IRISH HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

This is not the history of Ireland. It is rather a look into Irish history primarily written in an attempt to debunk the mythology that for such a long time surrounded the fighting in British Northern Ireland. It explains the myth of the religious war, with Catholic versus Protestant, and the ever glorious, magnificent, marvellous, and victorious British army in between.

Attention has been given to the portions of history that influenced the situation in Northern Ireland as it is today in the 1990s. Large sections of the past 800 years, which is the period of British occupation being dealt with here, have been omitted. The story is not always in exact chronological order. Aspects that impact on the dichotomy today take priority.

(Six counties, known as Northern Ireland, the Six Counties, Northeast Ulster, or sometimes as just Ulster, are a British colony and are under direct rule from Westminster. Unionists refer to the state as ‘Northern Ireland’; Nationalists not wishing to recognise the legitimacy of the statelet refer to it as ‘The Six Counties’. A better description is Northeast Ulster, which is where it is situated. It is not northern Ireland in a geographical sense, as County Donegal, the most northerly county of Ireland is not included; it is not Ulster, as only six of the nine Ulster counties belong to Britain. The Republic of Ireland has no say in the running of the Orange State as it is also sometimes called.)

Condensing histories makes them sterile. They have no ability to shock, although unspeakable cruelties may have been committed. When academic armchair historians write histories in textbook fashion, they have no life, no soul, they read like a company balance sheet, facts are presented without emotion, although often enough with plenty of prejudice.

On the other extreme, when relating Irish history in sectional isolation, the Northern Ireland situation on its own, for example, it makes no sense. It makes ordinary people seem excessive, and can leave them open to ridicule. It makes so-called ‘extremists’ seem ridiculous.

There is no attempt being made here to denigrate the ordinary people of Britain or Northern Ireland. Neither is there any attempt being made to show the people of Ireland, past or present, as anything other than normal human beings with all the flaws and imperfections of humanity. There is no romantic notion that they were once all ‘saints and scholars’ or heroes ‘taller than Roman spears’.

Not all the Irish people, well educated or otherwise, are fully aware of their own history, or were at any given time fully aware of it. Arthur Griffith once complained that as a result of British influences, ‘Irish education is a means of washing away the original sin of Irish Birth’. Although he said that before Ireland gained independence in 1921, he would have had no reason to change his mind had he lived for another fifty years. The situation existing in Northern Ireland was unknown to every generation that grew up in the Republic, after the division of Ireland in 1921. Few southerners travelled north. They were content with the press and, later, television images of violence to inform them. They began to rewrite the history of the roots of the conflict in an attempt to shift their erstwhile cousins, with a nationalist ideology, further away from mainstream conservatism. It became fashionable to speak of the ‘shared history’ of Ireland and Britain. (If a ‘shared rape’ is a ‘shared history’ then so be it, but people should be aware of the difference.)

Oh, there are household names from the history books all right: Brian Boru, Patrick Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, Padrick Pearse, James Connelly, but not everyone knows where they fit in, what they stood for, or what ideology links them together.

The period from 1916 onwards was totally ignored in the school curriculum, as if it never existed. Irish history began with ‘Early Christian Ireland’ and ended with the Easter Rising of 1916.

The Church was in control of education and the historical struggle between the Church and nationalists’ ideology was overlooked because it was too difficult to explain to children. (Among other things, the Church regularly spoke out against involvement in, and excommunicated leaders of, nationalist organisations.)

The system of education gave the Church a powerful source of strength through its ability to channel so much of the energy and talent of Irish children into its ranks. The Church points with pride to the fact that the proportion of Ireland’s resources expended on missionary activity, at the time of the Vietnam War, was equal in percentage terms to American military expenditure in the war.

This position was achieved by skilful Church diplomacy with the British. Some things are too difficult to teach, and the simple answer decided by both parties was to teach no history after 1916, and only sketchy events of the nineteenth century.

In the north a similar situation existed. The Catholic children received much the same historical instruction as the children in the south. The Protestant children learned nothing of the history of the Republic, and were instead instructed in the history of Britain.

This is not a story for the faint-hearted or the squeamish. There is nothing pretty about the history that was imposed upon Ireland and her people for the period being dealt with here. The atrocities committed in the name of ‘British justice’ have few, if any, parallels on historical record. Nevertheless, how Britain has been able to portray the people of Ireland in the past, and is still able to portray them today, is the ultimate ‘Irish joke’. Unfortunately, it is more than a joke. It is an ominous farce.

The reality behind this farce known as ‘British justice’, should come as a shocking revelation, particularly to those people in Australia who fervently believe that without their God, the ‘Westminster System’, which must have at its head the British monarchy (a feudal legacy of a country which has as its senate an unelected House of Lords, no popular constitution and no bill of rights, although, unquestionably, a good constitution corruptly administered is infinitely worse than a just administration with no constitution), the future of life as we know it would cease forever and be replaced by anarchical barbarism. So fanatical are some Royalists in their beliefs, that they doubtlessly hypothesise that humanity itself would be in danger of extinction, should Australians no longer swear allegiance to the British monarch or remove the Union Jack from its flag, or let the chain of command end with our own elected or appointed governor-general, and not the British monarch. A monarch who cannot by law be of any religion other than Church of England.

England was Catholic until the reign of Henry VIII, who fell out with Rome, and started his own religion over Rome’s refusal to grant him a divorce from his Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon, who had not supplied him with a male heir. He set up a new Church with himself as its head. Ironically, Henry had first been destined for the Church, but the early death of his elder brother Arthur left him heir to the English throne. He, of course, had some of his wives beheaded. It seems to have been quicker than divorce proceedings.

It is probably not an exaggeration to state that no country has ever produced such barbaric laws and then enforced them with such cruel, heartless diligence. It would be safe to say that the history of Britain, and with it the British monarchy, is a case study in the destructiveness of power.

Some pseudo historians will point to the Magna Carta (1215) as still binding to Britain:

Chapter 39: ‘No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be deprived of his lands or outlawed, or exiled or in any way ruined, nor shall we go against him, nor shall we send men against him unless by the lawful punishment of his peers or by the law of the land.’

Magna Carta, Latin for the Great Charter, was forced on King John by the barons when they rose against him in civil war. They were concerned with their own estates (not civil rights), over which the king had certain powers. Some of the king’s prerogative included that of an heir who was under-age. The heir became a royal ward, and the king could take all the income of the barony until the ward was twenty-one. He could also, as a favour, grant the barony, with the ward, to a friend. If the baron left a widow, she could not marry again without the king’s consent. If she was wealthy and held large estates, the king would most likely compel her to marry someone of his own choosing. The same would apply if the baron’s estate were left to a daughter. Sometimes the king sold such marriages to the highest bidder. In this way the king used his rights to increase the power of his officers and friends. There were no rules protecting the estates of wards in the King’s hands. The lands were often taxed heavily. Everything was sold that would realise a profit before the ward came of age. This was called ‘wasting’ an estate.

On the whole, the barons made Magna Carta for themselves and no one-else. It was certainly made for the smaller part of the population, for it left out the common people, bondsmen, or serfs, who were dependent peasants occupying the land of the barons, usually as labourers on the lord’s estate.

Because in many sections the language was vague, Magna Carta was interpreted by following generations in ways in which those who won the rights from the king in 1215 had never meant it to be interpreted. By the fourteenth century, for example, men were arguing that the words ‘the law of the land’, in chapter 39, referred to the courts of common law. Whereas in 1215 these courts had not been set up. By the seventeenth century some were saying that the ‘judgement of peers’ meant trial by jury. Trial by jury was unheard of when Magna Carta was drawn up.

There are examples of this, right down to the present time. In 1958 a lawyer argued that, because a section of the charter said that men could enter or leave the country without hindrance, passports were illegal, and so on.

If after reading this short history of Ireland, most of which came after the enactment of the Magna Carta, you still feel protected by its ordinance, read further the history of the North American Indian, the South American Indian, the Australian Aborigine, Africa, India, China, the West Indies, the Pacific Islands — wherever the hand of the Empire reached out its all-protective palm to succour and sustain the native peoples of the world. You will no doubt feel secure that the protection the Great Charter offers British subjects is for the perpetuation of us all.

What was it about Britain that made it ‘Great’ in a truly treacherous sense? It was that it was united under a single ‘dictator’ monarch, with singleness of purpose. (That is what makes Homo sapiens the most dangerous species on earth. If, for example, other species were to combine in the same manner, with singleness of purpose, with the mission to exterminate mankind, they could probably do so in a matter of days. This could be accomplished by species as diverse as birds and rodents, bees and ants, or even domestic cats and dogs. They could do all this and more if they carefully fore-planned their scenario and made full use of the element of surprise.)

Singleness of purpose on its own is not a bad or dangerous element in human nature. It only becomes injurious if it is directed towards the wrong objective. The conquest and destruction of other races are obviously not the most honourable utilisation of this ingredient and when used for this purpose it must be considered reprehensible. The tactic used by Britain in its worldwide campaign of havoc must therefore also be considered objectionable.

When landmasses were ‘discovered’, where the native people were living their peaceful, simple and happy lives, without the restriction of a central unit of government, they were easy to exploit. The people were unaccustomed to the need for a large army to defend their territory. The idea of a large-scale invasion was an unknown concept to them.

To justify the annihilation of so many millions of people, it has been necessary to show these native inhabitants as savages in the pages of history. They were regarded as simply ignorant savages, with a total absence of civilised ‘human’ values. This was the same tactic used to denigrate the Irish race, and was the origin of the ‘Irish joke’.

Their different customs, traditions, language, dress and religion were enough to hold them up to ridicule, and therefore facilitate and expedite their exploitation, incarceration and extermination.

The well known nineteenth century Irish exile to Australia, and author of that minor masterpiece The Jail Journal, John Mitchel, wrote: ‘England has been left in possession not only of the soil of Ireland — But in possession of the world’s ear also. She may pour into it what tale she will: and all mankind will believe it’.

This they did; and they still do it today. The writing of English history is done in such a manner, that the laws and customs of all other nations are shown to be barbaric. Whereas, of course, it was cruel barbarism that gave Britain its imperial swagger. Every nation touched by Britain suffered unspeakable misery while at its mercy. Whole cultures disappeared, in some cases entire races and nations were brought to the brink of extinction.

The excuse British historians use for the continued suppression of the Irish race is that Ireland is close enough for England’s continental enemies to use as a base from which to attack Britain. Under any sort of impartial scrutiny this argument is absurd. Firstly, in 1172, when Henry II made himself Lord of Ireland, the Irish people had been at peace with Britain for at least 600 years. Secondly, France, Britain’s main enemy through much of the Irish troubles, is closer to England than Ireland is.

The kings of England had been Lords of Ireland, in deference to the Pope, until in 1534 Henry VIII founded the Church of England and broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. He changed his title to King of Ireland. This was a warning to Catholic countries in Europe not to expect Ireland to cooperate with them in a war against England. The boy-king, Edward, or his advisers, continued in the same vein as his father, but when the Catholic Queen Mary came to the throne there was no return to sanity in Ireland. In English history Mary was to go down as ‘Catholic Mary’ to the Catholics and as ‘Bloody Mary’ to the Protestants. In Ireland she is simply Bloody Mary.

Under certain circumstances people give up their moral standards. The conditions necessary for these phenomena to keep recurring can only be avoided if history is told as it really transpired and not as we would wish it to have transpired.

Reading through the following tragic brief history of Ireland, it will be easy to dismiss all the carnage with an indifferent shrug while smugly reminding ourselves that it could not happen today in these ‘enlightened times’. It will be easy to dismiss the atrocities as belonging to another time when people were still savages and were simply applying the ‘standard of the times’.

Unfortunately, people looking back at the twentieth century will be able to make the same observation about us, as if we, in this ‘age of enlightenment’, were still unaware of good and evil and were merely still applying the ‘standard of the times’. The genocidal murder of people in their millions, sometimes within the security of their own country, by their own people, has taken place in Russia, China, Cambodia, South America, Africa and Europe, to name only the more obvious ones. Up to one hundred million people have died in global warfare, including the attempted annihilation of the Jewish race. There was the Great War — the ‘War to end all Wars’ —, which was followed by an even greater war, World War II. Then there was Korea, Vietnam and the ‘Mother of all Wars’, again to name only the most obvious. There was the racial antipathy that fostered apartheid as well as other racial and religious disharmony. There was the war in the Balkans, with atrocities hidden behind such words as ‘ethnic cleansing’ as if it were some Monday morning chore. In this, the most turbulent century in history, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the past.

There was no ‘breakdown of morals’ before the social order decayed in many of these countries, leading to the terrible crimes against humanity. Many modern states testify that societies can be extremely well ordered and yet be extremely evil. The horrors perpetrated by totalitarian regimes (the modern-day kingdoms) are self-evident. Conservatism (as in Northern Ireland), paying homage to tradition, though seeming more rational, can be almost as harmful in that it can freeze-dry social injustice as easily as it can preserve moral integrity. At a time when Nazism is again alive and well, strutting the German streets behind the prefix ‘neo’, it is sobering to reflect how easily the Nazi hierarchy, some of whom couldn’t hold up their end of pub conversation, could seize the frustration of a civilised nation and harness it into a satanic force that could rock the world upon its very axis.

It is also sobering to reflect what would have happened if the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had won the war. There would no doubt be peace in the world again or at least the war would be over. (If the absence of war can be called peace, then we would most likely have peace.) Another generation would have grown up in subjection to the new ‘master races’. History would have been re-written to suit the conquerors. Hitler’s face would stare at us from every street corner and every tall building. He would be the hero of every school child in Germany and wherever they preached the doctrine of the Third Reich; likewise in Italy and Japan. (Italy was a monarchy at the time of entering the war and Japan’s emperor was the equivalent of a monarch.) The men and women resisting the occupation of their particular country, whether in France, Poland, England, Australia or Russia would be to Germany and Japan what the IRA is to Britain and would no doubt receive the same type of press, based upon Stalin’s axiom that ‘a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic’.

There are few, if any, instances in history of a conquering country liberating the vanquished from slavery without bloodshed and sacrifice.

It is perplexing that the genocidal murder of the Jewish race in Europe by the Germans is well known, while other genocides are ignored and forgotten. Had we remembered them, what happened to the Jews might not have happened. When speaking of such things, Hitler, referring to the genocide of one-and-a-half million Armenians, by the Turks in 1915, said, ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’

Who indeed? And who remembers the others? In particular, who remembers the non-Europeans, the once proud native people who inhabited so much of the world’s landmass? Those who may have felt guilty were vindicated by Darwin’s new religious dogma of ‘the survival of the fittest’. In the precipitation of the advancement of the species, crushing the weak was for the good of us all. While it is not being claimed that these native people lived in total peace, it is interesting to note that among people for whom warfare is part of the normal conditions of life, certain customs usually spring up which will constrain the destructiveness of the conflict. It is only when radical changes in social or political structure occur that these checks and balances are removed.

How were ordinary men and women brought to commit such monstrous crimes as race murder and genocide? Propaganda! Always there is propaganda. In the case of Nazi Germany, Josef Goebbels played a vital part in alienating ordinary Germans from their fellow Jewish citizens. In newspaper articles and pamphlets, such as Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery originating in Tsarist Russia, the Jews were portrayed as members of a vast global conspiracy whose aim was world rule and the destruction of the German race. By the outbreak of war in 1939, the aim of deporting and ‘resettling’ the Jews in Eastern Europe had come to be regarded as legitimate, not only by the Germans but also by their allies — Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Vichy France and Fascist Italy.

In the case of Britain there is propaganda in every history book. Britain is a country, inhabited by people who appear to be intelligent, but nevertheless fail to see anything peculiar in complaining about Japanese or German colonial aggression while having ruled over the largest colonial empire the world has ever known. The propaganda machine of course would console the British people by telling them that their colonialism was ‘better’ than others. After reading this book it will be evident that colonial rule is not all afternoon tea and an absolutely spiffing game of cricket on the lawn old chap. Colonialism was, and still is, a nasty business. Because, in traditional colonial policy, the legal rights of the colonised are perpetually violated, there can only ever be traitors, conspirators or slaves amongst the colonised. And because alien rule ultimately depends on force, divisions remain that can take generations to repair after the colonisers depart.

Once the deed is done, then the common declaration is, ‘We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers’. (Well, if a man steals the property or possessions of his neighbour, and his children knowingly keep this property or these possessions while their neighbour is dying for its want, then the children too must be responsible for the crime of their father, by default.)

This story is not an attempt to justify the killing of people, ‘innocent’ or otherwise, just an attempt to explain the situation necessary for violence and bloodshed to occur. Northern Ireland, as a colonial outpost, meets all the criteria necessary for violence and bloodshed to keep recurring, forever and ever. What is the poison that permeates the lives of the people in the Six Counties of Ulster? What is its origin? How can it be removed?

Hopefully, a wide canvas will unfold as a result of a trip back in time, and the picture will explain itself. When looking back through time, think not of primitive uncivilised savages, or sub-humans. Rid yourself of the images that have been presented and reinforced by the moviemakers’ portrayal of everybody before the invention of the movie camera as weird and bizarre-looking. Rid yourself of the image of black-toothed, savages crawling around in primeval slime, with pet snakes, and fire-breathing dragons that eat slaves. Think not of medieval times as if the ‘eval’ in medieval had something to do with evil in the ideology of the Middle Ages. The so-called ‘Middle Ages’ were not in the middle of anything, from an ideological viewpoint, or regarding emerging civilisation, either then or now. The people were as apt to say: ‘How can this profane and iniquitous thing happen in this, the fifteenth century’, as they are to vociferate the sentiment today: ‘How can this evil thing be happening at the beginning of the twentieth-first century’.

Visualise when reading this account of Irish history, instead of uncivilised savages, people exactly as they are today, people like yourself, like your friends, like your family, people who knew right from wrong, good from evil, generosity from treachery, immorality from virtue, honour from dishonour. Instead of seeing ‘victims’, see real people; give them faces and personalities. Give them life in your imagination. Hear the silent cries of starving children. Feel the heartbreak of mothers saying goodbye to their sons and daughters, forever. Feel the disillusionment of so many failures. Hear the cries of the dying and the laments of the living. And remember always, there are no excuses for all the excesses, unless greed is an excuse.

There are a large number of quotations to sort through in the following chapters. While the number of quotations may make reading more tortuous, because they break up the style, their purpose is mainly to illustrate the point that people had the same thought patterns, regardless of what period in time they were writing. There are also a large number of names in the following pages, far too many to remember. It is not necessary to remember any of the names, however, to make sense of the story.

The truth is constant, whether we know it or not. By reading this simple historical story it will be possible to form your own opinion of what the truth might be.

Hitler could just as easily have said, ‘Who remembers...the Irish?’