DENIS DONOGHUE
369
Ireland has taken over from the United Kingdom most of its arrangements
for the conduct of law, a two-tier system of government, a similar police
force, a system of class formations favorable to the middle and upper-middle
classes, and similar arrangements in economics, banking, and investment. I
am not convinced that this decision on the part of the Free State and later
governments has been ei ther an error or a sin.
Besides, it is a fact of inescapable significance that since 1922 Ireland–
most of it, twenty-six of the thirty-two counties-has been governed by
Irish men and women and is otherwise subject only to the institutions the
Irish people have chosen to join, notably the European Union. That seems
to me to make such a difference that I am content to put up with every
defect in the government of Ireland, even beyond the third generation.
Perusal of Gramsci's
Prison Notebooks,
Fanon's
The Wretched
if
the Earth,
and
later work by Benedict Anderson, Edward Said, Partha Chatterjee, and
Homi Bhabhi has not weakened my resolve in that respect. I deplore the
faults of successive Irish governments: a misguided policy on the Irish lan–
guage, a futile economic war between Ireland and England in the 1930s,
folly in the question of censorshi p of books and magazines, the confound–
ing of politics and religion, the bad faith of governments on the question
of Northern Ireland. But I don't regret that Ireland stayed neutral in the
Second World War, or that it has chosen, at least for the present, to stay out
of NATO and to maintain its independent judgment, at least occasionally,
in the United Nations.
What I most deplore is the determination of Irish governments to
suppress the republican tradition in practice while paying lip service to it
on the standard anniversaries. I realize that the Free State government had
its hands full: it had to set up a working system of administration, entail–
ing reasonable arrangements in matters of law, agriculture, education,
economic development, transportation, and so forth. It had to deal with the
aftermath of a civil war, continued violence, assassinations. But I can't
believe that the execution of republican prisoners, even for crimes of mur–
der, was justified. What do you do with your gunmen when the revolution
is over? Long-term imprisonment would have been a just response. I con–
cede that in such circumstances the Free State government could not have
been expected to bring patient and imaginative consideration to these
questions: what should we do with the separatist passions we ourselves felt
and acted upon a few years ago, and how are we to comport ourselves in
relation to the United Kingdom and, more particularly, to those in
Northern Ireland who would take up arms rather than make common
cause with us?
De Valera had less excuse than Cosgrave for doing nothing. The insti–
tutions of the state were more settled, though not entirely to his
