The Irish language and the
IRELAND
Street. That seemed strange to people. It did not have anything to do with Irish classes. But these activists had made the tie-in between what was happening to the language and what was happening to everybody else.
At the end of the 1970s, a number fight for national liberation of young people started becoming aware of the link between the cultural struggle and the fight for independence and freedom. The latter has been going on alongside us, it was
But it rarely touched us.
TO A LARGE extent, the movement that led to the Irish revolution of 1916 and the revolutionary war of 1918-21 passed through and was moulded by a cultural movement around the revival of the
Irish language and traditional arts.
The president of the provisional republic proclaimed by the Dublin rising of 1916, Padraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Pearse), was an Irish revivalist and poet who ran an all-Irish school, to which the revolutionary socialist and trade-union leader James Larkin (also a pioneer in the American Communist movement) sent his son.
Most of the main leaders of the war of independence looked to the revival of the Irish language as one of the primary goals of independence. But the movement lost its momentum in the civil war of 1921-22, and to a certain degree the failure of the language revival became identified with the small and sour fruits of the Irish neocolonial state.
However, by the late 1970s, the question of language had again assumed a notable place in the new revolutionary nationalist upsurge in the six counties of British-ruled Northern Ireland. The H-block prisoners became exemplary students of Irish. Irish graffiti began appearing on walls in West Belfast (such as "Sinn e fear fior nar umhlaios don Ghall," "He is a true man who has never humbled himself to the foreigner"). And Irish-language signs appeared in H-block demonstrations.
In the local government elections in Northern Ireland in the spring of 1985, Sinn Fein published a manifesto and a poster in Irish. One of the candidates was Mairtin O' Muilleoir, who came to the revolutionary nationalist movement from Irish-language circles and became a leader of Sinn Fein cultural work. He gave the following interview to Gerry Foley in Belfast in February.
What was it that led
Question.
you from the Irish-language movement to Sinn Fein?
The involvement of
Answer.
Irish speakers
[this means young those who have learned to speak
Irish, since no natural Irish speaking communities remain in Northern Ireland] probably has its roots in 1969.
number of Irish
At that time a speakers in Belfast started saying to themselves that they could not remain apart from the community, that they had to get involved.
hap-
Two very important things pened in 1969. One was that Irish speakers began building a settlement of their own on the Shaws Road in
Belfast.
They decided that it was no enough to have your wee longer
22 club where you could speak the language and be an intellectual elite. It was much better to get into the community and start living with the and start bringing up your children speaking Irish. [That became
Shaws Road Gaeltacht, or Irish speaking community.] other thing was that when the Loyalists burt down Bombay Street [in the Catholic area], Irish speakers decided they do something about it. They opened up the Cluan Ard [an Irish-speaking cultural center] to the refugees for the few nights it was needed. In some people's eyes this was sacreligious. The refugees were speaking English. And other thing was that they organized to rebuild Bombay
We started to examine ourselves and
So, we started in our own amateurish way, without any guiding ideology, to set out a new path. That was the start of the Irish graffiti on the walls, and of a weekly paper in Irish, Gael Beal Feirste ["Belfast Gael"], of taking the language into the com-
Then the H-block struggle cata pulted us into political action. A number of us set up Gael Beal Feirste, which was a group of Irish-speaking activists who supported the demands of the H-block prisoners. It was one of a number of distinct groups in the movement, such as the teachers group, etc. And we started communicating with prisoners and organizing marches.
Then, when the second hunger strike came, we continued that sort of work and accelerated it. I and some other Irish speakers would have been almost full-time workers. By the end of the hunger strike, I had made my mind up that there was no longer any choice but to join the republican movement in order to work effectively. A number of people joined about the same time.
Q. What did you do after you joined Sinn Fein?
A.. The people in Sinn Fein at the time had the wisdom to say that cultural activists like us should not abandon what we were doing and just do Sinn Fein work, but that we should be developing cultural policies for Sinn Fein, developing the cultural aspect of the struggle. So, they set up a cultural department in 1982. This was something that had previously existed in Dublin, but at that time it had only existed on paper.
In Belfast, they started by bringing together older republicans, who all spoke Irish as a matter of course, since it was sort of a sacred principle in the 1940s and 1950s; some exprisoners, who had learned Irish in jail; and ourselves, who were basically gaeilgeoiri [Irish-language enthusiasts]. They asked us to start doing the work of a Gaelic League branch but doing it much more vigorously and at the same time to Gaelicize the organization. International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
Q. How far advanced is the work of Gaelicizing the republican move-
The work inside the organization is only starting. English is still the language people speak and still put out publications in English only. But progress has been made, mainly in the Six Counties. Recently I was at a meeting of Belfast Sinn Fein with about 130 people at it. The number of Irish speakers at it, people who had learned Irish in the jails, people who were involved with
Irish-language nursery Probably 80 percent of them were Irish speakers.
Getting people to understand the importance of the cultural side of the struggle is another thing. But people who are not involved in the activities of the cultural department are sending their kids to Irish-language schools.
But if you put that in Ireland 32-county context, it becomes a lot less. In the 26 Counties, our cultural work is virtually nil. It is also less in other parts of the Six Counties, except for Derry City.
On the other hand, we did influence the Ard-Fheis [ Annual General Meeting] of Sinn Fein this year. For the first time there was a bilingual clar [list of resolutions]. And we managed to get through a resolution, against some opposition, that makes the post of cultural officer an Ard position. The fact that Gerry Adams [Sinn Fein president] has been so strong on the cultural question helped
How much is Irish used as a vehicle of work in the movement? The Welsh nationalists at least do that. The Plaid Cymru office in Cardiff does work through Welsh to a considerable extent.
It is limited in the republican The Dublin office probably better than any of the Belfast offices. I have been to meetings of the West Belfast officer board where all are learning Irish and maybe ten out of twelve would be fluent. But it would never occur to them to conduct everything in Irish. For many people, it is a jail language. haven't adopted any of the new terminology.
Using Irish is the final step. have to keep working on them to take it. Everyone we win over is a victory, and then if they send their kids to an Irish school, that's something; and if they buy Saoirse [Sinn Fein's Irish-language journal], that's something.
Q. How many copies of Saoirse do you sell?
A. In Belfast, we sell 400. And
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 that's the bulk of Saoirse in all Ireland. We print 1,500 copies and we probably sell about 1,100. Another way to progress is that more people use Irish greetings and so forth.
Q. It seems to me that republicans, at least in the last 16 years, have used a few Irish phrases at meetings such as ending speeches
"go raibh mait agaibh" ["silence"/. Irish on posters, Irish graffiti, things that indicate that the language can now be used as a means of political communication. To what extent is
Well, we have to be selective. We don't have big Irish speaking areas, like the Welsh speaking ones. But at every election, we deliberately pick out the gaeilgeoiri and canvas them and give them Irish leaflets. is what we call an Irish-language vote. It's about three per cent; it is small but it exists. The older Irish speakers that never has more Irish been spoken in Belfast.
Q. About how many people do you think speak Irish in West Belfast?
About 5,000. There may be 10,000, because a lot of Irish speakers keep quiet about it. All the major political figures have some Irish. John Hume the leading Catholic bourgeois politician] can speak Irish. John Cushnahan [of the green unionist Alliance Party] can speak some Irish. Fergus O'Hare from People's Democracy [the Irish section of the Fourth International] is a fluent Irish speaker.
Q. International youth culture has obviously spread to Belfast in the last ten years or so. How much of a barrier is this to the Irish cultural revival. Do you get these kids in punk outfits saying "What does this old Celtic thing have to do with us?"
we probably would did more youth work. But we against it in the It certainly outside, alongside the republi can movement. But usually if people
"Brits out" position, you can get them sympathetic to the language.
Q. Is there such a thing, for instance, as an Irish-language rock group?
A. We brought an Irish rock group to Belfast in December. But it is the only one that exists. The Irish language is too weak to generate that sort of thing. So, the pop culture is a barrier. But the British troops in Northern Ireland (DR)
23
big advantage we have that overcomes the pop culture and overcomes TV to some degree is the existence of the struggle. It doesn't matter if the kids are mods or punks or whatever.
They don't like Brits. They know that the Brits shouldn't be here. There is a basic understanding that unemployment is wrong, and that something should be done about it. And they tune into those hey might listen to their music and they might dress up like punks, but at the end of the day, hey're still republican And that's good for us.
We have one Irish teacher who is a professional soccer player, and he has two-color hair. We can accept that because we still do not know where we're bringing the Irish language revival. We haven't said discos re bad thing.
Q. Is the revival of Irish associated with a revival of traditional music?
A. Not in Belfast. But in areas like Tyrone, where the language revival is weak, traditional music is strong.
I would love to see Irish rock and Irish discos take off, that would take government backing. Irish rock would have to be as good as commercial rock. We're up against the TV and professionals.
There seem to be two views on that. The Welsh, Cymdeighas yr
Gymraeg /Welsh Society] think that the only way to keep the language alive is to transfer ture into Welst objection that is made is that if the thing about it is that Welsh is the language, what is the point? After all, the original Irish revival brought a new style into literature, music and art.
The point is that if we had pop in Irish, it would be a advantage for the Irish revolution. It would be a big advantage if we had kids at Irish discos speaking Irish, even if it was only another point of conflict with the British
It's a big problem that there is no Irish youth club, there is no place where the youth can go through the whole rebellion of adolescence in Irish. You're not going to win that unless you win funding, and you're not going to win funding without direction. We also need a secondary school in Irish.
Q. What about the youth clubs that exist in Divis Flats. possible to take Irish into them? 24
A. No. The cultural department's work is a fair reflection Fein's youth work in Belfast, which is very bad. There has been a demand for Irish classes from youth. But those difficult classes to cater for. The majority of our classes are adults who are mad to learn Irish. But the youth are not sure, and they're a bit boisterous. I'm sure we could build demand among youth, but at the minute we haven't tried it.
We did set up a youth club in 1982, but it collapsed after a while for various reasons.
Don't you get people asking where is all this going? Are you going to try to make Irish the language of the country again? And how are you going to do that? members of the movement, there is very little debate about what we want for the language. Here we just think about when we can set up the next Irish nursery school, put up There is a debate in the 26 Counties, all right. The official Irish language bilingualism, position was for the restoration of mentioned that to people here, they wouldn't know what you were talking about. That debate has passed them about why the revival has failed in
Irish speakers. Although the revival is strong, the Irish language organizations are weak. The last time there was a debate about the Irish language was in 1984 when we brought about a hundred students and teachers together and started talking about it. Since then, no one has tried it. We have answered some such questions in various press revival has failed in the South, rather why it hasn't succeeded to date, because I don't think it has failed.
It seems to have failed in the sense that after more than 60 years of independence, the language has not been restored as the language of the people, and at the moment it is clearly on the wane.
it hasn't failed completely. You do have a million people in the 26 Counties who say that they can speak Irish.
Q. Yes. But there is the question of the historic strategy and implications of revival. In Irish nationalism, to some extent, revivalists have repreviving the language implies a radical Without that the chances of the Irish language in the long run are nil, given the economic power behind English commercial Even the Welshcommunities, much larger, are crumbling under the assault. The question is to what extent do Irish language workers still offer radical perspectives.
We are trying to combine the old values of the language movement, the ideas of Pearse, which we support, with a latter-day revolu-
For republican analysis of what is happening in this country and the need to create a new society in this country. Without saying that we want to go back to communism" or "comhar na gcomharsan" [the tradition of co-operative work], we are saying that there is much to be said for the Irish nation through reviving the language, through from us. We don't want to go back, but we want to reclaim our heritage, and at the same time to rebuild it, to recreate it, and build a society that will offer people justice and
We also say that if we don't resist cultural imperialism, we won't have a revolution in Ireland, if you don't resist cultural imperialism, you're going to end up with a halfway house, that we don't need the Gaelic, that we don't need the language, are ignoring the that all over the world, starting to realize that if you don't defeat cultural imperialism, if you don't defeat the massive communications industry and the brain-washing industry, you're not going to succeed.
Q So, how do you defeat it?
A. One way is to get people to speak Irish. That's a strong weapon. We're getting people to think for themselves, we're getting people who never had an education to speak Irish. Here, if you start speaking Trish, you step right outside the system.
We are also fighting cultural imperialism through republican educa tion, in which we are criticizing the Western powers.
Some Nicaraguans were here recently, and they explained that since their country is small they have to import. Ireland is a small country too, and for a while at least we would have to import. But we would be selective; we wouldn't do what RTE the Irish TV service] does, importing over 50 per cent of its material and having only two per cent of its proInternational Viewpoint 14 July 1986
$ MASH grams in Irish.
There is a huge communications industry based in America that is holding values and an ideology that are definitely alien to Irish freedom and detrimental to the Irish struggle.
Q. Do you see cultural imperialism as it affects you as primarily American rather than British?
A. It's a Coca Cola culture, which the British have accepted almost entirely. It is something that originated in America, and it is being hammered at us from Britain too. It is this Coca Cola culture that is the dominant culture in Ireland at the minute. It is one of the major SMASH H BLOCK forces against us. Conradh na Gaeilge [the Gaelic League] says that the 26 Counties imports more TV programs than any other country in the world except Singapore.
Here in the Six Counties, Jocally made programs are a very small percentage of the total. There are two 15-minute news programs a day, and the rest is British.
Q. How does Sinn Fein relate to the broader cultural movement?
A. A lot of cultural activists consider us Johnny-come-latelies, with some justice. When I and some other people went into the Ardoyne in 1983 to try to set up an Irish-language nursery school, we specifically said, "We know what you think we are, we know that you think we are here to get votes. You think we're going to be away in a year. But I'll tell ye that we're not." And we managed to win those people over. The nursery school still exists.
In the South, there is another problem. There is a tremendous fear of Sinn Fein. So, we have to combat that. Among the Irish-speaking establishment, there is that fear to a certain degree. There is also the attitude common to all establishments, that we are too radical, that we are taking the language out into the communities.
In the Six Counties, Sinn Fein now runs more Irish classes than any other organization. I was talking to a fellow tonight at the Divis Flats [the most concentrated and deprived neighborhood in West Belfast] who goes around the flats tutoring families in Irish. So, that's too radical, and they don't like it. We are also making the connection between the cultural struggle and the political struggle, and they don't like that, they say it's wrong to take politics into culture. But the British made it political by taking the culture away.
Q. Let's take a concrete case, such as this ban on books in Irish in Long Kesh concentration camp.
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
Can you get protests against that broader than the layer of people who support Sinn Fein?
A. You get a muted response. What we lack, and this is a big weakness of the Irish language movement, is a strong organization. You have a lot of individuals doing their own thing. But there is not one strong organization that could run a campaign against the book ban, or against the media.
Q. Is there a significant layer in the North who would support the language but not necessarily support Sinn Fein?
A. Yes. In the protests organized by the IM campaign, Irish in the Media, you might have had 70 per cent Sinn Fein supporters and per cent apolitical or pro-SDLP. And that is not entirely an accurate gauge because Sinn Feiners are used to protesting and ready to come out.
So, we had a picket of the BBC at Christmas. There are new things starting. There is a very healthy committee of nursery schools, which hopefully will start hammering the Department of Education. The visit of the Welsh Cymdeithas yr laith Gymraeg was helpful. And I was saying that I had to go out and do an Irish class or put up Irish signs or help out at an Irish nursery school. And they said, "We don't do any of that. We sit down and we organize protests."
We're not ready for that, but we are progressing somewhat. We're taking a slightly different road that is going to lead to more and more court cases protesting the lack of forms in Irish, and why should we be paying taxes when there's no tax forms in Irish. That's the sort of thing they did in Wales from 1964 on and finally we're latching on to that.
At our protest at the BBC at Christmas, we had all these people who had been involved in the language movement for ten years and had never been at a protest, alongside all these Sinn Feiners, who every week were on protests. That was a new development. don't think the Brits liked that at all. That's why we're getting some concessions from the BBC.
Q. Presumably the provision in the Anglo-Irish agreement about allowing street signs in Irish is also a concession.
A. The signs are already up. We are not interested in making them legal. We have said that 1986 is going to be a year of protest. We have built a base for the language. It is solid. We have pushed the revival more effectively than any generation in the twentieth century. We said that this year was going to be one of action, and it got off to a good start on the first day of the year with the setting • up of Raidio Beal Feirste, which is illegal but it is exposing the BBC and UTV, which say that it is impossible to broadcast Irish programs, although UTV did a survey showing that 70,000 people want them.
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