Sir, – Michael McDowell argues that “. . . cancellation of some names and monuments may have some validity in the US, but may lack it in Ireland” (“Why stop with Berkeley? Cicero was a slave owner too”, Opinion & Analysis, May 3rd). He makes this point after discussing the views of various characters throughout our history who today lend their names to buildings, or are commemorated in other ways.
He seems to have missed a rather crucial point about commemorations, including the naming of buildings, the erection of statues or other references to these characters.
As historian Anton Howes has pointed out, these public displays are intended to represent moral and ethical virtues we wish our society to model and follow. Indeed, many of the most problematic references to individuals we have today are from the 18th and 19th century where such virtue signalling was explicitly the aim of such projects.
So, what are we memorialising today by referencing individuals whose views on slavery, religious denominations, or other elements which today our opinions on have changed drastically?
It is necessary that we continue to symbolise positive, egalitarian virtues in the public space today. That means that we highlight individuals from our past who represent those virtues well.
For those who no longer represent virtues we hold as good or just, or for whom it emerges their views were not so virtuous after all, we should actively curate the public space as we see fit.
Efforts to conserve false notions of the past, whether by referencing Cicero, Berkeley or anyone else, highlight not only our resistance to change, but blunt our efforts to progress as a society. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL DE BÚRCA,
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.
Sir, – Fintan O’Toole’s article about John Mitchel’s views on race (“Honouring this fanatical racist by naming clubs after him shames our GAA”, Opinion, March 2nd) is a salutary reminder of the fact that history should not be hagiography. Great men (and women) are often complex.
Thus, Michael Davitt defended the Jews of Limerick against persecution but later expressly justified selective anti-Semitism. James Larkin fought for workers’ rights but published in his paper items derogatory of Jews.
In 1914 the Irish Worker reported that Irish trades unionists had warmly welcomed a deported white South African labour leader who objected to “the standard of the white man being levelled down to that of the savage black race (applause)”.
Fintan O’Toole writes that Arthur Griffith “idolised” Mitchel for “the very reason” that the latter argued that Ireland should be free “because the Irish are white”.
The reason Griffith himself gave in 1901 for “worshipping” Mitchel was not racial, but that Mitchel was the “proud, fiery-hearted, electric-brained giant-souled Irishman who stood up to the might of the British Empire”. It was only in 1913 that Griffith penned the words quoted by Fintan, in a preface that he was asked to write for a new edition of Mitchel’s Jail Journal.
The facts are that the 1913 edition came from the mainstream publisher Gill, that a Dublin newspaper described Griffith’s preface as “thoughtful, able and vigorous” and that there was no public criticism indicate attitudes then.
When Lady Gregory visited Washington in 1911 she unapologetically complained to Yeats that there were few people there “except members of government and n*****s”. Trinity College has just added a bust of her to its Long Room.
In my 2020 biography of Griffith I devote a full chapter to Griffith, race and Africa. It is not flattering, although it does show how Griffith condemned British treatment of Arab and black populations. Single-minded nationalism is always the key to his thinking. He retrospectively endorsed the Young Ireland strategy of neutrality on US slavery on the ground that the question could have split Irish-American support for Irish independence, that holding a particular viewpoint on any particular controversy (including race) should not be a precondition to Irish freedom when conformity on such issues was not required of imperial countries. – Yours, etc,
COLUM KENNY,
Professor Emeritus,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.