by Dermot Keogh
The state was also deeply confessional, predictably so, perhaps, given the overwhelmingly large (over 90%) majority of observing Roman Catholics among its citizens.27Its civic culture was deeply imbued with a Catholic ethos. Indeed, the sheer size of the Catholic majority (as a result of the partition of the island and the exclusion of the north-east of the island, with its sizeable Protestant community, from the Free State), and the historic experience of Irish Catholics since the sixteenth century, meant that a strong communal identity based on religious loyalty was, so to speak, ready-made and available to the Irish Free State at its foundation. This Catholic communal identity was easily shared and culturally comfortable even for elements of the nationalist political leadership who were politically committed, at a cerebral level, to a more inclusive, religiously pluralistic and republican version of ‘Irishness’ than that suggested by simple ‘Catholic nationalist’ sentiment. In fact, a language dimension to Irish identity which demanded nothing too burdensome, nothing beyond a symbolic recognition of the ancestral language and a care to ensure its presence in the ceremony and ritual of occasions of state, was probably the ideal ‘finishing’ of identity for many Irish Catholics, utterly secure in the historical identity and the civic culture defined and shaped by their religion.28
The growing assurance of the Irish state itself as a stable democratic state in a very turbulent world in the two decades after 1922, and its incremental march towards full political sovereignty by 1937 and a formal declaration of its status as a Republic in 1949, meant that the Irish state came to be taken for granted by its citizens, and Irishness (or ‘identity’) became, as it were, a function of citizenship of the independent Irish state – a comfort, let it be noted, not available to the Irish nationalists living in Northern Ireland, for whom issues of identity remained inevitably much more fraught with anxiety.
It would be wrong to suggest that some at least of the cadre of political leaders in the new state did not wish and work for a more substantial cultural change, and specifically for more substantial progress in respect of the ‘preservation and extension’ of the Irish language. Their own understanding of the enormity and complexity of the task being undertaken may, in retrospect, seem seriously deficient. But the geocultural location of Ireland, right in the middle of the Anglo-American highway of communications and entertainment, increasingly the main artery of a global technology grid of communications whose dominant language was English, made the challenge of achieving any viable form of bilingualism – to say nothing of a reverse language ‘shift’ – especially daunting in Ireland (Quebec invites comparison, but only on certain limited grounds).
The disproportionately large majority of monoglot English-speakers in Ireland at the turn of the century, and the reassuringly high status achieved by the ‘English of Ireland’ in the forum of world literature (Yeats’ Nobel Prize came in 1923, Shaw’s two years later, while Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in 1922), as well as its robustly creative energies in all aspects of popular culture, further weighted the advantages in favour of English being overwhelmingly the dominant vernacular and of its continuing to erode the fragile base of the Irish-speaking community. English was also the language of the vast majority of the Irish of the diaspora and of the countries in which most of them settled; while for the leaders of the Irish Catholic Church, English was the vital instrument of their dynamic global missionary effort from the middle of the nineteenth century forward.
It is not surprising perhaps, that, in the face of such overwhelmingly unbalanced prospects, some who were early enthusiasts for the cultural project based on the revival of Irish should, over time, have lost faith and hope in the project. Some also lost charity. In particular, a section of the intelligentsia, from relatively early in the life of the new state, began to articulate a dissident critique of the ‘official culture’ of the state: an official culture, substantially embodied in legislation as well as in a host of more symbolic ways, which they denounced as excessively confessional, conservative, censorious and philistine. The preponderant influence of conservative Catholic social teaching may have been the main target of this criticism. But it was significant that the language revival policy, especially the formulaic exhortations and heavily bureaucratic emphases which were seen as dominant features of state policy and its implementation, was increasingly seen by some intellectuals as merely another aspect of the sterile ‘official culture’, and denounced accordingly.29
It is only fair – indeed, it is necessary – to point out that the ‘cultural vision’ of decolonisation that centred on the language project was, for many of the revolutionary generation of Sinn Féin, linked to other social visions – notably, the social vision of a self-reliant, closely integrated Christian society, free of extremes of wealth and poverty, and bonded by a sense of reciprocal obligation up and down the social ladder.
This particular version of the Sinn Féin social vision is strongly present in Fianna Fáil’s list of aims and objectives at its foundation, and again in its 1932 election manifesto.30Certainly, de Valera’s own vision was set out repeatedly by him in a series of substantial statements – in the Dáil, in public speeches and in some of his radio broadcasts to the Irish abroad on St Patrick’s Day. The most frequently quoted of these statements is, of course, the 1943 St Patrick’s Day broadcast. But this was not an idiosyncratic view of the Ireland that some, at least, of the revolutionary generation of the Gaelic Leaguers dreamed of. As I have pointed out elsewhere, similar rhetoric can be found in statements by other contemporary leaders, for example, Richard Mulcahy.31The vision was expressed also in more sinewy political terms: for example, it is significant that in several of de Valera’s pronouncements on economic ideas the source he quotes again and again is James Fintan Lalor (with an occasional nod towards Connolly, depending on the political requirements of the occasion). The ideal was a communal view of economic resources, rights and shared entitlements, but one that stopped short of socialism.
In fact, if this 1943 vision can be criticised (as it has been) on the grounds that it conjures up and valorises a somewhat static, hierarchical Jeffersonian society, with a strong rural ethos (‘cosy homesteads’, ‘respect for the wisdom of old age’, etc.), there are elements in it which seem to reflect deep longings within the wider community. These elements included the valorisation of rural life and the desire for industrialisation without urbanisation – a kind of limitless dispersal or decentralisation of economic opportunity. This particular strand of the early Sinn Féin ideology was to cast a long shadow on twentieth century Irish economic policy, with enduring political resistance in local communities to industrial or development ‘growth-centres’, as recommended by Buchanan and other planners, and with continuing demands being made by political and community leaders on development agencies for the widest possible ‘dispersal’ of industries or plants. Neither should we ignore the fact that the Irish nationalist valorisation of the healthy (in mind and body) stock of the countryside – living the life that God intended – was part of a wider current of opinion, sentiment and aspiration among political and cultural nationalists in many parts of Europe in the later nineteenth and throughout the early decades of the twentieth century.32This general sentiment – the identification of the land and rural society as a privileged habitat for ‘authentic’ living, close to nature and to God, bonded in feeling and in values – was bound to be especially strong in Ireland with its emotive history of land dispossession.
What matters, however, in the context of this essay, is the way in which this ‘social’ vision was also embedded in policy as well as in rhetoric in de Valera’s Ireland. Thus, for example, the land distribution policy of the 1930s and, more critically, the tillage drive (through incentives in the 1930s, through compulsion in the war years), and the food self-sufficiency policy and reduction in the cattle herd, were all aspects of an agricultural policy cons
istent with, if not driven by, the vision of a well-stocked rural countryside of ‘comfortable’ small-holders. That these policies, and the vision that inspired them, reflected one important strain of contemporary Catholic social thought is well known.33In fact, the objectives of Muintir na Tíre, established in 1931, are, in language as well as in substance, very similar to de Valera’s declared vision. Based on the Boerenbond Belge (founded 1890) Canon Hayes’s organisation stated its aim as:
to unite the rural communities of Ireland on the Leo XIII principle that there must exist friendly relations between master and man; that it is a mistake to assume that class is hostile to class, that well-to-do and working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. This new rural organisation … intends to unite in one body the rural workers of the country, not for the purpose of attacking any one section of the community but to give agricultural workers in Ireland their due and proper position in the life of the nation.34
The methods of Muintir na Tíre (fireside chats, domestic forum for discussion, ‘rural weeks’, publications) were also consistent with de Valera’s version of the good life of a citizenry involved in responsible politics.
Yet, notwithstanding the valuable contribution of Muintír na Tíre to the quality of life in rural Ireland, it is significant that by the later 1930s the degree to which this ‘social vision’ was embedded in the policies and practices of the state was already being criticised as being inadequate. The facts, though they rarely speak for themselves, found a sufficient number of concerned community leaders to speak for them. The tillage acreage scarcely expanded in the 1930s, and the bruising tariff war with Britain in the 1930s inflicted damage which hurt, and provoked discontent among farmers well beyond the category of ‘ranchers’. After the temporary tillage increase of the ‘Emergency’ years (1939–45), there was an early reversion to the by then well-established pattern of land-use, with the emphasis on pasture. The flight of the small-holders from the land continued, and the number of farm labourers – the class for whom de Valera might have been expected to show the surest instinct – was halved (from 160,000 to 80,000) in the twenty-five years after 1930.35
Bishops and others began to demand more purposeful intervention to halt the drift from the land: public pronouncements and their contributions to such government enquiries as the Commission on Vocational Organisation (1943) and the Commission on Emigration and other Population Problems (1948–54) gave the Catholic bishops scope for advocating a more thorough-going programme of social action based on the family.36But the signs of public concern at the failure to realise the promised land were apparent in other ways also. Politically, Clann na Talún arrived on the scene in the late 1930s, to challenge Fianna Fáil on its own terms – the survival and improvement of the condition of the rural small-holders – while in 1943 Macra na Feirme was founded, through which young farmers were to offer an impressive critique of the direction of state policy in agriculture and in rural development in general.37
It is in the light of this growing criticism and debate from the later 1930s on the ‘social vision’ of de Valera and Fianna Fáil, as it related to the creation of the contented, integrated Christian rural society (staying at home in frugal comfort), that we can best reflect on the manner and timing of the questioning of the ‘cultural vision’ of Irish-Ireland’s project of decolonisation, and of the extent and effectiveness of its embedding in the life of the Irish state. Here, also, the coincidence of timing in the emergence of new and critical voices is quite striking.
Thus, for example, while sections of the teachers were understandably critical of aspects of the language policy (though mainly of ‘means’ and ‘methods’ rather than of ‘ends’) from the early years of the Free State, and while undoubtedly the commitment of many teachers to the language project must have been weakened by the constant preaching to them of their ‘obligations’ by ministers stone-walling on a long list of other pressing educational issues (teachers’ salaries, school resources, etc.), it is again from the later 1930s that we come upon the evidence that indicates the emergence of growing doubts on the progress being made in realising the cultural vision of the Gaelic League within the Irish state.38
Among those who continued to believe in and to support the language revival and the broader cultural ‘autonomy’ project, anger, frustration and stoic resignation were to be found in heavy measure, if randomly distributed. The most radical response to the evidence of failure in maintaining or sustaining the Gaeltacht community came from groups of political and social activists within the Gaeltacht community itself, supported by a cadre of urban intellectuals. The distinguished Irish writer and political activist, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, was prominent and influential in this movement. Ó Cadhain came to adopt a recognisably Marxist position (with strong Gramscian elements) on the language question and the depopulation, through emigration, of the Gaeltacht. The cultural hegemony of English was the outcome of socio-economic interests inherent in the power structure; the breaking of this cultural hegemony, therefore, would require a revolutionary socialist assault on these power-structures and the interests they served. Or, as he put it: ‘Sí athréimniú na Gaeilge athghabháil na hÉireann.’ (‘The restoration of Irish means the repossession of the country.’)39
Less radical language revivalists sought, at different times and in different ways, to advise, cajole, persuade, bully and shame the government of the day into showing more urgency and giving a higher political priority (and resources) to the language task than successive governments seemed prepared to do. The politicians were berated for infirmity of commitment, as reflected in their own behaviour and in the apparatus of the state over which they presided. The methods, policy directions and deployment of resources involved in state language policy were regularly and, at times searchingly, criticised. Revivalists with some more sophisticated and scholarly understanding of the socio-linguistic complexities of language change, and of the need for sustained and intelligent language planning at state level, suffered their own frustrations when regularly finding government ministers and their senior advisors deaf or indifferent to their advice.40
But there are dates and events which are suggestive of, at the least, new stirrings among the ranks of the converted and the committed. In 1935, An Comhchaidreamh, an organisation for Irish-speaking graduates of all the Irish universities, was founded.41In 1938 the Oireachtas, the major cultural festival of Irish-language artistic life, was revived after years in abeyance. A new Irish-language magazine of opinion and creative writing, Comhar, was launched by graduates in 1942 and a year later a new Irish-language newspaper made its appearance: Inniu, originally intended as a daily but eventually published for many decades as a weekly. A radical mood of impatience within the Irish-language movement saw new challenging branches established within the Gaelic League and a new departure, Glúin na Buaidhe (1942), while an Irish-language version of the Legion of Mary, called An Réalt, also attracted support from its foundation in 1942. For young Irish boys, the Christian Brothers established Ógra Éireann (1945), and, significantly, a new umbrella co-ordinating body for all the voluntary Irish-language organisations, Comdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, was established with the support of de Valera’s government in 1943. There were those who believed that this government support for co-ordination was a shrewd tactic to get the various strands of the Irish-language movement in the community together under one tent before the radicals became too subversive. And, in 1953, a young group of Irish-speaking graduates emerged from An Comhchaidreamh to found Gael Linn, which in the decades that followed was to prove most innovative (in terms of schemes and funding) in bringing the Irish language to the wider public through a range of activities and in particular through use of the emerging mass media of information and entertainment.42
It is arguable, of course, as with Muintir na Tíre and Macra na Feirme, that this flowering of
new Irish-language organisations and groups should be taken as a healthy sign of the vitality and energy of the ‘Gaeilgeoirí’ as a community: with new specialist activities and initiatives betokening its growing diversification of interests and demands, in fact its growing sophistication and maturity. But, on the other hand, there can be no ignoring the more than ample grounds for concern among committed revivalists. By the early 1940s, the number of ‘A’ schools (those conducting all teaching and activities through Irish) had peaked; and the discontent and opposition of the teachers was getting to the government and even to the Minister for Education, Tomás Ó Deirg.43Above all, the relentless weakening of the core communities in the Gaeltacht, through emigration and the continued advance of English in all areas of life, was evident to all and, as experts agreed, was not likely to be easily reversed, even after the belated establishment of a special Department of the Gaeltacht in 1956.
The concerns of the Irish-language organisations were registered by Comhdáil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge which in 1947 submitted to the government a substantial reappraisal document on the state language strategy and the implementation of government policy. But the core of the cultural vision – the ‘restoration’ of Irish as the main vernacular – so inspirational to key groups of the revolutionary generation who established the Irish Free State, maintained a tenacious hold on the imagination and certainly on the rhetoric of several of the leaders, particularly de Valera, even when the ‘facts’ of Irish social and cultural development, and the shortcomings of the state’s ‘performance’ in many areas, seemed to demand serious and candid revaluation.44This tenacity, understandably, could seem more like obduracy to those who were impatient for change or who sought a more robust response to failure than a mere further dose of exhortation. For certain writers and commentators, satire seemed the only response to a rhetoric which they found ritualistic and hypocritical: this was the response of Brian Ó Nualláin/Flann O’Brien/Myles na Gopaleen.45Máirtín Ó Cadhain, for his part, continued to flail and to shame the inadequacy of the state’s language commitment and policies relentlessly, in print and on platform.46
