Diarmaid Ferriter: Queen Elizabeth saw the ups and downs of Anglo-Irish relations

On September 6th, 1997, I stood in London observing the funeral cortege of Diana Princess of Wales as it made its way along Hyde Park. What on earth was I doing there? It was both by accident and design: an accident because I had booked a trip to London well before Diana’s death; by design because I could not resist the funeral spectacle given the enormity of the reaction to the death of the princess.

For me, there was also a professional interest. As an undergraduate in 1990 I greatly enjoyed the lectures of UCD historian Fergus D’Arcy on 20th-century Britain, and he gave a particularly absorbing lecture on the impact of the British monarchy. It was a subject I was to return to at various stages as a historian, partly because of all the factors that contributed to the Civil War in Ireland in the early 1920s, the section of the Anglo-Irish Treaty requiring members of the Irish parliament to swear an oath of fidelity to the British Crown seemed the most emotive and divisive.

But symbol was one thing and practice another. Over the years many Irish managed to combine their republicanism with a fascination with the activities of the House of Windsor.

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There was always going to be Irish curiosity about a family deemed responsible by nationalists for presiding over the historical oppression of a colonised people. Royal visits to Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries galvanised political militants to object.

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But that hostility was also born of an insecurity; historian James Murphy, who wrote about the relationship between nationalism and monarchy in Ireland during the reign of Queen Victoria in his book Abject Loyalty (2001) made the point that the increasing hostility displayed by Irish nationalists towards monarchy was party based on fear “of the undoubted popularity of monarchy among large sections of the Irish Catholic nationalist population and fear of the uses to which that popularity might be put”.

In tandem, military service by Irish men under the royal insignia was a constant from the time they were allowed to join crown forces after the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century. Joining the British army was a family tradition for many, and was not seen by them as either pro-British or anti-Irish. But that became an inconvenient truth.

Because of the events of the War of Independence, the phrase “crown forces” came to represent something abhorrent in the Irish republican narrative. The hatred of the brutal Black and Tans, the targeting of the Royal Irish Constabulary by the IRA and events such as Bloody Sunday in November 1920 when crown forces massacred civilians in Croke Park at a GAA match, did much to cement the resentment.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth II was associated with some of the darkest days and strains of Anglo-Irish relations, but also, towards its end, a satisfying resolution

As a student of history, the themes of a divided Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations formed a core part of my historical education and continue to. One of my other history lecturers, Ronan Fanning, was fond of reminding us of the declaration of Desmond FitzGerald, the Irish Free State’s first minister for external affairs, that “England is our most important external affair”.

During the mid-1980s, with the distressing backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Fanning noted wryly of the need to confront British-Irish realities: “Britain looms larger in the Irish consciousness than Ireland in the British; this has always been and will remain, among the most significant of these realities”.

A few years previously, in 1979, there was reference in a file (released by the National Archive in London in 2009) to Queen Elizabeth II’s “alleged dislike of the Irish”, an assertion made by a civil servant in the British Foreign Office looking at the possibility of a state visit to Britain by Irish president Patrick Hillery. Concern was expressed about diplomatic protocols and the activities of the IRA, but a longer report about the queen’s supposed personal attitudes was withheld from the released file. In any case, the British ambassador in Dublin at the time, Robin Haydon, made it clear that the diplomatic difficulties involved in an invitation to Hillery would be too great to overcome.

By the time of Queen Elizabeth’s state visit to Ireland in 2011 the atmosphere had transformed. The defining image of the visit was powerful in its dignity and simplicity. Head bowed, the queen did in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin what she had done countless times in many countries at national shrines. But this was different; because of all that had happened in Anglo-Irish affairs in the 100 years since her grandfather King George V was in Dublin, and because she was there to pay respect to those who had died fighting against the British Empire, not to be received by “loyal subjects” as her grandfather was.

While the rhetoric of reconciliation was full blown, there was also an assertion by president Mary McAleese of pride in “Ireland’s difficult journey to national sovereignty”. The reign of Queen Elizabeth II was associated with some of the darkest days and strains of Anglo-Irish relations, but also, towards its end, a satisfying resolution. Her 2011 visit was ultimately about diplomatic equality; that the queen was received in the historic centre of British rule in Ireland by the president of the Irish republic underlined that emphatically.

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD