The greatest English poet this century was Kipling, not merely because of the power and fecundity of his verse, but because he uniquely understood raw emotions and popular feelings. He could put to rhyme the power of the heart and the pulse of identity, and he is worth consulting even when the heart and the identity he defends are not ours.
One of the greatest poems from his pen is Ulster 1912, and its very greatness shines through the deplorable intolerance which animates it; for although Kipling loved Irishness and Irishmen, especially Irish soldiers of the Crown, he could not bear Irish nationalism, even when represented by the compliant and benign form of John Redmond. But his identification with Ulster loyalism in 1912 is useful to us today, not merely in what it tells us about that form of identity then, but also what it tells us about militantly defensive identity anywhere.
Intolerance
"The dark eleventh hour/ Draws on and sees us sold/ To every evil power/ We fought against of old./ Rebellion, rapine, hate,/ Oppression, wrong and greed/ Are loosed to rule our fate,/ By England's act and deed."
If that verse were not entitled Ulster 1912, might it not also be entitled Ireland 1916, or Ireland 1921? And what we may term intolerance in one political culture, might we also not call forthright, laudable, heroic, principled, unyielding in another? It is so easy to slip into the language of abuse of that which you do not like or, more to the point, do not understand. I should know, for I have done it too often myself.
So it is not difficult today to reach for the kind of language which Kipling used to denounce those who are already motivated by Kiplingesque emotions: "The terror threats and dread,/ In market, hearth and field -/ We know, when all is said,/ We perish if we yield."
We perish if we yield; this is such a powerful theme in Irish political identity, whether the yielding is within the GAA or within Derry's walls, that it is amazing that Kipling is not taught in Irish schools for what his own emotions tell us about ourselves. He is a useful tool of discovery; for is not the GAA stand on rule 42, which use of GAA grounds to "such purposes not in conflict with the aims and objects of the association" not in essence Kipling? Is not some of the opposition even to discussing whether or not we should rejoin the Commonwealth inspired by that same terror that we perish if we yield? And does that same dread not beat fervently in Orange breasts each July, as the drums of the Garvaghy Road speak of the perils of surrender?
Incomprehensible
To those not moved by such fears, as for those who are strangers to vertigo or agoraphobia, they are bizarre and incomprehensible terrors, infantile and illogical. But such judgements are useless to those who feel these emotions. So whereas I can see no reason not to join the Commonwealth, and indeed no very compelling reason either for doing so, it is quite clear from the warmth of some people's responses to this issue that it is very much a case of perishing if we yield.
The same goes for the GAA and its defence of rule 42. Yes, yes yes, it is the easiest thing in the world to call these men and women bigots; to those of us outside the particular GAA culture to which these people have given their lives, there can be no possible reason not to permit a soccer match at Healy Park in Omagh to raise money for the victims of the bombing in the town. Yet those people see reason in what they do; and though they might not articulate it to our satisfaction, in their hearts they feel they are right.
It is for them a matter of faith; and faith is the key to identity, just as it is to religion. We cannot explain to outsiders how or why we feel about certain matters; all we know is that they arouse great and inexplicable passions in our hearts, passions which are lucidity itself when we turn them over in our minds in the darker watches of the night, but which defy verbalisation when one tries to explain them to unbelievers.
Inflexibility
We have built political and national identities which imitate the forms of belief of our creeds. A Free Prebyterian's sense of national self merely politically mirrors his or her religious belief; and the GAA man or woman who defends his or her rules does so with the same inflexibility with which they would guard the key items of their religion.
Are such qualities changeable? If in the last resort they are, does it still come down to: "We perish if we yield"? That if people are talked down from their ramparts, their citadel is seized and all they hold dear, "the faith in which we stand,/ The laws we made and guard - / Our honour, lives and land -/ Are given for reward. . . " For if people genuinely feel extinction is the price of compromise, are they entirely wrong to oppose compromise? And is that - not the Border, nor this rule or that rule, nor membership of the Commonwealth - not really the great and enduring Irish question?