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A review Despite the inclement weather, a packed gathering assembled in the Teachers Club on the 11th November for the Dublin launch of Fergus Whelan's book Dissent into Treason, the fruit of his research into the records of the Dublin Unitarian Church. Armistice Day was honoured by the large number of poppies on display among an audience which consisted of many seasoned campaigners from the labour and trade union movement and a sizable contingent from our own congregation. Fergus was joined on the platform by Rev Bridget Spain representing the Dublin Unitarian Church, Senator Eoghan Harris who launched the book, and Albert Murphy who ably handled the proceedings. Senator Harris, a long time friend of the Whelan family, was perhaps the most appropriate person to launch Dissent into Treason. Some, if not all, of the attendees might have had good reason to disagree with positions taken by Senator Harris over the years. However it is undeniable that his writings and commentary on a wide variety of issues have required rational readers and listeners to stop and think, challenge their own strongly held views, and perhaps depart from a previously comfortable ideological comfort zone. Dissent into Treason will challenge open minded readers in the same way. In his well received address to the audience Senator Harris said; "Fergus Whelan's Dissent into Treason, like its subject matter, is a genuinely revolutionary work. Irish people are brought up to believe that Irish Republicanism is a French import, deeply influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution. Fergus shows it is also a British import, indeed that its roots reach further back than the French Revolution to English republicanism, to Cromwell, and to the Levellers. This revelation will not be warmly welcomed by the narrow Catholic nationalist side of Irish republicanism. But it will come as a great relief to those of us who are genuinely interested in the unity of Irish people. That's because the revelation that Irish republicanism also has British and Protestant roots allows us to approach the Northern Protestants, and particularly the northern protestant working class, with the claim that Irish Republicanism belongs as much to the Protestants of Northern Ireland as to the nationalists of the Republic; is as British as it is Irish nationalist; is as radical as the Levellers and has little in common with the conservative Roman Catholic stream of Irish nationalism - the stream that led some Republicans in World War 2 to support Nazi Germany. The precursor to Irish unity, and the first step towards any kind of federal system, is a system of progressive beliefs that can be shared by all the people on this island, a system of beliefs with a long and noble patrimony that can help foster a common purpose among all the inhabitants of the island of Ireland. Fergus Whelan's kind of republicanism, Irish and British, French and American in its roots is such a system, and as such it is a major contribution to the evolution of a modern progressive Republicanism, a truly open and tolerant republicanism that will be as palatable to progressive unionists as it is to progressive nationalists. This book is also a radical contribution to resolving the current crisis in militant Irish republicanism. It confronts so called Dissidents with real Dissenters and it damages one of the deepest delusions of Irish nationalists who would embark on another empty campaign of armed struggle the delusion that Irish Republicanism belongs to the Roman Catholic nationalist tradition. No, it does not. Because if Wolfe Tone is the father of Irish Republicanism, Fergus Whelan proves that Oliver Cromwell has a good title to being its grandfather. Irish reactionaries who would like to believe that republicanism is a first cousin of Roman Catholicism must first face the facts revealed in Fergus Whelan's ground-breaking study: that Irish republicanism has many fathers and mothers, and some of them are English., and some are Protestant, and all were radicals whose primary agenda was the alliance not of nationalist gombeens but of the " men of no property." who need peace as a prerequisite to social and political progress". Most of the audience would have long since rejected the orthodox nationalist depiction of the 1798 rebellion as a southern based uprising of Roman Catholics assisted by a few “honourable” Protestants. More recent accounts of the period have given far greater credit to the role of Presbyterians and other Protestant Dissenters in founding and leading the United Irishmen. It is not as if the clues weren't there! A simple comparison of the democratic republican form of Presbyterian / Unitarian church governance with the hierarchical / monarchical Roman Catholic form of church governance should have put any researcher on the right path. However, with the exception of ATQ Stewart's 'A Deeper Silence' and an excellent article by Derry Kelleher in the Irish Times a few years ago, even the most generous acknowledgments of the role of Protestant Dissenters in the United Irishmen have failed to understand or give recognition to their political and religious ancestry. The politics of the dissenters and the religious congregations they went on to form were forged in the heat of the English Civil War of the 1640's. As stated on more than one occasion at related services and commemorations in our church, the Unitarians of 1798 were republican 'because of' and not 'in spite of' their cromwellian ancestry. However it seems that being a republican, overthrowing monarchs and demanding freedom of conscience is all well and good with Irish historians until it places you on the same side as Cromwell and the opposite side to the pope! Historical accounts which treat Protestant republicanism as some sort of temporary conversion leave enormous gaps on either side of the period of the United Irishmen. Dissent into Treason clearly traces and sets out the intellectual lineage of the United Irishmen, if not back to Cromwell, certainly back to the 'Cromwellians' who challenged monarchs and the notions of god given arbitrary powers. In doing so, Fergus Whelan has closed a gaping historical gap and done an enormous service to Unitarians and Non Subscribing Presbyterians and indeed to anyone interested in approaching the study of Irish history with an open mind. When fully rested from his endeavors of the past few years he might give consideration to closing the gap between the period of the United Irishmen and the present day. In doing so he might explain how the religious congregations founded by the dreaded cromwellians live on today as Unitarians and Quakers. Now there's something we definitely didn't learn in school!
Rory Delany |