Disagreeing with Gary on Irish language

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mo chara Gary writes:


>I approved of Adams's use of Irish for it pisses off the Planters - the
>Loyalists, the Colonialists.  Their hatred of Gaelig has to be seen to
>believed.  In the 1960s there was a historical documentary produced in
>Ireland and the commentary was in Gaelig.  The film contained rare footage
>of the founding of N. Ireland.  There was a public showing for Queen's
>University Belfast students.
>
>A large number of unionist-Protestant students went.
>
>When the film began and the Irish commentary  was heard they began to
>scream abuse and shout and boo.  Their anger was of course related to the
>evidence of the failure of the colonial project.  At that moment I
>understood very clearly how political the question of the preservation of
>the Irish language was.
>
>Similarly when Maire De Brun uses Irish in the Stormount parliament she
>gets torrents of abuse from the Loyalists.  Again their hatred is of the
>Other - the Gael - the native - the "Indigene" who is to be hunted and
>exterminated.


I think there are a few serious problems with this.

But to begin, let me repeat that I am fully in favour of the Irish language
being available for people to learn throughout Ireland.  In fact, that is
not even a problem because it is the official language and compulsory in
schools in the South (where about 70 percent of the population of Ireland
live) and fairly easily accessible in the north.

The fact that hardly anyone in the South speaks it is indicative that
history has moved on.


Now, to turn to the political points that Gary makes, and with which I wish
to disagree.

Speaking Irish in the north did infuriate Unionists in the 1960s, and no
doubt the most neanderthal Unionists are still upset when Bairbre de Brun
speaks it in the Stormont Assembly (the other Sinn Fein member of the
Stormont Executive, Martin McGuinnes, is not an Irish speaker as far as I
recall).

There is a certain satisfaction I share with Gary in pissing off these bigots.

*But*, in terms of big-picture politics in Ireland these days, this is
neither here nor there.  It is not the old-style Unionists who call the
shots anymore.  Pissing off these old bigots is rather like pissing off the
most intransigent white racists in South Africa.  It may give some personal
satisfaction but politically it is irrelevant because they are irrelevant.

The dominant politics in the north of Ireland these days are not old-style
Unionism, but new-style 'respect for difference'.  Speaking Irish, far from
undermining this dominant new establishment and ideology, is an inherent
part of it.  The Republican Movement has traded national liberation for
what it calls 'parity of esteem'.  The Irish language is now no threat in
the north, indeed it is integral to the 'parity of esteem' sell-out, and
thus has no particular radical significance.

As an aside, I also wonder what language Health Minister de Brun speaks
when she counterposes closing a hospital in a Protestant area to a Catholic
area - rather than fighting to keep hospitals in both areas open.  (The
answer, of course, is capitalist language - which can be Irish or English
in form.)

That Irish as a language has no radical character today is not entirely
new.  Remember it was *not republicans*, but *Unionists*, who organised to
save the Irish language and what was deemed as Irish culture in the late
1800s.  This too, like today, was tied to the *defeat* of the political
struggle for Irish liberation.

Middle-class Unionist/pro-British Protestants, like the founder of the
Gaelic League (Douglas Hyde) and Lady Gregory, found romanticised Irish
culture very quaint and attractive.  It was counterposed to what Yeats
condemned as 'the filthy modern tide'.  It could be alluring to them partly
because it was aristocratic and partly because it had no radical political
implications, especially once the struggle for national liberation had been
defeated.  Loads of Unionists flocked to learn Irish and find out all about
Finn MacCool and warriors bold and faeries in Sligo and all the rest of it.
(In fact there is a neo-fascist variety of Unionism that is still deeply
into all this stuff, believing that indigenes from Ireland conquered
Scotland and then returned to reconquer Ireland, ie that the Unionists are
the descendants of these Irish indigenes.)

A number of IRB leaders - ie militant republicans - in the early 1900s were
incredibly scathing about all of this 'Gaelic' stuff.  (While some of the
leaders of 1916, such as Pearse, went through a phase of involvement in
Gaelic inventionism as well, they quickly moved out of it once a new
political opening occurred where it was possible to wage a struggle for
national liberation.)


As for Gary's reference to the Gael:

>Similarly when Maire De Brun uses Irish in the Stormount parliament she
>gets torrents of abuse from the Loyalists.  Again their hatred is of the
>Other - the Gael - the native - the "Indigene" who is to be hunted and
>exterminated.


I find this puzzling.  There is no such person as 'the Gael' in Ireland
today.  Indeed, since I know Gary is a militant republican at heart, I find
this a very strange formulation because it runs counter to the whole
history and spirit of republicanism.

Republicanism has nothing to do with Gaels.  As Gary knows, I'm sure,
republicanism was created by revolutionary Protestants who opposed British
rule and preached the union of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter - united
under the banner of being Irish - against British tyranny.  You'll find no
romantic mysticism about the Gaels, 'the Indigene', in Wolfe Tone and his
comrades.

I might also note that Bairbre de Brun has been one of the people leading
SF's charge to the right.  Pissing off some old Unionist bigot in Stormont
might help her keep some 'radical' veneer, but we as Marxists should not be
at all taken in.




>So notwithstanding the translation farce that Phil relates and his amusing
>story of trying to learn Irish and yes the conservative atmosphere that has
>frown up around it in the South of Ireland in the North it is still a
>matter of a people defining their own destiny.  as with the Native American
>languages the people have a right to say what must be preserved.


In the South people have exercised precisely that right.  They have decided
to speak English, rather than Irish.  Since the South contains 70 percent
of the population of Ireland, and 85 percent of the population of
nationalist Ireland, I think we can say that the bulk of Irish people have
made the choice.

I am neither for nor against that choice.  I am, however, for *recognising* it.



>Nor is it
>simply a matter of substituting culture of the Armalite rifle.  Here the
>cultural is the political. the Irish language is still important and
>despite the force of Phil's analysis I am for its preservation.  It is you
>see a sign that the conquest is not complete.


The problem here is that the conquest *was* complete.  A new
socio-economic-political system was imposed on Ireland - in fact two were,
first feudalism, and then capitalism, both thanks to British rule.

And new socio-economic-political systems bring new languages to the fore.
Time moves on.

Moreover, the neo-colonial elite in the South imposed Irish as the official
language there and tortured generations of poor school-children with it.
So there was nothing about the Irish language which signalled the conquest
was not complete.  In fact, given that the struggle almost stopped entirely
in the South, the region where Irish was the official language, it might be
argued that the impositon of the Irish language by the pro-imperialist
ruling elite there *proved* that the conquest was complete!

The bulk of Irish people, including a helluva lot of republicans, have
simply recognised reality.  So while they still want Irish to be readily
available, and there is heaps of goodwill towards it among ordinary people
(once they get over their school memories of it!), there is little chance
that it will ever again be the spoken language of the mass of the people
any more than Latin will be the mass language of the people of Italy.

Beir bua.

Is mise le meas,
Phil











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