Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

So what are we celebrating, anyway?

It's hard to imagine that we once had an independent foreign policy, that we played a crucial role in creating the nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, or that almost alone in Europe we opposed Thatcher's military adventurism in the Falklands

Everything was Irish except the weather. On a glorious spring day without a raincloud in sight, we took to the streets in our hundreds of thousands. The pubs overflowed, the craic was mighty, children licked ice cream and stared wide-eyed at the floats. From Oslo to Canberra, and Savannah to Shanghai, millions donned funny hats and Leprechaun beards and knocked back the Guinness in honour of the 'oul sod. Back home, in line with our newfound, post-Celtic-Tiger sophistication, the traditional parade in Dublin was supplemented by a funfair and a fireworks display choreographed by Group F, the French artists behind the millennium extravaganza at the Eiffel tower. Wasn't it a great day to be Irish?

But what, exactly, were we celebrating? Was I the only one who felt something lacking - something missing behind the razzamatazz and the laughter and the swanky parades?

Our National Day should be an occasion to commemorate all that is distinctive in our culture, the values around which we would build our society. But much of the day seemed an orgy of consumerism conducted under the aegis of corporate sponsorship - and always with an eye to the main chance. On 14 March, the Irish Independent ran a story about the Dublin St Patrick's Festival under a headline predicting it would generate €45 million for the capital, and explained that this year's festival had been extended to six days to maximise its tourist potential.

Key events in Dublin included the "7Up Skyfest" and "HB Big Day Out". Saint Pat may have banished the snakes, but clearly a belt of the crozier is the last thing he'd deal out to corporate buzzards. The odd céilí paid lip service to our native tradition, but what reference do the majority of this week's events bear to our national history, our national culture? Are we celebrating anything more this Patrick's Week than the fact that (some of us) have enough money in our pockets to get drunk?

The designation of Saint Patrick's Day as our national holiday early in this century reflected a time when the Catholic religion was seen as central to Irish identity. I don't think any of us would wish to return to that. But can we not devise a national day that would celebrate the best in Ireland's past and the values around which we would wish to build our island's future? A day that would celebrate our nation's traditions and distinctiveness while placing them firmly in the contemporary world?

France's Bastille Day, America's Independence Day, mark crucial events in their respective histories and celebrate the values those countries see as fundamental to their national life. Why can we not have a similar holiday in Ireland? But far from being celebrated, the crucial dates in the calendar of our national struggle - Easter Sunday, the deaths of the hunger strikers, the anniversary of Wolfe Tone - are a source of embarrassment, at best, to the Southern establishment. This is no coincidence. Although the 26-County state owes its existence to the efforts of Irish freedom fighters from 1916-21, its institution marked the betrayal of their cause - the reaction of a middle class elite that thought the revolution had gone quite far enough.

d if Fianna Fáil once represented a challenge to that system (let us grant them their achievements of the 1930s and in sustaining neutrality during World War II), they have long since become its most corrupt and rotten pillar. The seal is set on that corruption when they support, with hardly a murmur of protest, war on the people of Iraq.

It's hard to imagine that we once had an independent foreign policy, that we played a crucial role in creating the nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, or that almost alone in Europe we opposed Thatcher's military adventurism in the Falklands. We were once actually respected - and worthy of respect - at the United Nations.

The supine attitude of the political establishment in the face of this colonial and imperialist war is a betrayal of the values of justice and freedom that have sustained the Irish struggle over centuries. No wonder, then, that the 26-County establishment shrinks from commemorating that struggle. Better a little face-painting for the children, and a fireworks display sponsored by 7UP.

As for the Six-County statelet - its founding values are adequately represented by the granite steeple and granite faces of Drumcree.

Our national day has been stolen from us, divorced from history, hollowed of meaning, transformed into a parade of corporatism and greed in a society whose rulers give the people circuses but prefer to bury the values that truly define our nation. But in a few weeks time, other celebrations will take place in towns and cities across Ireland. Men, women and children will march to honour the patriots of 1916, and all those who have given their lives for Ireland, before or since. They will march to commemorate a cause that has refused to die, no matter what suffering or persecution it faced; a hunger for justice that neither imprisonment, nor executions, nor torture, nor oppression could quench.

In a world where the drums of war beat loud, and brute force is exalted in the face of international law and public opinion, they will proclaim again the truth of our history: that there is a spirit of freedom that neither tanks nor bombs can conquer; that the mightiest empire is less powerful than a risen people. In an island divided, scarred by sectarianism and military occupation in the North, by institutionalised corruption and inequality in the South, they will declare their allegiance to a Republic founded upon justice, a Republic whose citizens will be united, equal, and free.

Paddy's day is good fun, especially when the sun shines. But rain or hail, republicans will march on Easter Sunday - because on that day, we march for the things that matter.