When the Queen visited Ireland

By Tom Browne

Much of what’s written about Queen Elizabeth II during this period of mourning will be pretty worthless. As if to prove the old adage about the British being either “at your throat or at your feet”, the coverage so far has divided between reverential boilerplate or witless iconoclasm, largely devoid of insight. The analytical moment—where we can look at the Queen in the round—will have to be postponed, at least until the emotions die down.

As a mild republican, someone in favour of constitutional reform but with no clear sense of what reform should look like, my own reaction to her death—rather to my surprise—was sadness, mixed with a vague feeling of disorientation.

It’s often said that the Queen represented ‘stability’, but there’s little attempt to anaylse that on a psychological level. Faith in our foundations, however, has been severely tested of late. Over the last 15 years, we’ve had a financial crash, the Brexit fallout, a global pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, rampant inflation, a refugee crisis, a growing culture war, genocide in China and Myanmar, and the rise of authoritarianism from Hungary to the US. We’ve also had five different prime ministers. ‘Stability’ hasn’t been much in evidence.

Now more than ever, we need something to cling to. But with the Queen’s passing, it feels like yet another block has been yanked from the Jenga tower, and there’s a genuine sense (rational or not) that this could be the one that brings the whole edifice crashing down.

It’s often observed that the Queen’s first prime minister was Winston Churchill, and we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of this. She was a direct link to a Britain that people remember with nostalgic pride and, in some cases, are desperate to return to. As confidence in the present ebbs away, memories of the war, of Dunkirk, of ‘standing alone’, have become almost a secular religion. Removing our connection to that—regardless of your feelings about the monarchy—is bound to have an effect.

A turbulent history

The link with Churchill is significant in other ways, however. And it’s here that my reflections on the Queen mingle with my Anglo-Irish heritage.

Just as Churchill, for the British, embodies bullishness and fighting spirit, so he often represents, for the Irish, the arrogance and brutality of British colonialism. In 1952, when the Queen ascended to the throne and Churchill was still in Downing Street, relations between Britain and the Republic of Ireland were pretty much at rock bottom.

It was only seven years since the end of the Second World War—a conflict in which Ireland, much to Churchill’s fury, had declared itself neutral. This stance denied Britain access to the Treaty Ports at Berehaven, Spike Island and Lough Swilly, which, Churchill felt, were crucial to keeping Britain supplied during the Battle of the Atlantic (for more on this often-overlooked period, see Robert Fisk’s In Time of War).

Wartime correspondence between Churchill and the Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera seethes with resentment and mutual distrust. Relations were not improved in 1945, when de Valera foolishly offered his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler to the German Minister in Dublin, prompting a vituperative speech from Churchill, in which he stated that the wartime emergency may have forced Britain “to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera or perish forever from the earth”. 

From another perspective, however, Churchill had already “come to close quarters” with Ireland by deploying the Black and Tans in 1920, at the height of the Irish War of Independence. This auxiliary mob, made up of unemployed soldiers straight from the trenches, preceded to terrorise the locals with an orgy of reprisals, arson, looting and extrajudicial killings. Churchill, it’s remembered, was also a key part of the British delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which eventually led to the partition of Ireland and a bloody civil war.

So, to the extent that the Queen provided a link (however tangential) to all of this history—still hotly debated in Ireland today—it could be seen as a somewhat toxic link. And it’s in this context that her 2011 visit to the Republic, the first by a British monarch in 100 years, takes on such significance.

Truth and reconciliation

The Queen’s Ireland visit is, I’ve noticed, a mere footnote in the British coverage of her death. The Irish, on the other hand, have put it front and centre. This is hardly surprising. Although viewed as a triumph today, the wisdom of the visit was far from clear at the time.

The usual suspects, of course, were opposed. Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams declared the visit “insensitive”, although he soon changed his tune in the face of overwhelming public support. Other republican groups organised protests and boycotts, while the €30 million spent on security by the Irish government—in response to credible death threats—prompted yet more complaints.

The prudent course, in the face of all this, might have been a modest and low-key itinerary. But the Queen, instead, chose to face history head-on. Just as, in the eyes of some, her long reign implicated her in many painful events, so it gave her the stature and influence to move things forward.

On the first day, along with the Irish President, she visited the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin (originally opened by Éamon de Valera) and laid a wreath in honour of those who had died in the War of Independence. On Day 2, she gave a speech at Dublin Castle, the former centre of British rule, that’s worth quoting at length:

“To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past, I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all. But it is also true that no one who looked to the future over the past centuries could have imagined the strength of the bonds that are now in place between the governments and the people of our two nations, the spirit of partnership that we now enjoy, and the lasting rapport between us. No one here this evening could doubt that heartfelt desire of our two nations.”

Most remarkably, she paid a highly symbolic visit to Croke Park sports stadium, something that would have been unthinkable a generation earlier.

The Queen with President McAleese at Croke Park, Dublin

Croke Park was the site, in 1920, of one of the worst atrocities of the Anglo-Irish conflict. British forces, in retaliation for an IRA operation earlier in the day, raided a Gaelic football match, barricaded the exits and started firing indiscriminately into the crowd, killing 14 civilians and injuring dozens more. It was one of those moments that sear themselves onto the national consciousness, as significant in Ireland as Amritsar is in India.

The Queen’s trip to Croke Park, therefore, was a gesture that cut through like no other. It was also incredibly courageous. But as she was to remark three years later, on a visit to Northern Ireland, “We should no longer allow our past to ensnare our future.”

An ambiguous legacy

It’s events like this that should give republicans pause, including myself. The Queen’s visit to Ireland could have been undertaken by a prime minister, or an elected president, or any number of officials or diplomats. But it wouldn’t have had the same power or resonance, and probably wouldn’t be remembered today. The Queen, at this crucial moment, represented both our history and our nation. As such, she was able to embody Britain in a way that no one else could have managed.

This isn’t, of course, the final word on the monarchy. There will be plenty of time in future to debate issues of privilege, hierarchy and colonial legacy. And with the ascension of King Charles III to the throne, there will definitely be time to debate the wisdom of hereditary power and influence. But, for now, let’s remember those times when the Queen, as an individual, transcended these constitutional questions.

The Queen, I suspect, knew that all the ceremonial stuff—the flag waving, the Changing of the Guard, the State Opening of Parliament—was beside the point. The tests she faced were far more important than the trappings. And it was events such as the Ireland visit that most highlighted her diplomacy, seriousness and sense of occasion; qualities that distinguish her from her dimwit offspring.

So that’s what I’ll be thinking of today—those moments that, if just for a second, breathe life into the old cliché: there’ll never be another like her.