The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
From Ricochet's Irish correspondent (who, until I can finally talk him out of it, continues to go by his chosen pseudonym of Rick O'Shea), an informative--and gorgeous--piece of writing:
So, here it is: Queen Elizabeth II is visiting Ireland, the first British monarch to visit independent Ireland, the only Head of State in the world about whom we would have had historic issues about visiting.
It is extraordinary. The country in the world with which Irish people are most integrated, economically, culturally, socially, politically even, is undoubtedly Britain. Britain does more trade with us than with the BRICs. There are 200 flights a day between the two countries. The British are Ireland's greatest tourists. The Irish all watch British soaps, soccer, TV, politics. We both love our horses and our racing festivals (as does the Queen herself). The Irish populate the British airwaves and we are as familiar with British celebs as if they were our own. We holiday and work and live in each other's countries. We
have a free travel zone with Britain - when you fly from Ireland and land in a British airport, you don't have to show a passport. In the Houses of Parliament, the harp of Ireland is as high up in the famous lobby ceiling as the cross of St George. In Christian churches and the great Cathedrals of London, St Patrick is not just present but integral. No-one knows the Brits like the Irish, and vice versa. No other country is like this for Ireland. Nor for Britain. The relationship is quite unique.
And yet, and yet, Queen Elizabeth visited Germany, for example, in 1965 (I believe), despite all the horrors of twenty years earlier; but not Ireland, until now.
Imagine, Americans, if something prevented your President from visiting Canada for a century. How normal would that be?
There has been a great, intimate, and sometimes terrible history between Britain and Ireland going back to the early middle ages and before. In the last two centuries, there have been awful mistakes; injustices and deliberate wrongs done; deeds that horrified the people in whose name they were done - by agents of the State in Britain's case; by those who would arrogate the authority of the State in Ireland's, supported by a moral ambiguity of too many people, too often. But that is decidedly the past, and determinedly so, for all but a weird handful of our combined populations of more than 60 million people.
Though all the evils of recent decades are not yet cleansed with the disinfectant of honest sunlight, many have been: none so important, perhaps, than the murder of innocent protesters in Derry in 1972 by British soldiers. Last summer, a fresh, young, new Prime Minister, David Cameron, decided that he, on behalf of Britain, would acknowledge that wrong and apologise, without a scintilla of qualification or doubt. And the world-weary, sceptical, Irish nationalist people of Derry watching his speech from Westminister live on big screens on the streets of Derry burst into spontaneous applause. An emotional wave rolled out from Derry across the entire island of Ireland and beyond. A truly courageous and game-changing personal decision of his, which paved the way for the State visit today.
Many other moments and acts of political leadership on all sides have symbolised and built a lasting peace heralded in the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998, many courageous steps taken in the midst of sometimes glacial progress. The people of the island of Ireland as a whole voted Yes to that promise of peace, but it took years of hard and tedious statecraft to bed it down.
And so, yes, today, the arrival of the Queen in Dublin is the last, final, total statement of a welcome normality between our two peoples. It is the highest acknowledgement States can make of equality and maturity, as it is called, of the relationship - the States doing where people have already gone before in their hearts and in their daily lives.
If some say, "So what?", that very acknowledgement of banal, quotidien normality is the very heart of the matter.
Normal is good.
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Jan '11
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Not that I agree, but I know at least one person who said the following: "I have to watch what I say, but the time will come when the flag of the UK no longer flies over the Celtic Nations."
Jan '11
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Every drop of my blood is Irish. I've heard every tale of Trouble, and a few others beside. It's not that we would ever forget, but wouldn't it be a grace to forgive? I hope the visit goes well.
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
In my experience, it is sometimes more common for Americans of Irish ancestry to hold this grudge than it is for the Irish themselves.
Touring the Protestant sections of Derry is a terrifying experience; I hope the Queen's example of goodwill & outreach will be absorbed there. (Gotta love her green getup!)
Aug '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Like all pageantry this visit bores me, which I suppose is a sign of normalisation of my own relationship with the UK (where as it happens my own father was born,though he has long been an Irish citizen).A lot of people are giddy with delight at the presence of the monarch;a much smaller, but vociferous and in some cases potentially dangerous minority are outraged (some for Iraq/Afghanistan-related reasons,some more "traditional"), hence the high security levels and consequent inconvenience.Most people,I think, shrug their shoulders and think ho-hum, she came, she's meeting a few people, she'll be gone. No big deal.
Aug '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Further to my previous post, and on a discordant note hence the separate offering, I am bothered that the greatest sin of the British in Ireland seems not to be part of the discussion-I refer to the Famine in the 1840s and the subsequent mass emigration which devastated the country and pretty much halved the population in a generation. Ireland was no far-flung colony but, by their laws, an integral part of the United Kingdom at the time. I think the lady should have made some overt gesture of acknowledgement of the disaster and of her institution's responsibility for it.
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Charles, do you see a difference of interest based on age? For the Royal wedding my daughter said none of her friends in GB or Ireland gave a hoot, but the crowds I saw on TV were absolutely massive.
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
" I think the lady should have made some overt gesture of acknowledgement of the disaster and of her institution's responsibility for it."
Yes, that would team nicely with Cameron's apology for Bloody Sunday.
Aug '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
StickerShock, I have no real insight into how big or otherwise the crowds were in Britain,though I'd guess they were substantial alright. In Ireland, a lot of women used it as an excuse to hold coffee-mornings (my wife went to one) and enjoy the glamour.I had zero interest myself-it's that pageantry-reflex again!
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Even though it was a marriage at gunpoint, Ireland and England are family, and share lots of offspring, generations of offspring. Fair to say, each would be a poorer culture without the other.
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Could you offer a little explication here? Surely no one holds the British responsible for the fungus that caused the potato blight. So of what are the British guilty? Failing to provide more aid once the famine began? I'd be interested in how you draw the line between the natural disaster--an act of God--and acts of the British.
Aug '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Peter, At the relevant time Ireland was, under their law (the British Act of Union 1801) constitutionally part of the United Kingdom, as much as Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire or Westminster! Of course the British didn't infect the potato crop, but I don't believe for a moment that the British subjects in Yorkshire would have been left to endure a FAMINE ( I feel the emphasis is warranted) just because it was triggered by a fungus and wasn't really anyone's fault.They took over the country and had a duty to come to the aid of their subjects.They didn't do so in any meaningful way. Why that was is open to debate.The most benign rationale I have heard is that it was a function of the laissez-faire attitude of the time.Whatever way you look at it, over a million died and millions more were forced to emigrate in appalling conditions, all on the watch of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria, and her super-powerful government. Please bear in mind that this was not a single catastrophic event, like Vesuvius or Katrina, but a disaster that dragged on for several years with ample opportunity for the government (Crown?) to deal with the consequences.
Jan '11
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Those of us who heard the tale seventh hand (like me, generations later) were told that the potato crop in Ireland served two purposes. The first was to be the dominant staple of the Irish diet. The second purpose was to be an export commodity for the English plantation owners.
The blight didn't destroy the entire crop. There was still a sizable number of potatoes that could have fed the starving Irish, but instead, the English plantation owners took their export percentage off the top -- in full.
Remember the story of Pennsylvania, in which the British crown paid off William Penn with territory in the colonies? That was common with Britain. They'd "acquire" territory in various ways, and then give the land to benefactors as payment. They often gave out conquered Irish land to English friends of the crown. Those plantation owners were paid off first, ignoring the starving Irish.
Now, that's the story that I heard ...
Could it be a complete fable? Maybe. If so, I'm open to re-education.
May '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Yes, I think your right KC. But it was corn and other crops and livestock that were being exported to England while millions were starving. Corn Laws played a role and so did the workhouses. And of course the Penal Laws that laid the foundation in the first place.
Edited on May 18, 2011 at 7:52pmDec '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Wait, there's another Rick O'Shea? Darn, and I thought I was being clever...
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Peter, as Katie O states, the lasting impact of the Penal Laws set the stage for the famine's impact to be catastrophic. Catholics could not be educated, vote, own land, etc. ---- they were kept in a state of multi-generational peasantry. Tenant farmers worked such tiny plots of land that only a potato crop would sustain a family. The British demand for beef caused more farms to be devoted to livestock, thus forcing peasants onto even smaller plots. As the potato blight ravaged Ireland, its livestock were still being exported to Britain by British landlords. Throughout the famine years, Ireland was actually a net exporter of food!
Read the vile British descriptions of the Irish as subhuman, or Charles Trevelyan's statement that the famine was God's way of teaching the Irish a lesson, and you will get a feel for the British mentality at the time. Any laws passed to handle the famine protected landlords and tenants were quickly evicted -- which was a death sentence. Hundreds of years earlier Oliver Cromwell had led a campaign of brutal ethnic cleansing in Ireland. The British effectively used the famine to finish off what he had started.
Jan '11
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Agreed. The potato blight broke the camel's back, but the straw had already been piled high. Most of the histories report the same ... and it certainly fits in with what our family's collective memory says.
The problem is, most of the histories don't say much about those days.
Oct '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
'Why do they hate us?' Because they were brought up on tales of perfidy, and because it seems like a basic human need to blame someone else. How many centuries of apology will it take for this sibling grudge to be forgotten? How many more centuries will it take for grudges held across cultures to be forgotten? If some (otherwise) good people in Boston were willing to fill the tins shaken 'for the good cause' why should we expect 'moderates' to go out of their way to condemn their co-religionists?
Yes, this story matters. But I'm afraid the moral is a depressing one.
Aug '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
genferi, It's not about hate.There have been no centuries of apology. It's more than just a sibling grudge. I bemoaned the lack of a significant gesture by QE in recognition of the disaster and her predecessors' role in it. That's all. I think modern Britain saved Europe in WW2 and is now a friend of Ireland.
Apr '11
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
StickerShock. Here here on touring the Protestant sections of Derry. Chilling.
Jun '10
Re: The Queen in Ireland--and Why It Really Does Matter
Coincidently, this weekend there will be Hunger Memorials all over the world. Here's one taking place in Ohio:
http://www.ohio.aoh-laoh.com/
Some will be very involved, with speakers and commerative Masses, others are simply the local Hibernians organizing a food drive. I'd recommend anyone who lives near NYC visit the famine cottage in Battery Park:
http://www.nyc.com/arts__attractions/irish_hunger_memorial.1379/editorial_review.aspx