An Irishman's Diary

BERATING MY esteemed colleague Sarah Carey for referring to “Blueshirts”, Dr Ann Matthews (on this page, yesterday) writes: “It really is about time that the media in general stopped using the term ‘Blueshirt’ as a form of insult and moved on from the Civil War”.

I’ll come back to Sarah Carey in a minute. But in defence of Irish journalism, I feel bound to point out that the Civil War ended only 86 years ago; while the events from which the aforementioned epithet emerged rumbled on for a further decade. By the standards usually applying on this island, where we have very long memories, these things happened only last week.

In contrast, the English civil war ended 358 years ago. Yet to this day, everyone in Britain – not just its media – calls the main opposition party in Westminster “Tories”: a nickname borrowed from 17th-century Catholic Irish outlaws, to whom the parliamentary supporters of Charles II (died 1685) were compared. And nobody ever accuses the English of living in the past.

There is no reason to think that if the Tories’ former rivals, the “Whigs”, were still around today (they disbanded in 1868 to form the Liberal Party), their nickname would not be intact either. Whig was short for “Whiggamore”, a term for Scottish horse thieves (and later Scots Presbyterians), whom those opposing Charles II’s succession by the Catholic Duke of York were alleged to resemble. The name stuck to them for nearly two centuries.

In referring to one of our parties as the “Blueshirts”, Irish people – journalists included – are therefore only following an example handed down to us by the mother of parliaments; albeit in a milder form, without any implications of criminality.

It’s much too early yet, however, to say whether our nickname will catch on.

An even more recent example, by the way, is the “Stickies”. This name arose from Official Sinn Féin’s controversial abandonment, post-1970, of the pin-on Easter Lily – until then regarded as a core republican principle – in favour of an adhesive version. The “Stickies” soubriquet has since followed members of the movement through several different political affiliations, up to and including the lily-free Labour Party. But there are signs that the nickname is beginning to die out already, after a mere 40 years. By English standards, that’s a failure.

AS TO DR MATTHEWS’ claim that Blueshirt is an “insult”, well, that very much depends on who uses it. I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets here in saying that Sarah Carey did not intend any offence. On the contrary. Like an African American using the N-word, her deployment of the term would be at worst ironic, at best affectionate. Depending on the subject under debate, she might even wear it as a badge of pride.

Whereas, for more-or-less opposite reasons, I would be reluctant to use the word, in case of causing offence. Growing up in the deep south (of Ulster, where Gen Eoin O’Duffy came from), I was taught that people of all shirt colours were equal in rights and dignity. But the fact remains that my family were members of the majority white-shirted community.

Which is why, to this day, I avoid using the B-word of other people, no matter how much they use it themselves; because it might just sound different coming from a honky like me.

“Blueshirt” was undoubtedly used as an insult by some once, and I suppose it still is today. But there are many examples of such names that were deliberately subverted by the community to which they applied until they had only positive connotations.

One thinks of the French Impressionists, for example: mocked as such by arts critics until they themselves adopted the name and with it swept the world.

Then, getting back to politics, there were the Suffragettes. Yes, that name is worn with honour today. But when the Daily Mail coined it in 1906, it was intended only to mock. For its original flavour, you have to imagine the silly term sometimes still used for female members of the agricultural community – “farmerettes” – and multiply it by at least three.

As for “Tory”, no doubt that name was highly insulting to an English conservative once. But even assuming he or she knows what it means, exactly, no member of the modern Conservative party would regard it as such. In fact, the descendants of 17th-century Catholic Irish outlaws might now be more likely to take offence at the implied comparison with David Cameron and his friends.

Even when intended to disparage, “Blueshirt” is fairly mild. Its origins were an interlude in Irish history that in retrospect looks more comic that sinister. As one historian put it, “the real trouble with O’Duffy was not that he was cold-bloodedly authoritarian but that he was warm-heartedly incompetent”.

So there must be every chance that the nickname, if its survives, will continue to evolve into a term completely devoid of derogatory meaning, and eventually of meaning at all. But as I say, it’s very early days yet.