DENIS DONOGHUE
Ireland: Race, Nation, State
(Part One)
Perhaps I should say a few autobiographical words to provide a context for
anything I think to say later on. I was born in Tullow, one of the minor
towns of County Carlow, itself a minor county of the Irish Free State, as
it was then constituted. But my home-though I rarely felt entirely at
home there-was in Warrenpoint, a town only slightly larger than Tullow,
in County Down, just across the border in Northern Ireland. My father
was the sergeant-in-charge of the local police force, the Royal Ulster
Constabulary. We were a Catholic family, living in the police barracks in
Warrenpoint: not a comfortable situation in domestic, social, or political
terms. My impulses were entirely nationalist, and I regarded the R . U.
C.
as an alien instrument of occupation; its function was to enforce the status
of Northern Ireland, a political entity I deplored. Whatever misgivings my
father and mother felt on this issue, they did not discuss them in my pres–
ence. Religion and politics were beyond the pale of conversation.
Warrenpoint is a seaside resort on Carlingford Lough, but it is mainly
distinctive for having the largest public square in Ireland. For that reason,
when I was growing up, it was famous for political marches, Unionist
flourishes of power, and Nationalist parades of resentment. Those occa–
sions were equal in one respect, though not ecumenical in any: each party
had two days in the year to itself. We had not yet learned to call the sum–
mer months the marching season, but the lines of ideological possession
were not in dispute. Nationalists started off the season on March 17, St.
Patrick's Day. Unionists took over the town on July 12, the anniversary of
their victory at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. There were two further
occasions. Nationalists who were also Roman Catholics-as nearly all
were and are-celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin on August 15. But they marched to a softer tread on that day than
on St. Patrick's Day, since they could hardly claim that the Blessed Virgin
was Irish. Finally, on the last Saturday of August, Unionists celebrated
Editor~
note:
" Ireland: Race, Nation, State" is an extended version of the 1998 Parnell
Memorial Lecture originally delivered at Magdalene College, Cambridge, on March
9. The second half of thi s article will appear in
Partisan Review's
Sununer 1999 issue.
