“What The Proclamation
Means To Me”
By Raymond Deane (Chairperson – Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign)
I was brought
up in a strongly Catholic and nationalistic household in County Mayo. I was
13 when the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising was commemorated, and still
open to the reverence with which my parents viewed that event and all who
were associated with it. As a music-lover, I thrilled to the tones of
O'Riada's Mise Éire and to the late Brian Boydell's commemorative cantata A
Terrible Beauty is Born.
The "troubles" in Northern Ireland coincided with my adolescent rebellion
against everything my parents stood for. Nascent atheism lent derisive
colours to such language in the Proclamation as "in the name of God and of
the dead generations...", or "We place the cause of the Irish Republic under
the protection of the Most High God." The Liam Cosgrave coalition government
that included Conor Cruise O'Brien - whom I admired at the time - drove the
last nails into my nationalism. Simultaneously, I was becoming increasingly
anti-fascist in outlook and the reference to "gallant allies in Europe"
coupled with the masked militarism of the Provos fed my antipathy to
everything I thought the latter stood for.
Fortunately, one continues to grow up. Over the succeeding decades it became
clear to me that to define nationalism exclusively as "hegemonistic
nationalism" was inadequate, and that nationalism was often a positive
initial response to imperialism, albeit one that had ultimately to be
superseded. Similarly, I was alerted to the rich tradition of civic
republicanism, and the gulf that separated the United Irishmen from those
who nowadays purported to speak in their name.
I noticed how knee-jerk anti-nationalism and anti-clericalism often lent a
mask of liberalism to pundits who were, in reality, quite reactionary.
Cruise O'Brien's passionate support for the state of Israel seemed
symptomatic of the extent to which such liberalism could morph into
illiberalism and authoritarianism. My first ever political essay was on
precisely this subject, and was called I Was a Teenage Unionist (Graph,
Autumn/Winter 1998).
On re-reading the Proclamation, I'm still somewhat repelled by the pietistic
language. However, this must be read in the spirit of the time in which the
document was written. Such contextualisation has the further effect of
highlighting the radicalism of certain phrases such as the guarantees of
"religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities" and the
resolve to "cherish... all of the children of the nation equally and
oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government,
which have divided a minority from the majority in the past."
These latter phrases surely echo James Connolly's accurate prediction that
Partition "would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South and would
set back the wheels of progress". Those wheels are still creaking, and
reactionaries on both sides of the border are still digging potholes in
their path. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, drawn up and signed by
seven visionaries representing a plurality of viewpoints, cannot be blamed
for the many shortcomings of modern Ireland and can still offer us
inspiration as we strive for social and political justice.
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