Daniel O’Connell: Forgotten King of Ireland
2 x 1 hour documentary on RTÉ One, Thursday 22nd and 29th August at 21:35.
Renowned broadcaster Olivia O’Leary journeys from Kerry to Glasnevin to Rome to chronicle the trailblazing life and the contemporary legacy of Daniel O’Connell – the man that King George IV of England grudgingly called ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland.’
Olivia O’Leary recalls a history lesson from her schooldays about O’Connell’s cancelling the monster meeting at Clontarf in 1843 to avoid violent confrontation with the British authorities. Her teacher dismissed O’Connell with the words: “When it came to the crunch, O’Connell couldn’t step up to the plate”. The young O’Leary begged to differ, and challenged her teacher – wasn’t he avoiding innocent bloodshed? Ever since, O’Leary believes that O’Connell has been downgraded by the received historical narrative and wants to explore just why this is so today.
Peppered throughout this narrative will be the stories of O’Connell’s life and a hard-nosed interrogation of his legacy. We meet with republicans and royalists, revisionists and biographers whom we will be asking just why is it that he inhabits a dusty old shelf in the back of the nation’s psyche. Is O’Connell the catholic emancipator losing his relevance for a pluralist Irish society? He has the capital’s main street named after him and yet his name is scarcely mentioned in the role call of Ireland’s liberators.
For the supporters of violent resistance, O’Connell was a conservative Catholic landlord who failed to lead his people in violent rebellion. To others, he is an Irish version of Gandhi, liberating his people without resorting to the gun. He was an emancipating giant at a time when Ireland was bereft of leadership. Is it possible for us to laud the father of Irish democracy whilst wallowing in the centenary celebrations of armed insurrection?
Here, O’Leary explores O’Connell in an international context – it is difficult to imagine today the esteem in which the emancipator was held. O’Connell welcomed liberated slave Frederick Douglass to Ireland and equated the African American fight for emancipation with that of his own country, much to the chagrin of his peers in parliament. He was a man of his moment, a true modernist when it came to women’s rights and slavery, and it is difficult for us to picture today how he gave a sense of pride back to the Catholic Irish of that time.
In the documentary, Olivia wonders how O’Connell himself would view his own legacy – his achievement of catholic emancipation brought a downtrodden people off their knees, but his failure to repeal the Act of Union was a blot on his copybook by his own admission.
As we enter this centenary period celebrating violent armed insurrection, perhaps now is the perfect time to explore the non-violent liberator’s influence on today’s Ireland.