*Originally published in 2022 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

It is almost a full century since the bitterly conflictual events of 1916–1923 which resulted in the violent disintegration of Ireland’s colonial history with Britain, and a brutal civil war among those accepting division of the country and those fighting on for unity of the whole island. It led to the crude partition of the island, and the formation of new governments (and new civil societies) on either side of a divided Irish border. A hundred years is a long time in any country’s history but at the same time too short to repair a narrative rudely torn asunder by political division and sectarianism, which inevitably erupted in sustained political violence in Northern Ireland in 1969. Civil disturbances ushered in a dismal period of archaistic violence known as “the troubles.” Those cataclysmic events in turn resurrected old memories of the early twentieth century and still more ancient conflicts, sustaining a cycle of violence and a looming dark heritage; propelling it unavoidably and violently into the active and inconvenient present. The fate of a major public monument, the Necrology Wall at Glasnevin in Dublin is symbolic of a living past. It may also prove a litmus-test for the malignance of dark heritage and its toxicity for the present, even years after we believed the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has nurtured a new nation of Irish peacebuilders.

The Politics of Dark Heritage

In Ireland, political history often seems condemned to a continuous rancorous re-enactment. Past events rudely resurface in the vivid present. This public memorial, a necrology wall, was erected at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin to remember all those who died in the Irish Revolution. It is now (unceremoniously) being discontinued because of safety and vandalism concerns. The Board of the Dublin Cemeteries Trust took the decision after an “extensive debate,” according to its chairperson David Bunworth. He said the wall had been vandalized three times and it would be impossible to stop a fourth such incident. The names of those who died in the Easter Rising will be removed from the wall too. Instead, he said the trust would erect a separate memorial to all those who died in the 1916-1923 period (without any inclusion of names which had been so contentious.)  This would be preserved along with a book commemorating all the dead from that period who are buried in the cemetery.

Why is Ireland’s dark heritage of the early twentieth century, and specifically of the years 1916–1923 still poisoning the atmosphere of its contemporary present? Why are the ghosts of its past conflict actors still haunting the temporal geography of Ireland today? To begin to answer that question one would have to understand the acrimonious bifurcation of Ireland which occurred at the tail end of this chronology of frenzied events that are commemorated by Glasnevin’s Necrology Wall. As visceral as these happening were at the time, they have diminished little in toxicity as the dates have become shibboleths for every recent political conflagration ever since.  Numerous incidents of vandalism of the Necrology Wall have persuaded cemetery administrators that the monument must close. The Necrology Wall remembers every single person killed in conflicts in Ireland between the years 1916 and 1923, including British soldiers and IRA (Irish Republican Army) members. Dublin Cemeteries Trust announced in March 2022 it would discontinue the Wall "with great regret", and only after repeated acts of vandalism of a "severe nature" on the wall. Indeed, Canada’s Ambassador to Ireland, Kevin Vickers, (himself a decorated Canadian service hero who had bravely defended the Canadian parliament from terror attack), at a public event in the Glasnevin Cemetery in May 2016, got entangled with a protestor who he sought to remove. The events of a hundred years ago re-emerged with the full malodorous bundle of the dirty laundry of the past.

The Trust's David Bunworth said they had considered other options, such as fencing off the wall.  "But that lost the whole spirit of what we're trying to do, which was about peace and reconciliation, it was about being non-judgmental, about being non-hierarchical," he said, "But the vandalism caused us to say to the project that we can't continue with it.... It is the firm view of Dublin Cemeteries Trust that if the wall were to be repaired.... it would be vandalized again," it announced. The memorial is an ongoing project which would have eventually recorded the names of every man, woman and child who died over a turbulent period in Irish history, from the start of the 1916 Easter Rising through to the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. It was first unveiled in April 2016, during the centenary commemoration of the Easter Rising. The wall was unceremoniously attacked with sledgehammers and paint bombs in February 2020, while in April 2017 paint was thrown over it in an incident the trust described as "callous vandalism". The wall had originally been inspired by the Ring of Remembrance at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire in France which, from 2014, has remembered 580,000 soldiers from all sides killed in the first World War.

Remembering or Denying the Past?

So why does Ireland remain so chronically divided over its dark heritage of almost a century ago? Why are Ireland’s “war dead” more contentious than the Europeans souls lost in WW1? During the Decade of centenaries leading up to 2023, Ireland has been confronted with the ghosts of a heritage largely and perhaps deliberately downplayed in preceding years. It is like the relics of a Nazi grandfather long concealed in the attic. Nobody invokes his memory. Memorializing that past still splits families, divides mixed religions, and causes political controversy. The primary political parties take their roots directly from the blood of the civil war period and invoke its imagery as political ammunition. 

Well, the Glasnevin monument was highly controversial from its very inception.  It is a remembrance wall showing the names of........

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