Political Solution or Political Illusion Part I

I have always been intrigued through out history about the mystery of illusionists and now they captivated and enthused their audiences. Not to bore you with the details, the art of illusion falls into three broad categories, optical, auditory and tactile, with the former two the best known by most of us.



However, prestidigitation or misdirection is the fundamental backbone of many illusions. The true art of illusion involves focusing the audience’s attention on one object or place while the actual trick is conducted elsewhere.
The art of illusion has always been synonymous with politics through out world history and unfortunately our own shores have not escaped it’s effects.
However, when an entire society subscribes to an illusion, mankind will inevitably correct the transgression, or perish as a whole. Have no doubt; confronting strong proponents of illusions requires eternal vigilance. Vigilance in this context can only mean; confronting a persistent political illusion with a legitimate political vision.

‘Facts are stubborn things; and whatever maybe our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence!’ (John Adams, 2nd American President, 1797–1801)

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So how can the art of illusion be adapted to our current political situation. In one word ‘The Good Friday Agreement’!! In my opinion this agreement provided the imaginary cloak for Britain’s plan to burden us with the next phase of it’s very calculated and visionary imperial agenda!

In my previous letter I made reference to British Imperialism and it’s effect upon the Irish people. But on closer inspection Imperialism can take many guises and not just the military form which we all pre-occupied ourselves with and were subject to up until The Good Friday Agreement. (and to some Republican’s still are!!!)

As the British government will know, through their practices both here and on foreign soils, military imperialism is only the first step in establishing imperial hegemony - (a word I will explain later)- and a very uneconomic one at that! It is costly and, by itself, produces few long-term benefits for the colonizer. Therefore, it must be followed by strategies to persuade the colonized to accept their condition and transfer their allegiance to their conquerors to ensure an uninterrupted flow of benefits from colonized to colonizer without further military intervention. Hence military imperialism transforms itself into linguistic and cultural imperialism.

Hegemony can be best described as the processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the setting up a police force to control opposition. To the sceptics this will resemble very much our Stormont government of today and on the ongoing debate regarding The Irish Language Bill, The Policing & Justice Bill and cultural and emblems issues. The recent rumblings of disquiet from dissident Republican groups are just the repercussions of when, once insurgent ideology, threatens to become hemogenic.

However, let us not kid ourselves that we are any better off from having no more military imperialism. By their very nature, linguistic and cultural imperialism are more insidious than the military form!! There is a very fine line demarcating political vision and political illusion especially since memory and recollection play such a major part in our nationalist and republican tradition.

So to all you traditional Republican’s out there, I will sign of with an extract from one of two ballads inserted in the play ‘The Freedom of the City’ by Brian Friel: and depicts the aftermath of three IRA volunteers who were shot in the Guild Hall Square, Derry.

“We’ll not forget that sunny evening, nor the names of these bold three
Who gave their lives for their ideal – Mother Ireland, one and free.
They join the lines of long-gone heroes, England’s victims, one and all.
We have their memory still to guide us; we have their courage to recall”

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Trust Your Leaders! (UNCENSORED)

In 1915, James Connolly proclaimed the immortal words

“Trust Your Leaders!”

Nearly a century later, traditional Irish Republicans are re-iterating and pondering over the very same words, but with a fundamentally different tone!

In many republicans’ minds, the exclamation mark has now been replaced by a question mark. Irish history has shown that our embattled people have always placed our leaders on pedestals during extenuating circumstances, investing their time and energies believing and implementing their ideologies. During conflict we have idealised them to the point that any form of criticisms or protest was perceived as derisory and near sacrilege to the cause. However, when upon realising that these heroes were but mere mortals, we were guilty of quickly turning the same level of adoration, in equal measure, into ferocious condemnation and contempt, leading all too often to tragic consequences.
However, undeterred, our illustrious leaders have always by tradition, professed to inspire faith and purpose in our people through out our history of decimation and adversity at the hands of British Imperialism. From Charles Stewart Parnell to Michael Collins, their British counterparts of their time could not undermine their forth-rightness and remarkable steadfastness to their cause. Their principle over riding goal was always not to remake society but to remake government. Of Parnell, William Ewart Gladstone, described him as the most remarkable person he had ever met, whilst a future Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, described him as one of the three or four greatest men of the nineteenth century! Of Collin’s, Winston Churchill, who was actively involved in the British negotiating team of the 1920 Anglo-Irish Treaty spoke of his adversary,

“He supplied those qualities of action and personality without which the foundation of Irish nationhood would not have been established."

However, will such comments ever be bestowed upon our current SF leaders in this, the 21st century?
Any history book on successful conflict resolution will unequivocally tell you that a revolutionist who surrenders the initiative to the enemy is already defeated before any negotiation takes place! To many traditional republicans involved in the current struggle, this surrender of the initiative was remonstrated in both Decommissioning and the provision of Articles 2 & 3, to be used as bargaining chips. In return, The Good Friday agreement and all its complexities, was designed to herald a time for momentus change, i.e. a complete break from the past and those dark days. However, to accommodate this grand meeting of minds Adams & McGuinness had to follow a similar path to that of their predecessor Michael Collins. And like Collins, the current Sinn Fein leadership has accepted institutions and ideas which leave a bitter taste in the mouths of traditional republicans. Through self-professed extenuating circumstances, Sinn Fein has in effect accepted a two-state solution, agreed to take part in partitionist Stormont and in essence succumb to adhere to British rule. Yet, in many of their addresses to rally support from their party faithful pre-Good Friday, they strenuously vowed such conditions would be unequivocally unacceptable as an outcome to any negotiations.
However, unfortunately, that is where the similarities between Collin’s negotiations and those of the current SF leadership abruptly end! Back then Collins assumed leadership of a fledgling state (FREE of all British forces) and took command of a national army into which many of his IRA comrades could be absorbed into. In effect, he was given the platform on which to build a new Irish state based on the principles of

‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’

, and in his own words the republican movement of that era had fought and died and WON

“the freedom to achieve freedom”

. Au contraire, given such a platform and mandate, the current SF leadership cannot boast of such lofty successes. Instead, all we seem to have achieved are a few seats in Sunningdale Mark II, no commitment from the British government to remove their troops let alone a withdrawal date. Furthermore, we as a society are faced with the yet unknown future consequences of rumblings of discontent and dis-satisfaction within the republican movement itself.
If only our current leaders could use such inspirational language as Connolly, Collins, Pearse et al. Much has been made recently about Martin McGuinness's comments regarding the description of dissident republicans as

“traitors to the island of Ireland”

. Leaving aside the whole hypocracy debate that ensued, it is very important to fully understand the meaning of the diction that our leaders use especially if it is to be deemed in some quarters as inflammatory and provocative. Therefore, we must ask ourselves what exactly is the true definition of a traitor? According to the online dictionary provided by Farlex (www.thefreedictionary.com) a traitor is described as ‘One who betrays one's country, a cause, or a trust, especially one who commits treason’. As Deputy First Minister, it is perfectly legitimate for him to point out the futility of an armed struggle and to do so will not advance the cause of a United Ireland. However, for all our sakes, he thankfully stopped short of accusing them of the latter word treason, which in itself is defined as a ‘Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.’
For many republicans the current political situation continues to throw up a volley of unanswered questions rather than answers. For example:

Will the unravelling of future events unveil that the current SF leaders valued their own personal political power or other interests over the cause?

Did they too, unwittingly become ravaged, as the IRA did in the mid 90’s, by infiltration by British Intelligence agents, which would have undoubtedly, seriously compromised their future bargaining position?

Or, ultimately, will this generation of Irish Republican voters have been deemed to have overestimated the ambition and underestimated the current SF leadership’s conviction to the cause?

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