Language rights in the subpolity

Níl aon Gaeilge ar Carsonia

When October comes, we will apparently, finally have an Irish Language Act, or Acht na Gaeilge, in the smaller of Ireland’s two states. Assuming it happens, this will mark the end of a years long struggle between Sinn Féin and the DUP over the implementation of an Acht, which people hope will give our language the protection a native language deserves. Agreed to in principle within the Good Friday, St. Andrew’s and New Decade, New Approach agreements but of course endlessly put on the back burner while unionism showcased its unceasing hostility to anything native, the streets of Belfast and elsewhere have been thronged with people in red t-shirts calling themselves An Dream Dearg, demanding #AchtAnois.

So, this is great news, right? The people power of the thousands that regularly took to the streets to demand an Acht has been harnessed in order to crush the obstinance of unionism, yes? Not exactly, no. After telling the DUP that they would not approve of whoever their new choice for First Minister was until the unionists agreed to implement an Acht, Sinn Féin then withdrew this requirement, allowing Stormont to function as normal, because the British Government has agreed - in a manner similar to how it dealt with abortion and gay marriage - to legislate an Acht na Gaeilge of its own if one cannot be agreed in Stormont by October, which of course it won’t be.

That this was apparently a cause for celebration is indicative of where the mainstream of Irish republicanism has strayed in the post-Good Friday Agreement era; running to the colonial master to protect the language they tried to destroy in the ethnostate they created is now considered good sense, a fair move in the long-term dirty war of parliamentary one upmanship with unionism.

The national language, like our national games, is obviously an inherently political thing. There are those who like to stress that speaking Irish isn’t political; we all know who they are because in our neoliberal world that demands all culture be depoliticised, these are the people who are pushed to the front of public conversations about the language. “Sí an Ghaeilge athghabháil na hÉireann,” Ó Cadhain famously said, “agus is í athghabháil na hÉireann slánú na Gaeilge”; Irish is the reconquest of Ireland and the reconquest of Ireland is the salvation of Irish. The reconquest as a concept passed down from Connolly to Ó Cadhain to republicans of the provisional movement such as Bobby Sands and Jim Lynagh, men who used revolutionary influences of their time (Ho Chi Minh for Sands, Mao for Lynagh) to develop their theories of a self-sufficient Ireland, one that is, as Sands wrote, “free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically”. The physical, cultural and economic all share equal footing in Sands’s writing and it is only through that lens that we can fully grasp the importance of the national language. If Pat Fanning’s fear for a depoliticised GAA was that it would become a “mere sporting organisation”, the language stripped of its political potential becomes a mere mode of communication.

There is no Acht na Gaeilge that can be arrived at in Westminster that does not render our language as anything other than a mere mode of communication. The reconquest of Ireland, of which our games and language comprise such an integral part, can only be a full reconquest when the cultural is paired with the political and economic goals that Sands paired with them; unless Westminster’s Acht includes a pledge to completely withdraw from the six counties they continue to occupy and to divest all economic interests in Ireland, then we are still at square one. Westminster will do what is in Westminster’s best interests, to expect any more or less is to indulge in fantasy, and what is in its best interest is a quiet northern state, one whose Executive is not threatening to collapse. If that can be delivered through allowing for depoliticised cultural expression for the Irish, then what harm to the Boris Johnsons of the world? Walter Benjamin wrote of how Fascism saw “its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves”. Benjamin’s description of Fascism has become the dominant logic of neoliberal capitalism, where cultural expressions of the widest variety are encouraged as long as they pose no threat to the established order, and if an Acht na Gaeilge is the price the Tories must pay for the north to stop giving them headaches, then they will do so gladly. “The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property,” Benjamin added, and this is where the issue lies for mainstream republicanism as it exclusively expressed through the Sinn Féin party today.

Historically of course, the British parliamentary system has been downright opposed even to allowing the Irish people to express themselves culturally, but since the Good Friday Agreement it has slowly signalled a willingness to allow that expression while preserving the property relations it has set it in place in Ireland; this is true whether measures are arrived at in the halls of Westminster or the British-administered Stormont Assembly. Therein lies the issue, these are so-called solutions that are arrived at in the British halls of power that are now accepted and celebrated by republicans as progress.

The problem is that mainstream republicanism is now exclusively confined to these halls of power, be they in Dublin, Belfast or London. The republicanism of the streets is now dead and any demand that is taken to the streets such as An Dream Dearg’s Acht Anois protests are quickly cannibalised by Sinn Féin to become yet another parliamentary demand to be driven solely through their party apparatus. In embracing parliamentarianism, Sinn Féin has fallen into the trap of thinking delivery is all that matters. Allowing for and actively encouraging the occupying British Government to legislate for the protection of our native language is just an outworking of this approach; in a world where delivery is all that matters, neither the method of delivery nor the content of what is delivered is of any importance.

We know that whatever the British deliver for the Irish language will not be satisfactory because we know that they cannot satisfy the overarching demands of a centuries old cultural and political movement, of which language rights in our homeland make up just one part. The presence of the Irish language on signs is an unequivocally good thing, the more visible a language is the better, but what those signs will show is the ongoing destruction and occupation of our country, our towns and our history. An Seanmullach will still be Castledawson; An Chorr Chríochach will still be Cookstown; Baile na Croise will still be Draperstown; Ard Mór will still be Randalstown; and Croimghlinn will still be fucking Royal Hillsborough. These are not things that dual language signage and a Comisinéir Teanga agreeable to the DUP can ever hope to solve.

This is the problem with Sinn Féin’s delivery focussed parliamentarianism: it delivers nothing of any real substance in the case of progress towards an Ireland that is ní hamháin saor ach Gaelach agus ní hamháin Gaelach ach saor. Instead, what is delivered is the opportunity for the party’s members to post the green tick emoji and tell us how Sinn Féin delivers, because in this neoliberal world the idea of competence rules the day and the ability to Get Things Done™ is deemed to be more important than what is actually getting done.

Sinn Féin’s watery approach to language rights within the six counties is indicative of its overall approach in the post-Good Friday Agreement era. When delivery is all that matters to a republican party, it will do anything it thinks will make a united Ireland seem more palatable to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. This, coupled with the arrogant assumption that a united Ireland is an inevitability rather than a revolutionary goal to be constantly struggled towards, means the party becomes complacent, wedded to nothing but the idea of delivering the biggest of green tick emojis in the form of a 32-county state. The character of this state, or the means by which it is achieved, no longer matter when this is your approach. Where a border poll of simultaneous and separate referenda in both of the states within Ireland was once rejected as partitionist, it is now Sinn Féin’s major demand; the history of absolute Euroscepticism within the republican movement has been abandoned for promises of how the European project will enrich the future united Ireland; the Special Criminal Court designed to harangue and discriminate against republicans is no longer voted against; and where once republicanism was once enlightened by the idea of joining everyone, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the banner of being Irish, we are now told of how the united Ireland will be respectful of the “British” identity of loyalists whose nearest British ancestors date back to the 17th century.

What makes this even more frustrating is that we have the blueprint for the alternative already at our fingertips. In 1969, five families established what is known variously as Gaeltacht Bóthar Seoighe, Pobal Feirste, or the Irish Houses, a new development on west Belfast’s Shaw’s Road where Irish is the main language. The original five houses were built by hand by the small community that would come to inhabit them, and over time the community has stretched to 22 houses, houses which can only be bought by people who pledge to make Irish the first language of the home. Where Gaeltacht Bóthar Seoighe’s main influence is felt is gaelscolaíocht, Irish language education, in the northern state. The families established Bunscoil Phobal Feirste in 1971 to serve their children. It was the first gaelscoil - or bunscoil as they are known in the northern state - in the north. 50 years later, there are over 7,000 children in bunscoileanna throughout the six counties, and there are two gaelcholáiste - second-level schools - too. Bunscoil Phobal Feirste received no official recognition from the north’s Department of Education until 1985, by which time it was already a success. It, and other cultural endeavours focused on the language in Belfast’s west such as Cumann Cluain Ard and Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, are evidence of what can be created when a community builds itself, away from the auspices of the occupying state.

What was once done in west Belfast is among the best examples of what our recent revolutionaries like Sands and Lynagh envisioned for how republicans can resist while we are forced to live within the British state. Building from his readings of Ho Chi Minh, Sands espoused the idea of self-sufficient communities within the republican enclaves of the north, communities that disengaged from the occupying state and were self-policed, self-taught, self-organised and self-sufficient. Building on these ideas and the Maoist tracts he had read in prison, Lynagh developed an idea of an Irish People’s War, where the architecture of British occupation - RUC stations, British army installations and the like - would be removed by force in order to create the no-go zones that would make these kind of self-contained communities possible. It is infuriating to see the language, one of the greatest tools in this pursuit of a economically, politically, and culturally free Ireland, stripped of its potential in order to check a box on Sinn Féin’s list of parliamentary deliverables.

Níl aon Gaeilge ar Carsonia; the northern state was created to fundamentally alter our conception of Ireland and its culture. That its treatment of the gerrymandered minority it was created to destroy necessitated no-go zones in the recent past should say enough about the cruelty of its creation and continued existence. The British Government legislating for our language is meant to show us that those dark days are over, to further enmesh us within this horrible creation they call the United Kingdom. Yet we have only to look to the recent decisions regarding historic cases of British state-directed murder in Ireland such as the Pat Finucane case and the plans to introduce an amnesty for British soldiers who murdered Irish people during the Troubles to know that the dark days aren’t over, they have only taken on a different shape. We are denied the physical freedom that Sands spoke of by the continued occupation of the British, yet they reach out the hand of supposed cultural freedom by dint of Acht na Gaeilge and Sinn Féin lap it up. When Ó Cadhain said that the language was the reconquest of Ireland, he did not mean for it to be an instruction manual for the British.

Therein lies the problem for Sinn Féin: they now treat the British Government as a neutral arbiter in the local fight between republicanism and loyalism rather than as the colonial occupier whose behaviour emboldens the loyalists. Without the physical freedom of an end to occupation and the economic freedom of control over our own affairs, what use is the cultural freedom of Westminster’s Acht na Gaeilge? Will there be an official translation available for the bill that excuses the British army’s murderers for the crimes they committed in Ireland? Will we be allowed to request that the boots on our necks say croppies lie down in Irish? If you want to know where a language revival with no larger political project gets you, you need only listen to the Welsh actor Michael Sheen speaking of the English plans to “make us a theme park, make us a gift shop” and how the Welsh were forced to “accommodate, accommodate, accommodate, as if nothing else had ever happened”.

Every year we fly our black flags, we sing “Roll of Honour” and “Loughgall Ambush”; we commemorate men like Sands and Lynagh but we no longer pay them the ultimate respect of engaging with the ideas that they developed during the lifetimes that made them such folk heroes. Mark Fisher once wrote: “A culture of commemoration is a cemetery. No cultural object can retain power when there are no longer new eyes to see it.” This is the great malaise of republicanism as it stands, new eyes are no longer tuned to ideas such as athghabháil na hÉireann; we sing our songs of Sands and Lynagh and then get back to promoting ideas that were antithetical to the republican movement when they were alive. The idea of the reconquest passed from Connolly to the likes of Ó Cadhain to the likes of Sands and Lynagh and remains undeveloped since then. Instead, we are left to ignore their ideas of an Ireland independent culturally, economically and politically, left to greet with enthusiasm the enshrinement of our culture into the parliamentary system of our occupier and also left to pin our hopes for reunification on a desire for the six county bourgeoisie to be allowed to re-enter the imperial European Union that once again renders Ireland as a country that cannot be independent in any way.

Independence has never existed in any part of Ireland; the Free State, nominally independent since the declaration of that incomplete republic in 1937, remained dominated economically by Britain through both trade and a currency union until 1978, when it hitched its economic dependence to the European Monetary System; it is quite obviously still dominated by Britain in matters of physical freedom, as seen through the border Britain placed in Ireland and the Garda Commissioner it placed in the Phoenix Park. There is a reason why the Land League came before the Gaelic League; the Irish people require control of the land they inhabit before they can decide how life is lived on that land. Instead we are left with a southern state where Scairbh na gCaorach is still Emyvale, Baile na Lorgan is still Castleblayney and the post-Brexit status as the only EU state where English is the dominant language is celebrated. This is a good thing, we are told.

Speaking Irish, as a way of life rather than as a mere form of communication, is a threat to both of the states within Ireland. Your chosen language does not inoculate you from capitalism, but in the case of minority languages with little market viability, it does place an albeit small barrier between you and a system that demands trade be as frictionless as possible. This is the reason why the Free State has for decades sought to destroy the Gaeltacht areas, both passively through the deprivation of infrastructure and services, and actively through its planning laws and decisions. This is where the newfound enthusiasm for the European project within mainstream republicanism would have us, the English language headquarters of the imperial and neoliberal European project.

This isn’t to take aim at the people of An Dream Dearg, or any single-issue cultural pressure group. These groups operate within the reality that Sinn Féin build within the republican community and, to my mind, are blameless for how these things work out once the issue has been railroaded into the parliamentary system. The problem is that when Sinn Féin abandoned the armalite in one hand and ballot box in the other strategy, they put two hands on the ballot box rather than picking up a shovel, or a book, or some other tool that would build within their community and organise the self-sufficiency that Sands envisioned. A truly revolutionary party, as Sinn Féin purport to be through their international expressions of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution etc, would be doing this work, building the alternative lives that are possible and teaching the republican people how to live in the north while disengaging with the occupying British state. Instead, we are taught to measure progress by the fact that the queen said a cúpla focal.

In the last few days, the need for some to stress the non-political nature of our language has once again come to the fore with the news that a planned naíscoil in Braniel, east Belfast has been forced to relocate. Obviously, the people who discriminate against the Irish language are wrong, but those who seek to appease them by stressing the language is not a political tool are just as wrong. We should have the confidence in ourselves and in our political project to tell these bigots that yes, they are right, we do see the language as part of the fight for a united Ireland, but not only a united one, an Ireland that seeks to completely undo the cultural, economic and physical scars centuries of British occupation have left us. We should puff out our chests and say yes, the language is one of the linchpins of an Ireland free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically. Through her, through our games and through the seizing of the economic levers of our country, all of it, we see the reconquest of Ireland.