The perennial discussion of a 'pragmatic' Ireland rejoining the British Commonwealth is utterly fatuous, writes John Waters
I GOT a call the other day from Radio Ulster to debate whether Ireland should rejoin the British Commonwealth. This notion is one that jumps unprompted from time to time to the minds of otherwise sensible people, who are then afforded generous media space to elaborate their opinions. This time, the hook was another debate on the same subject taking place last Tuesday evening in London, involving Ian Paisley and Dessie O'Malley. I can't imagine that being a heated encounter, but I tried to compensate on the BBC earlier in the day by communicating the utter fatuousness of this perennial discussion.
Strangely, there appears to be a minority of people out there who do not grasp that Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth is as likely as humans walking on the sun. I don't mean Ian Paisley, from whose vantage point the idea is possibly plausible enough, but rather commentators from the Republic, whose musings about a possible "pragmatic" return to the Commonwealth create a continuing impression that this is a plausible idea. I have a sense that most citizens of the Republic are bemused by this, but that each individually thinks himself among a minority of dissenters and therefore keeps quiet. I can't recall the last time this was put to an opinion poll, but my guess is that, beyond a small elite of dissociated native settlers, it would get short shrift.
Another factor contributing to the sense of plausibility arises from the political context in which such discussions used to take place. Whenever this idea was floated during the Troubles, it was difficult to see it off without seeming to be on the side of the Provos. This resulted in an under-emphatic expression of the case against what is actually a total non-runner. Because of our anxiety to understate anything that might be interpreted as a "nationalist" position, a degree of plausibility developed around the idea that, one day, the Irish people might be "mature" enough to do something that would deny the last 1,000 years of their history.
Oh come now. The modern Commonwealth, we are assured, is not like that. It is a loose affiliation of equal nations, joined under a flag of mutual convenience, blah, blah. Sure it is. But it remains also the embodiment of what our forefathers spilled an ocean of their blood trying to escape.
There is nothing mature about amnesia. Remembering has nothing to do with nationalism, but everything to do with identity and psychological balance. For centuries we have been prevented from looking squarely at our history, first by the process of colonisation and more recently by the shame arising from the desecration of Irish nationhood by the Provisional IRA. The resolution of the Northern conflict has unexpectedly enabled us not only to engage at an emotional level with our history, but also to stop lying about it.
Twice this year, I have been involved in television programmes about the Great Famine, which have touched on the nature of Ireland's historical relationship with Britain in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago. While the Provos were murdering people, we had to pretend that we were over it, that most of it never happened, or that, anyway, it was all a long time ago. Now, the political context for denial has been removed, we can state the facts baldly. We do not wish to do anything with these facts, but simply to record them again, after generations of shamed silence, so we know who we are.
In a programme produced by Animo Films, I re-entered the world of my father's family's existence on six acres in north Sligo, where some of my granduncles lived through the Famine and some died in it. Making that programme confirmed for me that the memory of this trauma was still in my bones, and I got a similar response from many hundreds of people who saw the programme.
Last Tuesday night, while Ian and Dessie were debating in London, RTÉ broadcast the first part of a Tile Films two-part docudrama, Death or Canada, to which I also contributed (Part two goes out next Tuesday at 10.15pm). Death or Canadatells of tens of thousands of Irish Famine victims out of whose suffering was born the modern continent of North America. The narrative follows the humanly inconceivable journey of the Willises, a Protestant family who, in Black '47, abandoned their home in the west and gambled everything on finding new lives in Canada.
Death or Canadagives the lie to the myth that Irish history has been predicated on religion. Instead, it confirms that the main narrative thread has been the endurance of radical interference and massive oppression over many centuries. I harbour no resentment towards individual or collective about this, but I'm damned if, in the interests of politeness, I'm going to be bullied into pretending it never happened. Neither will I be silenced by the murderous record of Provo thugs, whom history will perceive as having appropriated a history that wasn't theirs to fight a squalid, parochial turf war. Our history stands beyond all that as a solemn and terrible warning about the need for long spoons and big sticks.