REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF DANIEL O’CONNELL’S HOUSE, MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN 2
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF DANIEL O’CONNELL’S HOUSE, MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN 2, SATURDAY, 16th October, 2004
Tá an-athás orm bheith anseo i bhur measc innu. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur bhfáilte caoin.
Good Afternoon, everybody.
May I begin by congratulating the University of Notre Dame on the superb job of restoration we see around us, and by thanking the Keough and Naughton families for their generous assistance in making the restoration possible. The dedication of this house is a fitting and hugely symbolic act that draws to a close the refurbishment of a building intimately associated with The Liberator. It occurs on the anniversary of the re-opening, fifty-five years ago today, of the little chapel at O’Connell’s home in Kerry, Derrynane House.
Ceremonies such as these remind us of O’Connell’s greatness even as they point to the degree to which his name has been unfairly neglected. Not that it was ever obscure, but it is an odd thing that although Daniel O’Connell’s memory is preserved in the names of streets throughout Ireland, it seemed at times as if he would become the forgotten hero of Ireland’s past.
Perhaps we should blame W.B.Yeats. When Yeats decried the death of ‘romantic Ireland’ he named the heroes who should be remembered and asked of more mundane times, was it
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
In that Pantheon of freedom, O’Connell appeared as a pale figure by comparison with his more colourful fellow patriots. Perhaps O’Connell was not romantic enough or militant enough for a world held in thrall by the shallow excitement and glamour of violence. But whatever the reason, it does not really explain the degree to which the legacy of O’Connell does not receive the popular acclaim it deserves.
We rightly honour the patriots of our past, shapers of our history and our mind maps of that history. Throughout generations of appalling suffering they led rebellions of the poor and dispossessed, mostly it has to be said without immediate success. O’Connell’s campaigns were very different. Non-violent in nature but nonetheless persuasive and popular, his hard work produced results. Catholic Emancipation was an immense achievement. And perhaps the Repeal of the Union might have been achieved if the collapse of his health and the Famine following shortly thereafter had not derailed his hopes. So great was the force of his argument that even some Unionists applied to join the Repeal movement.
He was educated abroad, because it was not possible in those days for a Catholic to graduate from Dublin University. He put his education to very good use by becoming the unparalleled political and legal advocate of his age. His eloquence was based on an absolute command of detail and profound grasp of the issues he was addressing. He could appeal to the heads and hearts of very different people in a direct way. He was an Irish speaking countryman to his countrymen, he was the sophisticated European in the salons of the powerful. After Emancipation, he dominated the British Parliament by the force of his oratory and the precise forensic analysis of his opponents’ views.
O’Connell’s campaign against the Penal Laws was a major intellectual as well as a major political breakthrough. After the disastrous failure of the French Revolution, it seemed that the struggle for democracy was effectively thrown into reverse. With the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars still vivid in the memories of most people, O’Connell devised a new politics which demonstrated that the goals which had inspired the best of the Revolution could be pursued without descending into the pit of violent oppression which was produced by that Revolution at its worst.
He was a fervent and life-long opponent of political violence and the use of force. Instead of organising a revolt, O’Connell took largely uneducated country people and built them into a great mass political organisation. A political organisation with extraordinary moral courage and determination. A political force which achieved its goals without recourse to the violence which had been the hallmark of Irish resistance up until then.
Daniel O’Connell hated injustice. His politics were rooted in the egalitarian and libertarian principles of the new American republic which he had absorbed and from which he never faltered. His intellectual achievement was to marry those principles to the parliamentary traditions of Europe. In that achievement, he showed Ireland, Europe, and the world, that the Eighteenth Century pillars upon which the struggle for liberty had been built, had not been lost forever in the tidal wave which swept the Ancien regime back into power.
The principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, had been the product of an enlightened vanguard of thinkers who illuminate our political discourse to this day. The enterprise, which began as an attempt to impose freedom from above, quickly turned into the Terror, a pattern to be repeated, not as a farce but as a tragedy, in the Twentieth Century.
The genius of O’Connell was to create a peaceful but forceful campaign for liberty from the bottom up. His mass movement for Catholic Emancipation had the support of members of every class of society. The penny rent was an ingenious system for financing the movement, but it also copper fastened the common commitment to shared goals in the first mass political movement, probably, in the world.
In other words, O’Connell had invented, and wielded to great effect, the first modern political party. Today, as then, the political party system can be untidy and diffuse, but it makes room for a broad sweep of opinion and gives everybody a platform and a say in the decisions which affect them. And in large measure we owe it to O’Connell.
We forget, to our own loss, that O’Connell was a giant of a figure who bestrode the platform of European politics of his day. But O’Connell’s vision extended well beyond his own shores: he promoted justice on the basis of principle, and was a powerful advocate of, for example, the end of the slave trade and civil rights for European Jews.
Today, for all the statues in his memory and the streets named in his honour, his greatest monument is the foundation he laid a long time ago for the peace process of today and the Good Friday Agreement. His influence in moulding the moderate, non-violent and democratic political tradition has been, over time, both the dominant and the most valuable strand of our national public life. He would certainly recognise, as familiar and valued principles, the commitment to resolving our differences through democratic and peaceful means; a dedication to the promotion of partnership and equality; a promise to vindicate and protect the human rights of all members of all communities on the island of Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement has not yet reached final fulfilment. Suspicion and old vanities still impede its complete implementation, though the elements, including human rights, continue to make slow, but real, progress.
The continuing support and encouragement of the international community, and of Ireland’s many friends overseas, is of tremendous encouragement to us. Nowhere is this truer than in the United States. Successive Presidents and leading figures from both parties in the Congress and at state level, have played a crucial role in developing and sustaining the peace process. The Irish-American community has displayed unfaltering understanding and commitment.
As we stand on the eve of a new Ireland and reflect on the past, I am confident that O’Connell’s vision of peace and justice will prevail just as I am confident that Ireland is on the path to completing the work of creating a fully inclusive egalitarian Ireland begun by O’Connell and coming into our grasp in this most blessed of generations. I have no doubt too that O’Connell would view today’s successful, confident Ireland with a deep sense of pride, hope and personal vindication. Could this be the very generation he worked for, the first to know true peace, widespread prosperity and respectful partnership between Ireland’s different strands? That we are this close is thanks to him, the man once dubbed ‘Ireland’s uncrowned monarch’, a title he would surely have rejected thought he might have taken a different view had he been more accurately called Ireland’s ‘un-inaugurated President’.
Our thanks to those who have once again brought his memory, his legacy before us to inspire and encourage us to complete the journey he started.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.