We choose what to remember

Recently, after I had written about the official neglect of Daniel O'Connell's role as the founder of Irish democracy, I had some fascinating correspondence from the architect Austin Dunphy.

He told me a story that forms a nice postscript to much of the recent debate about 1916 and official memory. It expresses in microcosm a great deal about the State's ambivalent relationship to Irish history, about the way it has encoded, almost in its DNA, a distrust of non-violent change.

In the mid-60s, Austin Dunphy was a young architect with the Office of Public Works. He was working on three jobs - the restoration of Royal Hospital Kilmainham, architectural works at Áras an Uachtaráin, and the restoration of Daniel O'Connell's ancestral home at Derrynane Abbey in Caherdaniel, Co Kerry.

Often, after a day working at Áras an Uachtaráin, as he was about to leave for home, he would be called in to the private study of the president, Eamon de Valera, whose own political career as the dominant figure in 20th-century Irish politics was shaped, of course, by his status as the most senior survivor of the 1916 Rising. Dev discovered that Austin was interested in his own pet subject, mathematics, and a bond formed between the young architect and the elder statesman. They would discuss mathematical problems which, because of his poor eyesight, Dev would sketch out in chalk on a desk covered with green linoleum.

When the restoration work on Derrynane was nearing completion, there was a discussion about who should perform the official opening ceremony. Austin suggested President de Valera. It was pointed out to him, however, that O'Connell was an unpopular figure with 20th-century nationalists and he himself recalled that de Valera's predecessor as president, Seán T. O'Kelly, on taking up residence at the Áras, had insisted that a marble bust of the Liberator be removed from the entrance hall and consigned to the basement. Austin, however, promised to sound Dev out.

At their next discussion, he described the work done on Derrynane as conversationally as possible and then popped the question. "To my surprise and great pleasure, he immediately said 'Yes'." The day went splendidly. There were soldiers with fixed bayonets, military bands, assembled dignitaries. De Valera made a speech praising O'Connell's achievements.

Shortly afterwards, Austin met Dev again for one of their chats and thanked him for making the occasion so memorable, and in particular for his generous tribute to O'Connell's memory. He added: "I knew O'Connell was not at all popular with his [ie Dev's] generation of nationalists, which I said I could never quite understand. He then said something which I have never forgotten. He said: 'You must think, you must consider our feelings at that time. We firmly believed that the Irish people could only be 'jolted' from their lethargy and Irish freedom and liberty achieved by force of arms. How then could we promote the memory of the man who achieved so much by parliamentary means with no loss of life? To praise him would have made it impossible for us to justify armed insurrection."

This is, of course, an anecdotal memory of a particular, perhaps momentary thought and not necessarily a considered view that de Valera wanted to pass down to posterity. But it seems to me both highly credible and deeply poignant. Credible because Dev himself, had, after all, become an accomplished parliamentary politician and had managed to achieve things by political means that he had been unable to achieve through the violence of the Civil War. Poignant because it suggests a tinge of regret at the violent turn taken by Irish politics in the first half of the 20th century.

Austin Dunphy's recollection of de Valera's rather rueful attitude to O'Connell is an interesting microcosm of so much of the debate around commemoration in Ireland because it sums up a notion of historical recollection as a zero-sum game. If you want to recall and celebrate the achievements of unarmed politics, you must ignore events such as 1916. If you think 1916 was a noble episode, you have to ignore the likes of O'Connell. Because statements about the past have to contain morals for the present, we choose what to remember according to current political needs.

This attitude still prevails. At the end of this month, there is the centenary of the death of O'Connell's greatest successor as a leader of mass movements for popular rights, Michael Davitt. Yet the Michael Davitt Memorial Association in Davitt's home place of Straide, Co Mayo, has had a terrible time trying to get even modest public funding for centenary events. Apart from the issuing of a commemorative stamp, the Government has shown very little interest in recalling Davitt's immense contribution to the breaking up of the landed ascendancy in Ireland and to the labour movement in Ireland and Britain. Asked about Government plans for the centenary in the Dáil recently, the Taoiseach replied: "I cannot recall the exact support we have given, but my department's commemorative division has been in discussions with the people involved."

Perhaps if Davitt had managed to shoot a few people, the Government might have shown more enthusiasm.