Interview with Bik McFarlene (Part I)

This is an extract from my interview with Brendan McFarlene, he talks about escaping from the Maze, IRA communication tactics and the H blocks.

You can get more videos on my channel youtube.com/almery1916

‘What If’? – New Irishness

There has been a lot of talk about the British identity. As some of you may know there was a poll on several northern irish and british newspapers asking whether Britishness is in decline. Overall, 80% said yes while 20% said no. There does seem to be a concern about Britishness right now amongst politicians in the UK and Ireland. With that being said, I feel the question needs to be asked…

What if there is a decline in Britishness in NI? Will we see a new sense of Irishness amongst those who currently renounce it?

I think it’s an interesting thought. The north of Ireland is a peculiar place when it comes to discussing national identity. Prior to the Easter Rising, Irish people in Ireland felt both British and Irish. As is the case now with the people of Scotland, Wales, and to a lesser extent England, people did not have to choose between the British aspect of their character and the Irish aspect. Indeed, at the outbreak of World War I, Irishmen queued up in their droves to join the fight for the British Army and recruitment matched levels of those in Britain. Of course, the 1916 Rising changed everything. Suddenly a separatist desire had been reawakened in Irish people and thanks to alot of British incompetence, such as the desire to introduce conscription in Ireland, the Irish people suddenly found themselves having to do something that they had not had to do prior to 1916 – choose between their Britishness and Irishness. As we know, most people in Ireland chose Irishness and renounced their Britishness. In the Free State and subsequently Eire, Britishness gradually withered away.

Ireland’s north was different. While some renounced their Britishness, most people retained their sense of Britishness as well as their sense of Irishness, albeit an Irishness quite different to the one perceived of down in the south. However the North had issues of its own to face which would force the people to choose between their Britishness and their Irishness – The Troubles. The Provisional IRA campaign in the North led to many people who regarded themselves as ‘Irish unionists’ renouncing their Irishness totally in favour of Britishness or else ‘Northern Irishness’, which was little more than a retaliatory identity anyway.

In the North today, the two main unionist parties try to outdo one another on which one is more British. The same is true of the nationalist parties in relation to Irishness. None of the main parties seem to acknowledge the groups who refer to themselves as British and Irish or British and ‘Northern Irish’ or who simply refer to themselves as neither. Everything is left in black and white terms. Or green and orange terms to be more precise!

What happens though if Britishness declines in Britain? Where does that leave the people in the North who curently define themselves as British? Would they consider the idea of once again calling themselves Irish?

I know it can be hard to assess the relevance of surveys, however one ‘Northern Ireland Life and Times’ survey conducted at the beginning of the year attempted to determine the political attitudes of people. The results were:

Unionist – 39%
Nationalist – 23%
Neither/Northern Irish – 37%
Other (specify) – 1%
(Don’t know) – 1%

When one assesses the 18-25 age bracket, things get even more interesting:

Unionist – 27%
Nationalist – 27%
Neither/ Northern Irish – 45%
Other ( specify) – 1%
(Don’t know) – 0%

Now people can draw many different conclusions from these types of surveys but what I think is abundantly clear is that there is a significant portion of people in the North who are sick of being herded into one of the two tribes, unionism or nationalism. As I highlighted above, unionist parties are too busy preaching about their Britishness while nationalists are too busy preaching about their Irishness.

The situation facing the two national identities is complex. I personally believe there is a decline in Britishness but that this decline is more of a decline in the perception of what it means to be British.

I think the same is becoming true of the Irish identity. We can see small glimpses of this happening. How people define their Irishness in 2016 will be vastly different to how people would have defined it 50 years previously in 1966. It won’t be based on Catholicism, it won’t be based on anti-Britishness, it won’t be based on conservative values. In 2016 we will see a more secular Ireland, we will see an Ireland that has embraced Europe (hopefully not too much) and we will see a more liberal type of Ireland I reckon.

The point I’m trying to make here is that Irishness is evolving. Soon we will have to reshape Irishness altogether as it was reshaped in 1916. There will be Polish-Irish, Chinese-Irish, Nigerian-Irish etc. If Ireland can successfully integrate these people into Irish society, as a true republic should be able to, then it will greatly enhance the chances of a United Ireland in my opinion.

If Britain does not handle the evolution of its national identity as well as Ireland, and with its strong conservative elements and cautious approach to the outside world it’s quite possible, then the people of NI, particularly the younger generation, might find it in their best interests to be part of in a society with many definitions of what it means to be Irish.

After all, if there can be Polish-Irish, Chinese-Irish and Nigerian-Irish, what’s stopping them from having British-Irish as well?

Irishness in 1916 witnessed a revolution in its identity. Irishness in 2016 will have hopefully witnessed an evolution in its identity.

We’ve spent long enough focusing on the ‘dead generations’. It time to focus on the future generations.

Parlez-vous irish republicanism?

Interesting how things develop, i think this is a great way to start this blog.

Yesterday i got a comment regarding my understanding on the word “republicanism” in an Irish context. Now don’t get me wrong, i KNOW where i come from and why it would be easy to think i might be attaching the wrong meaning to the word. So lets talk “Irish Republicanism” and its implications. While doing so, we might define other words in an Irish context along the line.

I’m gonna start by quoting one of my favorite authors when it comes to irish politics, Paul Dixon:

“(..) nationalists and unionists ideologies are not static but dynamic, shifting over time in response to changing circumstances. The term ‘nationalist’ is often used to describe someone who aspires to a united Ireland but is opposed to the use of violence to achive it, while ‘republican’ often shares much of the analysis of the ‘nationalist’ but is prepared to use violence. So all republicans are nationalists, but not all nationalists are republicans(…)“

Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: Politics of War and Peace, page 7

So there you have it. What does this mean in my world? exactly that.

As a young girl making my way into irish history on my own, with no help whatsoever considering i was growing up on the other side of the world, in another language and with little notion of the island of Ireland’s current history, you can imagine how films and other media affected my so called “self-thought” education as regards to past events. As you can imagine, there was no independent line of opinion in the so called “self-taught” first few years of my Irish history education. (then again, is there ever one?)

Films like Michael Collins or Braveheart, while might help creating this very unique and nationalist sense of self about what “I” am and what I’m not by defining myself as part of something, it also brings along this confusing idea of taking other people’s views on different matters as your own. This lead to some very funny debates in forums (specially with uneducated Americans who took Breaveheart as a historical fact and didn’t know the difference between Ireland and Scotland) that ended up making me even more interested to find out the “truth”(if there is one) about the past.  Sometimes a mirror to the future of what you can become if you don’t take matters into your own hands, can be a very hard reality to face for a 18 year old girl.

But back to the subjective views of Irish history in film, now being aware of this at the start of my journey, it had a counter effect on me: If the director of the film Michael Collins is portraying him as the underdog hero and demonizing De Valera, surely there must be more to the story….. right?

Little did i know the historic rendezvous i was getting myself into.