Irish Political Review, December 2008
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Historians? Irish Times Censors Never Mind Lisbon. Brendan Clifford SIPTU on Budget What About London? Manus O'Riordan Labour Comment page 14 page 5 back page IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW ecember 2008 Vol.23, No.12 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.22 No.12 ISSN 954-5891 War And Remembrance Budget 2009: Nationalist Ireland has this year celebrated the 90th anniversary of its victory in the End of an Era? Great War. All the stops were pulled out to glorify it and make us forget what it was. A fashionable theory about nations, advocated by Professor Comerford of Maynooth amongst many, is that they are "invented" by forgetfulness of their actual past and This was the first budget in more than mythical remembrance of a past that never was. Whatever about nations, that is certainly 20 years that was prepared in the context of recession and rapidly deteriorating .the way that the Great War is having greatness restored to it. At the end of the Great war the nationalist Irish responded to their experience of it by public finances. GNP will contract by 1% voting to have done with the Empire that launched it. In the mostly keenly contested next year. The budget itself and the manner election held in Ireland for a generation, in December 1918, the electorate brushed aside in which the political reaction was dealt the one party system established by John Redmond's movement by Tammany Hall with indicate that the Government is in a methods, and returned the Sinn Fein party. That was the originating act of Irish state of panic. This caused it to announce democracy. one set of measures, which were then The decision of the Imperial Parliament to carry on governing Ireland in defiance of amended piecemeal. the election result was the seminal action which rendered the Great War ideology For no good reason it has departed spurious and inaugurated a generation of authoritarianism and Fascism in European and from 20 years of coherent tax policy. The world affairs. key element in that tax policy involved a But the Great War is what our masters have decided that we should remember and diminution of the burden of tax on the low celebrate, and that the election is what we should forget. paid. This was underpinned by social The election is a "detail"—a word now much used by the academic historians who partnership. Of course there were other are paid to alter our memories. We thought that history consisted of details, and that the elements in those years. The high paid kind of history that transcended details was the "historicism" attributed to Soviet also received relief thanks to the Progres- ideology by two generations of Western historians and condemned. But it seems that sive Democrat influence but that was never we are mistaken. Truth lies beyond the details. an essential element in tax policy. In almost every budget since 1988 Tax President McAleese during the month opened an Archive and Research Centre Allowances and then Tax Credits have attached to Professor Comerford's Modern History Department at Maynooth. It is in a increased while the standard rate of tax building prepared for it by the Office of Public Works (whose Minister is Martin has remained stable or decreased. The Mansergh). This is to be a private research facility—that is to say, it will not be generally only exception I can think of in relation to open to the public as the National Library and the National Archive Centre are, though Tax Credits was the last of McCreevy's it is said that scholarly amateurs will be admitted. budgets in which the credits were increased The President said that the Centre was designed to produce a "new landscape". She by less than the rate of inflation. Brian deplored the old days of 'them and us', "in which so much energy was wasted along those Lenihan, in this budget, did not increase the Tax Credits at all. And since inflation continued on page 2 continued on page 4 and translator into Irish of French and German literature [and a Yiddish speaker The Great War: to boot!], who proudly described herself as a "Gaelic authoress" in the 1901 Census, Remembrance Or Poppycock? had always held a far different view than her brother concerning the wearing of US songwriter George M. Cohan, son Laurence Keohane, whose own first cousin British Army uniforms. A colleague and of Jeremiah Keohane of Clonakilty, West on his mother's side, John Sheehy, would collaborator of Padraig Pearse in An Cork, was the man who provided the be killed on the Somme front in 1918 Claidheamh Soluis, a founder of the Gaelic jingoistic musical accompaniment for while serving in the British Army's Royal League in the Clonakilty area and the America's entry into the Imperialist War Engineers. Irish-language editor of the Cork Sun, in 1917, with such songs as "You're A There was, indeed, hardly a family in Máire was responsible for organising the Grand Old Flag", "I'm A Yankee Doodle Ireland left untouched by the War that very successful Feiseanna in the early Dandy" and "Over There!" [with its refrain: Britain had launched on Germany in years of the twentieth century that for a "The Yanks Are Coming!"]. He was a August 1914. But John Sheehy's sister, time were held in conjunction with the second cousin of my maternal grandfather, Máire Ní Shíthe, a native Irish speaker Clonakilty Agricultural Show. That is, continued on page 9 But are the descendants of those who lived a chosen life of social exclusion, or C O N T E N T S exclusiveness, in the Big Houses, still War And Remembrance. Editorial 1 people apart, "incomprehensible Budget 2009: End Of An Era? John Martin 1 strangers", who can only enter the body The Great War: Remembrance Or Poppycock? Manus O'Riordan 1 politic if we pretend the history of Ireland Editorial Digest (Irish Fascism; British Military Parade; Great War; Durkan Gurning) 2 for a couple of centuries was other than it Readers' Letters: From Australia. Patrick O'Beirne 3 actually was? Junk Economics. M. O'Riordan (Irish Times' PD Censoring of SIPTU on Budget) 5 SIPTU'S Censored Comment On The Budget. Report 7 There is only one Them and Us in Thoughts At Cork City Hall. Jack Lane (Report of 'Lest We Forget' Leaflet, Ireland today: the Protestant community with photo) 10 in the North, which the President compared Poppy Day. Wilson John Haire (A Sonnet) 11 to the Nazis a few years ago, and the Catholic community which certain Blair Says Muslim "Extremists" All "The Same Forces". David Morrison 11 elements in the South have been trying to Shorts from the Long Fellow (Karl Marx; The Internet; Prescott; Nietzsche; disown for a generation. What effect will Coolacrease; Peter Hart) 12 falsification of national history through Little Boy Soldiers. Pat Walsh 13 the medium of the Big Houses have on the Thermobaric Bombs. (Report from Eamon Dyas) 13 Ulster Unionists? It is unlikely to have Historians. Brendan Clifford (Part 1) 14 any effect. The Ulster Protestants have Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy 16 little affection for the Big House Ascend- Ireland 'Betrayed' Before First World War Ended. Brian Murphy (Report) 17 ancy in the rest of the country, and the Big Coolacrease. Offaly Express; Philip O'Connor; Pat Muldowney 18 House nostalgia cultivated by the Southern Fintan's Faulty (?) Ear. Seán McGouran 21 revisionists does not embrace the socially Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (Auditor Report; Where Is The Money Spent? connected Big Houses of the North. By far the most influential Big House in the Gun Licences; The Environment; British Democracy) 22 country was Mountstewart, seat of the Parade Of Death David Morrison (Report) 23 Stewart/Castlereagh/Londonderry Index 2008 23 dynasty. It is open to visitors, and is Muriel MacSwiney's Memoir (Part Two) 25 visited, in the way that English Big Houses Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: are, as a place of consequence. But, while Never Mind Lisbon: What About London? Big House nonentities are being dredged back page up for specious nostalgia around the New National Wage Deal Republic, the Londonderry phenomenon page 27 is abominated. The Great War is the means by which formidable demarcation lines of Catholic into Them, retrospectively, in a project the Republic tries to make contact with and Protestant, of landlord and tenant, of that is to be called 'history' but that is the Ulster Unionists. But when nationalist Irish and Anglo", but said that those entirely policy. And the scholarly amateurs Ireland confesses that it was wrong about wasteful divisions have begun to give way who are to be allowed to take part in it the Great War, and indulges in orgies of to a shared purpose to shape a shared must submit to this policy directive. celebration, it tells the Unionists nothing future (IT 14.11.08). It seems that the Centre will focus on they have not always known. And, since The Centre is located in Castletown the Big House, the Anglo-Irish oases that the confession is obviously made for an House, Col. Kildare, which— were once dotted around the country. But ulterior motive, it is actively counter- "was once a Big House, a place of and they are no longer to be called Anglo. And productive. for privileged elites, its demeanour less yet if they had not been Anglo they would Two noteworthy statements were lost than welcoming to the masses. Today it not have been laid low by the Irish national amidst the deluge of re-hashed Great War belongs to the people and is at their development.