John-Paul McCarthy's open letter to DUP's Peter Robinson

MakeEmLaugh

John-Paul McCarthy, columnist for the Sunday Independent and holder of a PhD in History from Oxford University, wrote this open letter to the DUP's Peter Robinson, in response to Robinson and other unionists' suggestion that the Irish government apologise for Taoiseach Jack Lynch's role in the establishment of the Provisional IRA in 1970.

Dear First Minister: Your party's recent call for an apology from the Irish Government for their role in creating the Provisional IRA has not worn well down here.

The Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and Michael Lillis, one of the architects of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, wheeled out the big guns against you double quick.

Now, I doubt you're massively worried about what either thinks of you or unionism generally, but that said, these kinds of arguments are bad for everybody.

And for unionism especially.

Let me explain.

The main problem with the blanket indictment of the Irish government in 1970 is that it confounds pluralist Irishmen like the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, with the neanderthal element around Haughey, Blaney and Boland.

The lack of discrimination in the DUP charge-sheet creates an impression of casual contempt down here and as such, it gives critics like Martin and Lillis their opening to rough you up.

A few kind words the next time around about Lynch's pluralist legacy and you'll be able to divide mainstream nationalist Ireland in two.

Most Cork people of my age look on Lynch as a throw-back to the O'Connellite era of huge mandates and platform swagger.

They are proud of the way he made his way to the top job having been dragooned into cabinet politics by De Valera and then promoted by Lemass.

They admire his easy populism and the failure of the tribunals to do him any damage.

They like the fact that he lived in a small house in Rathgar as Taoiseach and that he resigned the premiership as casually as he acquired it in 1979, having brought us safely across the European Rubicon.

Hiding behind this kind of urban pride though is a deeper, unarticulated sense of relief that Lynch did not send the Irish Army across the Border in 1969-70, as well he might have to keep control of his government.

And this is where your apology motion starts to bite.

Some people still see the Arms Trial in 1970 as a product of misunderstanding or treachery on Lynch's part. But the truth is fairly plain at this stage.

Haughey and Blaney wanted to control the emerging provisional faction within the IRA, and as such they set about feeding it in its crib.

Lynch did not feel politically strong enough to fire them, so he gambled that their planning would never get past the all-seeing eye of Peter Berry, the secretary of the justice department. (Berry broke up the attempt to land guns at Dublin Airport).

Someone in the Irish police tipped off the future Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave about all this.

And suddenly Lynch was out of time and he fired the cabinet mutineers.

Having rid himself of this dead-weight, Lynch was then free to rework the language of modern Irish nationalism.

He spoke for all Irish citizens of goodwill live to camera during the marching season of 1970 when he addressed your parents' generation and said: "Since the Irish State was founded 50 years ago my predecessors and I have said again and again that we have no wish to confront you or destroy you. Indeed, we think that a branch has been broken from the Irish tree."

The image of the broken branch might grate with you today of course.

Your people don't look south for their shade, rather north and east, but it's important to remember how rare those kinds of sentiments were in 1970, especially coming from a rather aloof Cork barrister who only let his guard down when boozing with hurling comrades.

He had more to say that night too, about the paranoid tradition in Irish Catholic culture and its belief that unionism could be made to do whatever Whitehall told it to do.

Lynch made an eloquent plea for a new birth of freedom in Irish life, one based on a repudiation of our culture's self-pitying instinct:

"There is no real invader here," he said.

"We are all Irish in all our different kinds of ways. Let us not appeal to past gods as if past generations had said the last word about Ireland. We have the opportunity to say for our generation what's in our hearts and minds. I think that there is in us an instinct for good, for enjoyment, for beauty and above all for peace with our neighbours."

Not bad at all, right?

Next time you return to 1970, I'd suggest you incorporate some of this rhetoric into the analysis.

It will double your range and deepen the pathos of your presentation, helping you to bypass Martin and Lillis and get a respectful hearing in the hurling pubs of Cork city.

The UCC historian Professor Tom Dunne drew a resonant portrait of Lynch in his memoir, Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798. (Dunne met Lynch at a Cork school in 1971.)

"I expected to dislike him," Dunne wrote, "as I had long disliked his overt appeal to the Catholic voter and his general conservatism."

Dunne changed his mind when Lynch opened up over a drink about Haughey and Blaney.

"It was him or them, Lynch said, and he had no option but to sideline them, 'take them out'. If there was talk of nationalism, I don't recall it. The ideological emphasis instead was on democracy; that the IRA threatened it, and that he had acted to save it. History will very likely judge in his favour on that score."

Your thoughts?

Fr Tod Umptious

MakeEmLaugh wrote:

Your thoughts?

No, your thoughts first please

MakeEmLaugh

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

No, your thoughts first please

Overall, I agree with McCarthy. I have not yet heard an argument that has persuaded me that the Irish government should apologise for its role in the establishment of the Provisional IRA in 1970.

Madd Finn

Is it just me or does John Paul McCarthy's picture byline remind anybody else inescapably of Billy Bunter?

But seriously....

In general terms I disapprove of politicians from one generation "apologising" for the actions of their forebears. It solves nothing and only risks the creation of future problems; it changes nothing about the facts of history (how could it?) but instead establishes a norm for interpreting the facts of history which acts as an obstacle for future re-examination.

I use the term re-examination instead of revision, even though both words are effectively synonyms in this context. But "revisionism" carries about it a whiff of dishonesty. Revisionists are often seen as people who want to "rewrite" history to reflect their point of view.

I maintain that revision/re-examination is an essential part of the study of history. It is important to examine the past, continuously, both to re-interpret in the light of newly available evidence and also to correct widely held but potentially mistaken impressions that have been allowed to take root thanks to the emphasis of earlier generations of historians.

With regard to the specifics of this case, I think that the notion that Fianna Fail, or even an element within it, created the Provisional IRA is nonsense. The seeds of the split within the Republican movement were sown when republican ideologues in the 1960s tried to explain the Northern Ireland situation purely in terms of class politics and refused to recognise the power of cultural, sectarian and national identities.

The "protestant and catholic working man" to quote the words of a song about celebrated Sticky Joe McCann would unite in their common interest to tear down the sectarian establishment that kept them divided to the detriment of their common class interest.

Yeah right!

Once the reaction to Civil Rights and People's Democracy marches caused society to fracture along the line of least resistance, ie the sectarian divide, the emergence of a militant, traditionalist sectarian catholic/nationalist militia was inevitable. As was the appearance of its mirror image on the other side .

Screw apologies for the past; it's the future we need to worry about.