists are over. The highly insular - even
incestuous - and claustrophobic clerical society of De Valera has
crumbled. And the people are beginning to quietly reclaim their own
heritage. Of course, these three phases of any post-colonial society
were well described by Frantz Fanon and should come as no real
surprise to any student of our own colonial conflict.

Having survived the contrived, defensive, ersatz paddywhackery of De
Valera's Ireland, and the blindly destructive backlash of
Revisionism, we are now in a position to construct (better,
reconstruct) Ireland with a fuller, more complex and yet much more
satisfying understanding of who and what we are. And of necessity
this mature understanding has to come to terms with the presence of
those Children of the Occupation amongst us. For they are Children of
the Nation too.

When, as John Waters puts it, "remembering the future" - as any
postcolonial society at this phase must do - we could do a lot worse
than to leave aside the Occupation blip for one moment, and consider
the other 7,000 years of history, culture, and politics on this
island. Could there be some benefit to considering how our
illustrious ancestors - the educators of Europe in the Dark Age, the
oldest literary tradition in Europe, the proud originators of the
second-oldest Code of Law in human history - organised their affairs?
Some small insight that may be of use to us in reconstructing
Ireland, in remembering the future?

Far from the myths of the 19th Century "Celtic Twilight" writers,
Ireland has always been a diverse island - in its landscape and its
peoples. The notion of an ancient pure Gaelic race, sole rightful
heirs to the whole island, is nonsense. Most modern scholars tend to
think that the Milesian Gaels, who became the dominant culture to
such an extent that "Gael" is now synonymous for many people
with "Irish", actually only arrived here shortly (in historical
terms) before the time of Christ. And the peoples they found were
hardly a homogenous lot - a blend of tribes, different types of Celt,
many of which spoke different forms of the language (the P-Celtic and
Q-Celtic forms), who had begun to arrive in Ireland scarcely 3-400
years before the Milesians; and also the descendents of the ancient
Mesolithic race who built Newgrange, those small dark folk known to
legend as the Fir Bolg.

The long-running wars in Ulster, from roughly 400 to 1000AD, between
the Milesian Uí Neill, their P-Celtic vassals of the Airgialla, and
the Q-Celtic Cruthinic Ulaidh tribes will perhaps be the example most
familiar to many readers. On occasion these wars are elevated to a
spurious mythic status in a vain attempt to "prove" that "Ulster" has
always been "different". But such dynastic struggles went on in every
corner of the country, for example the long struggles by the Milesian
Eóganachta in Munster to subdue the likes of the Déisi, Múscraige,
Corco Duibne and others and assert the primacy of Milesian rule.

And so, what initially appears to be a bizarre political structure -
the entire island divided into anywhere between 80 and 150 tuatha
with a weak and largely symbolic position of Ard Rí - is in reality
no more than a highly sensible solution to the problem of a hugely
diverse population, especially where differing populations tend to be
geographically concentrated. The common thread was the fénechus, the
common law of all Ireland, that ancient, hugely complex, and
progressive codification of the rights, responsibilities, privileges
and duties off all Irishmen (and, notably, Irishwomen) that has
become known as the Brehon Law.

This system was both highly tolerant of local peculiarities, and
highly flexible. It withstood all shocks thrown against it (not the
least of which was the arrival of the Milesians!) and more-or-less
calmly took all in its stride. When the Norse and Danes started to
settle and build our costal cities, the Brehonic system adjusted the
boundaries of various tuatha, and the brehons went to work
incorporating Viking trade custom and law into the fénechus. To claim
there was no friction would of course be lunacy - the point is that
the system was more than capable of handling the change. Only with
the rise of Brian Borúma were the tensions inflamed into all-out war -
and Brian is an exception, a unique event in Irish history.
Nonetheless, when the dust had settled at Clontarf things went on
much the same as before, much as they had done after any other
dynastic or political struggle between Irish kings in the past.
Whatever else Brian may or may not have achieved, "driving the
Vikings out of Ireland" was not one of them.

After the initial shock of the Norman invasion, much the same
happened. Within a few generations, as every schoolchild knows, the
Normans had become "more Irish than the Irish" and had largely
adopted the Gaelic system (with, naturally, a few modifications of
their own in the areas they controlled). In fact, it was not until
the overwhelming military might of the Crown was brought decisively
to bear that the ancient system, which had survived all crises for
thousands of years, finally crumbled after the Flight of the Earls in
1607. Think about that for a moment, in light of the full tapestry of
Irish history. 1607.

I think anyone who has been following my more recent ramblings will
see where this is going. We need a system of Government, post-
Occupation, that can easily cater for the differing identities of the
rich tapestry of the Irish peoples. We especially need a system that
caters for situations where particular distinct groups are
geographically concentrated. We need a system that affords a common
rule of law, a common definition of citizenship, a common
understanding of the basic rights and wrongs of society but which
allows local customs, beliefs, traditions and downright peculiarities
space to flourish. And a system that is flexible enough to run itself
over the long term. Who amongst us wants to keep re-visiting
constitutional, institutional and cultural issues, problems and
conflicts ever few years because the system we choose is rigid,
inflexible, incapable of accommodating change?

We need all of this, and the conventional wisdom, the "what everybody
knows", is that it isn't possible, it can't be done, it's too complex.

Funny thing is, we already have it. It's right there in front of us,
always has been. Sometimes we humans have an amazing tendency to
overlook the elephant in the living room. Our ancestors specifically
designed their system to cater for all these very problems.

Now, obviously the world has moved on. I am not some misty-eyed
sentimentalist mourning a mythical Golden Age, nor some extreme form
of Luddite that wants us all to return, Pol Pot-like, to Year Zero
and forget everything that has happened in 800-odd years. But neither
is the past ever a truly foreign country, and many interesting things
can be learned there. Our ancestors were no fools - but we would be,
if in some mad dash towards a shallow, consumerist "modernity" we
spurned the opportunity to learn from the past, and build on what has
gone before.

Éire Nua? I think I'll pass. Ireland Renewed (or Éire Nua a Fhail?)
on the other hand….

END