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I’ve come to the conclusion that what the world needs now is Wolfe Tone.
Saturday marks the birthday of the father of Irish republicanism – Theobald Wolfe Tone, the man who paved the path to Irish freedom, born on this day in 1763.
He’s the most celebrated figure in Irish political history, with crowds assembling at his Bodenstown birthplace in Co Kildare around this time every year, for centuries. Padraig Pearse – who revered Tone as the greatest patriot – called Bodenstown “The Holiest Place in Ireland”.
Tone – leader of the United Irishmen and champion of non-sectarian Irish democracy – nearly made it in his ambitious expedition to overthrow British rule and establishing an Irish republic with the help of the French army. “So close you could have thrown a biscuit ashore” as he said himself in his diaries.
He ultimately failed in the mission, but his vision inspired generations after him, and he changed the course of Irish history in his short life.
It’s an international saga that spans the ages and features box office names likes of George Washington and Napoleon.
It’s incredible no one has made a Netflix special starring Paul Mescal as Tone and maybe Barry Keoghan as his compatriot Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
As a child, I went every year to the Bodenstown commemoration, and I still go today. It formed my early political education. I am now proud to call myself a Wolfe Tonian republican.
This year, on his 263rd birthday, it struck me that Wolfe Tone is more relevant than ever now, in an era divided by the new religion of woke ideology, tolerant of everything except differing views.
It often feels like the world has lost its reason, its ability to find common ground; has sacrificed imperatives like critical thinking and dissenting opinion, in the name of supposed progressivism, too often intellectually lazy.
Enter Wolfe Tone – a freethinker, a non-conformist. His famous unifying rallying cry of “Protestant, Catholic and dissenter” could not be more relevant than it is now. He believed in uniting all under the common name of Irishman, in the shared mission for independence and to break from England “the never failing source of our political evils.”
He was anti-identity politics; victor and not victim. He was common sense, with compassion.
You’d like to hope we are moving past cancel-culture at this stage, but to break through that, you need fearless leaders who have the courage of their convictions.
Tone was ready to sacrifice his life for Ireland – today we have leaders not even willing to risk their careers to stand up to divisive, fake nonsense like identity politics, play along with what they think the public want, but in fact are being dictated to by a loud minority.
His words on the futility of engaging in pointless debate where no one listens to anyone could be a reference to toxic social media.
In his autobiography he writes of his frustration at an over-heated after dinner debate on Catholic liberation and the rights of man that achieved nothing but division. “Broke up rather ill displeased towards each other. More and more convinced of the absurdity of arguing over wine.”
Theobald Wolfe Tone envisioned a united Irish identity that transcended religious and class divides. It’s extraordinary that he could see that in the 1790s – and so could the people – and yet modern politics went backwards in the last decade to segregate and sow divisions and engage in petty purity tests . It’s an easy way to target groups of voters and convince them they’re weak and need your protection. But it’s disingenuous, manipulative, politically reckless, riven with hypocrisy, and not of benefit for any nation.
Tone’s vision had more in common with the great doctor Martin Luther King, who spoke of not judging on colour of skin, but content of character, than he does with most contemporary and cowed politicians. Similarly, John F Kennedy’s message of asking not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country, is very Wolfe Tonian.
Both MLK and JFK are inspired by the civic republicanism that was at the core of TWT’s political vision. If we collectively lived by that creed, the extremes on the left and right would be kept too busy to bother with meaningful industry, to be involved in infighting and finger pointing of the toxic culture wars.
Wolfe Tonian republicanism is more relevant as ever. Ideals like freedom, tolerance, unity, and freedom of conscience are endangered in a 21st century that has rolled civil liberties backwards and had the neck to call it liberalism.
Liberty, equality and fraternity, as he learned from his French and American evolutionary brothers, are not fashionable concepts in a supposedly “progressive” Ireland that too often excludes, in the name of inclusion. That is tribalistic instead of pluralistic.
His guiding principles of reason, critical thinking and open political discourse need to be preserved. Now the instinct of the establishment and the modern clerisy is to shut down debate, gatekeep information, and try and control the narrative – astoundingly forgetting that this doesn’t make issues go away, but drives them underground, and invites bad actors to step into the vacuum. It is an environment that can only lead to civil unrest. Societies that stifle voices turn to violence.
And where is Tone’s ultimate quest, a free and independent Ireland, in the list of priorities of leaders so obsessed with niche concerns these days?
Ireland’s interest was Tone’s entire focus and it should be the ultimate vision of any party that calls itself Irish republican.
“To say all in one word, Ireland shall be independent. We shall be a nation, not a province; citizens, not slaves.”
Why is Wolfe Tone such a continued inspiration?
Because he was extraordinary: a visionary, a great debater, a barrister, a brilliant writer, a diplomat, a man of international standing, a master orator, a Protestant who stood against the oppression of Catholics, and – back to Padraig Pearse again – “a thinker, doer, dreamer of the immortal dream.”
He knew the importance of rhetoric and pulling people in to your way of thinking, not shunning them for having a different view. Tone was about winning hearts and minds, not dividing on race, gender or sincerely-held viewpoints.
He could see the corruption gene in the Irish government from centuries back, and in a quote – that again would not be out of time today – highlighted how, with Grattan’s Parliament: “Formerly we had our distresses gratis at the hands of England, but now we pay dearly to receive the same aggravation at the hands of Irishmen.”
Yet the quote that speaks to me most, in relation to being most relevant to the Ireland of today, is the one right here: “Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community—the men of no property.”
Larissa Nolan is national communications direction for Aontú and is writing here in a personal capacity.
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