What is the Purpose of an Irish State?
Word count: 4,408 words
Estimated reading time: 20 minutes
Syndicated: this article was originally featured on Pangur Bán’s Substack, and is syndicated with the permission of the author.
Summary: Pangur Bán tracks the evolution of the Irish State’s purpose, contrasting its original cultural and spiritual mission with today's material, GDP-driven focus. Drawing on nationalist thinkers, heargues that the State should exist to help the Irish become Gaels — a mission that entails the revival of national consciousness, language, and identity; goals beyond mere economic calculus.
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Many days do I reflect on the current state of Modern Data-Driven Ireland™️whilst I ponder a very simple question. What, if any, is the purpose of the current Irish State?
Now, this could be answered easily by many. The purpose of the 26 county Irish ‘Free State’ is to provide healthcare, education, social welfare & benefits, fix the roads and - most importantly - ensure economic growth via an annual increase in GDP. As we know from Steve Pinker: line go up, make everyone happy!
But if this is all the ‘Free State’ is about, what is its point? What is the mission, the purpose of the State? Does it exist purely to ensure economic growth? The following passage, courtesy of Desmond Fennell, is pertinent:
“The state lost its fundamental legitimacy and acquired a merely contingent legitimacy instead. It ceased to embody, in the citizens’ eyes, the perennial nation and its sovereignty; it was presented and seen as embodying merely itself — and itself as merely an agency for supplying the citizens with material goods.
It became, in other words, a state legitimised by money. There is a great difference between the relationship of citizens to a state legitimised in this way and their relationship to a state seen as embodying the perennial nation and its sovereignty, and succeeding reasonably well materially.
The latter kind of state, by reason of its conspicuous identification with the nation’s traditions, aspirations and sacred values, makes itself lovable by its citizens. They can, and most of them do, love their nation as embodied by its state, and this love renders them willing to make sacrifices at the state’s behest.
This was literally the case in Ireland during the Economic War of the 30s when Irish farmers — in unconscious imitation of the most ancient form of sacrifice —slaughtered their cattle for Ireland’s sake, rather than send them to Britain. The state which has a merely contingent legitimacy, based on the material advantages it offers, cannot evoke love or the willingness to sacrifice. Its legitimacy, and its power to exact obedience, have no spiritual source to draw on, only a material one.
This was the kind of state which the Republic became from the early 60s onwards. Authoritative voices told us that the state’s function was to ‘create more jobs’, distribute bigger doles, invent new kinds of doles, build bigger & better-equipped schools and hospitals, give free access to them, improve the telephone system, & provide more police and soldiers, with better and better equipment, to protect the citizens’ growing wealth against the increasing assaults on it by robber gangs. That, said the politicians, civil servants, economic gurus, radicals and bishops, was what the state was there to do.
By doing that, it showed itself a good state and deserved our loyalty & obedience. Governments which did all of that were good governments, and those which did not deserved rejection. The communications media, strengthened greatly by the addition of television, made propaganda for this new state. They called it the “compassionate” & ‘‘caring” state & compared it, favourably, with its nationalist predecessor
They urged governments to spend more, and to give more things ‘‘free”’ to people. They went further and argued that the state, to be fully good, must facilitate increased sexual consumption also, by removing the legal impediments which restricted or discouraged it.
Thus the new, reduced conception of the state’s function — as a dispenser, facilitator and protector of material goodies and as nothing else became established in the public mind during the 60s.”
— Desmond Fennell, ‘State of the Nation Since the 1960s’
The words of the ‘GP’ of Modern Ireland’s ills struck me as soon as I read them. In the above passage, Desmond details the transition from Dev’s Ireland to the Ireland shaped by Lemass and Whitaker; Modern Data-Driven Ireland, the most apt description for the incumbent era, was an outgrowth of the aforementioned.
How did we get here? The timeline is as follows:
There was a rebirth in Irish national consciousness - its origins are rooted in the 1880s, the roots of the Gaelic Revival:
"Something in the songs - though I could understand only a few of the words - something in the music - something in the atmosphere gripped me, and I seemed to be put in touch with something far back in the Race. Unknown depths in me were stirred and across the centuries I seemed to be in touch with the days when Irish speech and Irish manners and traditions were in every valley and on every hill and by every river... I understood, accepted, and felt myself to be one with the Gael. For the first time I saw the whole of Ireland. It was a revelation, one which in the fifty years that have since elapsed, has not faded."
P. S. O'Hegarty, 'In the Gaelic League', Radio Éireann Broadcast, 1952 — O’Hegarty recalls his experience of encountering a 1902 Gaelic League Feis as a young man, and its effects in awakening national consciousness.
This combined with previous political agitations (Land Wars, Home Rule etc.) and global events (WW1) eventually spawned the central event that ignited the Gaelic Flame - the week of Easter 1916.
"After the Rising there was in Ireland, as everyone knows, a sense of spiritual exaltation....Through them the past had become alive, visible to us all. The warriors of old - the O’Neills, the O’Donnells, the O’Sullivans - they rode the land again, and Tone and Emmet were speaking in every ear, and with them, the nameless dead that had fought and died in the same fight...Vision! - the land was swept with it - our lives were dazzled: we lived nobler." — Daniel Corkery Seamus, ‘The Hounds of Banba’ (1920)
"The generation that became conscious twenty years ago turned with hope, faith and reverence to Gaelic Ireland. From the remnant of the Gaelic-speaking people they would learn what civilization their country was capable of attaining to.
They were of the race of Brennus and Vercingetorix, of Cuchullain and Maeve, of Columbanus and Scotus Eiriugena...of the race of the missionary saints, and of the lovers of learning who had made themselves the patrons and protectors of European culture." — Padraic Colum, ‘Introduction in Poems of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood’ (1916)
"Easter Week brought the stirring memories to a sharp point. A sudden rush of self-realisation brought the nation back to the attitude of 220 years ago, the normal attitude of race-consciousness. Now, as then, the nation knows itself to be the true owner of this island." — Aodh De Blácam, ‘Towards the Republic’ (1918)
"Chonaic mé an aiséirí: fás Chonnartha na Gaedhilge agus fás Sinn Féin agus fás gach gluaiseachta eile a bhí ag obair chun Gaeluithe an náisiúin sna blianta iontacha sin idir Chogadh na mBórach agus bliain a 1914; na filí Béarla, Yeats, O'Sullivan, Colum, MacDonagh, Mac Cathmhaoil, Plunkett; Amharclann na Mainistreach; cothú tionscal na hÉireann; na cruinnithe, na céilithe, na Coláistí Gaeilge, an Ghaeltacht ; blianta iontacha, go deimhin, an taca ba soilbhre, ba ghile b'fhéidir i stair na hÉireann go dtí sin ó theacht na nGall. Agus na fir óga sin a bhí le feiceáil sna ranganna sin, sna craobhacha, sna cumainn sin uile, bhí gunnaí acu ina lámha." — Liam Ó Briain, 'Cuimhní cinn: Cuimhní an Éirí Amach. Cuid 1', (1951)
[The symbology of Easter 1916 is itself worth it’s own entire article. It is both Cúchulainn and Christ like. But I will be getting too off topic]
There was then a War of Independence, the Treaty and Civil War. This was followed by the years of Cumann na nGaedheal and then after a near dominance in politics by Dev’s Fianna Fáil for the next three decades.
In future articles I will elaborate on the significance of the foregoing; for now, however, I content myself with a question of cardinal importance: what is the purpose of the Irish state?
The reason I gave this outline of events and the quotes above is to show that a real self-awakening happened within that period. Much like how in the stories of the Fianna, Manannán mac Lir or Gearoidh Iarla, where they are said to sleep and slumber deep within caves and lakes, ready to awaken to defend Ireland at her hour of need — deep within us rests the collective racial consciousness of the Gael ready to arise again.
This was the whole purpose for the nation’s rising on that Easter Week. It was a resurrection of its soul. Ultimately then, it was the recognition that the Irish nation should be intellectually and culturally self-shaping, self-governing, and economically self-maintaining - Sinn Féin, We Ourselves ought to be our credo. Quoting Desmond Fennell again:
“Whether through organised sport, the establishment of cooperatives, language revival, literary creation and presentation, theosophical preaching, militant trade unionism, the symbolic re-enactment of Christ’s death and resurrection, military training or armed rebellion, it was an attempt to restore man in Ireland, or the Irish people, to proper human being.
According to the individual or the group concerned, stress was laid on various attributes of realised humanity: on character or intellect, authentic language, creativity, nobility or vitality, on unity of being, aesthetic sensibility, moral courage or physical fitness, on collective ruling power, political or mental autonomy, brotherliness, self-respect or self-reliance, awareness of man’s divinity - and so on.
This humanist movement was directed against materialism and capitalism, which were often seen as embodied by England and its industrial civilisation. It strove to elevate, instead of matter or money, man.” — Desmond Fennell, ‘Heresy’
Lamentably, this vision faded away as time went on - the reasons for this are manifold, and I will explore them in depth in future articles on my Substack — suffice to say, the following are germane:
Failure/Neglection of Language Revival. Causes lack of self-confidence. Loss of a cultural filter.
Erosion of Catholicism. Vatican II’s watering down of traditions etc. Catholicism compensated for the culturally damage suffered by the loss of language and held as the only cultural barrier against the wider Anglosphere.
Tensions in the North in 1950s and the outbreak of the Troubles by 1969. Failure of the Free State to do anything about Partition and then the Fine Gael - Labour crackdown on Republicanism in the 70s onwards.
Economic failure to establish the original Sinn Féin economic programme. Many reasons for this I have discussed on Twitter and will elaborate in further articles. Check out Peter Ryan also.
Each of these is worth their own article to explain, but for now the curious reader may search my twitter for some scattered notes and threads.
Regarding economics: this is a factor relevant to the initial question of this article and it was also harder to prevent due then-contemporaneous global trends. For example, Ireland was quite a large recipient of Marshall Plan grants despite being neutral. A term attached to the Marshall Plan was that countries had to calculate their GDP for the first time ever — this was a new metric developed by Simon Kuznets in 1934, who didn’t include public or military spending.
Despite inventing the concept of GDP, Kuznets would not be invited to the meeting in Washington, 1944 where a total of nine economist, including John Maynard Keynes & Richard Stone, agreed that the IMF and World Bank would use GDP (including public spending in the metric) for measuring growth in the post-war economic order.
This is relevant as again the criterion of success for the Marshall Plan was dependent on GDP and Ireland was in recipient of a large amount.
“As one commentator put it: 'If GDP went up it meant that the aid was working. If GDP fell, that meant aid was being spent on the wrong things." And it would be naive to regard the plan as simply an act of economic goodwill. In practice, it was really just another weapon in America's unconventional Cold War arsenal. The diplomat George Kennan, one of the founding fathers of US military strategy with respect to Soviet Russia (in 1946, he coined the term 'containment'), was also a key architect of the Marshall Plan. 'Economic aid happens to be a weapon in which we still have the superiority,' he wrote in a note to a colleague about the Marshall Plan; 'it should be our principal weapon in countering communist expansionism.” — Daniel Susskind, ‘Growth: A Reckoning’
I will delve deeper into this another time, but this explains the shift in the thinking of the likes of Lemass and Whittaker towards their embracement of the post-war economic order. We can’t fault them too much as Fennell states:
“Appearances apart, moreover, it is also a fact that, in those early years, the new course was not intrinsically reactionary or anti-national. Just as Lenin’s partial return to a private-enterprise economy, in the New Economic Policy of 1921, was necessary to gain a breathing-space for the Bolshevik Revolution, so was Lemass’s turning to foreign enterprise necessary to rescue the Republic’s economy.
The state’s initiative in seeking and encouraging outside intervention was, in the circumstances, its only available means of serving the nation as it needed to be served. When a boat is sinking, it is right & proper to throw weighty, precious things overboard.
What made the new course reactionary & anti-national in the long run was that, unlike Lenin’s New Economic Policy, it was allowed to continue indefinitely, to become the new norm, & thus to undermine the revolution which it was ostensibly intended to serve” — Desmond Fennell ‘State of the Nation Since the 1960s’
Lemass-Whittaker were both embracing the post-war fixation of GDP and this would have been fine if it were to get us out of bad waters economically during the 1950s and quell the emigration spikes of the unemployed to a post-war and rebuilding booming Britain. If this were done with then attempting to restore the Irish language’s place and the ideals in what Fennel describes as the humanism of 1916, it could have been fine. But here we are and this obsession with economic growth would come to dominate all facets of the State to the neglect of all else. And hence, this brings us back again to the Fennell passage at the start.
Instead of using our increased wealth to now better ourselves and stir the nation towards completing the goals and live up to the ideals the State was founded on to fulfill, we have forgotten and outright abandoned them to the point our current Taoiseach stated that the idea of sovereignty is backwards. We all know the current condition of the Free State so I needn’t rant. Ultimately, we have not internalized what Thomas Davis sang and have instead become a province again.
Máirtín Ó Cadhain phrased it aptly, if pessimistically.
So the Free State has totally divorced itself from the initials goals and ideals of 1916 and a new worldview - that of data-driven economic growth which can be referred to as ‘Derek’s Ireland’ has currently taken hold. Ireland is now a Shared Island, a province in a wider interconnected global economy, finally free from Dev’s Prison Island.
However, those who still hold dear that spark of national consciousness within them should not lose faith. It was like this before in Irish History as those passages about 1916 indicate. As Corkery puts it:
"It was... Lessing who did a man’s part in giving the German nation confidence in itself and in its star...
Ireland’s present condition, as will be understood from what has been said, is incomparably worse than Germany’s ever was; and not one but a whole battalion of Lessings would be needed to establish a normal state of mind among us. One can but predicate not one Lessing nor a succession of them, but rather a succession of nationalistic movements, rising and falling, each dissolving into a period of reaction, of provincialism, yet each for all that leaving the nation a little more sturdy, a little more normal, a little less provincial than before." — Daniel Corkery, ‘Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature’
The Question Answered Simply
I wanted to do some exploring and brainstorming above as I flesh out the answers both to this question and others I will be writing about over the coming months. Acknowledging now the current dominant view of Ireland, I believe it was worthwhile to really understand our mission and to start we must ask: what is the actual purpose of having a State for the Irish Nation if not for the Derek view of maintaining economic growth?
My brief answer:
"The State is a physical body prepared for the incarnation of the soul of a race.....In the highest civilizations the individual citizen is raised above himself and made part of a greater life, which we may call the National Being.” —George William Russell (A.E.), ‘The National Being’
The Irish State is the embodiment of the Irish nation to enact our collective national consciousness and realize our Will.
What is the collective Will of the Irish Nation?
The Gael is ultimately the idealization and realization of the Irishman’s Being. The Gael is the real living race memory of the Irish that can be reawakened if not yet actualized already or still present along the Western edges. It’s a racial consciousness that has not been stamped out.
"The idea of the national being emerged at no recognizable point in our history in Ireland. It is older than any name we know. It is not earth-born, but the synthesis of many heroic and beautiful moments, and these, it must be remembered, are divine in their origin" — George William Russell (A.E.), ‘The National Being’
Thereby, the purpose of the state is to provide the means for the ‘Irish’ to become ‘Gaels’.
This is what the driving mission of the Irish State is meant to be. It is meant to provide all the necessities for the ‘Irish’ to become ‘Gaels’. I will explain more about this in an upcoming future article. But I will reiterate:
The purpose of an Irish State is to provide the means for the ‘Irish’ to become ‘Gaels’.
"Think of where all this long cavalcade of the Gael is tending, and how and in what manner their tents will be pitched in the evening of their generation. A national purpose is the most unconquerable and victorious of all things on earth. It can raise up Babylons from the sands of the desert, and make imperial civilizations spring from out a score of huts, and after it has wrought its will it can leave monuments that seem as everlasting a portion of nature as the rocks." — George William Russell (A.E.), ‘Imaginations and Reveries’
A final point to add to this brainstorm first piece. This mission and purpose for the Irish State doesn’t have to come into conflict with economic activity.
This includes the materials needs as James Connolly stated:
“You cannot teach starving men Gaelic; and the treasury of our national literature will and must remain lost forever to the poor wage-slaves who are contented by our system of society to toil from early morning to late at night for a mere starvation wage.” — James Connolly ‘The Language Movement’
Certainly it can clash but I would like to delve another time into the work of Finbarr Bradley who studied the relation between the Irish language and it’s positive impact on business. One could also look at the example of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew as well as others but it is up to us to develop our mission statements and alignments, to continue the project of restoring the Irish and hence Gaelic nation.
“And Ireland, long a province be
A nation once again”
I have been meaning to start this Substack for over a year now rather than confining myself to posting on Twitter/X. I had a deeper dive into the above question and more semi prepared but I am short for time with my work/life/relationship balance, so I thought I would get something out. I hope those of you reading can help refine the answer to this question. I have built up a compendium of references both from my own reading and from saving the many excellent posts on GaelTwitter - to which Irusan deserves the biggest shoutout. Expect me over the coming months to elaborate further on the above as well as pose more questions like it with attempted answers as I hope to develop a new spirit of revival for the Gael