The people of Ireland do not constitute an Irish nation today, any more than they did in 1916, writes Dennis Kennedy
Anniversaries are difficult times in Ireland. Annually July 12th and Easter Monday raise the blood temperature and lower the IQ across many parts of the North. Centenaries and half-centenaries are even worse - witness 1898 and 1966. Already the long run-up to 2016 promises a feast of bad history, petty politics and general thickheadedness.
Appropriately it has been led off by the head of State, President Mary McAleese, with her UCC lecture. Then came the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and his military parade, followed by assorted foot-soldiers, camp followers and hedge philosophers all seeking to hallow the memory of 1916.
There seems to be a two-fold purpose. The first is to fight off the barbarian invasion of revisionists who would sully the glorious memory of the heroic founders of the Republic by suggesting they had no right to do what they did, and that by doing it they made things infinitely worse for us all. And the second is to keep the grubby hands of Sinn Féin off the Holy Grail of 1916.
The big problem for the southern State is that Sinn Féin, by its words and particularly by its actions, sounds a lot more like the gunmen of 1916 than do the current wealthy custodians of the Celtic Tiger.
The big problem for Northern Ireland is that whoever wins this verbal battle among nationalists for the soul of 1916, the battle itself makes them even less likely than ever to contribute to a real settlement.
President McAleese spoke of Ireland in 1916 as "a small nation attempting to gain its independence"; Martin Mansergh wants unionists to accept that "the Irish people" had, and have, a right to freedom.
In those two quotes - and many more could be cited - lies the nub of the problem. There was no Irish nation in 1916, just as, in the sense those speakers mean it, there is none today.
You do not have to take my word for it. Writing in 1916, having just been an eyewitness to the Rising, James Stephens, in The Insurrection in Dublin, commented:
"Before we can talk of Ireland a nation, we must make her one. A nation, politically speaking, is an aggregation of people whose interests are identical; and the interests of Ulster with the rest of Ireland rather than being identical are antagonistic."
For which situation Stephens blamed not the unionists, but Sinn Féin and mainstream nationalism as embodied in the Irish Party. The tragedy of the last 90 years is that political nationalism has failed both to recognise that the people of Ireland do not constitute an Irish nation, or to make much effort towards forging such an entity. Unionists still see their interests and those of nationalists, and of the Irish State, as antagonistic, not identical.
The current rush by that State to reassert its spiritual affinity with the revolutionary violence of 1916 makes no contribution towards a peaceful settlement in the North.
In this the role of the President has become central, as it has in another policy area. Since the Belfast Agreement she has been used by the Government as a key element in promoting the interpretation of the Belfast Agreement as de facto joint authority - even joint sovereignty - over Northern Ireland.
In the course of 2005 Mrs McAleese made seven official visits to Northern Ireland. In the same year Queen Elizabeth made one, and that one was the 13th to the province since her coronation 52 years ago. When the two met at Hillsborough last December the Queen may well have wondered who was the host, and who the visiting guest.
Nor is it just the frequency of the presidential visits that makes them significant politically - invitations to some of the functions involved have read . . . "On the occasion of the visit of the President, Mrs McAleese, you are cordially invited etc . . ." Just "The President", not the President of Ireland, or the Irish Republic.
A benign interpretation of these visits could be that they indicate good will and neighbourliness, and help bring people together. Not all of them are to nationalist or Catholic bodies, and it could be argued that they are symbolic of that aggregation of interests across the island that Stephens wanted, and are intended to help "make Ireland a nation".
But if the Government, and Mrs McAleese herself, see the visits in this light, how can they be reconciled with her Cork lecture and her comments at Auschwitz?
At Auschwitz she articulated a sectarian ultra-nationalist view of the northern situation, and in Cork she reaffirmed the southern State's origins in and reverence for revolutionary violence. On both occasions she came in for much public criticism, but as President she does not speak personally; she was articulating the view of the state of which she is head.
So much for "making Ireland a nation". The Irish State is entitled to select its own heroes and celebrate whatever events it deems historically seminal - subject to its own citizens assenting - but in acting as it now is, 90 years on, it is making precisely the error that Stephens identified. As head of that state, Mrs McAleese is part of the problem. Even if they are benign in intent, her visits to the North may deepen the sectarian divide, not bridge it.
Dennis Kennedy is a historian and writer on European and Irish affairs