HOWZAT

Understandably, this side of things didn’t feature heavily in Coiste’s analysis. Yet a re-examination of the notion of collaboration, and the hard, fixed categories it presupposes, is an aspect of remembrance that cannot be dodged indefinitely.

The other awkward question for republicans is the one that struck Meehan — the sheer numbers of the dead. There was no conscription in Ireland and it takes only a moment’s thought to realise that the 200,000 Irishmen who volunteered for the first world war, and the 50,000 who died, dwarf the numbers involved in the war of independence. In the second world war, 58,000 volunteered from the south and 38,000 from the north.

The lost history turns out not to be just a forgotten grandfather here and there, but the perspective of our immediate ancestors. That may take some time to come to terms with and, for both unionists and nationalists, it casts a challenging new light on current republican attempts at accommodation with the British government and the unionists.

The openness of Catholics and nationalists to service in the British Army and to working in the institutions of the state is nothing new and it does not mean that many were secretly unionists. It was, for the most part, a pragmatic choice based on economic interest or the defence of hearth and home, not loyalty to the state. When nationalist feeling hardened into outright rejection and tolerance of armed struggle, the reasons are generally to be found in the unionist refusal to accept the validity of nationalist aspirations and its suspicion of Catholicism.

Eamon Phoenix, the historian, told how the support of Irish nationalists for British wars was undermined and transformed into outright opposition to the British link by events such as the treatment of demobbed soldiers after the first world war. Many nationalists who got jobs in the shipyards were violently expelled as disloyal infiltrators by sectarian mobs despite their military service.

That radicalised many but, even so, support for the British armed forces persisted within nationalism for years. Until 1925, for instance, a rally of the Ancient Order of Hibernians was addressed, each Remembrance Day, by Sir James Craig, the unionist prime minister. The tradition ended abruptly when he pushed his luck too far and alienated the avowedly nationalist group by telling them that they must support the principles of unionism.

That was a bridge too far and, as the DUP comes to grips with Sinn Fein, it may care to reflect on Craig’s mistake in pushing nationalist co-operation past what could be delivered. This is not the first time nationalists have been willing to work with unionists to achieve stability. There has always been a willingness to give practical support to the institutions of the state while fully intending to change them by democratic means as soon as they can.

The basic offer of stability and the acceptance of difference that is on the table this weekend has been available several times before. Each time it has been rejected by a unionist leadership that has demanded something more clear cut than nationalists were prepared to give. Each time the result has been division and hardship for the whole community.

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