The memories of the Irish

‘The problem,’ the saying goes, ‘is the English can't remember history, while the Irish can't forget it’. 

My mother gave me a fine illustration of the truth of the notion. Back in the 1930s (the late 1930s, I imagine, since she was born in 1924) an Irish friend invited her to a rally in England addressed by an Irish patriot. I think she said it was the son of the murdered Irish Republican leader, Michael Collins, which would make it a great story, had Collins ever had a son. 

Maybe it was just one of his associates.

‘I should warn you,’ her friend told my mother, ‘he’ll be mentioning Oliver Cromwell within the first ten minutes of his talk.’

In the event, it was under five minutes.

Cromwell, many English people know, was the man who led the New Model Army in seventeenth-century England. The uprising it drove put a big dent in the doctrine of the divine right of kings, by putting a definitive end to a king who believed in it (it cut off Charles I’s head, which is pretty definitive). What a lot fewer remember is that Cromwell was also the man who applied in Ireland what the Roman historian Tacitus accused his compatriots of doing in their conquered territories: Rome, he said, made a desert and called it peace. Cromwell pacified Ireland with sword and flame. The Irish haven’t forgiven him (and they shouldn’t) but nor have they forgotten (which maybe for their peace of mind they should).

I’m an Englishman and therefore cursed – or possibly blessed – by a short memory. Even so, as Danielle and I turned up in Dublin a few days ago, I remembered clearly when we were last there together. It was with two of our sons, then aged five and three, back in 1988. This time, it was on our way to meet one of those sons, now 40, and our daughter-in-law, with their own children, aged five and three. 

As we were reminded by a couple of people in Dublin this time, 1988 was the year of the Dublin millennium. We enjoyed some of the events associated with the celebrations, though they left me a little confused. There were references to all sorts of things happening in Dublin rather over a thousand years earlier, including the foundation of the city, but no mention of anything particular in 988.

In the end, I tackled a young actor in Viking costume who’d been re-enacting tenth-century events.

‘If nothing particular happened in in 988, why are you celebrating the millennium in 1988?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘we missed the actual anniversary, but when we saw the success Cork made of its 800th anniversary in 1985, we decided to have a celebration ourselves, even if it’s a few decades late. We promise to get it right next time.’

I think it was the Irish wit of the reply that appealed to me most. 

It was lovely to be back in Dublin with Danielle. And I was intrigued to see a mural on a hoarding near where we spent the night.

Curious mural in Dublin

It showed the face of Michael Collins with a great quotation from him: ‘Give us the future… we’ve had enough of your past…’

The past Britain – specifically England – gifted Ireland was dismal. It was by no means just Cromwell’s massacres that blackened it. His campaign completed an extraordinary transfer of land to alien ownership, specifically to the English and Protestants. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, something like 50% of Irish land had been owned by Irish Catholics. By the time the English Civil War broke out, that proportion was down to 14%. By the end of Cromwell’s time, it was down to 5%. England didn’t just kill in Ireland, it also stole. Massively.

At the end of the following century, one of the better English Prime Ministers, William Pitt the Younger, attempted to bring in legislation to grant Irishmen equality with the English, at least in trade. He was defeated, by a coalition of legislators representing British industry, which was more than happy to see tariffs on Irish trade kept in place – even trade with Britain – to protect their own privileged position. There were regulations, too, about what industries the Irish could engage in and which they were banned from developing, again to protect English interests. In addition, Catholics – and the vast majority of the Irish were Catholics – were banned from holding any kind of public position or teaching in the universities.

The dying also continued. The terrible famine in the late 1840s cost about a million lives and a million emigrants, at a time when the total population before the Famine had been eight and a half million. Even today, the total population, of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland together, is still not seven million. An excellent measure of Britain’s attitude to the disaster was that, when it abolished slavery, in 1833, it paid £20 million in compensation to the former slave owners. Its total aid to Ireland during the Famine was £10 million.

Nor did the killings end. Why, some even happened in Collins’s own time, including the Croke Park massacre, when British soldiers entered a stadium in Dublin and fired for a minute and a half into a crowd waiting for the start of a Gaelic football match, killing fourteen, including three children, and wounding sixty others.

So, yes, I understand why Collins felt Ireland was sick of the past. And would like to take over its own future.

Sadly, though, while the British Empire was already in decline, it was still the world’s greatest ever and had huge power. Tired of fighting after the world war and desperately short of money, Britain knew that it could defeat the Irish uprising but only by using massive force, which would be a catastrophic expense and, since it would lead to terrible killing, would be condemned by the world and even by much public opinion in Britain (think Gaza today). 

On the other hand, it was quite impossible, politically, for the British government to allow the Protestant-majority counties of Ulster to be absorbed into a separate, Catholic-dominated Irish state.

Equally, Collins knew that the Irish Republican forces, which he commanded, hadn’t the resources to impose their will on the British. Indeed, keeping the army in the field was draining the new country’s already stressed finances. 

The compromise was to partition the island. Six counties of the northeast would remain within the United Kingdom. The other twenty-six would be given quasi-independence as the Irish Free State. The compromise took the form of a Peace Treaty signed by the British and the Irish delegation to the negotiations, led by Michael Collins. 

After the signing, Collins confided to his diary ‘I tell you this, early this morning I signed my death warrant.’

Eight months later, he was proved right, when he was gunned down by members of the anti-Treaty forces led by his former comrade, Éamon De Valera.

Not many people in England know much of this. But plenty do in Ireland.

Across the Collins mural, somebody had scrawled the word ‘Traitor’.

Ah, yes. The Irish have long memories. It was fun to be back in the country and have it proved to me again.