Irish Foreign Affairs Volume 13, Number 3 September 2020 “Every nation, if it is to survive as a nation, must study its own history and have a foreign policy” —C.J. O’Donnell, The Lordship of the World, 1924, p.145 Contents Editorial :- The Phil Hogan Debâcle p. 2 Liberal Democracy and its Problems Brendan Clifford p. 4 Britain versus Russia – Battle for the Caucasus (Part 7) Pat Walsh p. 10 Everything stops for tea Wilson John Haire p. 17 Presidential Honours for a Wannabe Nazi Collaborator Manus O’Riordan p. 18 Nariman Narimanov – A Patriotic, Humanistic Bolshevik Pat Walsh p. 26 A Quarterly Review published by the Irish Political Review Group, Dublin Editorial - The Phil Hogan Debâcle The most representative Irish Government there has ever himself to strict quarantine for a fortnight. He said that, while been has deprived the Irish state of the most influential position in Ireland, he had occasion to visit a doctor, and the doctor had it has ever held in the European Union. The Taoiseach, Micheal given him a Covid Test and found him to be free of it. But Martin, has sacked EU Trade Commissioner, Phil Hogan. that was dismissed as being irrelevant. The regulation had to The present Government is so representative that it is unable be applied mindlessly. Anything else would be elitism. So to govern. It is barely able to hold together. held the Editor of the Irish (formerly Cork) Examiner, Daniel The issue on which Hogan was sacked was attendance at a McConnell (who had led the clamour) in an interview with Pat golf dinner, organised by the Golf Committee of the Dail, at Kenny on Newstalk. which, it is suggested, Covid guidelines were broken. Kenny raised the matter of Tanaiste, and former Taoiseach, Varadkar going in and out of the state without ever quarantining himself, and excusing himself on the ground that he was an Hogan denies that any laws were broken, or that any important business. The Taoiseach did likewise. regulation was breached. The most that can be said is that a guideline which it was intended to make into a regulation was What business could the Tanaiste in a makeshift Government not observed. have that was more important than the business of the EU Trade Commissioner? Hogan had nothing whatever to do with the organising of the dinner, or the making of laws and regulations about Covid But Hogan was only visiting on holiday? He was attending social distancing, but the dinner was attended by people who a holiday event of the elite of a society which, for better or were involved in the governing of the state, including a Supreme worse, has decided to be bourgeois-capitalist and to make itself Court Judge, who remains on the bench. a central point in the transactions of international finance- capitalism. Is important business in that sphere dealt with only in an office and during office hours? It was not the Government’s business to monitor the doings of the Commissioner it had nominated. A Commissioner, once appointed, ceases to be a functionary of the Government which The Government that made the disciplining of an EU Trade nominated him. The Commission is an EU authority, whose Commissioner a matter of domestic Irish politics is a Coalition personnel are drawn from the states of which the EU is made of three parties plus some Independents. It is at the mercy of up. It is the core institution of the European Union. Without every change in the breeze of public opinion. it, the Union would be a mere alliance of convenience between the various states. What is called democratic government is representative government by political parties which are always trying But now a component state of the Union has usurped the to unseat one another. Nothing else is now recognised as authority of the Union by (effectively) sacking a Commissioner democratic. In representative government there is a tension over whom it assumed it had continuing authority because it between being representative and governing. The tendency in had nominated him. recent times in Ireland and in Europe has been to give priority to representativeness over the function of governing. The establishment of representative government was If this action, driven by nationalist populism, is allowed to pioneered by the British State, and it has been maintained there stand as a precedent, then the end of the EU is nigh. during a long period when it was breaking down in other states, because in Britain priority has always been given to government This is not the first time an EU Commissioner has been over representativeness. sacked in response to populist rabble-rousing, but it is the first Proportional representation in multi-member Constituencies, time it has been done through the action of the Government which encourages the representation through separate parties which nominated him. There was no demand anywhere but in of various shades of opinion, has been warded off in Britain, Ireland that he should be sacked. despite a number of attempts to introduce it—but Britain The previous sacking was of a French Commissioner, introduced it in Ireland in 1920 for the purpose of weakening Edith Cresson, but that was not done in response to a French whatever government would replace the British administration. clamour. It was done in response to a populist clamour led by Pat Cox and the European Liberals and was part of a campaign Two months ago, the British Government had a much to weaken the central institutions of the EU by establishing a more difficult problem about a breach of Covid regulations, spurious democracy where there were no grounds for a genuine that was much more serious than the problem presented to democracy. Micheál Martin by Phil Hogan’s attendance at a Dail golf The sacking of Mme. Cresson was followed by a sacking of dinner. Dominic Cummings drove from London to the North the entire Commission. The populist phrasemongers held that of England during Lockdown, to visit his parents. The visit she could not simply be replaced by another nominee because was discovered and publicised by the media. A media and the Commission was an integral whole and it either stood or fell Opposition howl was raised, demanding that Cummings should together. It remains to be seen whether that will be done in the be sacked. But the Prime Minister considered that Cummings’ present instance. expertise was needed for the conduct of government, and he rode out the clamour. A second ground for the clamour against Hogan is that he Micheal Martin caved in. was on a visit to Ireland, and should therefore have subjected The British mode of representative government has often The system depended on the effectiveness of a rural-based been condemned as a form of elective dictatorship. But that Fianna Fail in holding a wide range of opinion together as a is its virtue. functional Party, capable of winning elections. The present crisis is the result of its decline in the hands of Bertie Ahern and It was the French Revolution that proclaimed democracy to its collapse in the hands of Micheál Martin, the Smart-Alec, due the world, but it was Britain that established a viable system of in great part to its repudiation of its origins and its demonization the democracy during the following century, while France was of Charles Haughey who, through virtuoso statecraft, made going through a series of popular revolutions and authoritarian Ireland a player in the world of Finance Capitalism, on which counter-revolutions: Republics and Monarchies; democracies its present prosperity depends, and gave the major European and charismatic authoritarisms. states the impression that Ireland was not just a British hanger- on. The political philosopher Edmund Burke, when the French Revolution was proclaiming general human rights, said that the basic human right was a right to be governed without The Trade Commissioner—who has been sacked by a continuous commotion. virtual political nonentity, Micheál Martin, for next-to-nothing And the way this was to be done by representation was (because, formalistic quibbles aside, that is what has happened)— through the bundling together of opinions in two parties, so that two years ago, when he was EU Agricultural Commissioner, the electorate could actually make a choice about government. gave the Irish Government a severe talking-to, when it seemed to be in despair over Brexit, told it that there was a future for Ireland in Europe, even if Britain would not be there to look In France each Revolution brought forth a great proliferation after it, and put some backbone into it. He changed the policy of parties, each expressing a particular shade of opinion. This of the State with regard to Brexit from relying on an Irish deal made government impossible and led to forcible restoration of with Britain, to relying on Europe to look after Irish interests in authority. the face of British bullying. The policy was so successful that Britain has still not recovered from the shock! Ireland, despite the subversive influence of PR, had a viable And now Martin has thrown away the best card Ireland has party government for more than three-quarters of a century after in Europe! the Free State obsession with denying legitimate expression to And the Europeans must now be coming to think that the anti-Treaty opinions was overcome by the Fianna Fail victory Irish are small-timers after all. of 1933. 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