Who fears to speak of ‘98?
Who blushes at its name?
When cowards mock the patriot’s fate
Who hangs his head for shame?
John Kells Ingram, The Memory of the Dead (Who Fears to
Speak of ‘98?)
Political traditions are strange things. Eras pass, conditions change, and it can seem as if old ways of political formation disappear, never to be seen again. But once-powerful ideologies can linger far beyond the point of overt effectiveness or vigour. In the late 19th century, the personal indiscretions of Charles Stewart Parnell split the Irish Constitutional Nationalist movement along Parnellite and anti-Parnellite lines. Parnell passed, as did both wings of the coalition he once led. Constitutional nationalism was swept away by the tremors of 1916, and the earthquake of the revolution. Yet as late as the 1970s, there were supposedly still pubs in parts of the country that one would not frequent if one’s family had chosen a particular side of the Parnell split.
People’s lives are long, and political bonds can often be passed from generation to generation like treasured heirlooms, even if one may not have much use in the modern era for a pocket watch, or for an old ideology. Ireland in 2024 is a complex soup of political traditions and beliefs, far in excess of the dozen or so parties one has the choice of at election time.
It remains true one hundred years from independence and partition that Republicanism is the bedrock ideology of the country. The three largest parties in the Oireachtas all draw their political inheritance from the old Sinn Féin of the revolutionary period and all are ostensibly in favour of Irish unification. Nonetheless, traditions that reject Republicanism persist. The largest and most impactful anti-Republican ideology is of course Unionism, encompassing hundreds of thousands of people in Ulster, and a handful elsewhere. Here, however, I want to focus on three other political traditions that reject Republicanism, implicitly or explicitly. These traditions may not be as eye-catching as unionism, but they nonetheless form a substantial component of the political system. Indeed, one of them arguably constitutes the country’s hegemonic political outlook - even if its true nature is often clothed in Republican rhetoric. What all share, however, is a pessimism about Irish people’s possibility for self-government, and a sense of embarrassment towards quintessential aspects of Irish culture.
Anti-Republicanism #1: Anglophilia
The first and most classic form of anti-Republicanism is simply a pro-British or Anglophilic stance. This tradition tends to be known more by pejorative titles: West Brit, Castle Catholic, shoneen, jackeen, etc. In pre-independence times, this was a substantial amount of the population, stretching from those directly employed by the British administration in Ireland like policemen, soldiers, tax collectors and the like, to those who had strong economic, social or professional ties to Britain. This included a large number of both Catholics and Protestants and was strongly represented in Dublin and Cork, among other places. Proponents were against separation from the British Empire as a matter of both ideology and practicality.
After independence, this tradition incorporated some remnants of the old constitutional nationalist tradition, once the dominant political force on the island. The old Irish Parliamentary Party and its predecessors spent generations agitating for a Home Rule statelet within the British Empire, and came agonizingly close to success before betting the house on the baleful slaughter of the First World War. Fatally wounded by their position as recruiting agents for an imperialist war, their support collapsed in favour of a more radical Republicanism that imagined full Irish sovereignty and a clean break from Britain. Losing the nationalist mandate of heaven in the 1918 election, unable to adapt to the oncoming insurrection, they became increasingly irrelevant.
The Anglophilic element did not entirely disappear, however. After the War of Independence, most proponents made peace with the Irish Free State, but remained London-oriented. William Redmond, the son of IPP leader John Redmond formed the Anglophile National League in 1926. James Dillon, the son of another IPP leader, John Dillon, in 1932 organized other fragments of the old political system into the short-lived National Centre Party, which advocated for continued collaboration with Britain and an end to the trade war. They and other minor Anglophilic tendencies were united with the pro-Treaty Cummann na nGaedheal and the quasi-fascist Blueshirts to form Fine Gael. This marriage of convenience gave Fine Gael a slightly strange, syncretic air, and they have since generally been a warm house for those sceptical of full separation from Britain.
During the Troubles, this tradition resurfaced as a virulent hatred of physical force Republicanism and an insistence on conciliation with Ulster Unionists that tipped into, well, just plain old Unionism itself. Conor Cruise O’Brien, arch-priest of this class, was himself the grandson of an IPP MP. For Cruise O’Brien, the 1916 Rising was "a mistake"; he never forgave the gauche, middle class leadership of the rising for shoving aside his bourgeois kin, the rightful custodians of a pacified, quasi-independent Ireland. The essential belief of the Anglophiles is that the revolution was an immense blunder which severed ties with our closest neighbours and kept us a poor, religious backwater, when we could have been a key province of a dynamic commonwealth.
Anglophilia was and is very much a minority proposition in Ireland, but, it must be said, clearly overrepresented in the media, political, and academic world. Indeed, the Anglophiles can count a Taoiseach among their ranks. The late John Bruton was an ornery and largely ineffective leader, who eschewed the veneration of Republican traditions in favour of the old constitutional nationalist ones. He famously hung a picture of the benighted John Redmond in his office while Taoiseach, and lathered then-Prince Charles with such unseemly praise that even the British papers described him as "embarrassingly effusive". One could never quite escape the feeling that he would have gladly been Governor General of Ireland instead.
The argument of the Anglophiles has suffered considerably in the last decade as successive British governments have sought to make Ireland pay for English nationalist fantasies. These days you are more likely to encounter Anglophilia in the form of arguments for a "maturity" in our attitudes towards the UK, that is to say a complete negation of Republican history, symbols and pride. The English, they say, are really our estranged brothers. One must stand and show respect for God Save the King, but not The Broad Black Brimmer. Occasionally this ideology makes painful contact with reality, like during the RIC commemoration controversy of 2020, when an attempt to commemorate British state forces who were killed during the revolution knocked back Fine Gael’s election chances.
Anti-Republicanism #2: Europhilia
The second anti-Republican tradition is more readily comprehensible and, in its original form, more defensible. It is essentially Europhilic, rather than Anglophilic, seeing Brussels as the pole to orient oneself towards. This ideology grew from a legitimate dissatisfaction with Ireland in the mid-century, with its austere underinvestment, social conservatism and myriad state failures. To the Europhiles, Ireland was not just politically backward but intrinsically hidebound, unable and unwilling to reform itself from within. The only solution was to surrender political sovereignty to Europe, whose courts and political institutions would make better decisions than our domestic cohort of priests, beef farmers, landlords and sleeveens.
Here’s a popular narrative I have heard and read dozens of times: Ireland joins the EEC in 1973 and is immediately landed with an immense to-do list of reforms to bring it up to speed with European norms. First on the agenda is the official pay disparity between men and women in the public service. The government get right on the job, forming a task force to tackle the issue. They advertise in the papers for people to work on it, setting different pay rates for the men and women they recruit. Ha ha. Paddy can’t do anything right. The story is effective because it contains an element of truth; the Irish system was indeed sclerotic, and the duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael made it immensely difficult to reform. But it also suggests a gnawing pessimism, that perhaps there is something inherent in the Irish character that leads all projects of self government to ruin. Maybe we need a strong hand, not from England, but from Europe.
Europhilia is strongest among the parties of the centre and centre left, and in Fine Gael. The former saw Europe as a bastion of liberal modernising, a way to change our repressive laws around religion, women’s rights, abortion, and sexuality, as well as a metropole to flock to in search of less parochial culture. Fine Gael for their part were immediately invested in the European People’s Party, the political movement that more than any other has shaped the development of the union into its current right-wing, neoliberal state.
The social basis for this ideology is among the college-educated, and is strongly urban. What you might consider their elite corps lie among those Irish people actually working for the EU and its institutions, a not inconsequential number. This outlook is strongest among the over-40s, though is present also in younger cohorts. For liberals of a certain age, the EU was salvation, not merely politically but culturally. Republican symbols were symbols of the Catholic Church, of Dev and old Ireland. In more recent years they have moved from a position of supplication to one of enthusiastic participation. Ireland, they say, now punches above its weight. Irish people serve in all corners of the myriad political system of Strasbourg and Brussels. If Belgium is the cockpit of Europe, perhaps Ireland is a respected co-pilot.
This ideology too, was dealt a blow by recent history. The great recession brought financial ruin to Ireland, and an avalanche of sovereign debt that we were essentially blackmailed into accepting by the powers that be in Brussels. Bad European banking bets were made good by our pliant government, and effective sovereignty was removed from us for a few years for violating the stern strictures that Germany insists upon. Even in our protests there was a hint of self-flagellation. One viral sign at the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships read “Angela Merkel Thinks We’re At Work”.
Ever a neoliberal institution, the further rightward drift of the EU has proven difficult to ignore for the squishier among the Europhiles. Tens of thousands dying in the Mediterranean at the hands of brutal EU policies and the region’s embrace of Israel are hard, though not impossible, to ignore. More comfortable with symbols of Irishness, more confident in Ireland’s capabilities, many younger people have drifted towards a position of mild ambivalence, or even criticism, of the European project. Conversely, Brexit was a shot in the arm for the Europhiles who could view it as a battle between progressive constitutional norms and exclusionist, crypto-racist nationalism.
Anti-Republicanism #3: Nihilism
The final group is the most amorphous. Plainly speaking, these are the Nihilists; those for whom it is a foregone conclusion that the Irish Republican project has failed. The Nihilists disavow formal ideology in favour of a pox-on-all-their-houses approach to politics. Sometimes the Nihilist comes from a socially alienated sector of society. In other cases they themselves have had a profoundly disillusioning experience with local government, national politics, civil society or the like.
From a Nihilist you will frequently hear that politicians are all the same, that nothing ever changes, that there is no point in voting, perhaps even that Ireland is the most corrupt country in the world. Implicit in these claims are that the political system – and the ideological bedrock underneath it – is irrevocably broken, and cannot be fixed, worked within or perhaps even overthrown. Ireland is a swamp, and we must be content to stand in shit until we keel over. This posture of powerlessness, of futility, separates them from the socialist and anarchist left, whose systemic critique usually carries at least the faint possibility of renewal or revolution.
Unsurprisingly, this constituency contains a large number of non-voters; abstention makes intrinsic sense if one believes the system is corrupt beyond repair. Paradoxically, some of these people historically voted for Sinn Féin, the party’s anti-system orientation part of the appeal. In recent years they have drifted away, with the party becoming increasingly part of the political mainstream. The potential for radicalisation of members of this group in service of the far right should not be discounted. Though they are unlikely to be among the far-right's strongest supporters or organizers, they are quite capable of casting a vote for someone who promises to burn it all down, or to punish the most vulnerable in society, because they have lost faith in the possibility of anything else. Last November’s general election recorded the lowest turnout since 1923. Apathy and nihilism were prevalent throughout the land. In such an environment the centre and the right are the only ones likely to thrive.
Anti-sovereignty – the shared core of anti-Republican ideologies
These three ideologies - Anglophilia, Europhilia, and Nihilism - have their own particularities, but what they share is a rejection of the basic idea of Republicanism: a fully sovereign, independent Ireland making democratic decisions, free from external domination.
On an emotional level, their proponents are embarrassed by Irish culture; how often have you heard someone refer to traditional music as "diddley-eye"? This, again, is strongly generational. Many people in the generations over 45 consciously reject symbols of Irishness for their supposed provinciality and hidebound nature. In contrast it's no surprise that self-consciously Irish and Republican music, art and literature is enjoying a huge swell of popularity among younger people. This has led to a strange conjuncture, where men of pensionable age scornfully regard young people’s enjoyment of, say, the Wolfe Tones. Don’t they realise that this is all so cringe?
Most of all, these are essentially ideologies of defeat. They are what you get when you stop believing in your fitness for self-government, that you require an external master. Of the three, Europhilia, while not constituting a majority, must be considered the most consequential, because, to be frank, it won. In terms of sheer volume, most bills passed in the Oireachtas are drafted with the motive of compliance with European legislation. The Irish parliament is not entirely without power, but it would be hard to say that it holds more than the European Commission. Unlike the nihilists, the Europhiles belong to a substantive, institutionally-based political movement. Unlike the Anglophiles, the Europhiles have been successful in their political project.
Some Europhiles may not have realised - and may even regret - just how much sovereignty would be surrendered. Others may want the federalisation to go further, for Ireland to be politically absorbed into a European super state, relieving us of the burden of self-government and the embarrassment of cultural particularity. In the medium term, however, further political integration beyond the Lisbon Treaty seems unlikely. The Europhiles must wait to trade in their green jackets for blue ones, to hum Ode to Joy instead of Amhrán na bhFiann.
Ireland is far from unique in having its people’s sovereignty abridged by institutions that put key decisions beyond popular control. We are unusual among European nations however, in having an enduring and popular tradition in the political subconscious that this is desirable; that the people are unfit to govern themselves. Europhilia is the latest and strongest version of this ideal. Dressed up in superficial liberalism and much talk of individual liberties, it is, at heart, a deeply pessimistic and reactionary view of the Irish people, an old poison in a new bottle.
Jack Sheehan is an Irish writer, historian, and middle school teacher living in New York. He has written for the Baffler, the Washington Post, Tribune, and the New York Times, among others. You can find his work at jackdsheehan.com or jacksheehan.substack.com.