‘Lost, Unhappy and at Home’: The Impact of Violence on Irish Culture

Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill

Introduction: The Impact of Violence on Irish Culture

The representations of violence in Irish culture, explored in this volume, are necessarily representative of the particular historical and cultural conditions that have prevailed in Irish society and, since partition in 1921, in the two jurisdictions of the island. As described in our introduction to the first volume of this book, this history has been weaving violence into the fabric of Irish society, in explicit and visible ways, and also imbricating it in more subtle, less visible, but no less corrosive forms. Fearghal McGarry (2021: 254) makes the case that in Ireland, a history defined by anti-colonial struggle ‘has transformed generations of former gunmen into established statesmen’. This is of course not unique in the post-colonial period, where the perpetrators of political violence become the leaders of new states (see Bianchini, Sylla and Zeilig 2024). In any case, as David Graeber points out, states are intrinsically violent entities, ‘at the same time forms of institutionalized raiding or extortion, and utopian projects’ (2004: 65). What makes the case of Ireland unique, however, is the longevity of the histories of violence against and by the state, and the fact that this was not merely anti-colonial, but included agrarian, sectarian, and class-based violence (McGarry 2021: 254–255). To that list we must add violence against women and children, often at the hands of the Church, as explored below, in the chapter by Pilar Iglesias-Aparicio.

The influence of historical violence notwithstanding, modern Ireland is among the highest ranked countries on the Global Peace Index, which measures the extent of violence on contemporary societies across the world using three metrics: ‘the level of Societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of Militarisation’ (IEP 2023). In the most recent study Ireland ranks third in the world. This measure, placing Ireland as one of the least dangerous places globally, has been achieved on the back of a notable social, cultural, and economic development over recent years. Where Ireland had historically existed in the shadow of its larger and more powerful neighbour to the east, it is now substantially more economically successful. Various indicators put the per capita GDP of the country at double that of the UK, having come up to British levels of economic productivity around the millennium, and continued in steady growth while the UK has fallen back, especially in the period post-Brexit (World Economics 2024). Across the same period, from 1998 to the present, and contributing to a significant reduction in the militarisation of the island, a largely durable peace has been secured north of the border. The continuance of the peace processes in the north offers the prospect of a more secure long-term future for the island of Ireland.

Additionally, in the last three decades Ireland has undergone marked changes in societal values, mitigating much of the intrinsic forms of social violence, particularly against LGBTQ+ people and women, through the provision of rights. Homosexuality was legalized in the north after a legal challenge to the European Court under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (McLoughlin 1996). In the south, the legislation prohibiting divorce was repealed in 1995 and divorce was made available from 1996 (Crowley 2011), with homosexuality decriminalized in 1993 following a legal challenge to the European Court of Human Rights brought by Irish Senator David Norris (Norris v. Ireland 1988). Two constitutional referenda in the 2010s brought Ireland into line with other European states, amending the Constitution to provide equal marriage rights for same sex couples (Ireland 2015) and repealing Amendment 8 of the Constitution (Ireland 2018) to enable women to choose to terminate pregnancies (O’ Shaughnessy 2022). Similar gains north of the border were achieved more recently with the prohibition on abortion removed by enactment of the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, (SI 2020/345) and same sex marriage equality legislation extended by the Westminster parliament in 2021 (SI 2019/1514).

However, these advances that have facilitated a less violent polity do not necessarily mean that the picture is one of unremitting peacefulness, economic success, and social cohesion. The so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy, where a substantial dependence on credit fuelled a property boom and a transformation of Irish cities and towns, (Casey 2016: 16–17) led to near-catastrophic fallout after the global economic crash of 2007–2009, and severe consequences, in property shortages, high rents and high levels of homelessness remain (see Donovan and Murphy 2013). There have been protests over water charges (Cox 2017), the parlous condition of state-run social and health services (Devitt 2021), the status of the Irish language and, more recently, immigration (Carroll 2023). The development of a movement opposed to the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers has been an unwelcome indication of fracturing of the social contract that prevailed throughout the post-millennial transformation of Irish society.

Moreover, traces and remnants of the old forms of Ireland, the repressive moral and societal strictures that underpinned it, and the violence it engendered continue to throw a long shadow over the contemporary cultural landscape. Investigations into child sexual abuse facilitated by the Catholic Church, the extensive institutional abuse of young mothers and their babies, and the cover-up by the state of these abuses have caused considerable anger. The violence of social opprobrium against single women who have children continues, with recent studies showing enduringly high levels of stigma (Bradley and Millar 2021). While at the same time, rates of single parenthood in the Republic of Ireland have soared, from ‘the lowest extramarital birth rate in 1980, at 5 per cent, to join those with the highest rates by 2000, at 32 per cent’ (Bradley and Millar 2021: 413–414). A study by the Irish government Central Statistics Office, has shown that single parent Irish families suffer the highest rates of deprivation, with fully half of all families living in poverty (CSO 2017).

The anti-colonial struggles, explored below by Luca Bertolani Azeredo and Marie Jonietz, continue to exert an enduring influence over contemporary Irish politics. At the same time, many of the legacy issues of Ireland’s anti-colonial past and the sectarian conflict in the north remain only partially addressed, creating ongoing political uncertainties on both sides of the border about the future of Ireland. Shelly, Muldoon and Roth (2023: 365) note that the post-Brexit situation has created an ‘increased sense that a United Ireland is likely’, making possible future instability in the north, and a concomitant resurgence of political violence. These are some of the issues explored by Yann Bévant in his chapter here. Further, Joyce and Lynch posit that the legacy of the conflict has been a widescale victimization beyond that experienced by those who suffered from direct acts of violence, but have been rendered victims of social forms of violence including ‘poverty, sectarianism, silence, deprivation, and hatred’ (2018: 508).

The picture thus presented is of a country that sits balanced between the violence of the past, and the potentialities of its future, not free of its colonial history, caught, as Seamus Deane puts it, between the romanticism of Yeats’ nationalist vision and Joyce’s cosmopolitanism (1985: 46) neither of which do justice to the present. In the interim, its present moment implies a new violence, that of socially exclusionary economics, which Rob Nixon has dubbed ‘slow violence’ (2011) where ruthless exploitation of resources favours the ascendancy of an elite, and where, as Luke Gibbons frames it, Ireland is positioned as a key player in a high-tech future where history is just another marketable commodity (1996: 96). It is against this backdrop that the writers of this volume explore issues related to violence and its effects on Irish society and culture in the twenty-first century. Their chapters cover works of theatre, cinema, poetry and history, and the social and cultural consequences of the past as it affects the Irish present.

The first section of the volume looks at some of the important histories that shed light on the role of violence and its effects on Irish culture, society, and identity. Luca Bertolani Azeredo studies two Irish paramilitary groups that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as responses to the popularity of the Boy Scouts and other youth groups in the UK before WWI: Na Fianna Éireann, established in 1909, and The Young Citizen Volunteers of Ireland, founded in Belfast in 1912. Azeredo’s chapter compares these two groups, paying close attention to the influence of gender, age, social background, relationships with adult movements, and literary propaganda. Smaller youth paramilitary groups are also mentioned and compared to the abovementioned ones in order to offer understanding of their unique positions within British and Irish early twentieth-century history. Azeredo builds on an extensive study of primary sources preserved in Dublin and Belfast, particularly Witness Statements, newspapers, and private papers housed in the Irish and Northern Irish national archives.

In his chapter, Yann Bévant discusses the current political situation in Northern Ireland arising from the threat of Brexit and Sinn Fein’s new political agenda. He argues that antagonistic perceptions of national identities are at the root of the Northern Irish conflict and that republicanism is, from an ideological point of view, one of these interpretations. However, within this ideological spectrum there have been numerous splits until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. For some years before that, Sinn Fein had been adopting a pragmatic approach that involved replacing armed struggle with social policy. While the process may have been merely a strategy to achieve the ultimate goal of reunification, Brexit has been a litmus test for the much-feared possibility of a new cycle of violence. Bévant stresses, however, that for the moment Sinn Fein favours a pragmatic approach, as opposed to a confrontation that would now be counterproductive.

Pilar Iglesias-Aparicio’s chapter offers a comparative analysis of the systemic institutional violence against women in Irish Magdalene Laundries and the Spanish Patronage for the Protection of Women (Patronato de Protección a la Mujer), created in November 1941, under Franco’s dictatorship, and in operation until 1985. Iglesias Aparicio explores the ways in which both of these institutions applied politics of control and repression of women. She also focuses on the sociocultural context, ideology and underlying systems of power which supported the existence of these institutions: the patriarchal system – which establishes different and binary gender roles and rights for men and women – as well as the power of the State (a democratic Republic in Ireland, a fascist Dictatorship in Spain), in alliance with the Catholic Church’s power, and the collaboration of society.

Like Bertolani Azeredo, Marie Jonietz focuses her chapter on the key decades of the early twentieth century where Irish national identity was forged through violent means in the military actions around the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. Her investigation unpicks the mythologies of martyrdom and self-sacrifice used by the founding mothers and fathers of the Irish state, and the ways in which Celtic myth and Christian iconography was co-opted to justify violence during the period under examination. Prominent in her analysis is a consideration of the stories of the boy-hero Cú Chulainn from the Ulster Cycle, and the operation of this mythic material in the ideological foundations of the Fianna Éireann. The centrality of these myths to the violent ideologies of the Irish independence movements is demonstrated by Jonietz, showing the significance of stories from the Ulster Cycle, those of Fionn Mac Cumhail, Cathleen ní Houlihan and others, in forming Irish revolutionary identity.

Sara Romero explores different types of discrimination that had been obscured by sectarian conflict during the Northern Irish Troubles, as recounted in Anna Lo’s memoir, The Place I Call Home (2016). In it, Lo explores her experiences as a Chinese woman living in Belfast during the Troubles and her political involvement in helping other discriminated minorities. Using a postcolonial theoretical approach, Romero highlights the parallels between the Hong Kong in which Lo was born and the Northern Ireland to which she emigrated. Confirming Primo Levi’s idea of the ‘grey zone’, she shows how the oppressed can also become oppressors on grounds of ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.