Diarmaid Ferriter: Political narratives around Treaty centenary will be keenly contested

Last summer, when contemplating his scheduled return as Taoiseach in December 2022, Leo Varadkar suggested there is "a kind of poetry" to that timeline as it coincides with the centenary of the formal creation of the Irish Free State, a year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. There was little poetry, however, on December 6th, 1922, when WT Cosgrave spoke in the Dáil as head of government to mark the inauguration of the new state; security was tight and the public gallery was empty.

The country, Cosgrave insisted, had “definitely emerged from the bondage under which she has lived through a week of centuries”. But because of the civil war the occasion was sandwiched between horrific events, and the day after Cosgrave spoke, pro-Treaty TD Seán Hales was shot dead in Dublin. Retaliatory executions of anti-Treaty republicans followed. The only way to deal with the “diabolical conspiracy” to overthrow the state, declared Cosgrave, was “to crush it”.

In time, Cosgrave's political opponents achieved revenge, winning power less than 10 years after their civil war defeat. Fianna Fáil fashioned its own narrative of the dark days, sometimes through a self-serving selectivity. This summer I found a copy of a long-out-of-print book published by the Department of External Affairs in 1963, Facts About Ireland, which included this remarkable summary of the decade 1922-32: "Following the approval of the Treaty by 64 votes to 57, a civil war broke out which ended in May 1923 in the defeat of those who wished to maintain the Republic and were opposed to the Treaty. In 1926 Mr Eamon de Valera, who as President of the Republic had opposed the Treaty, founded the Fianna Fáil party. Following the 1932 election, the Fianna Fáil party came to power and proceeded to abolish the oath of allegiance to the British Crown and other restrictive clauses of the Treaty."

It was some whitewash. Cumann na nGaedheal, in power from 1923-32, had vanished and its successors in Fine Gael saw this publication as another manifestation of Fianna Fáil arrogance and distortion of history. Fine Gael had to wait for another 10 years before they achieved power again and by that time there was party satisfaction that Cosgrave's son Liam was at the helm, with, they believed, echoes of the challenges his father faced due to the Troubles.

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One of the reasons Ireland recovered relatively quickly from the civil war was because both sides drew heavily from the same cultural well

As we approach the centenary of the Treaty and civil war it will be interesting to see how the shifting of political ground in recent years will impact on the “historical” narratives preferred by politicians; the big difference this time is that Fianna Fáil is likely to be squeezed out of them.

Last week Minister for Justice Heather Humphreys gave the Beál na Blá oration (this year online) to mark the anniversary of the killing of Michael Collins. As usual, there was much hot air and deification of Collins who, maintained Humphreys, "had no time for hiding behind romanticised views of the past"; while others spoke for the dead, he concentrated on "the rights of the living".

A reading of Collins’s collected speeches and thoughts, The Path to Freedom, would suggest otherwise. He had a decidedly sentimental view of history. As Anne Dolan and William Murphy, authors of the most recent book about him, suggest, his beliefs “were grounded in a nineteenth century romantic understanding of the Irish nation” as he insisted the “Gaelic Soul” was “indestructible”.

There were parallel silences; for all those who traded on insults and propaganda, many civil war veterans were reluctant to speak of it or commemorate its cruelties

Ireland’s ancient civilisation, he wrote, had been characterised by “security, prosperity and national greatness” while in the impoverished west of Ireland “one gets a glimpse of what Ireland may become again”. His meanderings were of their time and “second-hand thinking” and were common on both sides of the Treaty divide; indeed, one of the reasons Ireland recovered relatively quickly from the civil war was because both sides drew heavily from the same cultural well.

The real purpose of Humphrey’s speech, however, was to accuse Sinn Féin of having “emotional reverence for the atrocities of the past” and seeking to “weaponise history and in some cases rewrite it entirely to suit their own political narrative”. Fine Gael, like Fianna Fáil, has also done this; some of its veterans of the civil war, like Seán MacEoin, honed a narrative in the 1960s of the actions of himself and colleagues in 1922 as “the greatest example of patriotism”.

But significantly, there were parallel silences; for all those who traded on insults and propaganda, many civil war veterans were reluctant to speak of it or loudly commemorate its cruelties. Sinn Féin could profitably learn that less is more when it comes to commemoration and that an excess of reverential piety or defiant righteousness does little to help healing. As Fine Gael limbers up to take them on in the coming commemoration matches, it will be interesting to see where, if anywhere, Fianna Fáil can position itself.