anniversaries. The formal commemoration of important events has been a feature of Irish political culture since the 17th century, though often a contentious one. Guy Fawkes's day, 5 November, was first established by the
Cromwellian regime in 1656. It was confirmed in the 1666 Act of
Uniformity, along with 30 January (the execution of Charles I) and 29 May (the
Restoration). These last two, as celebrations of monarchy, had a particular appeal to royalists and later
Tories. In 1662 the Irish parliament had also ordered the annual commemoration of 23 October as a day of thanksgiving for deliverance from the
rising of 1641. This remained the main Protestant festival in Ireland for most of the 18th century.
Commemoration of
William III continued sporadically through the 18th century. From the 1790s, and especially after the establishment of the
Orange Order, celebration of the military victories at the
Boyne and
Aughrim took over from the commemoration of William's birthday (4 Nov.), and the theme of the defence of civil and religious freedom, which had made the Williamite tradition attractive to
patriots and radicals, gave way to the exaltation of Protestant supremacy. From the 1820s 12 July was joined in the Protestant festive calendar by the
Apprentice Boys' celebrations of 18 December and 12 August.
Official support for 23 October and 4 November was withdrawn by the short‐lived Whig administration of 1806. Thereafter successive governments promoted St Patrick's Day (17 Mar.) as a non‐party national festival. It became a bank holiday in 1903, and remains independent Ireland's principal national holiday. In Northern Ireland, though still a bank holiday, it was celebrated more enthusiastically by Catholics, and was marked by parades of the
Ancient Order of Hibernians. AOH parades were also held on 15 August, the Catholic festival of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Easter commemorations of the
rising of 1916 regularly brought republicans in Northern Ireland into confrontation with the security forces. In the south official commemoration of the rising was suspended from 1972, in response to the growing violence of the
Northern Ireland conflict, but the occasion is kept up by republicans, as is an annual commemoration at the grave of Wolfe
Tone at Bodenstown, Co. Kildare.
The continued sensitivity of political anniversaries in a divided society is also evident in the status of Armistice Day (11 N
ov.), replaced from 1945 by Remembrance Sunday. Initially intended to commemorate the dead of the
First World War, it was largely co‐opted in Northern Ireland into the
unionist political calendar. In 1987 an
IRA bomb killed eleven participants in the ceremony at Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. In independent Ireland what were initially significant Armistice Day ceremonies were marginalized by public hostility and government indifference. A war memorial park at Islandbridge outside Dublin, constructed 1931–8, lay largely derelict until refurbished and formally opened in 1994.
Bibliography
Walker, Brian , Dancing to History's Tune: History, Myth, and Politics in Ireland (1996)
