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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Lost Soldier’s Song
Patrick McGinley
Sinclair Stevenson £14.99
McGinley’s new novel is set in 1921 and follows a young IRA recruit in his fight against the British. The period has been described by modern Republican leaders as the ‘four glorious years’ when the IRA took up arms to rid the south of Ireland of British troops.
The struggle was launched on the upswell of hatred provoked by murderous repression against the Irish people. McGinley describes how Declan, a young graduate, joins up. His reasons – he hates the British, is desperate to escape the tedium of unemployment and is drawn by the legends of past Irish freedom fighters – are reflected by other fighters Declan encounters along his path through low key military engagements, escapes and eventual capture by the British.
The novel captures the brutality of the Black and Tans, a force put together from the most bigoted and murderous elements of the British army. Civilians are murdered, villages and towns kept under curfew and IRA fighters hunted down, tortured and killed. Against this, Declan’s comrades are poorly armed, poorly trained and often led by total crackpots.
The novel’s strength is in McGinley’s portrayal of tension between the IRA fighters and their officers. We see how the army is organised by a rigid hierarchy, where the rank and file obey orders or face the firing squad. It is this threat, often in the face of suicidal plans, together with loyalty to Irish nationalism that leads many to death or capture.
The tension is always around in the IRA hideouts, fighters either ignoring their doubts or becoming cynical. But the truth of that cynicism is a powerful lesson for today. As one fighter says, ‘We’re fighting for a nation of second-rate shopkeepers and for generations of shopkeeping politicians to come’.
Unfortunately, the novel focuses only on an isolated group of fighters in south west Ireland, who never hear of the impact their struggle has on the outside world. The guerilla war was also accompanied by an explosion in the working class that threatened those ‘second-rate shopkeepers’ leading the IRA and the movement for Home Rule.
A number of general strikes, North and South, suggested that the nationalist struggle might spill over into class war. Tragically the likes of Declan and his comrades never made the connection with these workers, and were in fact used by their leaders to put down a wave of land occupations by agricultural workers.
The argument that Irish workers needed to wait first for independence before putting their own demands crushed all hope for equality in Ireland. McGinley’s book is an enjoyable way to start chipping away at the myths of the ‘four glorious years’ as part of the struggle for socialism in Ireland today.
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