Thursday 21 February 2008

Change We Can Believe In? - Diversity and Minority Identities in Ireland's New Republic (by David Christopher)

This is my first piece for Reform’s new blog and I thought I would use it to express some personal perspectives on developments over the past 10 years, and on the potential for Reform, and the wider Irish Republic, looking ahead.

Ten years ago, at the public launch of the Reform Movement, one of our members commented that the Irish-British identity was Ireland’s “oldest and largest” minority. Back then that may well have been true - but certainly not today! We may still be the oldest of the Irish Republic’s minorities but today we are probably somewhere between small and middling-sized compared to our very welcome new communities from Eastern Europe, West Africa and beyond who have brought so much positive change and diversity to our shores.

Ten years ago almost feels like a different country. Back then the peace process was still in its infancy - all-party talks had barely begun and many sceptics doubted that a unionist-nationalist agreement was even possible. Back then the Irish Republic was still a largely mono-ethnic, mono-cultural state. “Official Ireland” still seemed more comfortable reflecting stale decades-old nationalistic orthodoxy than in embracing the potential of a rapprochement with the Unionist tradition.

Nowadays, so much has changed for the better that it is difficult to know where to begin. Beyond the obvious headline-grabbing issues which we are all aware of - such as the Irish Government’s invaluable support for the peace process over the past 15 years since the Downing Street Declaration, there has been a whole host of lesser-noticed, but no less important, developments which are going a long way towards boosting reconciliation between the two traditions in Ireland, and especially in the Irish Republic.

These are just some examples:

  • It was recently announced that the British-Irish Council (BIC), established under the Good Friday Agreement, will now be placed on a permanent footing, and will now have its own Secretariat. This goes some way towards placing the crucial Strand 3 (all-islands) of the Agreement on an equal footing with the Strand 2 (north-south) element, and is a sign that the Irish government recognises the vital importance of the all-islands dimension to the peace process.
  • 10m Euros has been spent on the Battle of Boyne Interpretive Centre - due to open in 3 months - a very welcome investment by the Irish government in promoting greater understanding of the Orange tradition in Ireland.
  • 250k in government support for Orange Order in the Irish Republic. This will go some way towards helping the Orange minority, particularly in the border counties where they have witnessed a number of their halls and community centres burnt down in recent years. Interestingly, the Orange Order chose to quote the Easter Proclamation in their response: "Our members in the Republic of Ireland stand ready to play a fuller part in civic society than heretofore. The recognition which this funding brings with it goes some way towards providing reassurance in the Republic of Ireland that all the children of the nation will now be treated equally."
  • The renewed historical interest and appreciation of the suffering inflicted upon the minority community in Southern Ireland throughout the 1919-1923 period - in particular the sectarian slaughter of many West Cork unionists during this time who were condemned as “spies and traitors” simply for holding a different political belief. It is significant and welcome that one of the most eye-opening documentaries on this period - the documentary on the Coolacrease murders in Offaly - was produced by the State broadcaster RTE. This is a very positive sign of growing maturity on the part of the majority nationalist community in the Republic towards dealing with the past, warts and all, and recognizing that wrongs were inflicted on all sides.


Of course there is still so much to do, and a long road ahead - we have seen the fruits of embracing Europe - so why not embrace the Commonwealth also? In doing so Ireland would become the fourth European Union nation in the Commonwealth, after the UK, Cyprus and Malta. Joining the Commonwealth would give the Irish Republic a whole new dimension to the work we already do with the EU and United Nations.

And perhaps most important of all, those of minority identity in the Republic are still denied the fundamental promise of the Good Friday Agreement - the right to choose between Irish citizenship, British citizenship or both. It is nonsensical that somebody of nationalist identity in Strabane, County Tyrone has this right, whilst somebody of Irish-British identity across the river in Lifford, County Donegal is denied it.

Nevertheless, I hope these are future steps along the way of the peace process and will be realised in time. On the whole, I have a great sense that after many years of stalemate post-1998, things are finally really moving in the right direction now. The Irish Republic is moving towards being a truly inclusive, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural modern European state which recognises and respects its own minority strands of identity, including the Irish-British strand.

This is a development that can be welcomed by all of us - and Reform Movement members should be proud of having been in the vanguard of this change over the past decade. What seems so clear today was certainly not so clear ten years ago when the Reform Movement was launched.

The foundation of power-sharing in Northern Ireland between Unionists and Republicans is the most positive development of all - let us all hope it opens up the door to a new future of genuine equality and mutual respect, north and south, between Ireland’s age-old political traditions of Unionism and Nationalism - and leads to an Ireland that is a warm house for all of us.

What are your thoughts on all of this? - let us know, the comments section is open for your views!

Thursday 7 February 2008

Time to make Irish optional in schools? - (Article by Robin Bury)

Brian Fleming tells us that thousands of students are opting out of learning Irish (Education Today 17th Jan. 2006). An ESRI study concludes that Irish is "the least popular subjects among school students". What has gone wrong? Why after 80 years of force-feeding is Irish so unpopular and spoken by practically no one? Let me explain why the language is all but dead, especially in the quiet, once isolated country places where it was the thriving first language, the small Gaeltacht areas.

The truth is that today less than 20,000 people speak Irish as their native language.

Reg Hindley, a former lecturer at Bradford University, has specialised in studying languages, both Irish and Welsh. He took a sabbatical year from Bradford University to study the status of the Irish and wrote a book called The Death of the Irish Language, published in 1990. His main conclusion is clear and uncompromising. He states, "There is no doubt that the Irish language is now dying". In effect, we are now vying with Portugal as the most monolingual country in Europe -- but at least in Portugal the official language is Portuguese.

Hindley believes the current generation of children who are first language native speakers may well be the last one. And remember all these children speak fluent English. They know, as do their parents, that their job prospects are zero if they do not speak English. Their parents also know that this country would never have had the "Celtic Tiger" if we spoke Irish, not English.

Unlike the children of HiCo parents, we know that the children in Gaeltacht areas think that Irish is really quite boring and certainly not cool. But the state has been blinded to these realities. "The failure to reconcile romantic nationalism and nationalist myth with the realities of Gaeltacht life has been a conspicuous element in the failure to save the language" according to Hindley.

The reasons why Irish is dying are obvious. Irish once thrived in the isolated small communities which spoke it. With the coming of the motorcar and the advent of mass tourism, all this ended. Dingle, for instance, now depends on tourism for its main source of income, and these tourists speak English, whether from London, Paris or Berlin.

But what happens if Irish dies in the Gaeltacht areas, as now seems inevitable?

"A country which cannot adequately support at home the people who speak its dying national language, will have grave difficulties in sustaining it into the future", states Hindley. Do the HiCo parents believe this? Doubtful. They will be happy to have their children speaking classroom Irish, a dumbed down, easier to learn version of Irish that native Irish speakers find almost incomprehensible. And can Irish be sustained by only by enthusiastic intellectuals who associate language with nation?

Understandable as it was that the new Free State had as a top priority to revive Irish, it was probably too late by 1922 to succeed.In 1922 only a handful of people were native, monoglot speakers. That decline began as far back as the late seventeenth century when parents increasingly encouraged their children to speak Irish, especially as the penal laws were relaxed.

By the late eighteenth century Irish was "an interest for scholars and occasional Protestant activists as a medium for conversions", according to Hindley. Put simply, Irish people had decided over a period of some 200 years to speak English for very sensible pragmatic reasons.
Let us face facts: despite all sorts of ingenious plans and incentives, the battle has been lost.

And students know it. Irish is not a "sexy" language. Even in Gaeltacht areas teenagers have rejected Irish as a language of romance. One said, "But if you went to a disco in Galway and asked someone to dance in Irish, you'd be absolutely shunned. It's just so uncool, man." For sheer compression, as an obituary for a language, that would be very hard to beat.

It was once believed that the failure to embrace the Irish language is to disavow your very Irishness. This spirit is very much alive today among many adults, but our youth have learnt the way to gain access to knowledge and power is through the language of the Anglophone world. Is it not time to make Irish optional?

(by Robin Bury - originally published in the Irish Times)

Monday 4 February 2008

Some Thoughts on the Irish language (submitted by Anonymous)

My own views in brief are that I would object to compulsory Irish, but taking it head on would be counter productive because it is so important from a symbolic point of view to Irish nationalism (even if most people don't want to speak it or make an effort around it). I do not object to the state spending money on it, because nobody else will, but since a substantial share of the population now object to the compulsory aspect you could argue that teaching people who dont want to learn the language is a waste of money and it is not rationale in terms of developing the language. Instead, the funds should be focused on those who wish to learn it, the TV station etc, so those involved would get more money, while those who do not wish to would not have to do so.

In relation to the Protestants, this was probably the feature of the new state that they objected to most, even if some notable Protestants were involved in the nationalist revolution and language movement, most found it objectionable because it had no link with their heritage. In a sense their heritage did not count in the new set up. Although it must be said that the new state treated the Protestants minority well on the whole, notably in relation to education, it was around the Irish language that it was most intolerant of the protestant position.

In this regard, I would also argue for parity of esteem for English in the constitution as this is the language that most people speak, it is the language of the Irish Diaspora etc. In symbolic terms it would also recognise that there has been an English speaking tradition on the island as well as a Gaelic tradition, and one is not superior to the other. The Irish variant of republicanism gives priority to the Gaelic nationalist tradition, and this is expressed in the constitution, in relation to the status of Irish as the first language, whereas true republicanism would afford parity of esteem to both languages and both traditions.

In the event of the end of partition, which 32 county Republicans aspire to, compulsory Irish would be a non-runner in Northern Ireland. A new 32 county Ireland would have to accept that there were historically two ethnic groups on the island and for one of these for the most part Irish was not part of their cultural set up. By making Irish compulsory the state failed to recognise this; in a united Ireland if it comes to pass they will have to! Learning compulsory Irish would be just as unattractive to most northern Protestants today as it was to southern Protestants in the 1920s. However, the northern Protestants could not be forced into learning Gaelic the same way as southern protestants were in the 1920s. Why not change this sooner than later. As immigrants enter Irish society in increasingly larger numbers the section of the population for which Irish is not part of their cultural heritage increases further, but the biggest group of objectors to compulsory Irish are now neither Protestants nor immigrants.