Slogans in Irish Life

This is an article I had published in Ireland's Own magazine some time ago. I've had four articles published in Ireland's Own: an article about letters pages, this one, an article about C.S. Lewis which I posted on the blog already, and a recent article about the Dublin Millennium of 1988.

I read Ireland's Own when I was growing up, especially on my aunt's farm in Limerick. It's a rather nostalgic, family-orientated magazine, so it's obviously right up my alley. I also like its "grab bag" flavour; I also grew up reading books of trivia such as The Giant Book of Fantastic Facts (my father said he never would have bought it for me if he knew I was going to take it so seriously), and How to Hold a Crocodile. Anyway, I assume it's OK to post it here now, long after it appeared in print. 

I had an amusing experience some years ago, while walking through the campus of University College Dublin. There was a demonstration of some kind taking place—an incident which is a much rarer event on a university campus than one might suppose. I was most interested to hear what the students were demonstrating about. I was, however, unsuccessful; I could hear the rhetorical demand “What do we want?”, but the response was muffled, as I was some distance away. So what I heard was: “What do we want?” (Something something something.) “When do we want it?” “Now!”

The experience seemed like a commentary on how standardised most demonstrations are. Perhaps that’s no bad thing. There is a comfort in the familiar. However, it’s a shame when an opportunity for a good slogan is missed. The very first demonstration I ever joined was a protest march against the building of a motorway close to the Hill of Tara. I was very impressed by the chant the protestors had come up with:

“We will not say sayonara

Goodbye, Auf Widersehen, to Tara!”

Slogans are fascinating things. A few words can capture the essence of a cause, or the essence of a whole philosophy of life. Slogans don’t only convey a message to one’s opponents, or the outside world. They echo down the years, down the generations, down the centuries. Even those of us with very little knowledge of the Roman republic will recognize the phrase, “Carthago delenda est”, “Carthage must be destroyed”, the phrase associated with Cato the Elder and other supporters of a war to the death with Rome’s great rival. Apparently, Cato was in the habit of finishing his speeches with this line, even when the speech had nothing to with Carthage. He obviously wanted to impress it on his listeners’ minds, but could he have guessed it would still be widely recognised more than two thousand years later?

There is poetry in slogans, too. After all, they are phrases which are not only intended to concisely express an idea, but to convey an emotion—which may be anything from enthusiasm to horror, depending on the slogan. Ronald Reagan’s famous re-election slogan, “It’s morning again in America”, is a good example of a poetic slogan. Before I depart from the topic of American Presidential slogans, I might mention that one has left a lasting mark on the cityscape of Dublin; a bed and breakfast on the Drumcondra Road still bears a placard with the words, “Is Féidir Linn”, an approximate translation of Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can”.

What are the most memorable Irish slogans? The main narrative of Irish history is the long struggle for independence, and this certainly produced its crop of slogans. Perhaps the most famous is Tiocfaidh ar lá, “Our day will come”, much used by the Irish republican movement in recent decades—to the extent that Irish republicans are sometimes called “the chuckies”. This phrase seems to have originated with the hunger striker Bobby Sands, in the late seventies, so it is surprisingly recent. “Up the Republic!” is a simpler and older nationalist slogan. Brendan Behan’s memoir Borstal Boy describes how, when Behan was in an English prison for IRA activity during the Second World War, another Irish republican prisoner shouted “Up the Republic” from his cell and urged Behan to shout it back. The teenage Behan did so most reluctantly, since he was immersed in a book and didn’t want to be interrupted by warders.

Daniel O'Connell

 “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” is a slogan which might be said to have had a massive influence on Irish politics. It has been attributed to Daniel O’Connell, and was popular in Irish nationalist circles in America during the Crimean War. It became most relevant, of course, during the First World War, when it expressed the determination of the Irish Republican Brotherhood to strike a blow for Irish freedom before the War ended. (They feared the end would come a lot sooner than it did.) The 1916 Easter Rising was the outcome, and the rest really is history.

A less well-known nationalist slogan is the Irish language “Ní síochán go saoirse”, “No peace till freedom”. Although it’s a powerful slogan, most of us will be grateful that a different philosophy has prevailed since the Good Friday Agreement. A different angle on the same subject was taken by the popular temperance slogan, “Ireland sober is Ireland free”.

To turn from political nationalism to economic nationalism, the Trade War between the UK and the Irish Free State, in the nineteen-thirties, gave us the immortal slogan: “Burn everything English except their coal”. But the phrase itself is a lot older, originated with Jonathan Swift in 1720. As early as that, Swift was advocating economic independence from England.

I’ve mentioned a few slogans in the Irish language already. The movement to revive Irish has generated a few of its own. “Gaeilge agus Fáilte” (Irish is Welcome) is a simple and catchy one, often seen on stickers in Irish-speaking homes and institutions. My own favourite is “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam”— a quotation from Patrick Pearse, the 1916 leader and Irish language revivalist. It means “a country without a language is a country without a soul”, and it’s difficult to argue otherwise—nothing distinguishes a country more than its language. On a brief visit to Holyhead many years ago, I was deeply ashamed to hear ordinary Welsh people speak their native language in the streets, and to compare this with the near-complete absence of the Irish language in most Irish streets.

Party politics has its memorable slogans. Perhaps the most famous is the Irish Labour Party’s ill-fated proclamation that “the seventies will be socialist”. Well, that didn’t happen. More recently, Fianna Fáil’s 2002 slogan “A lot done, more to do” is still often cited—but usually in the context of ridicule. Note to political slogan-writers: your creations might come back to haunt you.

In the sphere of commerce, it must be said that there aren’t very many outstanding Irish slogans. I can still remember the EBS Building Society’s “Say yes, yes, yes with the EBS”, from the nineteen-eighties, but that may be a personal quirk. Well, try it yourself. Think of an outstanding Irish advertising slogan. (“Guinness is good for you” doesn’t qualify. It was thought up by Dorothy K. Sayers, the English novelist, for an English advertising agency.) It seems like the Irish have put their hearts more into politics than business!