The recent announcement by Trinity College in Dublin that it is seeking public nominations for the renaming of its main library offers the university an excellent opportunity to name it after a major figure with positive ties to the institution and an inclusive legacy.
In my view, there could be no one more worthy of the honour than Theobald Wolfe Tone - himself a Trinity graduate – bringing with it his timeless legacy of commitment to liberty and human rights for all the people of Ireland, regardless of creed and for all humanity alike. His life’s work and commitment to inclusion – a key requirement specified in the nomination’s submission link – stands in direct contrast to that of the slave owner and vocal slavery advocate Bishop George Berkeley who has been ‘denamed’ from the library.
By any objective appraisal, the brief but remarkable life of Wolfe Tone that ended at the age of 36 continues to offer an inspiration for his commitment to human liberty and equality to this very day.
Tone, like his ally - Thomas Paine – himself an architect in the founding of the American Republic – was also committed as an intellectual force and an activist in promoting revolution against monarchical rule and tyranny. His views also transcended national boundaries in the interests of all humanity.
It was in Paris in 1796 that Tone first met Paine after the two men were brought together by James Monroe then the American Ambassador to France. In Tone’s estimate, Paine “ has done wonders for the cause of liberty both in America and Europe.” Likewise, it led Tone to bestowing upon Paine honorary membership in the Society of the United Irishman of which Tone himself was a principal founder in 1791.
Tone as the record shows was also shaped by the French Revolution, inspiring his leading role in the foundation of the United Irishmen which evolved from a mainly Protestant organization working for parliamentary reforms and universal suffrage and Catholic emancipation into a wider movement for constitutional change.
In those efforts, Tone honed his skills as a negotiator and innovator as the driving force behind the Roman Catholic Convention in Dublin in 1792 that forced the then Irish Parliament to pass the Catholic Relief Act in the following year. Thereafter, the United Irishmen expanded into a wider movement for constitutional change, becoming more radicalised after being driven underground by the British Government’s 1796 Insurrection Act.
Tone increasingly saw the American Revolution followed by that in France as catalysts for replacing what he would call the tyranny of Britain’s “execrable government to break the connection with England - the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country.” His aim was “to unite the whole people of Ireland to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations”
However, in addition to rhetorically shaping the argument for an independent non sectarian Ireland, Wolfe Tone also entered the fray directly in the effort to bring “Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter” together, using his considerable powers of persuasion by traveling throughout Ulster to engage with Presbyterians including those among the United movement of the need for full civil liberties for a Catholic population still under penal laws.
In Tone’s view, “religious intolerance and political bigotry” had been long used as tools by the British government to keep the country divided with “the government of Ireland in the base and wicked and contemptible hands who had spent their lives in degrading and plundering her". In his estimate, the Crown had conspired to “exasperate the two sects against each other that they may with the greater ease and security plunder both.” This gave rise to Tone’s direct intervenion in County Armagh and also in Rathfriland, County Down, to end the sectarian feuds between Protestant Peep O’Day boys and the Catholic Defenders.
One can only imagine the hole there would have been in the development of the ideal of an independent Irish Republic without Wolfe Tone’s intellectual vision, and indeed physical courage, as a driving force in the foundation of the United Irishmen. His commitment against the odds in advancing the aspiration of an Ireland for Catholic Protestant and Dissenter remains a challenge to all genuinely committed to a fully inclusive and independent nation, It is also an ideal over time that also inspired other anti-colonial movements in their quest for national liberation.
Readers can make their own submission in support of Wolfe Tone to the Trinity College Library working group at the link below. The naming of this prestigious library after Tone would also help fill the inexplicable void in public memorials to him in Ireland’s capital.
https://www.tcd.ie/legacies/submissions/renaming-the-library/
*Dr. Francis Costello is the author of a number of Irish historical works. He has been a fellow at the Institute for Irish Studies at Queen’s University and at QUB’s Centre for Conflict Transformation, having also lectured at the University of Ulster and Columbia University.