Redmondism Revisited?

During the past week, I spoke to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association at the city library in Dublin about the Irish experience of the Somme battle, following a commemorative event in St Stephen’s Green to mark the centenary of the death of Tom Kettle MP, the Redmondite figurehead who died with the famous 16th British Army division, which was filled with thousands of young Irish nationalists who had gone to war in 1914, believing in the need to support the rights of small nations such as Belgium and Ireland against imperial tyranny. The ceremony which I attended was graced by the presence of two members of the Irish Army in uniform, including an officer who read a tribute to Kettle’s role as a soldier - albeit in the uniform of the British Crown - and also a military piper who played a lament as we laid a wreath at the bust of Kettle, underneath the leaden skies of a damp September day.

Whilst the presence of the army at the event which I have just described offers a real sense of an official coming to terms with the Great War in Irish history, no-one should underestimate the significance either of the existence of such voluntary organisations as the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association or the other regimental groups dedicated to the retrieval of the memory of such historic bodies as the Connaught Rangers and the Munster Fusiliers. The Dublin Fusilier group is some 450 strong and organises a strong series of event throughout the year, including trips to the battlefields where the ‘Dubs’ once served. Members wear a special tie and possess a Fusilier lapel badge. Some members were, in their day, members of the Irish Defence Forces and are now happy, on important occasions, to wear the cap of the Irish army veteran with the insignia of this former Dublin regiment, denoting the validity of a much earlier period of Irish soldiering under the aegis of the British empire.

What has been truly intriguing for me is that on one or two occasions, when conversing with members of the RDFA, I have discovered what can only be described as Redmondite sympathies. Opinions have been expressed which, whilst indicating pride in Ireland’s current independence as a nation, also point towards a genuine regret for the precipitate deeds of the leaders of the Easter Rising and the swift eclipse of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party in the years just subsequent to the rebellion. I have heard historical regrets expressed which focus on the way in which the rise of Sinn Fein led inexorably to the partition of the island and the protectionist, economic disaster of the new ‘Free State’. And, as might also be expected, I have detected a deep sadness that the advent of the IRA in 1918 led to a campaign against anyone who was wearing the British Army uniform which had been such a source of pride to as well as financial security in so many ordinary Irish families.

In the New Ireland Group, it is imperative that we recognise that within the 21st century melting pot of politics, culture and economics which we are experiencing since the rise of the Celtic Tiger and the attainment of the Belfast Agreement, it is not just the old verities of unionism and of the northern physical force tradition that are being reassessed. There is reason to believe that numerous citizens of the Irish Republic are thinking long and hard about the journey that the southern counties of this nation took from 1916 onwards. Perhaps it is a sign of the confidence of the Republic that the past can now be looked at afresh and maybe we should not be surprised at the outcome, when old allegiances, that seemed to have vanished for ever, make a vivid and poignant reappearance.