In this chapter you will learn about: • The promotion of Irish language and culture • How the Catholic Church came to play a dominant part in Irish life after independence • Cultural identity in Northern Ireland • The changed circumstances of Protestants in the South • The Eucharistic Congress, 1932 • The effect of censorship on art and literature in the Free State
By the end of this chapter you will be able to: • Assess the successes and failures of the State’s language and culture policies • Discuss the power of the Catholic Church and the significance of the Eucharistic Congress
• Understand some of the cultural differences between Northern Ireland’s nationalist and unionist communities
• Debate the impact of censorship on the development of modern art and literature Re-creating Irish Ireland
When Cumann na nGaedheal formed the first government of the Irish Free State, it set about carrying through the nationalist policies that had characterised Sinn Féin and the cultural revivalists of the independence movement. The years between 1922 and 1949 saw first Cumann na nGaedheal, and then Fianna Fáil attempt to create an idealised version of Ireland that was strongly influenced by ancient Irish culture and the Catholic religion, and a tendency to censor any ideas that conflicted with them.
The Policy to Revive the Irish Language
The revival of the Irish language had begun in the late 19th century. Groups like the Gaelic League hoped to revive Irish as an everyday spoken language, while in the nationalist wave that followed the 1916 Rising and the subsequent War of Independence, Irish gained a new status as the language of patriots.
246 LEAVING CERTIFICATE HISTORY
On Which Side Are You? Speaking Irish became a matter of patriotism.
