Responding To Seán Mór

By AM Sunday, February 14, 2010

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Earlier today the former republican prisoner and current Irish language enthusiast ‘Seán Mór’ placed a comment on The Pensive Quill which while not addressed to anybody in particular, does merit something in the way of response from those of us who feel we can rule in or out of the republican court people on the basis of the views they profess to hold.

Thomas Paine’s notion might well have some purchase on the thinking of Seán Mór. If so, it is good company to be in.

It has always been the political craft of courtiers and court government to abuse something which they call republicanism but what that republicanism is or was they never attempt to explain.

There is already an interesting discussion prompted by the Seán Mór question. Because my response, although quickly written, is a bit long for a comment, I have opted to post it as an article on TPQ. This gives it no special status and others who feel they wish to make use of the same facility for a lengthy response can do so.

I have neither the time nor inclination to find the time to write a comprehensive piece detailing what republicanism includes and excludes. But there are some thoughts that struck me immediately upon mulling over Seán Mór’s question and which I wish to commit to print.

I see a difference between an Irish nationalist and a republican. Connolly was at pains to emphasise such a difference in his Labour In Irish History. He placed a demarcation line between conservative nationalism and radical nationalism. The latter was more complementary to and compatible with republicanism. So, there is history of differentiation that republicans might draw upon.

In 1995 I used a term to describe the SDLP at a public discussion in Derry - ‘partitionist nationalists.’ Mitchel McLaughlin bristled at its usage arguing that there was no such thing; to which I responded that a partitionist nationalist was a nationalist – very different from a unionist who valued the union and opposed any united Ireland outside of British rule - who wanted Irish unity but who was prepared to have such unity deferred in preference to the partition/consent principle. Now Mitchel knew quite well that I was actually critiquing the SF position-to-be in a shielded fashion and for that reason he tried to rubbish the suggestion. So while a nationalist can be a partitionist a republican never is. It is the primal ground a republican cannot abandon.

About three years ago in a review for Fourthwrite I wrote the following:

But if republicanism is viewed as a systematic history of ideas rather than a whatever you’re having yourself philosophy then at its heart are core tenets that it seeks to promote and which distance it from the other perspectives that seek to utilise its insights.

It stands apart from nationalism in that interdependence rather than commonality defines it … Republicanism poses a particular challenge to nationalism in that it is based on citizenship rather than commonality. The point is illuminated in the collection of essays by showing that Germans living in Russia could obtain German citizenship as soon as they arrived on German soil but Turks living for years in Germany were denied citizenship.

In other words republicanism embraces people, not just some people on the basis of their national identity. It champions citizenship rather than common background.

The type of republicanism we are discussing today however is the republicanism that moulded the bulk of us – Provisional republicanism. It was a hybrid ensemble and the Provisional part ditched all republican sentiment and jumped into the arms of the British administration. The core issue it ceded ground on was the partition principle. Accepting that a minority in the island have the right to exercise veto and keep the country divided is the antithesis of republicanism. And support for the consent principle is inseparable from acknowledging that minority right to veto the unity of the country.

Whether the consent/partition principle is a good or bad thing is not the point – what is the point is that it is not a republican thing in that it is alien to the republican primal ground.

Taking it down to its most basic level, is there any republican who would criminalise armed republican activity and side with the British police against it? I totally oppose the use of armed force and criticise it most strongly but never forget that the people using it are in the very same mould as those young men and women who resisted tenaciously the British criminalisation policy in the jails. The SF leadership is in the mould of Don Concannon, Roy Mason and all that British crowd that stood shoulder to shoulder with the British police shouting ‘criminal’ at the people wearing the blanket. It should be an easy matter for observers to judge for themselves on what side of that line republicanism is to be found.