Anthony McIntyre feels a recently published book on dissident republicanism has set the benchmark for future work. 

There is a lot of good stuff being churned out by a burgeoning historiography of modern Irish republicanism. The contributing authors are not competing for space but are carving out different sectors which they proceed to flesh out with quality stuff. Having finished reading the third work in a reasonably short time frame, I opted to review them in the order they were read.

Marisa McGlinchey did not have an easy time crafting this work on dissident republicanism. The project in which the book has its provenance was beset from difficulties early on, which were highlighted and strongly criticised. A co-researcher later dropped out and McGlinchey - a bit too much of a worrier for this sort of thing - had to pick up the ball and run with it on her own and take it over the line. At the end of seven years of research the worrier became warrior and the final product has proven well worth the effort, igniting the public imagination like no other in the genre.

Not that her problems were over courtesy of her having moved to assure interviewees that from the outset she had the mechanisms in place that would protect the project from the type of sustained state assault the Boston College project had been subjected to. Even the appearance of the word "dissident" in the subtitle of the book has caused some to twitch their nose as if dissident is the bearer of a bad smell. What is a republican in a monarchy if not a dissident? I have always been quite content to identify as a dissident republican. I have never been content to allow dissident republicanism to be projected as a monolithic whole where its sole raison d'etre is to utilise physical force.

When eventually published there were still efforts to stifle the book. Prison management at Maghaberry for a time barred it from the jail. That is more revealing about the dullards that run the place than the author of the book and might even have prompted sales in response to an interest sprouting up from the hybrid seeds of censorship. There were reports of several customers turning up at book shops, unaware of the title but asking for the book that had been banned in Maghaberry.

The law of unintended consequence kicked in and now the archaic policy on book banning has been overhauled in the jail, pulling itself away from the Victorian view of what prisoners should be reading. Book banning in this day and age seems downright ridiculous but it is not as isolated as we might be tempted to feel. It is not the possible legitimisation of violence that the prison management were alarmed by – the bible was never banned despite its love of rape, slavery, genocide and infanticide – just the notion of a radical and unapproved idea. Then McGlinchey had the misfortune to be disinvited from attending a Saoradh ard fheis. She had written for a newspaper it disapproved of. As Napoleon once observed, among the oppressed are those who like to oppress.

Out of ninety people interviewed, there was only one person who is not a republican, Danny Morrison. A Belfast nationalist, he was gracious with his time, and his observations are no less valid because he is no longer situated on the republican spectrum, having opted to support the partition principle, the British police and judiciary - a strategic combination of which allows the British to prosecute and criminalise men and women who stood shoulder to shoulder with Bobby Sands. It is not simply a matter of Morrison and those of his persuasion having recoiled from the "theology" of republicanism which they rightly lambast, they have abandoned the "religion" of republicanism and have gone atheist on the entire project.

This is where McGlinchey is most insightful, clearly identifying the central demarcation line separating republicanism from other brands of nationalism within the country. It is the emphasis on the partition principle, otherwise called consent: “the most significant ideological shift undertaken by the Provisional Movement since 1986 was acceptance of the consent principle.”

Republicans have never believed that a majority of people in the North (a minority on the island) should be permitted to exercise a veto over the political unity of the country. They have always subscribed to the political concept of an unfractured national self-determination with no veto allowed to one geographical section of the island or one political minority in Ireland. In their view it is pointless claiming to oppose partition yet support the partition principle of consent which enables partition to exist. While rejecting consent of a minority it does not follow that the North should be coerced into unity by republican armed struggle. Republicans can easily oppose the use of republican armed force while simultaneously believing that the British state has a duty to legally coerce the North out of the UK.

The Provisional Movement killed around one thousand British state security force personnel in a bid to overturn the consent principle and killed no one to usurp the inequality principle. This forms the backdrop to McGlinchey’s treatment of the republican challenge to the Sinn Fein myth-making which has put forward the ersatz perspective that the Provisional IRA campaign, which was oversaw by some key Sinn Fein leaders, had as its objective equality rather than coercing unity into being.

Unfinished Business is a timely study on republicanism given the prominence in the news of the least politically thoughtful group of republicans to emerge since the Good Friday Agreement - the New IRA and its cohorts. In addition to a wide range of non-aligned republicans the author interviewed members of eirigi, Republican Sinn Fein, 32 County Sovereignty Movement, Saoradh, 1916 Societies, James Connolly Society and Republican Network for Unity. Despite the often competing groups the interviewees reveal the extent to which many of them have a promiscuous attitude to the myriad of republican bodies, moving through them seamlessly.

The author quotes Richard English in respect of the type of people she spoke to:

they clearly had a right to ask whether they suffering they endured and inflicted could be justified in pursuit of what the Provisional Movement eventually seemed to have settled for.

And it is in this spirit of academic inquiry that she goes on to draw this critique out so that people may better understand what makes dissidents tick. This is an understanding that Sinn Fein most definitely was not prepared to brook, hence its efforts to bully and intimidate its republican critics to the point of covering up for murder.

McGlinchey sets out to demonstrate who the dissidents are and makes the point that they constitute a much broader range than the “simplistic” mainstream depiction of them as unremitting armed strugglers. While many are reluctant to condemn armed struggle its is clear that for a large section of those interviewed there is no appetite for such a course. 

What does protrude as a unifying factor amongst all shades of dissident republican thought is the complete absence of trust in anything Sinn Fein promises. Says one thing does another seemed to be a monolithic view of the party amongst republicans. A very definite thematic unity is fashioned from the dissident critique of Sinn Fein: it ranges from total mistrust, a refusal to believe anything the party says, the extent to which the Provisionals were compromised by British Intelligence agencies, and Sinn Fein’s endless revisionism as the party tries to spin its way into constitutionalism while masking its origins. Also in the mix is Sinn Fein’s normalisation of partition and the British state security apparatuses who carry on much as they did during the IRA campaign, without the need for the same level of repression given the hopelessness of the military threat they face.

Unity, however, amongst republicans is a rare bird and McGlinchey makes the point that republicans have failed lamentably to articulate a clear strategy which in large part helps explain their fragmentation. She underscores this through flagging up RSF’s rejection of the 1916 Societies’ One Ireland One Vote campaign.

Throughout, the author uses the term radical republicans although as one of her interviewees, Tony Catney, pointed out there were some on the dissident spectrum who had the politics of Margaret Thatcher and merely wanted to be right wing Irish rather than right wing British.

McGlinchey painstakingly draws out the discourses of republicanism showing how today’s republicans employ the same concepts and language against Sinn Fein that Sinn Fein and the IRA used themselves during the armed struggle years. Dissidents do not see any radical rupture on their part with the politics that drove the campaign of the Provisionals but this fails to address just how discontinuous the Provisionals actually were from what preceded them.

Unfinished Business is also valuable for the way it brings into public discourse so many autonomous voices, illustrating that a feature of republicanism is the extent to which it has come to be characterised by the rise of independent republicans: independent from each other and from the republican groups, all the while explaining a revulsion at the authoritarianism they experienced while in Sinn Fein and a reluctance to join groups they feel might simply ape the Provisionals in terms of suffocating internal dissent and freedom of inquiry. One of the most incisive voices in respect of smothering debate is that belonging to the late IRA member Tony Catney who while never a member of Sinn Fein still managed to sit on its Ard Comhairle.

Some of the views expressed by the interviewees seemed formulaic and archaic, as if republican shibboleths on nationhood should not be subjected to public scrutiny. There is a move along nothing to see here approach to matters particularly around what it means to have national sovereignty. Some do not even want discussion of it which can only plant the same seeds of censure and censorship which came to characterise the Provisional Movement. 

Referencing antiquated views adds to the quality of the book. These views exist, there is a reason for them and Marisa McGlinchey does a remarkable job in pulling them all together. Doubtless, there will be future books on this very topic but the shoulders of the giant they will stand upon is Unfinished Business. 

Marisa McGlinchey, 2019, Unfinished Business: The Politics Of Dissident Irish Republicanism. Manchester University Press. ISBN: 978-0-7190-9698-3

Unfinished Business

Anthony McIntyre feels a recently published book on dissident republicanism has set the benchmark for future work. 

There is a lot of good stuff being churned out by a burgeoning historiography of modern Irish republicanism. The contributing authors are not competing for space but are carving out different sectors which they proceed to flesh out with quality stuff. Having finished reading the third work in a reasonably short time frame, I opted to review them in the order they were read.

Marisa McGlinchey did not have an easy time crafting this work on dissident republicanism. The project in which the book has its provenance was beset from difficulties early on, which were highlighted and strongly criticised. A co-researcher later dropped out and McGlinchey - a bit too much of a worrier for this sort of thing - had to pick up the ball and run with it on her own and take it over the line. At the end of seven years of research the worrier became warrior and the final product has proven well worth the effort, igniting the public imagination like no other in the genre.

Not that her problems were over courtesy of her having moved to assure interviewees that from the outset she had the mechanisms in place that would protect the project from the type of sustained state assault the Boston College project had been subjected to. Even the appearance of the word "dissident" in the subtitle of the book has caused some to twitch their nose as if dissident is the bearer of a bad smell. What is a republican in a monarchy if not a dissident? I have always been quite content to identify as a dissident republican. I have never been content to allow dissident republicanism to be projected as a monolithic whole where its sole raison d'etre is to utilise physical force.

When eventually published there were still efforts to stifle the book. Prison management at Maghaberry for a time barred it from the jail. That is more revealing about the dullards that run the place than the author of the book and might even have prompted sales in response to an interest sprouting up from the hybrid seeds of censorship. There were reports of several customers turning up at book shops, unaware of the title but asking for the book that had been banned in Maghaberry.

The law of unintended consequence kicked in and now the archaic policy on book banning has been overhauled in the jail, pulling itself away from the Victorian view of what prisoners should be reading. Book banning in this day and age seems downright ridiculous but it is not as isolated as we might be tempted to feel. It is not the possible legitimisation of violence that the prison management were alarmed by – the bible was never banned despite its love of rape, slavery, genocide and infanticide – just the notion of a radical and unapproved idea. Then McGlinchey had the misfortune to be disinvited from attending a Saoradh ard fheis. She had written for a newspaper it disapproved of. As Napoleon once observed, among the oppressed are those who like to oppress.

Out of ninety people interviewed, there was only one person who is not a republican, Danny Morrison. A Belfast nationalist, he was gracious with his time, and his observations are no less valid because he is no longer situated on the republican spectrum, having opted to support the partition principle, the British police and judiciary - a strategic combination of which allows the British to prosecute and criminalise men and women who stood shoulder to shoulder with Bobby Sands. It is not simply a matter of Morrison and those of his persuasion having recoiled from the "theology" of republicanism which they rightly lambast, they have abandoned the "religion" of republicanism and have gone atheist on the entire project.

This is where McGlinchey is most insightful, clearly identifying the central demarcation line separating republicanism from other brands of nationalism within the country. It is the emphasis on the partition principle, otherwise called consent: “the most significant ideological shift undertaken by the Provisional Movement since 1986 was acceptance of the consent principle.”

Republicans have never believed that a majority of people in the North (a minority on the island) should be permitted to exercise a veto over the political unity of the country. They have always subscribed to the political concept of an unfractured national self-determination with no veto allowed to one geographical section of the island or one political minority in Ireland. In their view it is pointless claiming to oppose partition yet support the partition principle of consent which enables partition to exist. While rejecting consent of a minority it does not follow that the North should be coerced into unity by republican armed struggle. Republicans can easily oppose the use of republican armed force while simultaneously believing that the British state has a duty to legally coerce the North out of the UK.

The Provisional Movement killed around one thousand British state security force personnel in a bid to overturn the consent principle and killed no one to usurp the inequality principle. This forms the backdrop to McGlinchey’s treatment of the republican challenge to the Sinn Fein myth-making which has put forward the ersatz perspective that the Provisional IRA campaign, which was oversaw by some key Sinn Fein leaders, had as its objective equality rather than coercing unity into being.

Unfinished Business is a timely study on republicanism given the prominence in the news of the least politically thoughtful group of republicans to emerge since the Good Friday Agreement - the New IRA and its cohorts. In addition to a wide range of non-aligned republicans the author interviewed members of eirigi, Republican Sinn Fein, 32 County Sovereignty Movement, Saoradh, 1916 Societies, James Connolly Society and Republican Network for Unity. Despite the often competing groups the interviewees reveal the extent to which many of them have a promiscuous attitude to the myriad of republican bodies, moving through them seamlessly.

The author quotes Richard English in respect of the type of people she spoke to:

they clearly had a right to ask whether they suffering they endured and inflicted could be justified in pursuit of what the Provisional Movement eventually seemed to have settled for.

And it is in this spirit of academic inquiry that she goes on to draw this critique out so that people may better understand what makes dissidents tick. This is an understanding that Sinn Fein most definitely was not prepared to brook, hence its efforts to bully and intimidate its republican critics to the point of covering up for murder.

McGlinchey sets out to demonstrate who the dissidents are and makes the point that they constitute a much broader range than the “simplistic” mainstream depiction of them as unremitting armed strugglers. While many are reluctant to condemn armed struggle its is clear that for a large section of those interviewed there is no appetite for such a course. 

What does protrude as a unifying factor amongst all shades of dissident republican thought is the complete absence of trust in anything Sinn Fein promises. Says one thing does another seemed to be a monolithic view of the party amongst republicans. A very definite thematic unity is fashioned from the dissident critique of Sinn Fein: it ranges from total mistrust, a refusal to believe anything the party says, the extent to which the Provisionals were compromised by British Intelligence agencies, and Sinn Fein’s endless revisionism as the party tries to spin its way into constitutionalism while masking its origins. Also in the mix is Sinn Fein’s normalisation of partition and the British state security apparatuses who carry on much as they did during the IRA campaign, without the need for the same level of repression given the hopelessness of the military threat they face.

Unity, however, amongst republicans is a rare bird and McGlinchey makes the point that republicans have failed lamentably to articulate a clear strategy which in large part helps explain their fragmentation. She underscores this through flagging up RSF’s rejection of the 1916 Societies’ One Ireland One Vote campaign.

Throughout, the author uses the term radical republicans although as one of her interviewees, Tony Catney, pointed out there were some on the dissident spectrum who had the politics of Margaret Thatcher and merely wanted to be right wing Irish rather than right wing British.

McGlinchey painstakingly draws out the discourses of republicanism showing how today’s republicans employ the same concepts and language against Sinn Fein that Sinn Fein and the IRA used themselves during the armed struggle years. Dissidents do not see any radical rupture on their part with the politics that drove the campaign of the Provisionals but this fails to address just how discontinuous the Provisionals actually were from what preceded them.

Unfinished Business is also valuable for the way it brings into public discourse so many autonomous voices, illustrating that a feature of republicanism is the extent to which it has come to be characterised by the rise of independent republicans: independent from each other and from the republican groups, all the while explaining a revulsion at the authoritarianism they experienced while in Sinn Fein and a reluctance to join groups they feel might simply ape the Provisionals in terms of suffocating internal dissent and freedom of inquiry. One of the most incisive voices in respect of smothering debate is that belonging to the late IRA member Tony Catney who while never a member of Sinn Fein still managed to sit on its Ard Comhairle.

Some of the views expressed by the interviewees seemed formulaic and archaic, as if republican shibboleths on nationhood should not be subjected to public scrutiny. There is a move along nothing to see here approach to matters particularly around what it means to have national sovereignty. Some do not even want discussion of it which can only plant the same seeds of censure and censorship which came to characterise the Provisional Movement. 

Referencing antiquated views adds to the quality of the book. These views exist, there is a reason for them and Marisa McGlinchey does a remarkable job in pulling them all together. Doubtless, there will be future books on this very topic but the shoulders of the giant they will stand upon is Unfinished Business. 

Marisa McGlinchey, 2019, Unfinished Business: The Politics Of Dissident Irish Republicanism. Manchester University Press. ISBN: 978-0-7190-9698-3

4 comments:

  1. You never miss a chance for a dig at Morrison do you Anthony? lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. what makes you think that Steve? LOL

      What I said was mild given the very serious views I hold about him.

      Ultimately, not one part of what was said about him in the review was untrue.

      Delete
  2. Yeah I know, but if he reads this it'll be like playing chess with a dog.

    He'll know something is going on in front of him but will have absolutely no idea what!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve, I think you get Danny Morrison wrong here , he isn’t a dumb observer. He apparently has made dumb choices, makes dumb arguments because he was comprised/co-opted to your team somewhere along the way. He couldn’t get his job back from Rita O’Hare so badly exposed was his motivations. He is your creature.

    ReplyDelete