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7 October 1999 Edition

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A Star Called Henry


A Star Called Henry
By Roddy Doyle

Many republicans will detest this book and it would be easy to write a review slating it. But as it is already a best-seller and will influence many people's interpretations of the 1916 Rising and the Tan War, I feel it should be taken seriously.

The book tells the story of the fantastical adventures of Henry Smart, a boy from the Dublin slums, who fights with the Citizen Army in the GPO, becomes a member of Collins' `Squad', romances half the country and is eventually disillusioned by the outcome of the whole struggle. If any readers are offended by the idea that the men and women of 1916 may have had sex, used `bad' language or felt fear, then perhaps they should steer clear of this book. In reality, of course they did all these things, although I doubt if anyone ever had as much sex as Henry!

The real problem with the book is its historical and political perspective. It is a novel, not a history book, and therefore Doyle can be excused some factual errors, but since much of the story is based on a number of historical texts (listed by Doyle at the end of the book) these need analysis. The vivid descriptions of poverty in Dublin of the early 1900s for example are based on Kevin C. Kearns's `Dublin Tenement Life', and readers will recognise scenes taken from Ernie O'Malley's `On Another Man's Wound'. The political perspective, however, comes from works like Peter Hart's `The IRA and its Enemies' and Richard English's book on Ernie O'Malley. While there is some value in these books, they are written from a strongly anti-republican perspective. As a result, Doyle continually overplays the negative aspects of the Irish Revolution and misrepresents the progressive ones.

A key example is the scenes set in the GPO. Connolly and the Citizen Army are salt of the earth working class Dubs (what about Captain Jack White and the Countess, Roddy?). Pearse and the Volunteers are all farmers, poets or shop boys, dreamers and anti-working class bigots. Doyle has fallen for the easy revisionist stereotype of Pearse, based on a misreading of a couple of his articles, and has ignored the more complex individual who, after the 1913 Lockout, was developing a more radical world view. Doyle thinks he is satirising republican `myth' á là O'Casey, but he is confusing the saintly image of the 1916 leaders created after 1922 with the more complex reality of different groups of radicals, including socialists, feminists, Gaelic scholars and republicans coming together to fight imperialism. Doyle doesn't seem to have asked himself the question as to why Connolly and the ICA found themselves in the GPO at all.

The trend continues, as almost every republican character outside Henry and his wife, is depicted as some sort of crank or careerist on the make. The Liam Mellows and Hannah Sheehy Skeffingtons are very absent from this account. Yet despite Doyle's cynicism, I found his accounts of the first faltering steps to organise Volunteer units in the countryside and the descriptions of their first raids compelling. More importantly, the bigger question Doyle raises is the fact that the Irish working class and small farmers did lose out in 1922 (and after 1932). There were anti-working class bigots and anti-Semites (Arthur Griffith for one) and Catholic bigots as well, involved in Sinn Féin. Generations of Gombeen politicians did make careers out of real or imagined exploits in the Tan War. Whole sections of the Home Rule party conveniently converted to independence in time to stake their claim in the new state.

`A Star Called Henry' is cyncial and one-sided, but raises important questions all the same.

Brian O hAinle


An Intimate History of Killing



An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare
By Joanna Bourke
Published by Granta Books, Price £25

This book has been out for a while and has been the subject of intense critical debate. It flies in the face of most current theorising about men and their behaviour in war - notably Ali Renwick's recent book Hidden Wounds, which was reviewed in this paper some weeks ago and which examines the apparently profoundly adverse after-effects of combat experience on former soldiers.

Bourke is concerned with how the act of killing another human affects the consciousness of the individual soldier, and in doing so convincingly challenges some of the received wisdom which has become central to writing about war. Drawing on the written accounts of combatants of both world wars and the Vietnam war, she questions the belief that men are necessarily traumatised by their experiences and demonstrates how guiltlessly soldiers can slip from combat into atrocity.

Her argument is that, when confronted by these atrocities - which inevitably form a major component of modern warfare - society has developed the coping mechanism of demanding that the perpetrators suffer grave emotional consequences, or at least become recognisably `brutalized'. Society has come to insist that the victimisers must themselves become victims of the wars in which they were actually eager participants. Thus, the truth behind the popular image of a quaking 19-year-old hiding in a trench but portraying himself as a fearless soldier when writing home, is more likely in reality to be that of an enthusiastic killer who has had the image of terrified boy grafted on to him in response to cultural sensibilities.

Bourke maintains the evidence shows that, for the most part, men were not particularly traumatised by combat and, furthermore, that seemingly gentle, normal men often experienced war - and killing - as an intensely pleasurable experience before going home afterwards, emotionally intact, to carry on their lives as though nothing had happened.

This work explores many facets of war but of particular interest is the investigation into race and the portrayal of Irish soldiers who fought in World War I:

``It was widely believed that the Irish were innately combative. Irishmen were born either soldiers or monks, informed one popular saying. Intimately related to this was the idea that Irish soldiers were particularly brave; indeed, they were acknowledged to be braver than English soldiers, which was why military commanders used them as `missile troops'. They were said to be unsurpassed for courage, initiative and `dash'.''

However, the concomitant image of the Irish was of child-like moodiness and unpredictability and; ``in the final analysis, the type of martial valour said to be possessed by the Irish made them profoundly unsuited to self-government. Irish success in the field of battle could be regarded as an indication of their lower biological and political development.''. So, for all their heroics, the Irish still needed the guiding hand of Britannia to keep them in line.

This infantilising of the Irish is a feature of modern political life as Liam O'Dowd has identified. The British state currently portrays itself as a kindly parent attempting to teach a recalcitrant child proper behaviour, but this is not new. Historically, when it has served their military or economic needs (like when there was a war to be fought or a fortune to be made out of Irish theme pubs) the English ruling class could effortlessly substitute one stereotype for another; the bunch of belligerent drunks of popular English racism have suddenly, for a strictly limited period, become brave soldiers with lovely accents who love the craic.

By Fern Lane

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland