Distorting the true image of Pearse

`O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" The distorted image of Patrick Pearse that Kevin Myers has allowed to ferment in his…

`O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" The distorted image of Patrick Pearse that Kevin Myers has allowed to ferment in his mind over recent years has, at last, reached a point of critical cerebral disturbance. By permitting a false reality to dominate his thought processes for so long he can no longer recognise, even if he wished, some of the historical realities concerning the life of Pearse.

Myers asks (Irishman's Diary July 22nd) "what was it about this man (`this blundering fool') which appeals to today's democrats?" Possibly, I would suggest, they may detect something of the qualities recognised by Brig Gen Blackadder, who presided at Pearse's court-martial.

He related to friends, on the evening afterwards, that "I have just done one of the hardest tasks I have ever had to. I have had to condemn to death one of the finest characters I have ever come across. There must be something very wrong in the state of things that makes a man like that a rebel."

Possibly the qualities of the rebels that were recognised by John Dillon, in his courageous speech in the House of Commons on May 11th, 1916, may also inspire some present-day democrats. Dillon remarked that "as regards the main body of the insurgents, their conduct was beyond reproach as fighting men . . . they fought a clean fight." He condemned the statement of Herbert Samuel (the Home Secretary) that there had been "some cold-blooded murders". He concluded: "I am proud of these men."

READ MORE

Possibly they may associate themselves with the discerning judgment of Eoin MacNeill, who, despite being deceived by Pearse and the IRB military committee (about the timing of the Rising), declared in 1917 that "Ireland has many heroes and martyrs in her memory; she will remember Patrick Pearse as hero, martyr, teacher and prophet. Bye-the-bye all the world will honour him as a fearless, selfless light and exemplar to mankind."

Most of these tributes paid to Pearse are well known. Presumably Kevin Myers has reflected upon them and rejected them in favour of the chimerical image of Pearse which inhabits his imagination. Ordinary people, however, may be inclined to think that if the adversaries of Pearse, let alone his friends, are prepared to honour him with accolades, there must be something to admire in the man.

They may also be encouraged to test some of the wider, and wilder, generalisations of Myers against the more basic considerations of simple facts. For example, they may choose to evaluate the contention of Myers that Pearse did not like peace, but "revelled in war", against Pearse's conclusion in his Three Lectures on Gaelic Topics of 1898.

Therein he identified himself with the wishes of Cardinal Newman that Ireland might be a place of learning to which scholars would come from all over the world and return home bringing "peace to men of goodwill".

They might, for example, balance the claim of Myers that Pearse was obsessed with a blood sacrifice against Pearse's statement in The Spiri- tual Nation (February 1916) that "obviously, if a nation can obtain its freedom without bloodshed, it is its duty so to obtain it".

They might also test the assertion of Myers that Pearse stood for "a glorification of violence" against his words to Joe McGarrity (August 12th, 1914) that some of the ammunition "consists of explosive bullets, which are against the rules of civilised war and which, therefore, we are not serving out to the men".

And they might like to check the contention of Myers that Pearse was "a fanatic who knew nothing about democracy, and cared even less about it" against Pearse's support for the Local Council's Bill of 1907 and his appearance on a Home Rule platform with Redmond in 1912.

Pearse, moreover, never joined Sinn Fein, and when he joined the IRB in late 1913, he did not do so to destroy democracy, but rather to restore it to the Irish people, asserting "the divine right of the people . . . [who] will, if wise, adopt the widest possible franchise - give a vote to every adult man and woman of sound mind" (The Sovereign People, March 1916).

This ideal was far ahead of then current practice and was formally incorporated into the Proclamation of the Republic, which stated "the Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens."

Concern for the social needs of the people - the mark of a true democrat - was also demonstrated by Pearse, who not only declared that he stood with "the landless man against the lord of lands, and with the breadless man against the master of millions", in October 1913, but also gave practical expression to those aims in the Easter Proclamation.

Significantly, the denial by Myers of these democratic and social dimensions to Pearse's thinking mirrors exactly the policy of the British censor in 1916 who prohibited a contemporary journal from publishing an article giving examples to show that Pearse and MacNeill were "men of proven constitutional instincts".

The view that Pearse was a democrat who was driven on to the revolutionary path by the unconstitutional actions of the Ulster Unionists was not to be heard.

In this unity of purpose and in this harmony of means between the British censor of 1916 and Kevin Myers of the year 2000 one may discern the true relevance of the latter's recent article on Pearse. It tells us nothing about Patrick Pearse; it tells us everything about Kevin Myers.

Father Brian Murphy OSB is a graduate of Oxford University, TCD, and the NUI. He is author of Patrick Pearse and the Lost Republican Ideal and is a member of the Benedictine community at Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick