'Two nations' theory and exclusive ideas of Irish identity

Madam, - I thank David Alvey (April 28th and May 10th) for clarifying the ideological premiss of the arguments he has been defending…

Madam, - I thank David Alvey (April 28th and May 10th) for clarifying the ideological premiss of the arguments he has been defending, viz. the "two nations" theory and the campaign to separate church and state.

It is one thing to argue, and to accept as the Good Friday Agreement does, that it is wrong to attempt to impose an Irish identity on those members of a distinct community in Northern Ireland who repudiate it. It is quite another thing, and quite objectionable, to try to take away the entitlement to an Irish identity of people who valued and were proud of their Irishness. Irish nationality is and should be inclusive, and not subject to special political or social exclusions for older minorities. It is not clear why we are still having such debates now, when we are in the process of welcoming a variety of new cultural influences and have given constitutional recognition to our diaspora.

After all the unkind things written about Elizabeth Bowen, it is a pleasure to recall Robert Fisk's tribute to her "gentle, sensitive dispatches from Eire, which are still a delight to read, a pen portrait of a nation and its people desperate to avoid involvement in a war that was not of their making" (In Time of War, p. 411). Frank Pakenham briefly wrote similar reports for the Ministry of Information and was attacked for Irish propaganda by the Unionist representative in London. He was subsequently chosen by Eamon de Valera to co-author his biography.

My father, a professional historian at all times, whose mother was from north Cork and whose contribution over six decades was appreciated by many Irish political leaders, was in a similar mould. It does not seem to have occurred to the Aubane Historical Society that it was an asset to have a number of Irish writers sympathetic to the land of their birth and to its aspirations in the Ministry of Information during the war, instead of tarring them with the more aggressive Churchillian approach vis-à-vis Ireland, which they manifestly did not share.

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Elizabeth Bowen may, however, have been picked on to provide a plausible bridgehead for a wider ideological argument. David Alvey advances the follow-up proposition that we should regard Swift, Berkeley, Sheridan, Goldsmith and even Shaw and Wilde (all Protestant) as English writers, because they "debase the idea of an Irish national literature". They debase nothing, as Fintan O'Toole eloquently demonstrated (Opinion, May 25th). All have been honoured as Irish by this independent State, whether on banknote, stamp, by statue, by taoisigh, or by regular Abbey Theatre productions.

The function of the selected exclusions is less to protect Irish culture than to plug the gaping hole in the intellectual credibility of the "two nations" theory. It can provide no place or satisfactory explanation for even such meritorious examples of the Irish Protestant and Anglo-Irish traditions, writers who were neither straightforwardly unionist nor, except Swift, easily assimilated to a more assertive nationalism. They moved freely in intellectual terms between these islands and contributed to the cultures of both.

An Irish national literature should not be confused with a nationalist one (see Yeats on Davis), nor need it exclude those who preceded its conscious creation (c. 1900), or whose opus, before or since, only partially fits into it.

The "two nations" theory, under a thin veneer of secularism, allows its practitioners to pillory un-Irish or "West British" people and activities of their choice, and remove from any legitimate place in this country's history and traditions whole classes of people they do not like, and all belonging to them past and present. For example, the Dublin-born Archbishop Chenevix-Trench, co-founder of Alexandra College, provokes this blanket dismissal by Jack Lane: "Could it be that there are people around these days who think those colonial Archbishops of Dublin were Irish?" (Elizabeth Bowen, Notes on Eire, p. 129.) Instead of respect for difference, there is too often just contempt for it.

In the course of this correspondence, excited suspicions were expressed over the post-1969 editorial policy and national character of The Irish Times, coming on top of the opposite accusation of having gone "native". I received two weeks ago the following tribute to a former editor from a greatly respected writer in the North: "Nobody has ever adequately acknowledged the contribution of Douglas Gageby throughout the entire civil rights and troubles. His support was invaluable." That contribution made The Irish Times the living antithesis of a "two nations" Ireland. - Yours, etc.,

MARTIN MANSERGH, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.