My glorious career in student politics and what I almost learned from it. July 31, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Greens, Labour Party, Sinn Féin, The Left.73 comments
On foot of discussions about the strangely long-lived impact student life appears to have had on Eoghan Harris, I’m reminded of the 1980s. Now the WP was an organisation which really placed no great interest in third level, probably since its grip on USI was by the mid-1980s but a distant memory (the student princes of OSF, Rabbitte, Gilmore etc having decamped to the unions or the public sector) and subject to a fightback by both PSF, fellow travellers of one stripe or another and the Labour Party (always more radical at the more – ahem – youthful fringes). As it happened I was probably one of the very very few reasonably active members of the party at both constituency and student union level, quite a trick considering the demands of the former and the way in which the party was regarded as the most Machiavellian and negative political operator in the latter. Anyhow, in my attempt to radicalise my fellow comrades in the student body I would bring in speakers from the party or try to organise that they might go to party conferences.
This was a project which met with mixed success, which is to say none at all. A small number from the Womens’ Group went to a WP Womens’ Conference but returned entirely unimpressed by the lack of theoretical enquiry and “boring” (I quote directly) concentration on childcare, housing and health.
On a separate occasion Pat McCartan, as Industrial Spokesman for the party, was dragged into the college to lecture on the Workers’ Party plans for dealing with the economy and unemployment. This too was met with a certain disdain by the more radicalised elements amongst my peers, the Maoists (of which there was one) found it insufficiently revolutionary and too detached from the rural (actually the latter point wasn’t the worst analysis I heard), those who were premature SF supporters had already developed a deep and abiding hatred for the WP, while most others found the ideas of large scale factory fishing ‘dull’.
Another time I brought a member of the party who had achieved some significance in the cultural field in to talk about his politics. The posters around the college made this fairly clear. Or so I thought. Unfortunately, after the visitor had waxed lyrical about his political education and the way in which the party had changed him for the better (I kid you not, there was more than a hint of a religious conversion at work here) it was announced by one tutor who had brought an entire year group to see this dialectical education that he had expected to hear about the cultural achievements, not the man.
I sort of gave up after that and ceded the field to the SWM who held meetings no-one went to and which even pity wouldn’t drive me to attend. The CPI-ML met with greater luck. They had one member on site and their TCD contingent would troop up on a weekly basis to be met with some interest by the more Republican on campus. Mind you none of those Republicans ever joined PSF, so perhaps their support was also more rhetorical…
I was never elected to USI, but spent some time on the fringes as a delegate to conferences. All good stuff. Particularly Portrush one year where I wound up in the bar having to listen to the large SF contingent give voice to that traditional song which contains the lines “Up the Provo’s, down the Sticks”. Still, this was after I’d been harangued for an hour or so by another member of the CPI-ML (who went onto much more exalted things) about the revolutionary necessity of the armed struggle. Not that this sort of discussion was restricted to the margins. The raw hatred during debates between some in the Campaign for Labour Representation and Nationalists and Republicans was remarkable and to some degree inexplicable at that point, although not quite so much in retrospect once one realises that the malign influence of the BICO was there…
I never saw that as a terribly important ‘site of struggle’. As a hostage to a perhaps delusional pragmatism I saw the real work as in the constituencies. Now, that view might well be correct although much of that work in retrospect seems to have been about getting certain people elected to a certain democratic institution, and not so much about seeing the ideology implemented.
And this in a sense brings me back to discourse. Because I’m innately suspicious of political parties that centre their activities on students. Or maybe suspicious is overstating it. Perhaps it is that I just don’t believe that it is possible to develop large scale long term political allegiance from such protean material.
And again to refer back to Eoghan Harris, his fears of Ireland slipping into ‘civil war’ seem to me to be akin to the idea that somehow May 68 could be played out on the admittedly smaller canvas of the Republic of Ireland with a students/students alliance spearheading such change, with presumably the SWP or whoever providing the ideological cement. Not that it was ever put in such terms. Both work on the line that you can leverage societal change in the most unlikely of conditions (and this reminds me of a friend of mine who was strongly involved in the bin tax protest who saw it as a means of displaying the true reactionary face of the state and therefore being an exemplar to the working class of the nature of that state. Anyone who has signed on in the dole office around the corner from the Rotunda will already have a fairly good idea as to the nature of the state, for bad and good).
The SWM, later the SWP, seemed to me to be living in a fantasy land (oh yeah, well I remember a certain E. McCann at Portrush bringing a certain star quality to proceedings, or not as the case may be) of mobilising people who didn’t want to be mobilised. This had a specific resonance for me because I was involved in the student administration of the college I went to on anti-Fees campaigns and such like.
From 1985 through to mid-1989 which was the period of my deepest involvement we (the Union) found it impossible to seriously mobilise the student body to combat a continuing process of fee increases. Not that there was no protest. There were sit-ins that disabled the College administration for weeks on end. There were also larger protests in tandem with other institutions in Dublin and elsewhere across the island.
But the point was that it was short lived and a basic problem was the rapid churn of students as one year arrived just as another left. Events from even three or four years previously achieved a mythic quality. I saw Joe Duffy on the back of a truck outside the GPO during a USI protest – or did I? I genuinely can’t be sure one way or another. The wars against OSF in USI were spoken of in hushed tones, but who could tell what were the details? I got my hands on some of the USI reports of the time and it all seemed curiously innocent to me, the sort of petty manipulation that characterised students politics during the period and ever after.
This ‘churn’ of students meant that campaigns would run into the ground too rapidly, would mean that only those outside of exam years, or what laughably were called ‘mature’ students, were really willing to give it their all, and even they were a minority of a minority (incidentally in my one size fits all paranoia it always struck me that the pressure to cut degree course from five to four, or four to three years was in part motivated by a wish to exacerbate the churn). Which meant that that SU activity tended to revolve around general administration and “ents”. Some years later, in the early 1990s, in UCD while doing a post-graduate course I saw almost the same pattern reiterate itself, albeit in somewhat better economic conditions. Oddly enough, for all the supposed sectarianism of the times on the left I found there was a broader comradeship between many of the different left groups I met there, from those who would later be in Red Action, Labour Youth and whoever.
But consider this. The mid-1980s was arguably the time of greatest prolonged economic crisis the 26-county state ever saw. Unemployment was sky-high, emigration was a constant. Yet it was impossible to motivate students to any sort of sustained activity. If not then, when? And if not, why? I’d argue that the reason was two-fold, firstly although students were more clearly middle-class then than now, the situation was so grim it made no difference – all would emigrate a seemingly failing state. Secondly the essential conservatism of the society rubbed off and lent a passivity to people. Revolution was rhetoric and everyone knew it – even at that point. A third possible reason was the sheer blandness of the alternative – Soviet style communism, in whatever variant was fairly unattractive, perhaps particularly in an Ireland that was just emerging from the permafrost of a mildly culturally and socially repressive state itself, and in any event was also a clearly failing system at that point.
This isn’t to argue that there was no capacity for change driven by students (although I’m also innately suspicious of theoretical models which try to reify their agency in political struggle). The late 1960s and early 1970s had seen student agitations which had specific results. Speaking for the institution I was in, moribund curricula were replaced. Tuition was altered. Staff were replaced and buildings and equipment developed. But these were essentially reformist demands, and as such were conceded when funding was available.
Afterwards, almost inevitably, the funding diminished and with it so did the fabric of the buildings, the number of staff and so on.
And I think it is interesting that political parties, such as the SWP, have recognised the necessity to break away – even slightly – from the college over the past decade or so (ironically at the very point where one could argue Third Level education has become somewhat more widely accessible to those from working class backgrounds – that too tells us something about the changing nature of our society and the intriguing ideological frameworks within which certain parties have operated). Again, I wonder if the emphasis on ‘youth’ sections, and students, has in reality been a minor contributory factor to the almost complete failure for radical left projects both in Ireland and abroad. There is a general cynicism about the left in this society, a sense that it is not entirely serious. I wonder how much of that is driven by the sense that ‘ah, it’s just a bunch of students protesting’. Students, rightly or wrongly – and perhaps wrongly, are considered a fairly cosseted group within the society. That the major visual manifestation of further left projects has rested in the past on such groups to provide much of the muscle is unfortunate. And unfortunate as well, if only because there is no reason why students shouldn’t participate fully in political activities. The process of Third Level can radicalise and inform. But can it do much more than that, and if not is this yet another case of the left looking back to partial victories, say the Russian Revolution, say 1968 and trying to crush all future activity and activism into their template?
If one believes in the generally accepted form of the political party, and I know there are those who with good reason don’t, parties have to organise beyond the academic institution. In a way the recent performance by Richard Boyd-Barrett, which was in all fairness quite good, might exacerbate this trend (although, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere he was flying something of a flag of convenience – but at least a convenience that broke away from the traditional image of the further left). Alternatively they might look at Joe Higgins and the Socialist Party and conclude that it really is a little too much hard work and better to wait until the conditions come right. Problem is conditions often don’t come right unless they’re nudged, or unless there is a serious component willing to step up at the necessary moment.
Actually I wonder what effect the most recent election will have on those fractions. Sinn Féin appear to be battening down the hatches and getting on with things. Labour seem to be waking up from the dream that was the Mullingar Accord. But beyond them how will the analyses stack up? No element or even relation of the further left was returned (sure, Seamus Healy did relatively well, and on another analysis so did Joe Higgins, but nowhere near well enough). I’ve spoken to one individual who would broadly be in the further left, although not aligned with a party, who told me a couple of weeks after the result that he was giving up on electoral politics. Good on him, but perhaps it gave up on him.
Yet in the face of the hegemonic grip by the centre centre/right on Irish politics that I referred to previously, where now for those groups? Opposition has its own charms, and we’ve seen various groups survive for decades simply by a sort of activism which bends and shapes itself to whatever is the issue of the day. But it’s unappealing surely? And then there is the instructive example of the Greens. A generous (and not necessarily incorrect) analysis of their words and actions since the election would merely serve to underpin the idea that they too had to accept that hegemony – even once they had stepped inside the tent. That they see no way of altering that until they are given time. It’s not the happiest of prospects, now is it?
‘Progressive’ Ireland to take on next ‘nationalist shibboleth’ July 30, 2007
Posted by franklittle in Art, Culture, Ireland.74 comments
I hope one of our newer contributors, Damian O’Broin, doesn’t mind being credited with the inspiration behind this post but a comment he made as a Labour member and Wexford supporter of his delight, one shared by all neutrals I can assure you, at their success on Saturday reminded me of something I have been meaning to post on. It might be particularly interesting in light of some of the comments on nationalism, labour and republicanism in Ireland.
For some time there has been a consistent anti-GAA trend in what passes for liberal intellectual circles in Ireland. Rules 21 and 42 were used for many years as sticks with which Irish liberal thought could chastise the reactionary peasant classes of rural Ireland. With rugby teams playing in Croke Park and PSNI hurlers, it seems that some are looking for the next windmill to tilt at.
Last February, Fergus Finlay opened up the new front with a fairly vile attack on our national anthem that I’ve been meaning to get back to. Confessing that he is unable to sing it, a rather curious omission in one’s education for a former Deputy Government Press Secretary, his argument is based on the sort of extremist literalism so beloved of columnists. The anthem, he points out, uses the phrase ‘Soldiers, are we…’, but “I don’t want to be a soldier, never did”. Fair enough Fergus, nor do I, but the song refers to a struggle of national liberation when an entire people arose and all, to one extent or another, were soldiers.
Finlay concludes with this terrifying prospect:
“In the interests of reflecting the modern, open country we have become, for the sake of giving a new generation a chance to find their own voice, and because it has outlived its usefulness, I reckon we should set about finding a new national anthem rather than worrying about anyone else’s.
“The Soldiers’ Song says nothing to us any more. It’s time we retired it with honour.”
Good grief. Could anyone imagine anything more terrifying than a process of finding a new anthem? We would end up with some monstrosity selected by a committee or, in the worst scenario, a Louis Walsh type “You’re a Star” competition.
Finlay argues that the anthem is out of touch and especially that it is too bloodthirsty and militaristic. Although he does acknowledge that the French Marseillaise is not without some revolutionary imagery. But other countries too take their inspiration from their struggles for independence. The Italian anthem uses the phrase ‘We are ready to die’ four times in its chorus and in one verse accuses Austrians of drinking the blood of Poles, Russians and Italians. Presumably metaphorically.
Greece refers to the ‘dreadful edge of your sword’ while the Mexicans optimistically see a future filled with ‘War, war! Let the national banners be soaked in waves of blood’ in a song that uses the word blood often enough to be genuinely disturbing. The Poles swear to ‘..fight with swords for all that our enemies had taken from us’ and later credit Bonaparte with teaching them how to fight. The Dutch anthem, somewhat bizarrely, contains a reference to an oath of loyalty to the King of Spain. Even that paragon of social democracy, neutral Sweden refers to ‘faith until death will I swear….With God shall I fight for home and for hearth’.
National anthems are not meant to appeal to the intellect or the political correctness wing of Irish life. They are supposed to appeal to the emotions, to one’s patriotism. Despite advancing years I still feel an electricity in Croke Park when the national anthem is sung. They are products of their time and for most countries celebrate and acknowledge struggles for independence, against tyranny foreign or domestic. Stirring national anthems have not yet led to race wars. Mexico is unlikely to be going to war with anyone. Italy is not expected to invade Austria anytime soon.
Irish nationalism and republicanism did not begin when Peadar Kearney sat down to write a new patriotic song. It will not, however devoutly some might wish, disappear if the song is changed. The Irish national anthem might mean nothing to Fergus Finlay anymore, but to be honest, I suspect that says more about Fergus than it does the Irish people.
Section 31, Eoghan Harris and rewriting history… July 29, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Labour Party, Media and Journalism, Sinn Féin.9 comments
Imagine my delight when I turn to the column by Eoghan Harris in the Sunday Independent this morning. Today he is exercised by the photograph I mentioned the other day, the one showing Pat Rabbitte with Alex White. Now, I mentioned briefly that it indicated a certain ownership of at least one good Labour result by the architect of their rather stagnant Election result. But Harris goes to town. On it. Under the heading “A picture that’s worth this thousand words” he lambastes Labour for ‘the spot where the Irish Labour Party became a minor political party of politically correct DCU academics, Law Library lefties and radical chic republican socialists (sic)”. Lest we think that he is referring to some other Labour Party, one that while far from perfect might still approach even distantly the platonic ideal of our collective imagination he rapidly disabuses us of any such notions.
“…what do the four people [in the photo] have in common? And the answer is they are all supporters of the kind of soft republican socialism that can be summed up in the high-profile positions that all four took against Section 31”
Let’s consider what he means by this intriguing elision of characters as diverse as Alex White, his partner Marcy Corcoran, Pat Rabbitte and Joe Costello with … soft republican socialism and er… Section 31. Because make no mistake about it, this is not a political conflict, it’s personal.
Now, there are few, very very few on this planet who would consider that Pat Rabbitte was a ‘soft republican socialist’. And if we take that as our bench mark we can perhaps see the absurdity of the following thesis.
“Alex White was one of the leading activists against Section 31 [the rule forbidding members of SF to be broadcast on RTE] when he worked as a radio producer in RTE in the Eighties. Back then there was no talk of peace. Sinn Fein-IRA was still a politico-criminal conspiracy intent on subverting both states on the island”
Let me pause and note that in the old ‘objective’ use of the word ‘subvert’ so in many respects was my political home at the time, and that of Eoghan Harris, the Workers’ Party. Certainly the nature of the changes envisaged by the party would have been pretty subversive.
“…as the reality of blood and death recedes, a generation of academics with no feel for how close we came to a civil war are creating a cosy cottage industry around a stand-alone version of Section 31, shorn of historical context and conjuring up a left concept about ‘censoring the media’ when of course we are really speaking of censoring the IRA”
Since most of those academics would be in the 40s and 50s the contention that they have ‘no feel’ seems rather gratuitous. But then let’s consider the claim that we came ‘close to a civil war’. I can’t think of one point in the 30 years of the conflict where there was ever any serious danger to the Republic of Ireland from the North. To put it simply there was never anything close to the support for SF or PIRA which would initiate and maintain a civil war in the South. Indeed Harris conveniently ignores the fact that PIRA was always fairly careful to limit its activities south of the border for the basic reason that they did not wish to see any greater a security response than the one they already had. And if he means the North… well… there is an academic debate as to the nature of the conflict. But again, one of the most cynical attributes of that conflict was the way in which violence on all sides was fairly carefully maintained at revoltingly predictable levels in order that the gestural aspects didn’t tip over into inter-communal slaughter. So, remarkably, in the space of 30 years very very few politicians were targeted on either side bar a number of grim exceptions. But that narrative, cynical as it is and one which reflects appallingly badly on all involved, doesn’t quite fit into the simple manichaean presentation that in some respects is just an inverse of the sort of ‘traditional’ Republicanism peddled by RSF, and SF back in the day, whereby all causes and contexts are swept away in order that the perpetrators can be painted in the worst possible light. And if the intention was simply to censor the IRA, then why censor those who were not members of the IRA…. well we know the answer to that. But to hear it presented in such terms is just like old times.
Mary Corcoran is lashed for editing a book of academic essays on Section 31 which had the temerity to have nine essays against the rule and only one, by Conor Cruise O’Brien, in favour. Okay. Perhaps Harris has a point. Perhaps he, as one of those pivotally involved in pushing for its retention by RTE should have been given the opportunity to write (there is a certain pathos to his point that ‘I…had recorded a role playing exercise called Provo Mortar Bomb to prove how the Provos would run rings around RTE reporters’ – well gee Eoghan, thanks for letting us make up our own minds about those hypnotic masterminds in the Republican Movement, somehow I and most I knew managed). And yet. And yet.
Then it’s on to poor old Pat Rabbitte (words you rarely see typed around here) who is charged with being part of ‘that leadership [of the WP that opposed Section 31], the current leader of the Labour Party, the third person in the picture’.
Finally, as further justification for supporting Section 31, well apart from the one about trying to censor the IRA (not difficult since it was a proscribed organisation), we are treated to his thoughts on the political context of the times as received by his old comrade Gerry Gregg (fair to point out that ‘comrade’ may not be the entirely correct term seeing as Mr. Gregg took a political right turn some while back). Gregg wrote an article in Magill that covered much the same ground as his mentor does in this piece.
“… in the course of a brilliant biographical essay in Magill magazine, Gerry Gregg (available here on Slugger O’Toole), gives a more accurate account of the political culture in the Irish universities from which RTE recruited political activists like Gregg and White in the late 1970s:
“But there were also a host of ultra-left and Trotskyite sects – such as the Revolutionary Marxist Group, Revolutionary Struggle and the League for a Workers’ Republic. These and other groupings gave what they termed ‘critical support’ to the murderous activities of the Provisional IRA. I remember in 1976, when ten Protestant workers had been lined up and mown down by the South Armagh Provos, that one student Trotskyite hailed the slaughter as a ‘progressive massacre’. Four years later, that student was working as a radio producer in RTE.”
Let me hasten to add that Alex White is not the producer to whom Gregg refers. But as an activist against Section 31, Alex White must have been aware of the passsions which blinded some of his fellow RTE radio producers. In particular he must remember a meeting which I have referred to here many times – the meeting of RTE radio producers in 1987 which refused to support a resolution condemning the Enniskillen bombing.”
Now before going any further Enniskillen was an atrocity, the almost unavoidable outcome of any campaign of violence waged within a contested and limited geographical space such as the North. An example of the dangers of engaging in gestural violence, similar in it’s own way to the later atrocity at Omagh. But, to present one group within RTE as being malign, due to their previous activities in student politics (I mean really, IWG, RS and LWR, he took them or any pronouncements by students seriously?) seems odd when one considers the history of Harris himself and the party of which he was a member. To further discuss the Enniskillen meeting in the context here is to do us all a disservice. What was the precise context of that refusal to support a resolution? I don’t know, and I’d like to. But whether it is what he claims it is, further evidence of a malign indifference to human life or placating PSF or PIRA is a different issue. I’ve never much liked loyalty tests of one form or another. Political loyalty tests regarding situations beyond the direct control of those being asked to take them I like even less.
Moreover while it may suit to portray this as a quixotic campaign by some principled WP members plus assorted trade unionist noises off, the reality was very different. The party, united almost as one in loathing PSF and PIRA was fairly clear this was one campaign it wasn’t going to get too exercised by. Any oppostion by the WP was to a large degree cosmetic and as I recall almost never acted on. Whether RTE trade unionists reflected the views of trade unionists more broadly is a further interesting question. And finally there was a broad consensus in the political establishment in favour of Section 31. Hardly tilting against windmills there. More like going with the flow of those who had actual state power.
Then it is on to another unlikely paragon of soft republican socialism, Joe Costello. Lashed for trying to:
‘visit Los Tres Amigos in Columbia until Rabbitte restrained him. But the snob in Rabbitte, which regards Costello as politically common, provides no protection against Costello’s protege, the Dublin South barrister Alex White…[and] as White is the likely future leader of a Costelloish Labour Party, as it was he and Joe Costello who combined to let Pearse Doherty in by the backdoor (when Mary Coughlan of Fianna Fáil and Dinny McGinley of Fine Gael had combined to keep Doherty from the front door) and since I do not want to see his dirty deal with SF rewarded with a Minsterial Mercedes, I want to wish Ahern and John Gormley a long political life…’
Okay, what to say? Rabbitte may well be not my political cup of tea, but I’ve never found him as described. Coughlan and McGinley were fighting an election, not some existential battle confined to our hero’s head. A Costelloish Labour Party? I wish.
So, nothing at all about the sensitivities of naked political censorship in a society which had groaned under the yoke of state and church led censorship of arts, culture and politics for much of the century. Nothing at all about the perception, whether valid or not, that there was a considerable hypocrisy on the part of those who allegedly organised secret branches of WP members and allegedly sought to censor those who were members of another party with connections with a not so secret army. Nothing about the enormous chutzpah in accusing Pat Rabbitte of being a soft ‘republican socialist’.
I’ve mentioned the British and Irish Communist Organisation recently, and I’ll return to them soon, but here is another who took a very similar if not quite parallel journey, albeit breaking with socialism in any form entirely in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Much the same trajectory from Republicanism to Marxism to social democracy and then onto an identification with (or a tolerance of on the part of BICO) Fianna Fáil.
The battles of the past are always so much more satisfying than dealing with a present which confounds expectation. And the answer to every problem is? Why vote Fianna Fáil. The catch-all party catches one whose political journey has been marked by an egregious meandering masked in the language of moral absolutism at whatever point one chooses to examine it. No surprise there then.
The Wicklow book-binding dispute… capital – red in tooth and claw? Nah, just the way business does business around here… July 27, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Labour relations, Trade Unions.13 comments
I find the Wicklow book-binding dispute interesting for two reasons. Firstly the way in which it is presented as if the company is acting in an unusual fashion in such disputes and secondly the way in which it is being actually covered by the media in quite a high profile fashion.
A number of thoughts strike me on the reasons for this. In a way it is a perfect storm of a labour relations dispute. These aren’t the horny handed sons or daughters of toil that often seem to inhabit the popular discourse of labour relations…These are binders who as the Irish Times notes:
Customers of Reilly Bookbinders include the Department of the Taoiseach, the Department of Agriculture, the Courts Service, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Galway, Queen’s University, several local authorities and the Labour Court.
Secondly there is the twist about the relocation of the company abroad, namely to Eastern Europe and:
However, a new company, Dunne and Wilson Group Ltd, has now taken over the company’s client base with the intention of moving its operations to the Czech Republic and is not liable for debts incurred by Dunne and Wilson (Ireland) Ltd, including severance pay for staff, Mr McKean explained.
Then there is the high-handed manner in which the company has acted which includes the incredibly inastute move of saying they were:
…insolvent and did not intend to offer its staff a redundancy package, Siptu spokesman Shane McKean said.
Mr McKean of the Irish Print Group division of Siptu has called for the appointment of a liquidator in a bid to obtain redundancy payments for the Reilly Bookbinders employees.
But he said, the company is referring the matter to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment insolvency fund, which could take months to process the claim.
Finally there is the interesting – ahem – approach to making offers which allegedly included:
Siptu said a company representative has offered to sell two guillotine machines and to “split” the proceeds with the employees, following a Labour Relations Commission meeting last week.
But Mr McKean said the other machines are to be used for the Czech Republic operation, and the protesting staff are refusing to allow any equipment or customers orders to leave the building.
On RTÉ this morning it was claimed by the SIPTU representative that the proceeds of the sale and consequent disbursal might amount to at best 1,500 euro.
But what is most gloomy is the way in which this is treated as somehow unusual. The problem being it isn’t uncommon for companies to balk at any redundancy payments over and above statutory. Yet this, and I’m sorry that I have to use the word yet again, feeds into a narrative about labour relations in the early 21st century, one where such problems are largely a thing of the past, where legislation precludes the need for collective bargaining or representation and independent young (it’s always young in the narrative) workers are well equipped to bargain directly regarding their wages and conditions. The public sector situation is naturally somewhat different in that union representation is good there.
Yet my experience of this is quite the opposite. And this holds true for many of my friends in the private sector. Unionisation is limited, labour relations are broadly poor, implementation of government, ICTU and IBEC (one of the employers representative bodies) agreed pay deals under national partnership is spotty. Many companies are run as if private fiefdoms, which in many respects they are.
Five or six years ago I was working in a group of companies. The companies hadn’t implemented a pay rise in two years. The holding company wasn’t making a loss. Indeed once I’d got the info off the CRO it was clear it was making quite a tidy profit. But the owner, and it was family owned despite having links with international corporations, refused to recognise unions, national pay agreements or indeed any level of criticism from his staff.
So, two others and myself set about getting SIPTU in. It took much less time than might have been thought to unionise almost the entirety of the work force including most of middle management and sales reps. One reason for that was a little heralded change in statutory redundancy payments where it moved from a half weeks pay per year of service to two weeks. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it was for a workforce that in the main had been there for ten or twenty years. Enough of a psychological cushion to give a certain steel to the workforce. And this helped to bring about a small victory, but one gained in the face of fierce pressure from the owner and his top managers, who simply did not accept that the workforce had any right to a say in their terms and conditions and did not accept that the state had any right to underscore these rights. I sat at the Labour Court with IBEC reps who shook their heads at the obstinacy of the owner saying they had never seen anything like it. But as our SIPTU officials noted the reality was there was a significant number of business enterprises run in precisely this way – companies who time had forgot.
The payoff for these activities was quite predictable. Under pressure from the union and the LC a wage increase was awarded. Six months later myself and three others who were strongly involved in the union were made redundant and in a way which was ostensibly quite reasonable. There was no talk of more than statutory redundancy, and ironically the only extra came because the company had screwed up the way in which they announced the redundancies.
A slightly less predictable outcome was that the owner contacted me occasionally over the subsequent year offering me not my old job back, but two to three days a week doing more or less the same work. I didn’t take it, but it indicated the incredible, almost unbelievable insularity of some employers. More satisfying than saying ‘no’ to the offer was the continued survival of the union within the group.
And bad and all as that is I don’t believe it is entirely atypical of labour relations in parts of the private sector today. Sure, in good times perhaps some, or indeed many, workers – well trained, highly skilled – can approach the market with equanimity. But when times turn sour that can fade with startling rapidity. Not all businesses are like that, but not enough are not.
Any company can fail, and I have some time for those who make the effort to start and continue in business. But with that comes responsibilities and one of those is to recognise who it is that is actually producing the goods.
I wish the workers’ well in the Wicklow instance. But I fear the best they can hope for is a better redundancy deal. Small enough recompense for those who as the IT notes:
…have worked for the company for between 15 and 20 years, while some staff have accumulated between 25 and 28 years of service.
The Empire Strikes Back, and back, and back… The ascendency of Fianna Fáil July 26, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Fianna Fáil, Irish Labour Party, Irish Politics, Sinn Féin.33 comments
They abide. They abide. Seemingly nothing can detach or dislodge Fianna Fáil from their present dominance. Other parties must work with them or around them. Note the Greens, and the rather wan talk about how FF would not ‘allow’ Patricia McKenna to become a Taoiseach’s nominee. Well, that may well be true, or it may not, but that it can be stated in such blunt terms indicates who is calling the shots at the moment.
The talk before the Senate Elections that they might be in trouble, lose their working majority, etc, all so much fluff now. They’re down two seats. That’s all.
This is, in short, a lesson in pragmatism and hegemony. Forget about the wonderful morally and ethically seamless Mullingar Accord. It achieved nothing, did nothing – except for Fine Gael. Fair dues to them. They did exactly what any party should do, look to its survival and beyond that look to increasing its vote share and representation and simultaneously look to getting into power.
But Mullingar remains no more or less than a midlands town and Labour is free. So, what next?
The Labour/Sinn Féin deal over seats was good. Great even. Here was a point where we saw a small but significant step forward which worked on two fronts. Firstly it demonstrated that the parties in a secret election could work with sufficient trust to deliver a result. That’s enormously important. Secondly it demonstrated that gains can be made. But let’s not overstate this. Two seats gained for the left is nowhere near what the left should be regarding as a victory. And who was that in the Irish Times photo on Tuesday with Alex White? Why one P. Rabbitte, enfolding candidate and wife in a bear hug complete with an enormous grin – sure the deal had to be done with the hated Provo’s, but at least there was a result. A lesson learned? Yes. Well. Dealing with FG led to no bonus. Dealing with SF leads to one seat. At least something is getting through.
So what next? Another five years. The Senate looks like it will remain the home of at least some level of interesting thought, although the general impact it has will be minimised by dint of a comfortable FF working majority – in tandem with their allies.
And for those of us who caught Sam Smyth in the Irish Independent food for at least some thought when he suggested that the Labour/SF deal opens the gates to the latter party being taken on board should the Greens have the temerity to jump ship during the current Dáil. I don’t know. That the Greens would jump, or that FF would bring SF into a coalition (with Michael Lowry as well?) seems hugely unlikely. I wondered at the response of Ahern in the Dáil to SF requests for speaking time. There was a pinched and querulous tone to his comments that went well beyond his normal public persona. He really didn’t like them. But of course, he wouldn’t. Labour presents little threat to FF in the working class. But SF are a different matter. A good wind behind them and who knows how many seats they might wind up with. Better to cut them off at the knees, so to speak, and limit their public exposure. And no doubt that seemed like a clever strategy in the aftermath of the election. Problem is that SF can project themselves as the awkward squad and to an extent already have. Their message may now be clearer because it is no longer mixed within the voices of the former Technical Group. And that niche left of the Labour Party has remained stubbornly attractive to at least one sector of the Irish electorate. Perhaps Ahern may yet come to conclude that it might have been better to embrace them as the Greens and others were embraced.
In any case, the word is out that some of the taboo’s relating to SF are being discarded, and that rumour that FG actually made some contacts with SF during the post-election period (reiterated again today by Smyth) to tie up their support for a minority FG-led coalition persists.
Narratives take time to change, but generally they change incrementally.
One last thing. It was notable that Independents did quite well in the Senate Elections. Another straw in the wind for 2012? It’s impossible to tell what the shape of the political world will be in five years time. But, Ahern by pandering to the Independents has effectively given carte blanche to every disaffected FF candidate in 2012 to jump ship and point to the “McGrath” deal, the “Lowry” deal and the “Healy-Rae” deal Mk II (or is that Mk II.V?). I think that could eat into his successors votes quite considerably and could potentially leave an FF that was much more dependent upon left forces, at least those that were willing to move beyond posturing.
The banality of the banality of evil as discussed in the Irish media… Crime Part 2 July 25, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Crime, Culture.11 comments
So… Been away a couple of days, far enough away to discover that the term Internet enabled apartment can cover a multitude of situations in a town where there has been a power blackout that has knocked out routers. Anyhow. Due to this, posting is, and may remain, a tad erratic for the next week or so. If only because all my information on the Senate Elections etc, has been from the Irish print media, laudably same day, not quite so laudably thin on analysis, oh and information…
On foot of my thoughts about crime there are two interesting pieces last week, one from Scientific American and the other from the Irish Times, both attempt to consider the nature of ‘evil’. And the interesting thing is that the supposed ‘right-wing’ Michael Shermer appears closer to a ‘left’ interpretation than UCD Clinical psychologist Marie Murray. But then Shermer is, like many of us on the left, ultimately a man grounded in materialism (although he might not quite describe it that way) and rationality.
Murray writes about the:
…gangland killings. There are premeditated murders. Men are massacred. Bodies are found in freezers. And we are, allegedly, and not without irony, one of the safest societies in which to live?
Actually, yes, yes we are. She continues…
This begs a most unpopular question. This introduces an antiquated word: one so politically incorrect, so incongruous in a secular world, and dissonant with societal discourses that it is difficult to articulate. But it is time, perhaps, that it was said. The word is “evil”. And the question is: “Are the acts described above evil?” If they are not evil, what are they? What clinical categories or what psychological rationalisations can we provide to explain and contain these behaviours at this time?
There are a raft of unsubstantiated points. For example:
Clinically we know the negative impact of violent pornography….Whereas acts of extreme cruelty were once considered to be the aberrations of the depraved, the deviant and the deranged few, they are now presenting so routinely that “the banality of evil”, as described by philosopher Hannah Ahrendt, that image of evil in pure pedantic form, seems to be making itself visible and it is not a pretty sight.
and then onto:
That good people can act in cruel and callous ways, depending upon context, was confirmed by the research of Philip Zimbardo in his famous Stanford prison experiments…If Nazism had not already convinced us of that, more recent images from Abu Ghraib prison must surely do.
Now we’re hitting top speed:
Most cultures have a concept of evil and words to describe it, although our postmodern world is increasingly scornful of ideas of good and evil. Radical relativism has replaced the notion of evil with the paradigm of perspective, whereby ethics are relative and “truth” is what you believe. Entitlement to live one’s life, primarily based on one’s own concept of right, irrespective of the rights of others, is increasingly valorised. And we have to ask if the rights of the paedophile should outweigh the rights of the child? Should the rights of the rapist outweigh those of the women he rapes? …..Because many who have experienced attack feel further violated by a society that too often frees perpetrators to offend against them again.
and into the home stretch:
Ask any ordinary person who has been a victim of violence in all its multifarious forms if evil exists and they will tell you that it does. They know. They have encountered it…..But unless we are prepared to acknowledge its existence, in the individual, in the collective, in the perpetrator, in the community and in those who stay silent before it, then people will become more anxious, more depressed, hopeless and suicidal than they already are. Society has been stabbed. It is wounded…Psychotherapists may have a duty to be non-judgmental but they have an equal duty to consider if political correctness is serving society well. They must ask if they have categorised, codified, labelled and pathologised every act to the extent that there is a rationalisation for every atrocity and reluctance to name any behaviour as wrong.
with just a parting thought to upset us…
For whatever bedevils our society today, it is bringing misery to far too many.
Now, away from boring stuff like statistics, which demonstrate crime hasn’t increased, has if anything somewhat dipped, one has to ask is this a case of Murray being too close to the wood to see the trees (and perhaps it is telling that the superheated rhetoric comes from one who works in the area of student counselling)? Because she deals, as a clinical psychologist, on a daily basis with extremely harrowing instances of misery, does this in any real sense represent the society? If I want to be anecdotal I can point to Irish society being much ‘happier’ in some respects now than twenty years ago when I was just 20 or so. There were good reasons for that unhappiness. An economy that was shot, elites that had completely resigned themselves to a dismal future, a cowed and embittered working class and so on and so forth. Now I look at a society of admitted flaws, but also enormous strengths. Why is she overstating the situation? Why indeed?
Furthermore she plays into the narrative on crime with the rather mealy mouthed: And we are, allegedly, and not without irony, one of the safest societies in which to live?
But let’s look at the article again, because, for all it’s modish references to Ahrendt and Abu Ghraib, it is just one more run through the ‘post-modernism and political correctness is the root of (literally) all evil’ spiel. And it is to be honest extremely reactionary in what it implies – if not in what it says. What evidence is there that the rights of victims are lesser than the rights of perpetrators – I’m not arguing that there are not imbalances in certain areas, one can point to sexual crimes as being an exemplar of that, but beyond that what is Murray calling for? What is the evidence that moral relativism has any place in our legal system, or indeed in the overall structure of our society on any meaningful level – if anything surely the contrary is true in a context of hyperbole about the incidence and spread of crime? What is the evidence that the release of offenders (often after processes which those of her own profession are engaged in to make determinations as to the suitability of such releases) is ‘too often’ followed by attacks – it wouldn’t take much to find out, a simple look at levels of recidivism would suffice. Which element of political correctness does she mean – are not racist or sexist comments also ‘evil’, is utter (often ignorant) frankness an unalloyed virtue? What is relationship between the volume or incidence of the crimes Murray points to and ‘evil’ – surely a society with one crime alone could see that as the most egregious ‘evil’, as distinct from a society such as our own where crimes are committed on a regular basis? This sort of gives the game away really, because would Murray write of ‘evil’ in this context say in a situation where crime rates were descending? Most unlikely.
Which leads to the question as to whether the term ‘evil’ has any utility in these discussions. I’m not afraid to use it, but I’m not sure it takes us any further than we’ve gone before.
I simply don’t believe her when she says that ‘radical relativism has replaced the notion of evil with the paradigm of perspective, whereby ethics are relative and ‘truth’ is what you believe’. I think the examples she gives are rather thin. One does not need recourse to the concept of ‘evil’, a concept which is so nebulous as to be largely unusable. While it might give a certain satisfaction to brand someone ‘evil’ what does that tell us in any meaningful sense about what that means and what we should do about it? Post-modernist thinking and relativism haven’t whittled away my ability to be able to distinguish right and wrong, or to determine a moral and ethical position on various issues which strike me as a better methodology than ‘knowing and encountering’ evil.
Already in the Irish Times today there was a letter from a psychotherapist:
While I believe that being non-judgmental towards my clients is a prerequisite for my work as a counsellor/psychotherapist, this in no way clouds my judgment or belief as to whether a particular action is right or wrong. I try not to judge or condemn the person, whatever their actions. How else could I work with them ?
How else indeed? But this, although a fine line, points up the difficulties implicit in the Murray thesis. Should a psychotherapist spend sessions with a criminal berating them for their ‘evil’ or attempting to bring them to some self-awareness of what they have done? How does this concentration on the concept of ‘evil’ assist in this context?
Turning to Scientific American we see many of the same references and points discussed, but frankly in a more engaged fashion.
Shermer notes that:
The photographs of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib shocked most Americans. But social psychologist Philip Zimbardo had seen it all 30 years before in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University, where he randomly assigned college students to be “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison environment. The experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after just six days, when these intelligent and moral young men were transformed into cruel and sadistic guards or emotionally shattered prisoners.
He continues:
As he watched the parade of politicians proclaim that Abu Ghraib was the result of a few bad apples, Zimbardo penned a response he calls the Lucifer Effect (also the title of his new book from Random House), namely, the transformation of character that leads ordinarily good people to do extraordinarily evil things. “Social psychologists like myself have been trying to correct the belief that evil is located only in the disposition of the individual and that the problem is in the few bad apples,” he says. But, I rejoin, there are bad apples, no? Yes, of course, Zimbardo concedes, but most of the evil in the world is not committed by them: “Before we blame individuals, the charitable thing to do is to first find out what situations they were in that might have provoked this evil behavior. Why not assume that these are good apples in a bad barrel, rather than bad apples in a good barrel?”
Zimbardo looked at Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick who was the military police officer in charge of the ‘most abusive’ blocks in Abu Ghraib. A model soldier, a self-defined patriot, church attendee, when Zimbardo had him assessed by a clinical psychologist it was clear that Frederick was neither sadistic nor had pathological tendencies.
As Shermer notes:
To Zimbardo, this result “strongly suggests that the ‘bad apple’ dispositional attribution of blame made against him by military and administration apologists has no basis in fact.” Even after he was shipped off to Fort Leavenworth to serve his eight-year sentence, Frederick wrote Zimbardo: “I am proud to say that I served most of my adult life for my country. I was very prepared to die for my country, my family and friends. I wanted to be the one to make a difference.”
Shermer comes to some interesting conclusions: First, it is the exceedingly patriotic model soldier—not a rebellious dissenter—who is most likely to obey authorities who encourage such evil acts and to get caught up in believing that the ends justify the means.
I think this is important. It is the ability to ‘normalise’ ‘evil’ and place them within a given context that is enormously dangerous and points to the ability of any to become involved in such acts.
Second, in The Science of Good and Evil (Owl Books, 2004), I argued for a dual dispositional theory of morality—by disposition we have the capacity for good and evil, with the behavioral expression of them dependent on the situation and whether we choose to act.
Here is a thesis quite divorced from the Murray “evil is out there… an evil evil that is underpinned by relativism” thesis and instead recognises that the capacity for good and bad is in all of us and is located clearly within societal and social contexts and constructs. That doesn’t diminish personal responsibility, doesn’t preclude the choice of some of the most negative path possible in a life. But it does at least pull us back from the unknowable.
I’ve never been terribly interested in books about murderers because to be honest it has always seemed to me to be eminently explicable. Strip away social convention, fear of retribution, empathy and so on and sooner or later, in one circumstance or another it will be possible for someone to kill another. And here is the problem. I don’t feel any need to bundle up the various components of that process in the term ‘evil’ to know that that murder is wrong.
I certainly don’t need to see the term used inchoately as a gratuitous whipping boy against the contemporary period.
And I’m absolutely certain it has nothing at all to do with post-modernism or relativism.
The O’Reilly case and the Irish media July 23, 2007
Posted by franklittle in Crime, media, Media and Journalism.1 comment so far
Today, Joe O’Reilly is beginning his life sentence in the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise following his unanimous conviction on Saturday evening bringing to an end an almost three year campaign for justice by the family of his wife, Rachel, whom he murdered in October 2004 at their family home. Outside of his Mother who still insists on his innocence, there can be few people not glad to justice being done, who are not satisfied at the result.
It also brings to an end one of the most interesting intersections of crime and media in Irish life that we have seen over the last few years. There have been no murders, no crimes, in recent Irish history that received similar levels of media attention not merely over the course of the trial, but in the years since the murder took place. There were 66 murders or manslaughters in 2006, 54 in 2005 and 45 in 2004, the year Rachel O’Reilly was killed.
Some achieved a limited prominence in the media such as the murders of Baiba Saulite, Anthony Campbell, Dennis Donaldson or Donna Cleary. Most, the victims of inter-gang warfare in Limerick or Dublin, were forgotten by all but their families and the Gardaí after a fortnight. None achieved the prominence of the Rachel O’Reilly murder. In only her case has the victim achieved such a status that she is regularly referred to in the media by her first-name only.
I have been trying to remember over the weekend when I became aware that her husband was the killer. I don’t read the Evening Herald, which was to the fore in identifying him as the killer, and I didn’t follow the story when it cropped up elsewhere in the media. Yet at some point I became aware that it was ‘known’ who the killer was. A consensus had emerged not in the corridors of the Irish media, but at watercoolers and dinnertables across the country long before O’Reilly was arrested and charged with the crime.
Writing in the Sunday Tribune yesterday, former Evening Herald crime correspondent Mick McCaffrey, made a number of interesting comments. The Herald, and McCaffrey in particular, probably wrote more about the trial than anyone else, and were the first and the most vociferous in pointing the finger at the husband. I find what he says about the appetite for news about the murder interesting:
“Every time the murder appeared on the front page of the Herald, sales went through the roof. The amount of times Rachel’s photograph was splashed on the front page of the paper became a bit of a running joke among journalists and ordinary members of the public…..
“We eventually got permission (To show pictures of O’Reilly in handcuffs after this arrest) and the frontpage poster edition was one of the biggest-selling copies in years.”
Why was this murder so different? At one level it had a couple of things we’re not used to in Irish murders. It had a clearly identified guilty party at an early stage. The story was less about ‘who’ killed Rachel because we ‘knew’, but about whether he would be caught. The steady closing in of the net around O’Reilly contributed to the build-up in interest. It also had sex in O’Reilly’s affair with Nikky Pelley.
But was there something else? A number of weeks ago Tomás Ó Siocháin, TG4’s Programme Editor, began a speech on the media by reading out five names, the last of which was Madelaine McCann. The first four, only one of which I vaguely recognised, were the names of four children of similar ages who have disappeared in Ireland over the last two to three years. “Why,” Ó Siocháin asked, “are we able to remember some victims and not others?”
He pointed to the distinctions between the McCann case and those of the other children, many of whom were the children of immigrants. Madelaine was white, female and pretty. Her family, those advocating and fighting on her behalf, were middle class, English speaking and media literate. The media, once identifying a story for which there seemed to be unlimited interest, became fixated on it to the detriment of other stories that might have had a better news value.
Can the media obsession with the O’Reilly case be explained similarly? Is this at the heart of why the murder of Donna Cleary, a working class single mother shot by a gangland thug, is more important than the murder of a middle-class married woman by her husband? Is it the reason why the murder of Baiba Saulite, an immigrant to this country and a single mother, by gangland figures allegedly operating on behalf of her estranged husband is slowly being forgotten?
And if so, what does it say not merely about the Irish media, but about those of us who consume it?
A plague on both your houses July 22, 2007
Posted by smiffy in European Politics, Uncategorized.6 comments
In the current religion versus atheism debates, mostly fought out on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free pages and occasionally on here and elsewhere, it’s easy to fall into the black-and-white “Religion + politics = bad, secularism = good” mindset. We rightly see the mixture of religion (particularly religious fundamentalism) and government as anathema to liberal democratic values; we might, therefore, make the mistake of thinking that secularism, of any stripe, is worth supporting against an alternative. Secularism, we might think, represents Enlightenment values, the tradition of Voltaire and Paine, of Jefferson and the American Revolution, of the United Irishmen, of Darwin, Huxley and Russell. All good stuff, yes?
Well, as Gershwin might say, it ain’t necessarily so. While secularism is, obviously, a necessary aspect of a modern, functioning liberal democracy, today’s elections in Turkey remind us that it isn’t a sufficient one.
The political crisis of earlier this summer, which forced these premature elections (which it looks like the incumbent AKP party is likely to win with an increased share of the vote) put the issue of secularism centre-stage and was watched closely by those in Europe troubled by the idea of a Muslim-majority state acceding to the European Union. The mass protests against the AKP attempt to install Abdullah Gul (he of the headscarf wearing wife) drew admiring glances from those who prize secularism above all else, an indication that Turkey was a modern, forward-looking democracy rather than the backward, semi-Islamist state that some opponents of the Turkish EU big might have one believe. The veiled threat from the Turkish military that it might intervene (again) if it didn’t like the actions of the elected politicians was passed over as an unfortunate faux pas, but with little further comment.
Turkish opponents of the AKP (literally the Justice and Development Party), particularly the Kemalist CHP (or Republican People’s Party) but also many in the smaller parties and the establishment media, like to portray it as a hotbed of Islamist reaction, cunning enough to play the game of democracy as long as it suits, but ready to jump at a theocracy as soon as the opportunity arises. There’s certainly some merit in the charge; many in the AKP, including Gul and Tayyip Erdogan the party leader have chequered histories when it comes to far-right religious politics. However, since the AKP came to power in 2002, Turkey hasn’t descended into Taliban-esque religious tyranny. On the contrary, with the opening of formal negotiations aimed at EU membership, the AKP government has been continuing along a path of slow (indeed, painfully slow as well as grudging and inadequate) reforms designed at bringing Turkey into line with EU norms in a wide range of areas, not just economically.
That said, the AKP is a right-wing conservative party; if not Islamist then in line with traditional Christian Democrat parties across Europe (ignoring the obvious, glaring difference). One would like to hope, then, that its main opposition would come from a liberal, leftist position – the kind of ‘secular’ values outlined above. Which is why the current political climate in Turkey is so depressing.
The two main opposition parties (based on the expected outcome of the election) are the CHP and the MHP (the Nationalist Movement Party) which while ostensibly secular is moving towards a hardline, nationalist, quasi-authoritarian position, particularly in relation to the Kurdistan issue (which surprisingly arose prominently during the election campaign) as well as growing in scepticism towards the project of EU membership. Indeed, it’s important to remember that it was the CHP, and its predecessors (or the assertively secularist military), that were in power during the most oppressive years since Turkey gained its independence. Worse yet is the MHP, essentially a neo-fascist, far-right nationalist party complete with its own quasi-paramilitary group, the Grey Wolves. Based on the figures released so far, the MHP is likely to receive around 15% of the vote, an increase of over 50% on their 2002 result.
So where’s a wet liberal secularist like me to turn? What would I do if I were Turkish? On the one hand we have the religious right, on the other we have extreme nationalists. Any party that comes close to any position with which I might identify receives a negligible amount of votes. What does this suggest for the future of Turkey?
The issue of EU membership is, I think, crucial. Despite franklittle‘s compelling criticism of the European Union (while I don’t agree with everything he writes, I’m at one with him on the institutionalisation of neo-liberal economic policies) I think the only hope for a liberal genuinely democratic Turkey is for the negotiations to succeed and for the Turkish state to institute the kind of reforms (e.g. strengthening of human and civil rights, reduction of the power of the military, normalising its relationship with Cyprus, to touch on just a few) required of membership. And with the question of Turkish accession likely to be a key factor when it comes to national ratification of the Reform Treaty, as well as the election of Sarkozy, a staunch opponent of the Turkish bid, that membership is far from assured.
All of which leaves us with a situation where the best hope for a genuinely secular and democratic republic in Turkey is the success of the religious party over the avowedly secular ones.
If only they could all lose.
This Ireland… 1 July 21, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Class, This Ireland.3 comments
From yesterdays Irish Times…
Thirty-seven homeowners in a Co Dublin housing estate, where properties cost more than €1 million each, have no legal title to the driveways into their homes…
Mr Justice Esmond Smyth has been told in the Circuit Civil Court that they will have problems selling their homes because they do not have a legally-binding right-of-way to the estate, Elton Court in Sandycove.
Tell us more…
The problem over legal title to access roads to Elton Court came to light when Ronbow Management Company Ltd, the management company that runs the estate with and for the residents, tried to block a local vegetable sales man parking his delivery van in sight of their properties.
Niall Beirne, counsel for Tommy Byrne, who used to grow vegetables on the plots where Elton Court now stands, said the residents claimed the van lowered the tone of the area.
He said that after retiring Mr Byrne had been forced, through pressure from the residents, to get rid of the offending van and buy a car for himself and his wife Philomena.
I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for the residents actions. Who are these Byrne people anyway?
Both of them have lived for 35 years at Breffni Terrace, Sandycove, alongside the relatively new Elton Court development.
Oh. I see.
Mr and Mrs Byrne took an action in the Circuit Civil Court seeking a declaration that they were entitled to park their car in Breffni Lane, close to their mews home along which they had access and parking long before Elton Court had been developed.
Mr Beirne said Sorahans, the developers, had granted them a licensed spot to park their delivery van or car in Elton Court where the residents now leave their bins, but his clients, who were elderly, had been unable to continuously walk the 185m to and from this parking spot. They said they were entitled to park their car beside their home.
I’m sure there are two sides to this story.
This was disputed by Ronbow Management Company Ltd, with a registered address at Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin.
See?
Mrs Byrne said the residents had visited her home when her husband was ill upstairs, and had threatened to stay until the vehicle was moved.
Okayyy…
Suzanne Boylan, counsel for the company and the residents, said the defendants were unable to consent to the Byrnes obtaining an easement to park because of the difficulty with legal title to rights-of-way on access roads to the estate…Judge Smyth granted the Byrnes a declaration of entitlement to an easement to park a car at their home. He said the residents had no alternative but to take the steps they had done because they could not be seen to consent to this matter without the court’s intervention in the case.
Hmmmm…..
Reading the Irish Left: The Bell part 1. July 20, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Irish Politics, Marxism, Media and Journalism.8 comments
Thinking about BICO has sent me scurrying back to what little constitutes my archives of political material. Some of this is inherited, some borrowed and somehow never returned (I don’t think WP Youth will miss Working Class USA by that old Stalinist Gus Hall but if they do they can email me here), quite a bit stolen, but what I find most fascinating is the way in which the same issues reappear.
Take, for example, the Bell, the ‘literary’ magazine founded and edited by Peadar O’Donnell and Sean Ó Faoláin. O’Donnell is a remarkable character and a brief overview of his life hardly does him justice. Born in County Donegal he lived and worked in Dublin and Scotland, came from the ITGWU into the Irish Citizens Army, then onto the IRA. He was very active during the War of Independence but after the Treaty went with the Republican side, being a representative on the army executive.
After the defeat of the Republican side in the Civil War he attempted to shift the remnants of that grouping towards a more socialist position, but met with little success and it became clear that no progress would be made within the IRA. He co-founded Saor Éire and the Republican Congress. Neither made a significant impact, although all are touchstones of the Republican Socialist tradition.
Remarkably he was in Barcelona when the Spanish Civil War broke out and he was pivotal in encouraging others from the left Republican side to join the International Brigades.
But, perhaps inevitably, an active engagement with politics began to diminish as he got older. He turned to the cultural and the literary, as exemplified by The Bell.
That is the broad understanding of O’Donnell’s career. Problem is that with regard to his later years that account is somewhat incorrect.
While it is true that O’Donnell was not active in terms of a strong political engagement if one actually reads The Bell it is very clear that this journal was a vehicle for ideas that we would recognise immediately as belonging to left progressive area.
Ó Faoláin who is better known as a short story writer and a novelist also fought in the War of Independence and later in the Civil War on the Republican side. In some respects it was his vision which informed the cultural side of The Bell, in particular an aversion to censorship and the reductionist nature of then existing Irish Catholicism.
In format, an A5 book, generally about 72 pages long, it contained short stories, book and music reviews, reflections upon authors, and political pieces. One very telling omission was the absence of visual imagery. It is difficult not to see that as reflective of a disinterest in the visual area in Irish culture then, and perhaps now.
Take the May 1951 issue. This had a long article that dealt with “Auto-anti-americanism”, and the use of that term by Ó Faoláin in a previous piece warning against a reflexive anti-Americanism and for an engagement with the “Atlantic Pact”. In response were four separate articles by “A Trade Union Leader”, “A Writer”, “A Housewife” and “An Exile”. The genesis of Ó Faoláin’s article was the antagonism to the ECA, an element of the Marshall plan. The responses are illuminating. Louie Bennett (The TU Leader) pointed to the ‘defence campaign’, a precursor of the military/industrial complex, and the dangers of being enmeshed in it. He also noted how:
‘I drove down with friends along the valley of Glencree. It was dusk…the solemn, secret essence of it swept us into silence…what, after all can Ireland contribute to creative civilisation? I think of Muintir na Tire, the Young Farmers, the CountryWomen, the co-operative idea slowly growing and fructifying, the theory of Vocational Organisation whose value for our economic life has yet to be fully understood….And so thinking I am satisfied that the Irish people, left free to follow their own way of life, may make a valuable contribution to civilisation…’
A strange, no doubt heady, mix of modernity and…er…Vocational Organisation. And yet one that is remarkably contemporary. He also asked:
“How many of us really believe that a war such as now devastates Korea will defeat communism?… A Third Force is now definitely emerging, a force not dependent on armaments, free of imperialism, not yet adequately co-ordinated, but nevertheless at work ‘to avert a world war by getting in between the rival pressure groups of world revolution and world capitalism”.
Remove the references to communism, replace them with Islamism, and the discourse is almost entirely contemporary.
No less so is the contribution from Hubert Butler (the Writer) who argues that the US was trying to use ‘dissident’ communists of the Titoist strain to build tensions within the Eastern Bloc, and asked:
‘…what would the realist policy be in regard to the European countries, over which America and England exercise influence? Would not the Americans be obliged, by force of circumstance to resurrect the Nazis and Fascists, who have had over ten years’ experience in fighting Communism?’.
Perhaps superheated, but again certain contemporary resonances are unavoidable. He makes an interesting point about being in Vienna in 1938 after a street had been wrecked by the Nazis…
‘you could still see the foul inscriptions on the broken Jewish shop fonts…’Verholung nach Dachau’ ‘On a Rest-cure at Dachau!’ was the mildest of them…I have never before, in any communist country, and I have visited several, felt myself enveloped by such an emanation of evil’. He continues, and remember the context of this, 1951, ‘…then I saw pasted on the wall…the manifesto of the Austrian Catholic bishops applauding Hitler, and I heard how the leaders of the Austrian Evangelical Church had sent him an even more fulsome address, signing it, as did Cardinal Innitzer, with Heil Hitler’.
Brave stuff for 1951.
The piece from the ‘Housewife’ Brigid Lalor is interesting. “I want peace, not war. Then, I hate to see our people take alms. This attitude could be an outcrop of racial pride. God knows it is a poor return for all the proud blood that was spilled to fertilize our soil if we, in this generation, can only produce a crop of beggars”
She continues:
‘I am anti-British, anti-American, anti-Russian and pro-Irish. With Connolly I ‘serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland.’ I, as an Irish Christian mother, do not feel I should expose my children or Mrs. O’Faolain’s children, or any Irishwoman’s children to the horrors of an atomic war. If killed they must be, let them die because society to-day would not let them live full, Christian, civilised lives’.
Here the shift in the discourse is pronounced. Outside of a very small segment of the population it is difficult to envisage such an emphasis on the ‘Christian’, particularly juxtaposed with the Marxist Connolly.
Yet again, although the terminology is slightly different, it remains recognisable. ‘General Eisenhower has let the cat out of the bag as to what America gets out of all this. He said ‘We must give Europe assistance because…if not, our system will wither away.’ The system he refers to is the American Tory system, and we pro-Irish are not prepared to sacrifice Ireland or Europe to support an American Tory Government. I hope I am making my grounds for suspicion and unbelief fairly clear. I have few other reasons.’
Still, there are elements of the self-identity which now seem remarkably different:
‘…we pro-Irish value the way of life that we hold. Its standard is not high culturally or economically. We have failed our great dead leader so often, that it looks now as if history is taking her revenge on us for our careless waste of their blood and teaching. We have not a leader on our horizon in these fateful days. We have consistently refused to do what Tone and Connolly would have us do for our own people. If we believe the propaganda of Mr. O’Faolain I can see us arriving in the other world en masse from an atomic bomb, carrying the banner (the Tricolour, with the Stars and Stripes in one corner, and the Union Jack in the other) of our new Banana Republic.’
I can’t help reading that almost defeatist and beaten paragraph and think that it was no great surprise that within a generation the touchstones of identity, Connolly, Tone, Catholic Christianity and so forth would themselves be discarded. A shell of patriotism that surrounded a void, the contradictions too great to be painted over when the absolute failure of the state building project – and the reductionism to a sort of 26 county, Catholic, Nationalist identity fractured under the pressure of modernity – became apparent in the 1980s.
The ‘Exile’ responds by pointing to another fear of Marshall Aid:
“Sean O’Faolain would have us believe that the 16 million dollars from the USA to the Irish Government is given without any strings, without any expectations from Ireland and that Irish people will not have to work, arm, fight or die for these dollars. If he expects us to believe that, he underestimates the native intelligence of the people and the deep rooted Irish suspicions of Imperialism whether it is the British or American variety’
[On a point of historical accuracy, the Irish government in the 1948-51 period lobbied long and hard under the Minister for External Affairs, Sean MacBride, for Marshall Aid. Problem was the US wasn’t hugely interested in giving any, not least because of Irish neutrality in the Second World War. Joseph Lee has noted that the previous Fianna Fáil government had given control of Irish participation in the scheme to the Department of External Affairs. Sean MacBride, as Minister in the department was to oversee the disbursement of $18 million in grants and $128 million in loans. While a significant figure, and a substantial investment it fell far short of the £150 million that he had sought. To give an insight as to how contentious this aid was we don’t need to just look at the articles in the Bell. One Clann na Poblachta TD resigned over the acceptance of the aid.]
‘Recently American bombers landed at Dublin Airport. Were they uninvited guests…is it not more likely that they were having a reconnaissance of Collinstown for future possiblities? No, Mr. O’Faolain, it won’t do. America wants to involve Ireland in her plans for conquering the world. She needs Ireland’s ports and fields for naval and air bases: she would like to transform Ireland into an unsinkable aircraft carrier for her atomic warfare against Russia and Eastern Europe just as she has done or is in the process of doing in Britain, France, Western Germany, Italy….’
For all that it is anchored in it’s time, and an amazing mass of contradictory influences, there is something refreshing about the approach taken in the Bell to these issues. At least it is willing to engage with the issue.
But there was another issue of that year which resonated more strongly in our recollection of that period which will be returned to in the next post on the Bell.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 