Vivid Faces

In 1920, the Irish Republican, Muriel MacSwiney, began her public tour of America. Delivering lectures on British rule in Ireland, she told the American Commission that ‘[m]y parents are not quite like myself’ (p. 330). Following the death of her husband, the hunger striker, Terence MacSwiney, Muriel went on to work for various socialist causes in Europe until the end of her days. For her, as for many young nationalists, radicalism was a firmly entrenched mind-set. A sense of self-purpose and self-fulfilling prophecy divided her from her forbearers. The Republicanism of her parents was outdated, obsolete and on the wane.

MacSwiney’s statement characterises how revolutionary nationalists perceived themselves in early twentieth-century Ireland. Using letters, diaries and newspapers, Roy Foster traces the thoughts and feelings of the generation that rebelled against British rule in Easter 1916. Early in the book, he outlines his thesis.

                  

For many, young obscure Irish people in the opening years of the new century shared a sense that change was afoot, and that their generation would embody it. [. . .] [W]e might perhaps discern a “generation of 1916” in Ireland, reacting against their fathers. (pp 6-7)

Bent on self-transformation, these new nationalists felt part of a greater destiny. They sought to destroy what they saw as an Anglicized identity in pursuit of a purer, idealised vision of Ireland. In other words, the route of constitutional nationalism, then pursued by John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in Westminster, was totally ineffective. Redmonites collaborated with the British government – and Foster’s so-called ‘revolutionary generation’ found this unacceptable.

Radicalism encompassed various duties. Culturally speaking, the Irish language was key to a Republican relationship with the island of Ireland. Education was crucial. For instance, Gaelic League summer schools paved the way towards Irish language classes, indoctrinating students with revolutionary values to boot.

Admittedly, revolutionaries preferred symbol over substance as many of the main players struggled with Irish Gaelic. Liam de Róiste, another MacSwiney, admitted in 1906 that ‘I cannot say, with honesty, that I know the Irish language. I am very conscious that native speakers, in their hearts, laugh at my attempts’ (p. 50). The idea of Irish purity would be hard fought. Revolutionaries found it much easier to Gaelicize their names, a ‘powerfully symbolic act’ which allowed hardliners to don themselves with a mystic identity (p. 120). Overall, the emphasis on the Irish language is one example of how the revolutionary generation sought to cultivate nationalism.

Foster goes on to discuss the memory of the Irish revolution and the disparity between the generation’s early ideas versus the social conservatism that followed the formation of the Free State in the early 1920s. Many felt betrayed by the revolution – that is, de Valera’s Fianna Fáil government failed to stay true to the values of Easter 1916, imbuing national memory with a false version of meanings. Republicans like the Quaker writer, Rosamund Jacob, became disillusioned with de Valera, fearing the Free State’s revisionist ties with Catholicism and the formation of a two-nation Ireland. (The Free State constructed an identity which side-lined Protestant Republicanism, forgetting Republicans like Jacob in a state sponsored narrative of Irish history.) Foster notes how, over a hundred years later, debates surrounding the Irish revolution continue to this day. Anyone who reads this fascinating account of the individuals who set the revolution in motion will benefit from its lucidity and precision, remembering the conflicts that such a wild time in history caused.

Source: Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923. By R. F. Foster. Pp xxiii + 464 incl. 33 plates and 10 illustrations. London: Penguin, 2014. £10.99. 978-0-241-95424-9.

Vivid Faces by R. F. Foster. Showing Muriel and Mary
MacSwiney, c. 1922