The apparently deliberate burning of a hotel in Galway this weekend was a criminal act. If appearances are to be believed, it was also a political act. Which one of those you choose to emphasise is a matter of choice, but both are likely to be true. It was both against the law to burn the hotel and also true that the likeliest explanation is that the hotel was burned to frustrate the enactment of an unpopular government policy.
The question of when criminality becomes legitimate in a political cause is not one on which the Irish political establishment is well placed to pontificate, due to our collective history. The three biggest political parties in our state do not simply recognise the legitimacy of criminality in a political cause – all three of them celebrate it, commemorate it, and attribute their existence to it.
The 1916 rising was, in the eyes of the British Government at least, a criminal act as well as a political act. Like the burning of the hotel, we simply choose to emphasise the political element and downplay the criminal. The IRA campaign in Northern Ireland – and the associated operations to fund that campaign in the Republic – were criminal, and also political. On the other side of the ledger, Cromwell’s horrendous persecution of Irish Catholics was both criminal, and political. On different sides of the Irish sea, we emphasise different aspects of that campaign, as well.
It should not be surprising, then, in a country with a long history of glorifying criminal acts with a political motive that there are many people in the country quietly and not-so-quietly cheering this weekend’s arson. In the history of political criminality (assuming that’s what it transpires to be) in this country, this was very much on the milder scale: Nobody was hurt.
What our history should teach us is that while Irish people have a long history of employing criminality in a political cause, they rarely do so without some justification. There is no politician in the state who would argue that the war of independence was not legitimate, for example – even though it constituted an armed rebellion against the internationally recognised Government. There are many who argue that the position of Catholics in Northern Ireland left the provisional movement with “no choice” but to act as it did. These are mainstream positions.
Which means that the central question in analysing Galway – taken in the context of Irish history – is whether there was an alternative choice.
We know, for example, that the public are deeply opposed to the Government on immigration. We know too that the public are deeply opposed to the political opposition’s views on the same subject. We know again that to date, organised and peaceful political demonstration of this opposition has had almost no political effect, other than provoking our politicians into worrying daily about the rise of the so-called “far right”. The worries and fears of Irish people have been repeatedly labelled – but they have not once been addressed.
Here’s another way of looking at it: If local opposition to the forcible settling of migrants in that hotel in Galway had remained entirely peaceful and free of kindling, would that opposition have succeeded? Recent history tells us that it would not have succeeded: The migrants would have been housed, the locals told to go home, and the circus would simply have moved on to the next locale. We can never be certain, but unified local opposition, expressed peacefully, has tended to be a loser on this issue.
The difference with the criminality is that the opposition, for a time, has now succeeded: Even this Government will not, presumably, expect migrants to live amidst soot and ashes. It will take time to restore and repair the building, and in the interim local opposition has therefore won out.
The chances are, then, that others will learn from what happened in Galway. One can call this deeply wrong – and burning hotels is, indeed, deeply wrong – but we must live in the real world, and not in the world of moral preening.
This brings me back to our history: Imagine for a moment that you could go back to 1916, in the aftermath, and advise the Government of George V with the objective of keeping the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland united, rather than tearing it asunder. What would you advise?
It would not, I’d suggest, be “stay the course. Execute the traitors. If the Irish get uppity, send in the black and tans and burn some villages”.
A reasonable approach – not one guaranteed to succeed, but a reasonable approach – would be conciliation. Be proactive, you might advise them: Don’t wait for a fight, but set up an Irish home rule parliament straight away. Pledge your support for land reform. Develop an industrial strategy for southern and western Ireland. Address people’s anger.
Such an approach may well have still failed, but I think we might all be able to agree that it stood a better chance of success than shooting Padraig Pearse and sending fellows from Manchester over to burn Cork City to the ground.
The Irish Government, for better or worse, now faces the same choice: Repression, or conciliation. Like the Brits in 1916, there will be no shortage of voices demanding repression. Like the Brits in 1916, repression may be a choice they come to regret.