McGuinness’s headstone, Shatter’s legacy, Martin at the grave of a true Republican
THEY may not be best buddies these days but, when he resigned as Justice Minister, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny paid tribute to the major reforms Alan Shatter introduced into Ireland’s citizenship laws and his creation of a new citizenship ceremony.
This heart-warming ceremony may turn out to be one of Shatter’s finer legacies. During his time as minister, 69,000 foreign nationals became Irish citizens. Last Friday, more than 3,000 new citizens were welcomed to what minister Finian McGrath described as “the Irish family”. Since the introduction of citizenship ceremonies six years ago, more than 100,000 people from every continent, every region and more than 170 countries have become new citizens of Ireland.
THE final element of the citizen application process, without which one cannot become a citizen, is what is known as the “declaration of fidelity to the Irish nation and loyalty to the State”.
While everybody knows that their rights as citizens of the State are enshrined and protected in the written constitution, few ever pay attention to Article 9.3 of the constitution, a short paragraph which states: “Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens.”
This means that a fundamental political duty as citizens is to owe allegiance to the Irish nation and to give loyalty to the free independent Irish State fought for, shaped and built from 1916 to 1937.
“Loyalty to the State” is not often spoken of in current political discourse. It means loyalty to the constitution, the Oireachtas — president, Dail and Seanad — loyalty to the courts and the rule of law; loyalty to the laws that we have chosen through our institutions to abide by.
In an address to the MacGill Summer School in 2012, the now Senator Michael McDowell raised a provocative issue: while people clamour for the recognition and enforcement of their constitutional and legal rights, he said, there was a remarkable absence of public commentary about fulfilling our correlative duty of loyalty to the State — “that citizens uphold the law and pay their taxes, not campaigning to boycott taxes”. In effect, he questioned if anti-water charge campaigners and those who boycotted or did not pay the charge were unfaithful to the nation and disloyal to the State. Answers on a postcard...
LAST Friday, McGrath said that becoming a citizen of Ireland meant more than having an Irish passport or being able to vote
He said: “What we ask of all our citizens, for all our sakes, were serious and solemn pledges and it is our duty to uphold them. On behalf of the Irish people we ask that you do your utmost to uphold these pledges to our nation, to its values and to your fellow citizens as you go forward from here today as our newest citizens.”
AS one who attended the ceremony, I must say I found it to be a moving experience, inspirational indeed, and, as Enda Kenny has referred, a tribute to Shatter.
When I came away, however, I could not help but reflect on a devastating article published in the Irish News last week by the former IRA member Shane Paul O’Doherty, under the headline: “Martin McGuinness told a ‘whopper of a lie’ about the IRA”.
A headstone was unveiled on McGuinness’s grave at the republican plot at Derry City Cemetery on Easter Sunday. It reads: “In Proud And Loving Memory Of Oglach Martin McGuinness, Oglaigh na hEireann, MP MLA Minister, Died 21st March 2017.”
Oglaigh na hEireann is a name the IRA uses for itself.
The unveiling of the headstone was attended by Sinn Fein vice president Mary Lou McDonald, she who once told the Dail: “I have never killed anybody.”
At the unveiling, she referred to McGuinness as a “fighter”, among other things. By referring to McGuinness as “Oglach”, the ‘Republican movement’ which erected the headstone in fact referred to him as “volunteer”; and that proves, according to several unionist politicians, that McGuinness remained an IRA member until his death.
ACCORDING to O’Doherty, the “whopper of a lie” McGuinness told was his claim to have left the IRA in 1974.
O’Doherty, who served time in prison for his IRA actions, argued that the lies of McGuinness and other “army council” members prevented the IRA leadership from serving prison sentences while ordinary IRA members did.
I found the following to be an interesting quote from the Irish News article, in the context of the citizenship ceremony last Friday: “Why have these IRA leaders denied membership and control of the IRA when so many young men and women volunteers toed the IRA line of not recognising British and Irish courts?”
BY the way, under a statutory instrument, introduced by Shatter in 2011, there is provision to revoke a certificate of naturalisation if new citizens have, by overt act, failed in their duty of fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State (presumably including the courts), or if they are also, under the law of a country, at “war” with the State.
HERE I might refer to an article published two years ago by Michael McDowell in The Irish Times, to understand what he called the IRA “creation myth”.
The IRA bible, otherwise known as the Green Book, asserts that in 1938 the IRA’s army council was formally and in writing handed over the role of the “Government of the Irish Republic”, established in 1916, by a handful of irredentist opponents of the treaty who had been members of the Second Dail up to the ratification of the treaty in 1921.
These former TDs somehow convinced themselves that even though most of them stood in subsequent elections to Dail Eireann (some were defeated and some were elected), the body to which they sought election was a bogus, usurper parliament without legitimacy.
They conferred on themselves the status of “executive council” based on their membership of the Second Dail and claimed thereafter to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic.
How they thought they had a continuing democratic mandate long after the lawful term of the Second Dail had expired is, like a lot else, a bit of a mystery, according to McDowell.
But after 18 years’ acting as the unelected government of the Irish Republic, their threadbare fantasy was becoming apparent even to themselves, so they decided to vest their governmental role and powers in the army council of the IRA in 1938, the year after the adoption of the constitution.
You may scoff, McDowell wrote, but this was exactly what the membership and leadership of the Provisional movement — the IRA and Sinn Fein — believed to this day.
Bizarre as it may seem, this was the basis of the insistence of Gerry Adams and his colleagues that the IRA did not commit any crime in their campaigns of terror, murder, maiming, robbery and extortion.
All such actions, you see, were carried out on the authority of the lawful “government of the Irish Republic” — and were, therefore, not crimes.
THIS is a theme which will be picked up on today by the Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin at the graveside of a true Republican, Wolfe Tone, at Bodenstown, Co Kildare. Martin will say it is a sad fact that Sinn Fein has committed itself to an ongoing campaign of trying to sectionalise and distort the history of 1916, and that Sinn Fein, founded in 1970, has invested enormous resources in promoting the false claim to having a unique link to 1916.
He will say: “They have failed because of the common sense of the Irish people and their refusal to allow others to whitewash their past and falsify the history of 1916.
“At the core of their narrative lies the claim that the hidden leadership of the Provisional’s movement retained the right to kill and maim in our name in spite of constant rejection.
“For them it retained the right to bomb civilians, to kneecap children and to have a parallel and secret justice system devoted to covering up the crimes of their members. In doing this they constantly ignored the demand of the Proclamation that no one who serves the Republic will ‘dishonour it with cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine’.
“And let no one be in any doubt, they have no claim to the title of honour that is Oglaigh na hEireann. It is the men and women of our defence forces alone who are Oglaigh na hEireann. Anyone who fails to respect this is merely showing that they put their movement ahead of their country.”