Reflections back

I just wanted to take some time to reflect on the entire trip, especially the very end of the trip, as I was the last remaining Battenite in Ireland, and the only to truly experience St. Patrick's Day in Dublin.

Ireland is a beautiful, historic, intriguing place. Despite a proliferation of less than fantastic weather, the vistas of the island were some of the most fantastic views I have ever seen. It truly is an Emerald Isle, and the pictures I took cannot do justice to the real thing.

Ireland's history was one of the most important factors drawing me to the Ireland trip. Its conflicted history with England, and the very recent issues of independence, civil war, and domestic terrorism provide a vast canvas of socio-political information to digest. The locations, exhibits, and people provide information that no school lesson ever could.

On St. Patrick's Day: It is a tourist holiday. I would estimate that 1/4-1/3 of the population on St. Patrick's weekend in Dublin is not Irish. In my hostel, there were Spaniards, Germans, Russians, Italians, and a huge variety of other nationalities. This, coupled with the variety of folk I saw while walking around the city, really emphasized the fluidity of borders in the European Union. Even though Ireland is an island, the ease with which Europeans can take a weekend trip there is astounding to me.
The Parade was a lot of fun, although definitely an interesting collection of marching bands, floats, and characters. From the Purdue band to a DJing monkey, the variety of images and colors was intriguing, to say the least.

 

Finally, the return flight: I had a very interesting conversation with my rowmates, who were staffers for Fianna Fail, an opposition party in Ireland, founded by Eamonn de Valera. One of them was even from Inch Island! We had a very frank policy discussion on Irish party politics, Atlantic relations, and even the role of government in society (hint: we disagreed on a few things). But all in all, it reminded me of the importance of including a variety of viewpoints in policy discussion, and the wondrous nature of learning from someone else's experiences.

All in all, a great trip, and in the midst of APP work, I find myself more and more wishing I could go back!

Revolution!

Our first stop on the Dublin history tour was the Kilmainham Gaol. For me, this site was the most moving. The Goal has a strong connection to the April 24, 1916 Easter Rising, which was Ireland’s bid to finally separate itself from British rule. As we entered a stone courtyard within the stone walls of the Goal, the tour guide related how the Kilmainham Gaol was intimately tied to the Easter Rising. He pointed to one side of the courtyard; it was here that the British executed the men and women convicted for participating in the Easter Rising.  

[i]

On April 24, 1916, the Irish Brotherhood published the Proclamation of the Republic declaring “To the people of Ireland: Irishmen And Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.”[ii] The Proclamation was similar to a document, the Declaration of Independence, written 140 years earlier to create an independent government for the United States. In both instances, men of conviction signed a document, the 1916 Proclamation of the Republic and the 1776 Declaration of Independence, to effectively create an independent government separate from the British rule. By signing the document, they wanted to create a better life for their countrymen through self-governance. Additionally, by signing the document, all of the men signed their death warrants for standing in defiance of the Crown.

This is where the similarities end: the Easter Rising of 1916 ended very differently than the American Revolution of 1776. The British squashed the Easter Rising in 6 days. The seven authors of the Proclamation were executed within 19 days of the beginning of the Easter Rising. Six of the authors, Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, and Joseph Plunkett, were stood against the stone walls of the Kilmainham Gaol courtyard and shot. The seventh author, James Connolly was shot on the opposite side of the courtyard while he was tied to a chair due the fact that he shattered his ankle during the fight.

This could have been the fate of the planners of the American Revolution and authors of the Declaration of Independence. They lived to fight the British for 8 years and ultimately win the independence for the United States of America. It was this point that struck me so strongly. The desire for self-governance is one that resonates within us all. It is this desire motivates our leaders to make great sacrifices in the name of the greater good for their countrymen and women.

by Ammy George

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[i] Kilmainham Gaol Courtyard. Photo by http://snowbirdjournal.com/upload/2481/july2012/Courtyard_at_Kilmainham_Goal.jpg

[ii] Primary Documents - Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 24 April 1916. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/irishproclamation1916.htm

 

Summary of Thoughts....

For the first part of the trip we explored Dublin. Dublin is gorgeous- it has beautiful buildings with a big canal running down the heart of it. It was a great place for our introduction to Ireland and it's people. 

One of the stops on our tour was to the famine memorial. It was later on in the day and the lighting gave the statues an eerie glow. Our guide told us that if you were silly enough to crack a joke about the famine, you might get punched. Here in Ireland they hang on to their history in a way I've never seen. The famine was over 5 generations ago, and yet our guide told us that his mother would never let a visitor leave her house without something to eat- a scar left from the famine neither she nor anyone she knew lived through. Our guide also told us that Ireland also gives more charity (not just per capita)  to famine causes each year than any other country. Again- their history is very real and very raw even after generations. Paul made a great point- at the recent Oscars someone joked that "Daniel Day Lewis was the best actor to get in Lincoln's head since John Wilkes Booth." That crack (from the same era as the famine) didn't create a stir or cause any controversy that I know of. Very different. 

During our second day in Dublin we went to the UN Peace Training School. Ireland can't deploy troops except for for UN Peace missions. Again, so different from back home. They have a tiny country and yet they've been involved in most peace operations since the 1960s. The next day we went to the University of Dublin and got to meet a professor who's running "We the Citizens" which is a national constitutional referendum. The crazy thing is that it's made up of 100 people, 60 of whom were randomly chosen citizens. I can't help but think that that would never work in the States. But, Ireland is tiny! 4 million people total. Between these experiences I learned about the benefits of a small country, and also that though small they can still have a global impact.

On our last day in Dublin we went to Parliment and got to meet with members of Shinn Fein- formerly the political arm of the IRA. The minister we met gave us a tour and then sat down and told us about Irish history. While you'd expect him to be staunchly partisan (being a republicanist) he gave what I think was the most unbiased presentation on the Troubles I heard during my entire time in Ireland. He then took us to Prime Minister question hour- where we saw the head of Shinn Fein Jerry Adams) go toe to toe with the Prime Minister about getting cochlear implants for a little boy. Now Jerry Adams caused a scandal in the 90s because he came to America and met with Clinton, even though we was considered a terrorist at the time. But look now- a decade later and this formerly militant man is fighting over... health benefits. Amazing how far Ireland has come.

After our time in Dublin ended, we went to Derry which is half in northern Ireland and half in the Republic of Ireland. It was the location of Bloody Sunday. While there we heard lectures from a former Protestant guerrilla fighter, a former IRA militant, a journalist who covered the troubles for the BBC, two police offers who started their careers during the conflict, and a scholar. What I came to learn was that all sides were exhausted by the conflict and that they're glad to live in a world where their children just have to worry about school. But, they all acknowledge that peace is tenuous. The police offer said something I thought was quite powerful: "peace is relentless, you must just keep sitting at the table." 

One memory I'll have forever is sitting with Big John at an IRA bar. Big John is  a former militant in the IRA. As a young guy in the 1970s he must have been terrifying he's so huge. John gave us a waking tour of location where Bloody Sunday took place. It was quite powerful. He was there. The night after that tour and his lecture we found ourselves in Sandinos bar with Big John. Sandinos is named after the Sandinistas movement and the inside is covered with propaganda from all anti-imperial causes: Native Americans, Sandinistas, Basque movement, Palestine, Free Syria, and tons of Che. I guess until this point i'd forgotten that a non imperialist power existed in Europe! I had to pinch myself at this point- it was such an incredible experience! 

Cochlear Implants and the Modern Sinn Fein

Gerry Adams was upset. On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to attend a Prime Minister’s Questions session in the Irish Parliament (the Teachta Dáil). As leader of the opposition party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams was one of those entitled to ask questions of the Prime Minister. This is the same Gerry Adams who headed Sinn Fein whilst it was the mouthpiece for the Irish Republican Army during the troubles, and whose negotiations with the Irish and British governments along with John Hume helped bring about peace in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein remains committed, however, to a United Ireland. And Adams remains a controversial figure- there is constant speculation on the extent of his activities within the IRA. Though unconfirmed, many believe that he held a seat of the Provisional IRA’s Army Council during the Troubles. He was so controversial that British Prime Minister even took the extraordinary step of placing a “media ban” on the broadcast of Adams’ voice in the United Kingdom, and was temporarily barred from entering the United States. He is the current  president of a political party which once declared an “Armalite and ballot box” strategy, in their own words asserting that they would take power in Ireland with a “ballot in one hand and an [automatic weapon]" in the other.

So what did the controversial Gerry Adams spend his questions on? As it turns out, a decidedly uncontroversial topic. Adams made a passionate case for state funding for cochlear implants, a surgically implanted electronic device which can allow deaf children to better understand speech and environmental sounds.  

Since its days as the political wing of a republican paramilitary group waging a brutal campaign in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein has separated from the IRA and become a viable, national political party interested not just in the cause of a unified Ireland but in an entire range of issues. Today, it is the fourth largest party in the Republic of Ireland and, even more extraordinarily, the second largest political party in the legislative assembly of Northern Ireland. And it has taken on a legitimacy unimaginable only a decade and half ago. The modern Sinn Fein denounces violence and promotes center-left social policies which focus on minority rights and ending poverty in Ireland. Hardly a radical agenda. Perhaps the many former militants who populate the party have examined demographic and opinion trends which indicate that Ireland will eventually reunite, and have simply decided they have no need to press the issue. Nonetheless, the fact that Gerry Adams can stand in the Dáil and emphasize Cochlear implants instead of republicanism and unification is a testament to just how far the peace process has come.

Irish Capital Punishment

I arrived in Dublin international airport at 7:00 am, found our program director at the airport breakfast place, and did the first thing I always do when entering a foreign country- pick up the fattest newspaper I could find. Leafing through it, I quickly found that news in the Emerald Isle would not afford a respite from American news. One of the lead stories was about the recent capture of Osama Bin Laden’s son in law and former Al-Queda spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. I remarked to our Irish program director, Tony, that I was unsure what crime he could actually be charged with, to which Tony remarked, “Just execute him.” After a quizzical look, he clarified: “I am of course opposed to capital punishment, but sometimes I wish we could make an exception.”

           

 Ireland’s attitude towards capital punishment is a curious one. Before you meet them, you would suspect that hardened nationalists, veterans of the troubles, Sinn Fein representatives and former Irish Republican Army operatives, some of whom have been associated with actual executions, would have at least reconciled themselves to the concept. As it turns out, the opposite is true. Ireland abolished capital punishment in ­­1990, and the vast majority of its inhabitants remain steadfastly opposed to the idea.

             

In the north, this trend might be attributed to an institutional distrust of the state, and thus the legitimacy of state-conducted executions. But similar attitudes persist in the Irish Republic. It could also be part of the general European conception that the practice is outdated and barbaric. Talking to former members of the IRA as well as unionist paramilitary organizations about execution, you would think you were conversing with a representative from amnesty international. As it turns out, years of violence doesn’t seem to have hardened them to the idea of death. It has done the exact opposite. Witnessing unarmed friends or family being ‘executed’ unlawfully by IRA on one side, or by unionist groups and even British soldiers on the other, has evidently bred a deep contempt of the practice among those most closely associated with it. Perhaps men who know what it is to take a life are the least likely to want to do so arbitrarily.

Blood Sunday Tour

Before coming to Ireland Paul had us each write a memo. Since we were going to Derry, I decided to write about Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday took place in Derry on January 30, 1972. On that day,  a civil rights march, held to protest internment of suspected IRA members without trial, ended when British soldiers fired on unarmed civilians. 14 men were killed, half of whom minors. The Saville Inquiry, which investigated the events, released its findings in 2010. They found the British soldiers actions "unnecessary and unjustifiable."

To prep for my memo I researched, I watched a BBC documentary, and I read testimonies from that day. But nothing could have prepared me for Big John's tour.

Big John works on peace and reconciliation efforts in Ireland. Before this though Big John was a member of the IRA. At 6'6" Big John's nickname rings true. You'd think that his size and past would make him intimidating, but in person John exudes warmth.  He's quick to laugh and absolutely hysterical.

On Thursday, we met John and started our tour. He kept showing us pictures as he explained the events of that day. I think the pictures played dual role- they certainly helped set the scene and make it more real, but I couldn't help but think that he also used them as evidence. The events of Bloody Sunday were contested (who shot first and why) for almost 40 years. At one point in the tour, John showed us the exact spot where a teenager was shot in the middle of the street. The boy's father ran out to get him and was also shot. The father had just enough time to reach out and touch his son before he passed out. The father survived, but his son didn't.

Then we walked into an open plaza and John pulled out a picture of a boy running across that same plaza on Bloody Sunday. That boy was John. It hit me then that he wasn't just telling us stories- he was reliving that day. John told us that as he ran for cover, his friend and classmate was shot in the back and paralyzed. John crouched and watched as a British solider walked up to his friend and shot- killing him. So much for the "shooting armed men" defense. The solider then looked at John and shrugged his shoulders. I wasn't  surprised to  learn that the events of Bloody Sunday led to an upshot in IRA membership. 

John's tour made it clear that the events  of Bloody Sunday, and  really all the Troubles, are still incredibly raw.

Probably the Best Coffee in Dublin

Dublin along the River Liffey

The British are famous for their self-deprecatory humor -- everyone from Emma Thompson to Eddie Izzard consistently demure from taking any credit or praise. This, in contrast to the perceived American bravado, creates a pretty stark difference in humor and culture.

Dublin is certainly no England, but the Irish love to jokingly remind themselves of how “small a country” they are, as our final speaker tonight repeated more than once. An unlike every single café in cities in the US that boast “the best coffee in the world,” Dublin seems to set its sights a bit lower, if a bit more tongue-in-cheek as well.

I wish we had a picture, but near the center of the city, one café’s sign boasted “Probably the best coffee in Dublin.” This sat only a few blocks away from the (what must be aptly named) “Decent Cigar Shop.” When we spoke to one of the UN peacemakers that makes up Ireland’s only international military force, he constantly reminded us how small or in some way less Ireland was in comparison to the larger armies of it’s fellow EU and NATO brethren. However, at the same time, because he was able to point out his own countries faults, we could also listen with a certain level of trust when he gave his opinions of the other operations of the world. When he spoke of the actions of French troops in the Congo or the Italians in Lebanon, we heard both the strengths and the flaws of these countries—in part, yes, because he had already set his own nationalism aside with a few quips about how the Irish were nowhere near perfect.

A final moment occurred this morning at the Derry police department. One of our guides turned to us and asked, slight bewilderment in his voice, “Why are so many Americans so interested in being Irish?”

We joked around the answer, perhaps mimicking our hosts in playing it a bit coy about our own nationality, but the bewilderment is funny. The Irish display so much pride in their history, their heritage and their heroes. They take their past and their present very seriously – much more seriously than their self-deprecatory humor lets on. It’s a bit of a surprise, and I think sometimes hard for Americans to understand, how a people can be at once so proud and so apologetic. It makes for a charming people and a relatively hilarious set of street signs, however.

By Caitlin Cummings