A common thread in this issue is that ‘identity’ in Ireland over the past two centuries or so has not been immutable (‘two traditions’, ‘Ireland for the Irish’ etc.). In his article on William Sharman Crawford (pp 20–2) Peter Gray reminds us that political radicalism in Protestant Ulster did not entirely disappear in the nineteenth century in the wake of the bloody suppression of the 1798 Rebellion. This finds an echo in the recent television documentary Andrew Trimble: for Ulster and Ireland, reviewed by Sylvie Kleinman (pp 52–3), which interrogated the crude binary association between religious and national affiliation that had crystallised during the Northern Troubles. Included in the discussion was a rarely seen tricolour dating from the Irish Tenant League of the 1850s (in which Sharman Crawford was involved), devoid of white and incorporating a blue band to represent Presbyterians.
In his consideration of Ulysses as history (pp 28–31), Daniel Mulhall points out how throughout the book, and in the ‘Cyclops’ episode in particular, Joyce lampoons the contemporary ethno-nationalist Irish Ireland ethos. It is not a coincidence that Joyce’s hero, Leopold Bloom, is Jewish—‘other’—yet defines his nation unambiguously as ‘Ireland’. Van Goose (pp 44–7) looks at the evolving and often contradictory attitudes of Irish society to people of colour. The ‘n’-word regularly featured in Oireachtas speeches and newspapers into the 1980s. At the same time much of Irish society found overt racism repugnant, unchristian, ‘un-Irish’. In his review of the latest biography of Eoin O’Duffy (p. 69) Brian Hanley makes the point that, despite the comforting notion that moderate ‘constitutionalists’ in Fine Gael soon removed O’Duffy from its leadership, there was widespread sympathy for fascist ideas among many in the party.
What is the relevance of all this in today’s Ireland? A year ago my editorial referred to the ‘bush fire of protests … against direct provision centres … incited by a lunatic fringe of racists, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists’. My ‘bush fire’ metaphor—an unfortunate choice, given that several arson attacks subsequently occurred—was based on the (over-optimistic?) assumption that they would burn out in time. Sadly, this has not been the case and, more worryingly, the rhetoric of the far right (‘unvetted males of military age’, ‘the woke agenda’, etc.) has now seeped into the political mainstream. I also opined that, ‘when tested at the ballot box, support for them [the far right] has been negligible’. The forthcoming European and local elections on 7 June 2024 will tell.
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editor@historyireland.com