THIS WEEK, WE saw more demonstrations in Dublin about immigration. As one protestor passed me by, he shouted ‘Ireland for the Irish’.
It made me think.
What does it mean to be Irish? Is Ireland a place, or a group of people?
Political scientist Hannah Arendt spent a lot of time thinking about questions like these, and for good reason. Born a Jewish subject of the German Empire, Arendt lived through two world wars, fled fascism, and ultimately spent 13 years stateless – belonging nowhere at all – before acquiring American citizenship in 1950.
In 1951, Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism. It is not exactly light reading. In one chapter, she talks about nations and states, and nation-states – words I had never really thought of as having separate meanings. I was interrupted one evening by a video call from my sister in London – or, more accurately, from my two-year-old nephew, Ruairí.
Ruairí likes to hold the phone extremely near to his face, meaning that his round, smiley head fully occupies the screen as he looks at you. As I chatted with him, I wondered: is he Irish? On one hand, Ruairí has spent his entire life in London and, in fact, when he says ‘no’, it is with a dainty little English twang. On the other, he has both an Irish passport and, perhaps more importantly, an unmistakeably Irish Head.
Irish society feels uneasy lately. This summer, we voted in our first elections in four years, and we probably will vote in a general election later this year. Politics is about how we organise society, and elections are still the main way for citizens to articulate directly how we want to do that. In the last few months, questions of Irishness, identity and belonging have featured in our political discourse with an intensity not seen in recent years.
In our era, most people live in nation-states. For a long time it used to be empires, however. For a while, Europe was mostly dictatorships. We are so used to nation-states we don’t really notice them: Spaniards live in Spain, Chinese people live in China, and Irish people live in Ireland. It seems obvious – but, for most of history, it wasn’t.
So, what defines Irishness? Is it language, religion, skin colour? Are you Irish if you live in Ireland? Is my nephew Ruairí Irish? What about the 100,000 Ukrainian refugees who are here, or their children – when do they become Irish? In fact, can you ever become Irish, or is nationality something in your blood?
Our sense of place is challenged when we see society changing around us. The recent increase in refugees seeking asylum in Ireland is a major development. It exerts pressure, in economic and social terms. Few would deny this.
We categorise things to make sense of them, including people. When we meet someone new, and ask them about themselves, on some level that is what we are doing: who are you? Are you like me? Where are you from? Black or white; friend or foe; foreign or familiar?
These questions sound simple, but simple answers to them must be judged with scepticism. Moreover, taxonomising people like they are plants or books is not only simplistic, but exceedingly dangerous. Arendt knew this. It led to the evil of the the Nuremberg Race Laws and the grim absurdity of South African apartheid ‘race tests’.
John Hume is one of my heroes. He was a nationalist – but he was wary of nationalism. Hume knew that by defining a nation, you must equally define those to be excluded. Hume sensed on a deep level that politics premised on tribe or creed is self-defeating. It divides people and pits us against each other, at the expense of concerns like housing, education, labour rights, or putting food on the table. It is a zero-sum game in which nobody wins. So went his often-repeated aphorism: you can’t eat a flag.
In the hospitals where I have worked, I have met Irish children – some from the Aran Islands and some with American accents from YouTube. I have worked with Indian nurses and Pakistani doctors, without whom our health system would collapse overnight. I have met refugee children, whose memories of home – places like Kharkiv and Kabul – are fading fast.
I think of them starting school here and taking up hurling; I cannot help but think that the home they fled is gone forever.
History does not go backwards – yet, even if we could turn the clock back, would we want to? This summer, one European candidate in my constituency – a strikingly well-funded campaign, I couldn’t help but notice – called for mass deportations and a return to traditional Irish values. This candidate would prefer to wind the clock back to, say, the 1980s – when the country was broke, teenage girls died giving birth in grottoes, and Irish people were leaving in droves and not the other way around.
Identity matters. There is no point pretending it doesn’t. Genes matter too, as demonstrated by my nephew’s large, lightly thatched Celtic head. Yet the crucial point is that identity is neither fixed nor simple. Identity consists of shared culture, history, language, beliefs. Irishness is all these things. Sometimes it is just about wanting England to lose at football.
However, if you asked me to pick one element ahead of all others, it would be shared values. I don’t care what passport my nephew carries or what accent he has. However, what does matter and what we can control is the values we raise our children to have.
Politics is not about policies or even politicians. Politics is about values, and elections ask each of us to choose those values we wish to follow, in our lives and in society. Some voices loudly claim that Irishness is about place and blood and that it is under attack. They are lying. The way to protect our Irishness is by staying true to those values we wish to define us as a society – like fairness, kindness, decency and solidarity.
It is hard to define what it is to be Irish. Of some consolation is the fact that our most celebrated writer, James Joyce, never worked it out Joyce left Ireland as a young man, never fully at home here, yet spent the rest of his life writing about it. The chosen hero of Ulysses, his masterpiece, was no accident: Leopold Bloom, the Jew, born and raised in Ireland, who wandered everywhere and belonged nowhere.
In one chapter, Bloom finds his nationalist credentials under cross-examination in Barney Kiernan’s pub. The men grow drunk, and the conversation seethes with antisemitism and resentment. Bloom is asked to define a nation. His simple and instinctive answer is met with mockery and derision, yet it would not look out of place in Arendt’s work: “a nation is the same people living in the same place”. Bloom’s compassion and humanism marks him out from every other character in the book.
The questions facing Irish politics today are difficult, but they are not new. Outsiders throughout history have reckoned with them. We should heed their wisdom.
Dr Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne is a doctor specialising in public health and paediatrics.
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