Review of Terence Brown "The Whole Protestant Community: the Making of a Historical Myth"; Review of Marianne Elliott "Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty"; Review of Robert L. McCartney "Liberty and Authority in Ireland" (original) (raw)

The Whole Protestant Community: the Faking of a Historical Firth. by
Terence Brown. Field Day Pamphlet No. 7
ISBN 0946755086

Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty
by
Marianne Elliott Field Day Pamphlet No. 8
ISBN 0946755094

Liberty and Authority in Ireland
by
Robert L. McCartney Field Day Pamphlet No. 9

Published by The Field Day Theatre Company Ltd, Derry, 1985.
Set of 3 for £5.00 sterling.

Is Irish historical consciousness itself the product of Irish historiography as Terence Brown suggests, following historian Oliver MacDonaghi 1{ }^{1} If so, changing the way history is written may have the effect of changing our historical consciousness. Since in Ireland history is politics more or less, new history will bring new politics. This, very roughly, seems to be the argument which motivates these new pamphlets from Field Day which focus on the Protestant role in Irish history.

There is no doubt that the Protestant contribution has not been up until recently been properly explored. In the history textbooks in schools in the Republic up until the 70’s, Irish history was a simple and moving story of hundreds of years of valiant struggle by the Irish Catholic nation against English oppression and Protestant collusion, culminating in a series of insurrentions which led to the founding of the independent state. 2{ }^{2} In this story Protestants - aside from Grattan, Tone, Davis, and the like receive favourable mention.

Since the late 60’s a revisionist historiography has begun to sweep away these simplistic “historical myths” with a new appreciation of

complexity. It is now mistaken to talk of an Irish “nation” before the nineteenth century; it has been shown that late medieval Ireland far from being rebel was Royalist; it is now clear that the Irish were as good at looting monastries and harassing each other, as the English were at persecuting the Irish; and the portrait of the Irish catholic people bravely keeping the faith makes little sense in the largely nominally Catholic Ireland of the 18th century. These pamphlets are part of this new historiography, destroying the old ideological idols and relishing the new vision of complexity, while carrying the flag for religious tolerance, pluralism, and liberal politics.

In terms of historical consciousness however, the Irish (and especially the Northern) Protestant has fared no better than his/her Catholic counterpart and according to Brown has actually fared much worse. Brown argues that the Irish Catholic historical myth, despite its inaccuracy, has had the effect of forging a strong and united cummural consciousness and given the Irish a “complex, rich, emotional identity”. For him, this myth is rich in its human themes - suffering, loss, aspiration, daring, sacrifice, hope. It is the myth of an enduring, indestructible Irish nation, transcending time, while time itself is understood in a cyclical fashion.

The Irish Protestant is, on the other hand, trapped in an imprisoning historical myth which is centred around the siege of Derry in 1689 and which interprets the lot of the Protestant people as one of resistance to betrayal, tenacity in the face of repeated assaults, and of bitter isolation endured because they are the elect. This latter colouring comes from the added millenarian emphasis which cloaks their historical myth in the Biblical imagery of the chosen people of God. According to Brown this myth comprehends " imaginatively much less of the human condition" and leads to an emotional narrowness, a lack of identity and a chronic stagnation of the spirit.

In his pamphlet Borun attempts to awaken Protestant awareness to a richer, more vibrant self-understanding, based on a deeper appreciation of the true complexity of their role in Irish history. The truth of 1689 and 1690 is, as is now well known, deeply distorted in loyalist memory. Brown emphasises the different strands that make up the Protestant - and specifically Presbyterian - past in Ireland. He stresses the robust tradition of dissent, the vigorous theological disputes, the forthright defense of liberty, all of which combine to shatter the myth of Presbyterianism as a single solid block of entrenched resistance to change.

According to Brown and Elliott, early Presbyterianism in Ireland centred round the idea of liberty. The Presbyterian consciousness in the 18th century was libertarian, anti-authoritarian, radically egalitarian. Its anti-papacy was part of a resistance to authoritarian rule, it strongly defended individual liberty and freedom of conscience. Presbyterians supported civil rights and religious toleration, and voted in favour of Catholic emancipation. Some presbyteries, notably the non-subscribing “New Light” ones, were influenced by the humanitarian and rationalist sentiments of the European Enlightenment. This radical dissent led to the Volunteers and finally to the United Irishmen and the rebellion of 1798. Brown sees 1798 as a “myth of the last chance”, symbolising the last real attempt by Irish Presbyterian and Catholic to make common cause. Elliott sees 1798 as an ‘expraesion’ of radical liberalism as hindered by the sectarian nature of the revolt in the South. PicCartney goes further in his pamphlet and is skeptical of the true extent of Tone’s liberal toleration for other religions.

After 1798 Presbyterianism withdrew into a less radical position and by the middle of the 19th century it was captivated by a fundamentalist evangelicalism which retreated into messianic elitism. PicCartney also cites

Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule as another blow to Presbyterian. liberalism. The modern loyalist consciousness was born. As Elliott powerfully documents there was always at the heart of Presbyterian. libertarianism a reactionary insecurity which was based on the religion’s sense of elitism and supremacy, which expressed itself in contempt for the Catholic intellect, and distrust of the political. power of the majority. However, Elliott tried to explain away some of the harsher anti-Catholic reaction in terms of an appreciation of the special language adopted by Presbyterianism which sought to preserve a special conn:ction between 17 th century disputes and the present. For Elliott, the Presbyterian sense of persecution is as old as that of the Irish Catholic and this, articulated in the language of anti-popery can of ten be mistaken for simple bigotry and. intolerance.

Robert PicCartney is more interested in Presbyterian ideals as they are manifested in political philosophy. Drawing on the work of Isaiah Berlin, he distinguishes between a philosophy committed to personal liberty (Presbyterianism) and one which sets only a limited value on freedom and emphasises authority and control ( e.g. Catholicism). In Ireland, the nationalist movement of the 19th century and the adoption of a simple majority rule concept of democracy in the Republic after 1921 both veer towards authoritarianism and the suppression of individual liberty.

PicCartney documents the illiberalisms of the 26 counties in the usual manner - censorship, Church control in"state"schooling, no divorce, no contraception, the Amendment campaign, the abandonment of the Taoiseach’s Constitutional Crusade, the strong resistance to religious pluralism. Unlike Brown and Elliott, he makes some specific recommendations for change. He wants to see the nationalist-Catholic myth of unity replaced by “the politics of social and economic justice for all classes”, while “education and social welfare must become the prerogatives of the state”.

Sinn Fein for him stand for the very opposite of liberalism and democracy, and threaten to destroy personal liberty while justifying the action in terms of the Irish nationalist myth. While he recognises that the IRA and the Catholic Church are in fact opposed, nevertheless he believes both draw stregth from the Irish state’s commitment to authoritarian rule instead of true liberal democracy of a pluralist kind. In the North then, PicCartney quite understands loyalist defensiveness. On the other hand, the UK is for him a pluralist state where neither Irish nor Catholic suffers any form of social disadvantage or oppression. In fact, it is the UK’s very insistence on preserving the rights of the Catholic minority that has provoked the"irrational and sectarian" wing of Unionism. However, PicCartney believes that the current state of affairs could easily be endangered - either by the Right or Left in Britain who would renege on commitments to liberty in favour of exerting their own form of control for the good of the people. PicCartney is indeed a liberal Unionist who feels that the UK is providing the proper framework of liberty which the Republic would do well to emulate.

The three pamphlets taken together provide a good deal of corrective analysis and constructive criticism of the Presbyterian role in history. They dispel simplistic historical myths. PicCartney’s criticism of the Republic is only too true, though it is not novel and indeed merely echoes the criticism which is being made within the South itself. But as contributions towards understanding or solving Ireland’s deep cultural and political problems, the pamphlets are deeply flawed, and not because they are too “academic” or too slight.

They are flawed because the basic assumptions in the analyses are faulty. To begin with Brown, he believes or rather hopes that a more complex history of diversity will give loyalists a less myopic vision of the world. But what has the understanding of the merits of a religious

tradition to do with the political mayhem of Northern Ireland; will an understanding of the robust dissent of Presbyterianism shed light on the stoning of RUC men by fulltime UDR members as happened in the recent Portadown riots? All religious traditions can be shown to have their ennobling features. The problem is that it is difficult to isolate religious motivation from secular or political or social instinct. It is not, in the makin, Presbyterian ministers who are at war with Catholic clergy. Rather a radical and violent dissatisfaction runs through the Northern Irish communities which bursts out in sectarian conflict as this is almost the only “authorised” form of dissent available, not in the sense that the community permits it, but that it has swallowed religious language as the olny language for expressing identity and conformity, and their opposites. Brown must ask further what is the function of religion in Northern Irish society. The very fact that it was a religious tradition which articulated political radicalism may itself disguise the real problem - namely why the political as such has not emerged into its own, on this island.

Elliott’s pamphlet falls into the same bog. She excuses religious anti-papist ranting as concealing issues of political scruple. Surely the point is to strip the politics bare and have at it. It is not a question of ecumenical understanding ( which is very well represented in Northern Ireland, despite hiccups) between the Churches or between their members; it may not be a question of a simplistic marxist abolition of religion; but the peculiar survival of religious discourse in political commerce in Ireland calls for a deeper and more liberating analysis.

PicCartney comes closest to dealing with the political as such. However his own limiting framework - his unquestioning and uncritical belief in liberal democracy as practised by the UK - prevents him from having anything more than a superficial grasp of the realities involved. He is unable to recognise the enormous injustices perpetrated by the UK - its involvement in an obscene arms race, its tacit support for represaive

regimes, its double standards on racial questions such as apartheid in South Africa, its maintenance of an obsolete monarchy in deference to those very elements of authoritarianism and majority rule (“Britons love the Royal Family”) which PicCartney elsewhere decries. (I am leaving out all reference to Ireland)

PicCartney fears the Left. But he is blind to the genuine radical commitment of many of those seeking a new Ireland of real equality and justice. PicCartney may be right in arguing that the IRA despite their commitment to justice would be quick to disregard it when it suited them, but he is mistaken if he disregards the genuineness of the social concern of those who vote Sinn Fein. Northern Presbyterians have withdrawn from the World Council of Cherches, and seem less than critical of South Africa (as Brown recognises) while Sinn Fein is unequivocal in its condemnation of apartheid. This is merely an example, but it is a fact that liberation theology and concern for the Third World is emerging in the South, while loyalists are speaking the language of the embattled elites - the language of Marcos in the Philippines, of white South Africans, of racial colonials.

While the history of Ireland needs to be constantly corrected and rescued from ideological distortion, it also needs to be protected from re-politicisation of another form, the form that is that measures everything by the yardstick of liberal democracy. PicCartney stops short of questioning the partition of this island and promotes a vision of co-existing pluralist states. But the political melting pot that is Ireland is already at work producing a new political form which does not need expression in religious terms and which may deepen the debate about democracy itself, as a large non-voting alienated youth begins to exert its considerable political power. It is hard to envision what will become of the Irish state in the coming years given its instability (as PicCartney recognises) but it will hardly be in the direction of a nuclear capitalist

first-world monarchy such as the UK to whom loyalists owe allegiance, at least if youth are finally able to express themselves. Since religious tolerance or indifference is already a matter of course among the young, the call for a more pluralist south, will hopefully be, by then, an irrelevance.