A seething mass of sedition
Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down
Published by Blackstaff Press
By A.T.Q. Stewart
Price £12.99
The title of this book is taken from the opening lines of Tom
Paine's The American Crisis, a series of 13 propaganda pieces
written to raise flagging spirits at a critical stage in the
American War of Independence.
In November 1776 the British had taken Fort Washington, a key
revolutionary stronghold, where they had captured over 2,000 men
and a substantial amount of arms and ammunition. By December,
they had forced the Americans back to Trenton, Philadelphia, the
symbolic seat of liberty, which seemed likely to fail.
In The American Crisis Paine applied himself to rallying support
in the face of almost certain defeat. Circulated in pamphlets and
broadsheets, it opened with a rousing call to arms. `These are
the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from the service
of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love
and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder
the conflict the more glorious the triumph'. On the eve of the
battle of Trenton, officers read it to the revolutionary troops.
The British lost the battle and Paine's pamphlet became a classic
of radical propaganda.
ATQ Stewart's Summer Soldiers is a narrative history of events
that culminated at Ballynahinch in 1798. Written in an accessible
and engaging style, it describes in vivid detail how Catholic,
Protestant and Dissenter turned out that June to fight for the
rights of man and the rights of nations.
Th heroes of republican folklore are all here: Henry Joy
McCracken, the rebel leader hanged on improvised gallows in High
Street, Belfast, opposite the market-house where he had taught
Sunday school; Rev James Porter, the propagandist, hanged within
sight of his meeting -house at Greyabbey; Roddy McCorley, Betsy
Gray, Henry Munro and, of course, the staunch and stoic figures
of Jemmy Hope and Mary McCracken, living for over half a century
after the bloody deluge of `98.
Perhaps most movingly of all, however, Summer Soldiers recalls
the anonymous. Stewart recounts how Samuel Skelton, Lord
Masereene's agent, watched yoemanry parties bury cartloads of
rebels in the hot sun after the battle of Antrim. ``The bodies
were shot in, a cartload at a time. `Where the devil did these
rascals come from?' the officer asked the driver of one cart. A
poor wretch raised a blood-streaked face from the cart and feebly
answered: `I came frae Ballyboley'. He was buried along with the
rest''.
By any standards, Stewart has penned an impressive narrative.
However, a flawed analysis lies behind the purple prose. First,
as the title suggests, Stewart regards the United Irishmen as a
less than happy alliance. Disunity and division - between rich
and poor and between Presbyterians and Catholics - are constant
themes. Here, Stewart appears to be restating an argument in his
more analytic study The Narrow Ground (1977) that republican
nationalism was only adopted by a minority of Presbyterians. In
Stewart's view, republican nationalism only received an
enthusiastic response from Presbyterians east of the Bann and
even there only from specific groups and only for a short period
of time.
This opinion is utterly at variance with the correspondence of
military officers and magistrates who saw a seething mass of
sedition in Dissenting congregations across the north in 1796-8.
Of course, this is not to deny that there were divisions within
the United Irish movement. However, the sporadic guerrilla-type
conflict of 1796-7 and the turnout in `98 dramatically
demonstrated the commitment of a substantial cross-section of
society to non-sectarian nationalism.
Second, although the book is a military history of events in
Antrim and Down, Stewart's narrow focus on the `turn out' allows
the rising in `98 to eclipse politicisation as the most
significant contribution of the United Irishmen to Irish
politics. Recent published work by Nancy Curtin, Louis Cullen and
Kevin Whelan has shown that there was a lot more to republican
nationalism than pikes and guns.
Careful readers will note that Stewart's flawed analysis does not
rest on any comprehensive archival work. The most important
primary sources for the history of the United Irishmen are the
`Rebellion Papers' - magistrates' letters, military reports and
captured communications packed into 67 large boxes in the
National Archive. Stewart refers to only four documents in this
massive collection.
Audaciously avoiding the main collection of source-material, he
draws on miscellaneous documents in other archives but he relies
most heavily on printed accounts, particularly post-rebellion
analyses by participants from both sides, such as Jemmy Hope's
autobiography and Samuel McSkimmin's memoir. These are useful
sources. However, they require a very careful reading. Time
changes people and their politics. Still, for all that can be
gleaned from post-rebellion accounts, one expects the historian
will consult the main primary sources.
For all its faults (and they are many), this is a good read. Read
it. Be sure to read more.
By Mícheál O Ríain.
Getting the measure of poverty
Poverty in Rural Ireland
Poverty in the 1990s
Published by the Combat Poverty Agency
Are you deprived? Is your income inadequate? Do you suffer from a
lack of resources or a subsistent standard of living? Maybe you
are just excluded. But the unanswered question is, are you poor?
Confused? Don't worry, you are just another victim, the
collateral damage of an unending and often dubious academic
debate on poverty. At its core is the issue of not how to tackle
poverty but how to define it and how to measure it.
Poverty and deprivation are the outcomes of the inequalities that
characterise Irish society. Such inequalities are not peculiar to
Ireland, they are a feature of capitalist societies and market
economies throughout the world. Tackling poverty and its causes
is supposedly the objective of successive Dublin Governments.
However, in the late 1990s it seems that the only measurable
outcome is the number of reports and studies on the subject. That
is not to say that academic study of the issue is not worthwhile.
It is. The problem is that the arena of debate has been limited
to academic circles and has rarely included the wider public and
or those who are enduring deprivation.
One very public exception to this has been the Combat Poverty
Agency whose publications are more readable and accessible than
the work of many of their academic colleagues.
These two new publications from them are a welcome contribution
to the debate on poverty for two reasons.
Firstly, Poverty in the 1990s goes a long way towards
categorising and assessing the different attitudes and positions
on the measurement and definition of poverty.
Secondly, Poverty in Rural Ireland puts the academic theory and
studies in a practical context offering a range of policy
responses to the complex issues of poverty and underdevelopment
that characterise large parts of rural Ireland today.
Poverty in the 1990s is based on a major research programme being
carried out at the Economic and Social Research Institute. It
offers a unique study of poverty in Ireland over the last ten
years. The major difficulty is that there is so much material to
cover in this publication, especially when you apply the
different measures of poverty.
But this is also a strength of both publications; they cover a
range of analyses and so manage to convey in a readable way the
complexity of poverty in Ireland today. Added to this is the
crucial undercurrent of how the studies should inform action on
poverty and deprivation. This is why Combat Poverty, unlike many
others, do seem to have taken positive steps towards getting the
measure of poverty. The question now is whether the policy makers
are listening.
By Neil Forde
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