Short of planning to ignore the Patron Saint and instead remember the snakes he banished, it’s hard to imagine how the Irish Government could have dropped a more epic political clanger this week than in proposing to remember, or ‘commemorate’, the Royal Irish Constabulary.

This ‘decade of centenaries’, concerning the founding of the two Irish states (well, state and statelet) undoubtedly throws up challenges and complications. But some decisions about what to remember and what to pass over are easier to make than others.

For Irish Justice Minister, Charlie Flanagan, to seriously suggest a state event to commemorate the Royal Irish Constabulary, is, I would have imagined, one of the obvious candidates to place in the ‘let’s not bother’ tray.

Gratifyingly, the institutional memory of the Irish people – keen at the best of times – corrected his suggestion and has managed to stop such a morally outrageous and historically risible event from taking place.

It has now been ‘deferred,’ we are told, which is another way of saying it is stone-cold dead. Given Flanagan has form for repeatedly tweaking the nose of Irish nationalist sentiment down the years – and after he apparently ignored his own committee of expert historians who opposed such a commemoration – the mess should stop at his door, while his achingly modern boss, Leo Varadkar, seems to understand too little of the history of the country he governs.

Indeed, the visceral public and political reaction against the Irish Government’s ill-starred plans – which stretched way beyond the republican tribe – revealed the latent potential of the Irish founding story and its undiminished power to inspire. (Permit me a brief diversion to beat a familiar drum, but this will prove to be a galvanising factor when the referendum on Irish unity arrives).

The RIC deserves to be remembered in a historical context, (as suggested by Professor Diarmuid Ferriter). Limited to a shadowy reflection, while we commemorate the virtuous struggle for Irish freedom instead. The force does not warrant public recognition beyond that.

From its very inception, the RIC was dedicated to the persecution of the Irish people – whether in evicting starving tenants during the Great Famine, or rounding up rebels in 1848, 1867 or 1916 – and one that brave Irish men and women were compelled to overcome in order to win their statehood.

‘The police are the public and the public are the police’ was how Sir Robert Peel envisioned British policing – a model that holds to this day. An unarmed constabulary drawn from the communities they are meant to serve, discharging their responsibilities ‘by consent.’

Little of that description applied to the RIC.

Its officers were not victims of history, trying their best amid tumultuous times. The RIC was an armed militia, given draconian powers and earned a deserved reputation for violence, committing countless human rights abuses, as the front-end of a repressive, colonial power, augmented, by the end, by the Auxiliaries and Black and Tans.

The comparison some made on social media, defending the commemoration as similar in intent to remembering the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who fought in the British Forces during the Great War, was ludicrous.

Those soldiers were fighting ‘for the rights of small nations’ and the promise of Irish independence. Of course, many subsequently returned to use those same skills on the flying columns to secure Irish freedom more directly (my great-uncles among them).

Ultimately, though, this episode tells us two things.

First, historical commemoration is loaded with meaning – witting and unwitting – and needs careful thought. There was a noticeably more sure-footed approach during the centenary commemorations of 1916, which successfully explored the events of the time three-dimensionally.

Second, ‘all must have prizes’ is a terrible starting point when considering public remembrance of the past. Occasionally, historical events are black and white. There are heroes and villains. The officers of the RIC were not heroes; the hated Auxiliaries and Black and Tans who supported them were nothing more than murderous, state-sponsored terrorists.

If we must remember the RIC and their dubious friends, then let us do so as the losing side – the vanquished foe of the Irish people a century ago, justly and resoundingly defeated in a legitimate  and successful bid for nationhood.