The Contest of Memory: The Continuing Impact of 1798 Commemoration

THE CONTEST OF MEMORY: THE CONTINUING IMPACT OF 1798 COMMEMORATION PETER COLLINS the Society of United Irishmen might be said to have originated in commemoration . The organization was founded in Belfast in October 1791 after many of its members participated in the enthusiastic and widespread anniversary commemorations of the fall of the Bastille that took place in the city in the previous July. The United Irishmen considered those Bastille Day celebrations, which were repeated for several more years in Belfast and in Dublin, to be important propaganda exercises that aimed to establish an affinity with revolutionary France, a political culture that in many respects they sought to emulate. In much the same way, later generations of Irish people have engaged in commemorations of the 1798 rebellion that have sought to establish an affinity backward to the United Irishmen. The aim of this essay is to identify the many authors of ’98 commemoration over the past two centuries and to analyze their often competing motivations. Down the years, commemoration of the United Irishmen and the 1798 rising has provided a litmus test of Irish political attitudes. To an extent, this can be measured by contemporary commentators. However, we might also gain useful insights into the state of politics at any given period by observing the activity of commemoration, its nature, and extent. As Kevin Whelan has remarked, the legacy and commemoration of ’98 has continued to have an impact on politics. “The 1798 rebellion was fought twice,” he points out, once on the battlefields and then in the war of words which followed in those bloody footprints. The struggle for the control of the meaning of the 1790s was also a struggle for political legitimacy. . . . The interpretation of 1798 was designed to mould public opinion and influence policy formaTHE CONTINUING IMPACT OF 1798 COMMEMORATION 28 tion: the rebellion never passed into history because it never passed out of politics. . . .1 For some the purpose of commemorating ’98 has been mainly to rekindle interest in the United Irish principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity and to establish the “brotherhood of affection between Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter” that the United Irishmen originally hoped to create . Revolutionary republicans have also used the memory of the United Irishmen to advance their radical separatist project. Others, although originally hostile to the secular and revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen, nevertheless got involved in commemoration because of the pragmatic political necessities of their own day. A good example was the Catholic church, which opposed the United Irishmen and what they represented from the 1790s onward. By the time of the centenary in 1898, however, due in part to an unprecedented level of popular interest, the church felt compelled to intervene in the commemoration in order to help shape its agenda. It successfully counterposed its “faith and fatherland” version to the revolutionary secular republican interpretation of the ’98 rising . In much the same way, constitutional nationalists had long been wary of commemorating a failed physical-force revolution, but they also felt obliged to take part in the centenary commemorations so that the field would not be left entirely to their republican opponents. It is no less important to understand the hostile attitude of loyalists to the commemoration of 1798. Many loyalists, particularly northern Presbyterians, were descendants of the United Irishmen. However, by the time of the centenary they had long since become implacable opponents of the aims of the United Irish project and, by extension, of its commemoration. REVISING THE RISING In the immediate aftermath of the 1798 rebellion there was a collective recoil from the shock of the disastrous events that in only a few months had led to the deaths of some 30,000 persons and the maiming, jailing, and exile of many thousands more. In certain parts of Ireland hardly a family was untouched by these tragic events. For various reasons, however, many sought to distance themselves from the rebellion. A form of collective amnesia occurred, particularly in counties Antrim and Down where PresTHE CONTINUING IMPACT OF 1798 COMMEMORATION 29 1 Kevin Whelan, The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism, and the Construction of Irish Identity, 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996), 133. See also the book’s...