O’CONNELL LECTURE DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT ST. MALACHY’S COLLEGE, BELFAST
O’CONNELL LECTURE DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT ST. MALACHY’S COLLEGE, BELFAST, THURSDAY, 24TH FEBRUARY, 2005
Dia dhíbh go léir tráthnóna.
I went to school right next door in a small convent school which backed on to St. Malachy’s but which has long since moved to new premises. In those days, as I watched the handsome young men in their black blazers and distinctive ties make their way up the Antrim Road to school, I had little understanding of the historic link between their school and the great Liberator, Daniel O’Connell. This, of course, was the first such College to open in Ulster after his great achievement in procuring Catholic Emancipation in 1829. You could say he opened the door that let our future in.
We gather this evening to reflect on the vision of that man whose historical importance is so significant that Dublin’s main thoroughfare is named in his honour. His statue stands at the River Liffey end of that street, passed every day by hundreds of thousands of people and yet it would be true to say that he has been somewhat neglected in recent times, his remarkable accomplishments overshadowed, perhaps, by characters regarded as more romantic or exciting and almost invariably more militant.
History has not been particularly kind to any of us who inhabit this island. A shared history is not the same thing as a shared memory of that history and it is hard, maybe even still impossible to find in the world of politics, heroes or heroines who are equally beloved by all shades of our diverse ancestries. O’Connell in his day was as reviled as he was adored. He was as controversial among those whose political ambitions he shared as those he opposed. Yet he was without a doubt one of the most influential political visionaries of his era, a key influencer of Irish, British, European and American politics, a founding father of social inclusion and democratic egalitarianism, the man who, by peaceful advocacy alone, put a radical new awareness of civil liberties and human rights on the political agenda of these two islands.
The O’Connell Lecture invites us to reflect from our contemporary perspectives on this towering figure in Irish, British and European history of the 19th century. Daniel O’Connell was born in 1775, died in 1847, and was described as “the exemplary international humanitarian of the age”. What, if any, significance can we extract from his life and vision in our times a century and a half later? In Rome, Gioacchino Ventura declared in his funeral oration on the death of O’Connell, ‘God does not create a great man for the use of a single age or a single people…’. That sounds like an invitation to ask whether O’Connell might indeed have a purpose for our age and for all the peoples who live on this island.
Maybe this quote from O’Connell himself can answer that question better than any words of mine:
“The principle of my political life and in that which I have instructed the people of Ireland is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create worse evils than they cure and leave the country worse than they found it.”
As his biographer Fergus O’Ferral has said:
“His career involved issues still vital in modern Irish politics, particularly the role of violence in the struggle for Irish nationality, hence he remains a touchstone in Irish political developments.”
Today, for all the statues in his memory and the streets named in his honour, O’Connell’s greatest monument is the foundation he laid a long, long time ago for the peace process of today and in essence the Good Friday Agreement. His has been a towering influence in moulding the tradition of moderate, non-violent and democratic politics and in robustly challenging that other tradition which used violence for political ends. It has been said that he died a disappointed man for his greatest twin ambitions were true reconciliation between Ireland’s Protestants and Catholics and an ending of the physical force tradition in Irish politics. No amount of effort on his part succeeded in producing the political formula which would bring about those ambitions but the formula was, of course, eventually found in 1998. The Good Friday Agreement set the scene for the growth of a new, non-sectarian and exclusively peaceful politics, its seeds planted generations before in hope that a wiser, more courageous generation might succeed where O’Connell had failed. It was built on the deaths, in the modern era, of almost 4,000 people and the trauma of tens of thousands left to mourn or to live in states of chronic anxiety. It was built on a shared hope and a capacity for mutual forgiveness unequalled in any conflict situation in modern times with the exception of the creation of the European Union out of the appalling suffering of World War 11. Importantly too, it was built on a dialogue between the traditions of peaceful politics and armed struggle out of which came a conscious and crucial decision by the armed struggle tradition to create the ceasefire space in which constitutional politics could show its power and its effectiveness. It has done precisely that.
Sometimes, when we live through our own history, its landmarks are not as evident to us as they become to those who come after us and there is little doubt that the Good Friday Agreement, when fully successful, as it please God will be, will rank among the most epic of events in modern Irish and British history. The massive majority North and South, who democratically endorsed the Agreement, saw it as an honourable, if difficult compromise and a very precious gift of peace to future generations. The rolling-out of the Agreement has been slow and, at times, stormy - as one might expect given the extent of long-held mistrusts and fears - but it has shown a remarkable robustness, weathering many difficulties. Now it faces that difficult period of clear disconnect between past and future, when old patterns of thinking and acting must give way completely to new ones that are intrinsically and unambiguously peaceful, lawful and egalitarian in their concept and conduct. This is the time for courage rather than chaos, for focus rather than foment. This is the time to exhibit utter fidelity to the vision at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement and, as it happens, at the heart of O’Connell’s vision too. Let us go back to O’Connell for a moment to see how his vision was gathered and expressed in his own times.
The political structure of the day was articulated by King George III in 1798 when he said:
“No country can be governed where there is more than one established religion: the others may be tolerated but that cannot extend further than leave to perform their religious duties according to the tenets of their church for which indulgence they cannot have any share in the government of the state.”
In that world, Presbyterians, non-conformists and Catholics found themselves outsiders subject to legal restrictions on their participation in civic society.
The Ireland of O’Connell’s day had a population of some eight million, one million of whom were Protestant and the rest Catholic. The Penal laws which had imposed considerable constraints on Catholics were already easing and, indeed, he was a beneficiary of one such change when in 1791 in England and 1792 in Ireland, Catholics were permitted to become barristers. But judicial appointments and many state offices, including Parliament, were still closed to them. O’Connell, the consummate lawyer, became the chief advocate of Catholic Emancipation. But, the context in which he placed that cause was startlingly radical for he argued not for concessions or favours but for rights, taking the then innovative view that each human being should be regarded as equal before the law regardless of politics, religion, colour or class. That belief informed his vision and his values. It caused him to side with the Protestants of Spain and Portugal in their struggle for civil liberties; to support the end of discrimination against Presbyterians and non-conformists; to champion civil rights for European Jews; to assert the right to universal suffrage; to argue for separation of church and state and to promote the end of slavery which he described as ‘an outrage of natural right and natural law’. His views on slavery pitted him against many of his Irish/American supporters and funders to whom he replied ‘I want no American aid if it comes across the Atlantic stained in Negro blood’.
One other essential principle infused his views, the one I mentioned at the outset and that was his unswerving faith in advocacy and political dialogue as the only acceptable means of achieving political reform. O’Connell had a horror of violence that was born of raw, direct experience. As a young man he had been schooled in France and had seen enough of the excesses of the French revolution to be turned off political violence for the rest of his life. As a barrister, he regularly defended clients who went to the gallows for their use of violence for political ends and he formed an abiding cynicism about its false glamour. On the contrary, he was determined to elaborate a strategy for the achievement of liberty through law. In consequence, he became the pioneer of large-scale democratic mobilisation, not just in Irish, but in British politics also, through mass political organisation, his legendary penny rent and his so-called monster meetings.
The penny rent was an ingenious system which turned the humble penny into a powerful force in politics. Contributors gave a penny a month to the cause thus freeing it from the pressure of interest groups which might have brought their own aims to the table and which might also have metamorphosed into factions along which the movement might split. Probably, more importantly, the monthly rent brought people together in a common commitment to their own liberation. A feature of this movement, which is different from almost all of the movements for liberty which preceded it, is that it was entirely constructive. No part of it depended on the sort of destructive action which had characterised the rebellions of the past. O’Connell’s keen legal mind discerned the weaknesses which produced the past failures and turned his loathing of political violence into the foundation on which he built a peaceful alternative strategy for the achievement of the same ends. Interesting, too, to note that the backbone of his organisation were the first generation to have benefited from elementary education. Their newfound confidence and ambition found a political home with O’Connell.
O’Connell was the author of the concept of political inclusion generations before it was to become commonplace. His vision at its simplest was, as all are equal, then live and let live. The concept of political inclusion was augmented by the concept of social inclusion, for he felt deeply the wasted lives of the poor and longed for a system of governance which simply took care of all its people without fear or favour and which existed by their will exercised through universal suffrage.
What O’Connell invented was the modern democratic party. He wanted to procure justice for all human beings who were restricted in their life-choices by virtue of the group they belonged to. The idea that he would have any hand or part in replacing a Protestant ascendancy with a Catholic ascendancy was anathema to him. The Ireland he aspired to would be resolutely egalitarian, non-sectarian, a place where Irish culture and British culture could flourish side by side. As has been written of him “the subjection of culture to politics revolted O’Connell”.
So does his vision resonate with today’s island of Ireland, where the constitutional position of Northern Ireland has been democratically agreed and can only be altered by decision of the people of Northern Ireland? Does it resonate in jurisdictions where, by contrast with O’Connell’s day, civil and human rights are asserted and vindicated by a formidable array of national and international laws, courts, tribunals and both formal and informal structures that span a free press, accountable policing and universal suffrage? Does his vision resonate in a time of widespread access to education which has created a massive capacity for confident influence and advocacy, unheard of in previous generations? I believe it does so resonate.
I might ask this question - is there an issue or a political ambition facing anyone on this island that cannot be adequately and effectively addressed exclusively through the politics of peaceful persuasion? I know of none and as far as anyone can tell that is, for the first time since O’Connell’s era, the stated position of every single elected political party on this island bar none.
The man who himself could not and did not reconcile Irish nationalism’s armed tradition with the Constitutional politics tradition was accustomed to crises, to disappointments and setbacks. He knew politics could be frustratingly slow but he also believed it would be sure. He had a vision, a just vision not for his co-religionists or for Ireland alone but for all humankind. He sold it by persuasion. His words opened up new thinking and accomplished a bloodless revolution, too much for some, too little for others but he changed history by the peaceful yet relentless assertion of sheer moral argument. His was a world characterised by inequality and injustice but he accepted his share of responsibility for changing things and for changing things in ways which fully honoured the principles of liberty, tolerance, equality and respect for each human being, which he espoused. Since his death in a famine-ravaged Ireland over 160 years ago, we have added layer upon layer to the blame we all share for the tragic history which is our common inheritance. Yet, in our time, we of all generations have come closest to an honourable framework for a fresh new culture of consensus. Relationships between Ireland and Great Britain have never been better or friendlier. Relationships between North and South have begun to ease. Relationships within Northern Ireland have great possibilities as peace becomes the norm and literally thousands of good-hearted men, women and children toil away quietly at the job so brilliantly described by John Hewitt as building “to fill the centuries arrears”. As we meet here this evening and reflect on the past, the present and the future; as we reflect particularly on the opportunity we have so nearly in our grasp, which so many have invested in and so much of our future depends upon, this is a time for conscientiously seeing things through, for making good on promises given and accepted in good faith. It is time to close the door on the tradition of armed struggle and to bring a dignified and principled end to the debate started by Daniel O’Connell. It is time to make a hope-filled, humanly decent start to the shared future that is the unarguable entitlement of the next generation.
Has O’Connell a message for today? He has. I think it is obvious.
Go raibh maith agaibh.