VINCENT BROWNE SHOW, 1998: SPECIAL ON 1798 REBELLION
Oct 27th, 2008 by Conor McCabe
This is another taping I made of the Vincent Browne Show - side B of the programme below. Again, it’s another fascinating discussion involving Browne and an informed panel of Dr. Kevin Whelan, Prof. Tom Bartlett, and Prof. Tom Dunne, with the topic this time the 1798 rebellion.
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Enjoy.
Thanks for this Conor. Good stuff.
Cheers Garibaldy.
I really should have left a better comment on that, but just didn’t have the heart to go into it all in detail. It was quite amusing to hear Dunne and Whelan interact, and how tense things got fairly quickly over the sectarianism issue. I also thought the guy from the Commemorative Committee showed up his colours by comparing Wexford in 1798 to a modern African colonial situation. The fact that people in Ireland were not separated by an insuperable colour barrier seems to have passed him - and a lot of people working in a postcolonial framework- by entirely. The notion that sectarianism was magically injected into Irish politics by the state in the 1790s to combat the United Irishmen seems to me to undermine the argument that the United Irishmen were founded to fight a sectarian state. It smacks of desperation. I’m also amused that the people who insist most on the politicisation cannot allow themselves to admit that sectarianism was as much bottom up as top down.
Having listened to this, the anger that comes out in Tom Dunne’s Rebellions is much more understandable. Has Conor or anybody else here read it? A great book.
I read Dunne’s book a couple of years back, but haven’t been back to 1798 since. Too stuck in the 19th/20th c.
I thought Dunne’s book was a great critique of the way the government has been abusing the past. Though I wouldn’t agree with everything he says by any means. I think he and Elliott are determined to keep everything in a fairly simplistic sectarian framework. Which is as ahistorical as the version they criticised.
Yeah I must go back to it again. The period itself is fascinating as well. Such a rich part of our history.
Indeed. Watched that Soviet na hÉireann thing. I’d like to have heard Tom Dunne’s response to that. I have to say I thought its grasp on the real possibilities at the time was somewhat tenuous.
Haven’t seen it yet as I was working the last night it was on. It’s on tomorrow, though, so I’ll try to catch it then. I haven’t heard of the actual claims it’s making, only comments from other people about a “one great push and the world was ours” analysis, but I suppose it’s hard to talk of a united left plan after the Carrigan tribunal, although the Rotunda occupation was roughly contemporaneous.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.