“i ngleanntaibh ceoigh”

“Within the foggy glens”

Sometimes in all the horror with which we deal we need to remind ourselves of peaceful places, times, and people, lest as Nietzsche warned, when we gaze into the abyss we find it staring right back at us. This somewhat self-indulgent posting is me reminding myself of why I fight.

If you’re Irish you come from a country that was invaded and rose in rebellion quite literally once a generation. Ireland was at war more or less permanently for 800 years until eventually the invaders were forced to sign a peace treaty and leave most of the island, hanging on only to a politically and economically unviable rump of their former colony. The Republic from which I come and whose constitution contains the promise that she will cherish all her children equally is a lot less than a 100 years old. Within my lifetime the Republic has gone from a poverty stricken backwater to a vibrant, successful, and open society.

I’m very proud of that.

Within my lifetime, or shortly thereafter, I expect Ireland to be united and that that’ll be done peacefully. I have no doubt that there will be atrocities and setbacks - but the momentum of the peace process is such that it is now unstoppable.

I’m very proud of that too, even fifteen years ago saying or writing that would have been inconceivable.

The place in the photo above is an easy bicycle ride and then a short walk from the home in which I grew up. It was the scene of a ferocious and bloody revenge attack upon a patrol of British “irregulars” - the notorious “Black and Tans.” The “Tans” were counter terrorists used by what was at the time the most powerful empire the world had ever seen. We had risen in rebellion yet again and in an early version of the “Salvadoran Option” the British empire resorted to terrorism, death squads, collective punishments, murder, torture, and rape to try to get their oldest colony back under their heel.

I’m probably one of the very few people who knows what happened at that place now and I only know about it because I knew some of the elderly men who had fought in our war of independence. Certainly it wasn’t known to the family from South London peacefully having a picnic there on the last day of their Irish holiday and who sent me this photo. I saw no reason to enlighten them - those days are long gone.

The leader of the 1916 uprising that started the war of independence - Padhraic Pearse, famously characterised the British empire as “strong and wise and wary” but strong and wise and wary though they were they failed and went down into the dust. Empires built on blood and racism always do fail in the end and their life-spans are getting shorter and shorter. Empires are built on fear and the biggest change of my lifetime is that “brown people” are no longer afraid and longer prepared to let others set their societies’ agendas. Long after the current attempt at an American empire is but a bitter and embarassing memory, people like me and you, and them, the people who say “no” will still be here.

On those days when we come close to despair, we need to remember that.

Mháircaish.

Cross-posted to gorilla’s guides.