D.P. Moran and The Leader: Writing an Irish Ireland through Partition

Abstract

FOR readers of literature D.P. Moran (1869-1936) is best remembered as pugnacious journalist who, at turn of twentieth century, coined an increasingly exclusivist form of cultural politics under rubric However, critical accounts of Moran are scanty, and apart from short monograph by Patrick Maume, his work has rarely received serious scholarly attention in its own right. (1) Moran's views have been frequently summarized by aphorism the foundation of is Gael, and Gael must be element that absorbs, and critics have typically focused on ideas expressed during early years of his career. (2) Moran himself has been criticized for employing chauvinistic images and crudely sectarian terminology; commentators have variously described him as bigot, xenophobe, racist, and as a great hater of anything that might be deemed non-Catholic or non-Irish. (3) This essay rises out of this tradition of critical neglect. It explores ideas which appeared in Moran's 1905 text The Philosophy of and early issues of The Leader--the newspaper he founded in 1900--and demonstrates how these ideas were to resurface in context of later editorials in run-up to independence. A series of editorials, essays, and cartoons appearing in years surrounding partition reveal Moran's continuing interest in politics of identity formation, morality, and language. They also reveal his continuing interest in delineation of wholesome Ireland identity. However, Moran's model of identity was riddled with irony and ambivalence: He repeatedly argued for return to (a language which he never mastered) through medium of English (a language in which he wrote with facility, but which he claimed to despise); he also pressed for coterminous existence of Catholic and Gaelic, and excluded Protestants as resident aliens, even as he argued that Catholics were an inherently tolerant incapable of bigotry. Moreover, Moran declared in support of Treaty while he simultaneously retained his belief in united Ireland. He equivocated about presence of border, seeing it as both an imperial imposition to be resisted and cordon sanitaire that provided for policies of cultural and economic protection; he also equivocated about place of North (and Belfast in particular), seeing North and its inhabitants as simultaneously native and foreign. Reading Moran's later work against backdrop of Treaty and partition suggests that his return to argument of The Philosophy of in early 1920s is neither simply irrelevant nor incongruous, as Brian Inglis suggests. (4) Rather, Moran's later work for The Leader provides critical expression of ambivalence and problematic of identity formation, and reveals some of discursive strategies that enabled Free State (or elements within it) to write itself through partition. THE MATRIX: MORAN'S EARLY WRITING Moran's understanding of Irishness and so-called indices of national identity emerged from ideology of wing of Gaelic League, which prioritized issues such as language and culture over parentage and place of birth. Insistent that the Gael [was] matrix of people, throughout his career Moran maintained that any commentary on must start with an affirmation of foundational importance of language. (5) He linked such assertions to historical importance of religion and argued that definitions of nationality must recognize coterminous existence of Catholicism and Gaelicization in an setting. (6) Such principles, by implication, ruled out role of Protestant within nation; they were, rather, assigned status of the English who happened to be born in (7) In Moran's argument Protestants could never be truly Irish, regardless of acts of apostasy or cultural repudiation; they could never fully participate in life of nation, no matter how they might learn to speak or write Irish; and they would always be adjudged alien by so-called thoroughgoing Irish considerations. …