1918 framed Irish life for a century - 2018 can shape Ireland for generations to come
POP history is yet another term I profoundly dislike for a variety of reasons. Often it is an attempt to totally dismiss the ordinary person’s halting grasp of what actually happened in the past, and, at its worst, it disregards working people’s rights to ownership of their origins and their past.
But good historians watch “pop history” carefully, and use it as a way into outlining a more accurate and entertaining picture of times past. Clever politicians know that the gut game of politics is often framed by popular folk memory of things like the “Tan War, the Dublin lock-out, or the Famine.”
So, let’s start with the popular memory of the last century in Irish history. In that we find the heroic sacrifice of the 1916 Rising; the derring-do of the War of Independence; the profound tragedy of the Civil War; and other dramatic events feature hugely.
By contrast, the year 1918 is not rated in Irish popular history. Yet a sideways squint through the splendid ‘Atlas of the Irish Revolution,’ will tell you that it framed our politics for the following century.
That landmark doorstop tome, published just before Christmas and tapping the expertise of a tribe of crack historians, mainly takes us through the years 1913-1923. It also devotes a final chapter to “memory and culture,” a more user-friendly way of saying “pop history.”
And from this splendid book we learn about the rise in 1918 of Éamon de Valera, inset, a Limerick man of strange Hispanic origins, who would be a major figure in 20th-century Irish political life. We see the swift demise of the old Irish Parliamentary Party, a group who had dominated not just Irish political life through the last 30 years of the 19th century, but who also cut a hugely influential dash across all British politics in that period.
We learn about the hamfisted attempts by London to impose conscription in Ireland, amid mounting slaughter in Belgium, a final throw-of-thedice offensive by Germany, and ahead of the expected entry of the United States in what we soon called World War I.
The British government forced through conscription against the best advice but it galvanised and united all of nationalist Ireland.
Two points are worth noting here. First is that the Catholic bishops endorsed the opposition; second is that it gave rise to the biggest national oneday strike in Irish history. Renowned British historian AJP Taylor noted it all as the point at which the UK lost Ireland.
Looking back, everything that year built towards the general election of December 1918. It came after the epically murderous “Great War” ended in November and it was the first exercise in mass democracy on this island.
Every man over 21 was given a vote as was every woman over 30 who was a householder, or married to a householder. The previous election in 1910 had 698,000 vot- ers, but by 1918 the Irish electorate was 1.9 million people.
The once-mighty Irish Party was swept aside as it was reduced to just six seats, its problems seriously compounded by the first-past-the-post system. The soon-to-be split Sinn Féin won 73 seats and opted to set up the First Dáil, which eventually came together on January 21, 1919, boycotting Westminster.
But the northern counties were largely a blank with the unionists taking the vast bulk of the seats there. The die was sadly cast for partition.
Also on January 21, 1919, in an unconnected event, two RIC policemen were killed at Soloheadbeg in an IRA ambush, an incident later regarded as the start of the War of Independence. This and subsequent violent actions were the result of a big re-organisation of the Irish Volunteers which was mainly done throughout 1918.
By now you’ll have got the idea, 1918 was a decisive year in Ireland’s history. Can we make any such claims for this young year of 2018?
Well, for now we can but note the abundance of raw material in the Irish politics of 2018 which shows it could shape Ireland for generations to come. There is the huge challenge of Brexit which means Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s Government must not just mitigate huge economic harm, it must also forge an entirely new and more independent relationship with the EU. Much will depend on the Government’s ability to make new allies in the EU.
This issue dovetails with the challenge of dealing with abortion, an issue which has bedevilled Irish public life for 35 years. It will continue to be a hugely emotive matter – but we need change on the issue led by calm and respectful debate.
Then there are the interlinked challenges of a major housing crisis and a two-tier health care system which is beset by a host of problems. The coming year, with a decade of economic recession now behind us, we have a golden opportunity to show progress in tackling both these shameful blots on our national reputation.
Looking north of the Border, could we really see an end to the year-long deadlock amid the two main parties, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin, to deliver a power-sharing government amid the crisis of Brexit? If we have grounds for any real hope here, they are well hidden.
But 1918 delivered a host of surprises – so let’s not lose hope in 2018 just yet.