It is unlikely that many of those who packed the country's pubs last Wednesday to "drown the shamrock" paused to reflect that for nearly 40 years of the last century licensed premised in this State were closed on St Patrick's Day. Moreover, such enforced sobriety was held by many to be an essential feature of Irishness, writes Brian Maye.
Those with even a modicum of interest in Irish history will probably be familiar with Patrick Pearse's assertion, "Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam" (A country without a language is a country without a soul). Pearse was a leading light in the Gaelic League, founded in 1893 to preserve and restore the Irish language as an essential element in the life of the country.
But most people may not know that a significant section of the Gaelic League, Pearse again chief among them, also believed in the theory "Ireland sober is Ireland free" and that, following a campaign waged by the organisation, pubs in Ireland were closed on St Patrick's Day 100 years ago. They were to remain closed on the national feast day for 37 years.
It might seem surprising that it was the Gaelic League that was to the fore in preventing Irish people from drowning the shamrock. After all, in many other aspects of Irish social life at the time, the league was hardly puritanical. It was one of the few organisations in the Ireland of the time that accepted men and women as equal members; it gave the sexes a chance to interact through its language classes, which were mixed, and more so through its céilithe. For this reason, both its classes and its dances sometimes fell foul of the Catholic Church.
But perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that temperance was one of the strands that fused with the movements for regeneration and cultural revival, such as the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin, which were such a feature of Irish life at the turn of the 20th century. One of the stereotypes these movements were determined to destroy was that of the "drunken Irish".
In 1898, the Jesuit Father James Cullen launched the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association which, within 20 years, had grown to a membership of 200,000. D.P. Moran's journal the Leader appeared on the scene in 1900 and soon became a mainstay of the Catholic middle class. Moran was a strong supporter of the Gaelic League and one of the main targets of his devastating satire was the Irish drink lobby, or "Mr Bung", as he called it.
Frequently the temperance movement was equated with liberation from English domination. As one preacher put it: "England suppressed out commerce, our factories, our mines, our industries, and left us only the distillery." And prominent people in the Gaelic League, such as the devout Dublin Catholic Pearse and the Belfast Quaker Bulmer Hobson, had a distaste not just for excessive drinking, but any drinking.
In 1904 the league, which helped to have St Patrick's Day made a bank holiday the previous year, began its opposition to the opening of pubs on the day. The campaign was based on the belief that drink had blemished and defiled the national feast in the past. The archbishop of Dublin, William Walsh, issued an invitation to the Licensed Vintners' Association, and they agreed to close the pubs. The Chief Secretary, George Wyndham, offered to pass a law to this effect, but the offer was declined. It was preferred to keep the gesture as a voluntary sacrifice on the part of the vintners.
Temperance remained at the core of Irish nationalism beyond the first two decades of the 20th century. Sinn Féin replaced the Irish Parliamentary Party as the majority voice of Irish nationalism after the 1916 Rising. The 1917 pamphlet The Ethics of Sinn Féin had the following passage: "Independence is first and foremost a personal matter. The Sinn Féiner's moral obligations are many and restrictive. His conduct must be above reproach, his personality stainless. He must learn the Irish language, write on Irish paper, abstain from alcohol and tobacco. Give good example: make examples of your life, your virtues, your courage, your temperance, your manliness, which will attract your fellow countrymen to the national cause."
The 1920s witnessed two Intoxicating Liquor Acts, in 1924 and 1927, which reduced pub opening hours; the second of these also made closing on St Patrick's Day compulsory. But by now the Licensed Vintners' Association was far from happy with the rule.
Its 1932 annual report deplored the national festival being "celebrated in sack-cloth and ashes" and argued that most people were opposed to the closing of licensed premises. It also recalled the 1921 comment of Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin, that the closing of pubs on St Patrick's Day was an affront to working-class people.
Throughout the 1930s the vintners repeated their call for St Patrick's Day opening, pointing out that rural people travelling to Dublin for GAA matches were being deprived of refreshments in public houses. But the Pioneers remained firmly opposed to any change.
In April 1931, the association held a rally in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre at which Senator Laurence O'Neill referred to the assassinated Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, who had overseen the 1924 and 1927 Acts.
"If there was no other reason for keeping the public houses closed on St Patrick's Day, respect for the brutally murdered Kevin O'Higgins should be sufficient," he said.
The PTAA succeeded in keeping the pubs closed for the rest of the 1930s but it was fighting a losing battle. In 1941, the Licensing Bill provided for limited pub opening on St Patrick's Day and gradually the length of time was extended until pubs were open for as long as any other day.