In May 1973, when launching his bid to become president of Ireland, former Fianna Fáil minister Erskine Childers was asked about his ability to speak Irish.
Childers replied that he did not speak the language, “but that if he needed the assistance of people to advise him on linguistic affairs, he would seek their advice”.
This was a curious “othering” of the Irish language by a candidate seeking to become head of a state where, according to the Constitution, “Ós í an Ghaeilge an teanga náisiúnta is í an phríomhtheanga oifigiúil” (“The Irish language as the national language is the first official language”).
This is followed by the assertion in the Constitution that “Glactar leis an Sacs-Bhéarla mar theanga oifigiúil eile” (“The English language is recognised as a second official language”). Childers saw no reason to commit to learning the first official language.
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Childers was seeking to replace Éamon de Valera as president, the same de Valera who in February 1939 had said in the Dáil: “If I were told tomorrow: ‘You can have a united Ireland if you give up your idea of restoring the national language to be the spoken language of the majority of the people’, I would for myself say no’.”
Like many of his contemporaries, de Valera had been a committed Irish language enthusiast; the embracing of Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), established in 1893, led to membership of 100,000 in 900 branches by 1905.
For many of that revolutionary generation it was of paramount significance; historian Brian Ó Conchubhair suggests it “set the cultural agenda for twentieth century Ireland ... not least because it was the smithy in which almost all Irish leaders forged their intellectual and cultural souls”.
In 1973, eighty years after the establishment of the league, there was certainly no sign of a united Ireland and the business of state and politics, as with previous decades, was conducted mostly in English.
Childers’s lack of Irish language proficiency was no barrier to becoming president; he duly won the election. During the campaign, the minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the Fine Gael/ Labour Coalition, Conor Cruise O’Brien, suggested the inability of Childers to speak Irish was proof Fianna Fáil had been “living a lie” in relation to its commitment to the language; the other candidate, Fine Gael’s Tom O’Higgins, could speak Irish, said O’Brien, “purposefully, effectively and substantially, and not just as a ritual observance”.
Interestingly, O’Brien did not use the word “fluently”.
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After Childers’s election, the Language Freedom Movement (LFM) hailed his victory as proof that “the bogus and mischievous link that certain elements have tried to forge between language and nationality has now finally been rejected by the Irish people”. The LFM had been launched in March 1966 and hosted an acrimonious meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin in September that year that witnessed scuffles, stage storming and flag waving and tearing as it sought to argue for diluting the tie between the state and the language and decried compulsion, suggesting the Irish language had become “the tail that wagged the nation”.
In parallel, a Gaeltacht civil rights movement also prompted militancy, including from writer and political activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain who asserted that “sí athréimniú na Gaelige athghabháil na hÉireann” (“the restoration of Irish means the repossession of the country”).
The Gaelic League may have started as a cultural organisation, but the language question could not remain outside the politics of nationalism; indeed, one of the reasons the founder of the League, Douglas Hyde, resigned as its president in 1915 was because of its increased politicisation. But his significance culturally was also one of the reasons he became the first president of Ireland without an election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael recognising in 1938 that his status as a linguistic crusader placed him above Civil War enmities. He would be an “Uachtaráin fhiúntaigh” (“worthy president”), suggested de Valera at his inauguration, largely because of his “foresight in saving from death our own sweet language”. That may have been overly optimistic; Hyde told journalists the same year “I hope we shall now develop along the lines of a Gaelic nation ... it may not come in my lifetime. It may not come in yours either”.
The politics around the Irish language is far from moribund today. An estimated 25,000 people protested in Dublin last Saturday demanding protection of the language. But in tandem, we now have two out of three candidates for the presidency – Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin – who cannot speak fluent Irish. During the general election campaign of 2011, one of the most notable events was a three-way Irish language debate between the leaders of the main Irish political parties, Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin, which generated pride regardless of political preference. That cannot happen during this presidential campaign, and that is something to be lamented.
