The Irish Republic after the Crisis: Commemorating the Easter Rising in the 2016 Election Campaign

Abstract

The Irish Republic after the Crisis:Commemorating the Easter Rising in the 2016 Election Campaign* Isabel Kusche (bio) A vote for myself and Sinn Féin is a vote for change, for a fair and just society based on the spirit and principles of 1916. —dessie ellis, candidate in the 2016 election The 2016 general election in Ireland was perhaps the most unpredictable in the country's history. In hindsight it would be called "the election that nobody won" and resulted in a complicated minority-government arrangement.1 The traditional parties Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Labour were confronted with a Sinn Féin rising in the polls, two newly formed parties (Renua and the Social Democrats), radical left-wing groups, and strong support for independent candidates.2 In this altered political landscape both new and established political actors faced the challenge of defining what they could offer to an electorate that looked back to years of austerity in the wake of the financial crisis. They needed to articulate an identity as political actors different from the others to an extent that made them more appealing to voters. This was also the centenary year of the Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. An election campaign a few months before Easter in such a year was likely to include some acknowledgment of the significance of the anniversary. Yet which political actors would or would not attempt to associate themselves with it and how [End Page 128] they would do so was far from clear and are the subject of the following analysis. Commemoration and the Context of the 2016 Election The politics of history can be defined "as any social action that is essentially based on historical references and/or tries to influence the interpretation and representation of history."3 It often involves open conflict about competing interpretations of past events. The history of commemorating the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland offers ample evidence of how changing political constellations guide decisions about the form and content of commemorations.4 Some anniversaries, most notably the fiftieth in 1966, were turned into state celebrations of an Ireland whose progress and modernity were framed as the eventual outcome of the Rising and were also validated by it.5 Other anniversaries, for example, the sixtieth in 1976, were celebrated without major public commemoration organized by the state since the violent character of the Rising was deemed deeply problematic given the violence in Northern Ireland at the time. Commemorations were thus left to non-state initiatives, notably the Provisional IRA and its sympathizers.6 The commemoration of events imbues them with extraordinary significance and assigns them a distinct role in understanding the present.7 It defines and constructs a present identity based on an interpretation of the past, which is inevitably selective.8 In doing so, commemorations serve both sociopolitical and psychological [End Page 129] functions.9 The notion of articulation in discourse is helpful to clarify how commemorations connect past and present.10 Making such a link suggests a contingent unity as opposed to a necessary unity. The articulated unity does not simply bring together preexisting elements but changes the articulated elements by creating a specific context in which they are to be understood. Consequently, interpretive frames that relate the past to the present are also tactical tools that parties and politicians can use in political competition.11 In drawing on a past event to make sense of their present and their pledges for the future, parties attempt to define their identity and the nature of that past event as they relate to each other. If this articulation is successful, it will change the understanding of both—either subtly or more radically, depending on how similar to or different from previous articulations it is. After all, "to remember is to place a part of the past in the service of conceptions and needs of the present."12 In the context of the 2016 Dáil election most Irish parties could be expected to have some reason to try to make use of the upcoming centenary of the Easter Rising in the service of their own present position. First...