Republican News · Thursday 30 January 2003

Morgan sketches republican vision

Public debate on nationalism

Fianna Fáil Junior Minister for Children Brian Lenihan, Fine Gael TD Gerry O'Connell and Sinn Féin TD Arthur Morgan led a public debate last Thursday in Dublin on their different perspectives on nationalism.

The discussion was organised as part of the Processes of Nation Building project that Coiste na n-IarchimÃ, the republican ex-prisoner community, has initiated to engage Irish society in discussion and debate about what type of new Ireland is emerging from the last 30 years of conflict.

The meeting was organised by Ella O'Dwyer, an ex-prisoner who spent long years in jail in England, who was released under the Good Friday Agreement and has since played a major part in the development of this initiative by the ex-prisoners.

The meeting last Thursday was the first in this series to be held in Dublin, though it follows several very successful meetings organised by Ella around the issue of Empire and what that experience means to us in the context of today's world.

Arthur Morgan gave a deeply considered presentation which put nationalism in its historical context. "Nationalism is compatible with many different political ideologies. We are socialist republicans, because no other philosophy offers the individual as much freedom within a collective process of empowerment and emancipation.

"So many modern expressions of nationality and culture are based on exclusion - all the way from Hitler's nationalism, to Mrs Thatcher's "I'm batting for Britain", whereas for republicans, our position is best summed up by the Irish patriot James Connolly, when he said that our allegiance is with socialists wherever they are in the world, irrespective of nationality.

"It is this belief in the right to struggle for liberation today that puts us in support and sympathy and comradeship with native Americans, or Australians or with the people of East Timor, Palestine or the Basque Country."

"What then is Irish nationalism? We are not insular. We have been influenced by waves of people, the Norse and Normans, the Scottish and English planters, the Roma gypsies who daily play their music on our Dublin streets and who, in the years to come, will undoubtedly have left their influence on 'traditional and 'Irish' music.

When it comes to Irish nationalism and republicanism, it makes sense to articulate an Irishness that is based on inclusiveness, which can incorporate all who come to our island as well as the millions abroad who have an identity with it.   - Arthur Morgan

"You can no more decide what is Irish music than you can decide who is Irish. "It is amazing that 26-County High Court judges or the Dublin government see themselves as being competent to sit, Solomon-like, in judgement over who is or isn't Irish.

"What we do have in being Irish is a shared experience of what should not be - British and unionist oppression of our communities, the denial of civil rights, or Christian bigotry and sectarianism, whether it was in the unionist Stormont state or in the Catholic schools of the 26 Counties, who spent decades distilling a tortured, fake idea of correct Catholic rural Irishness.

"What we have, in being nationalist, is a tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism and the exploitation it wreaked on our society."

"We have a revolutionary nationalism in that it was and is a rebellion against inequality - in how the British state and subsequently the Irish statelets controlled access to the resources, rewarding the loyal and the obedient and punishing those who demanded justice.

"When it comes to Irish nationalism and republicanism, it makes sense to articulate an Irishness that is based on inclusiveness, which can incorporate all who come to our island as well as the millions abroad who have an identity with it. It's not rooted in the green fields, the Guinness or the Barry's tea. It is rooted in the people who said and are still saying No to injustice or exploitation, no to corruption, cronyism, and clientelism and yes to freedom and empowerment for our communities. We are internationalists, championing the cause of the downtrodden and the oppressed."

As might have been expected, the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil party spokespeople drove hard in their initial presentations to regain the nationalist ground many might have thought they had left behind over the last 30 years of conflict.

Gerry O'Connell, head of the youth wing of the Fine Gael party, made an impressive and thought provoking address. He reminded people of the origins of Fine Gael and the strength of nationalism in the party's early years and ideology. "We are a constitutional united Ireland party, trying to find our way, in an Ireland that has needed to change, and we are sickened to the core by Fianna Fáil and recent years of government," he said.

"We go back to the War of Independence, the men and women in the Flying Columns in 1920 and '21 - traditions reflected in today's young people, who are a strong voice for nationalist Ireland. We come from the tradition of Béal na Bláth, of Michael Collins, and his vision of a United Ireland. Michael Collins has always been an important figure for us in our history.

"We are totally behind the Good Friday Agreement - it's all our futures, something for which all the people of Ireland, on that historic day, voted, like in the elections of 1918. I am certain that there will be a united Ireland in my lifetime."

O'Connell talked of Enda Kenny's recent visit to Ardoyne and the Short Strand in Belfast. "We have no idea," he said, "what the people went through and are going through in the North. I would like to see a bipartisan position on policy on the North."

Brian Lenihan, who joined the debate a little later, spoke of the need to define nationalism. He spoke of how things have moved on from 19th Century nationalism - "we can no longer be limited by a one-nation state". He said that "we learned our lessons in the last World War, where we took a position of neutrality to preserve our sovereignty in a part of Ireland, but it left us with no power, we relied on the convoys in the Atlantic to get our sugar, coffee and tea. We learned that we have to be constructive with the outside world, in today's world of global power, and in the context of the developing and expanding EU.

"On the issue of war in Iraq, we in the government have consistently supported the French position, that all decisions must be taken through the community of nations, the United Nations."

The meeting was an exciting first in Coiste na n-Iarchimí's programme to build the nation and to develop a view on the sort of Ireland society here wants to see emanating from the hard years of oppression and conflict. May that debate, which ex-prisoners have initiated, go on.