IRISH ISSN 0790-7672 May 2005 False History French Referendum POLITICAL Hope from the Pope?

Work—some thoughts Volume 20 No 5 REVIEW Terence McSwiney's Preface (Back page: Labour Comment) Incorporating Volume 19 Number 5 The Northern Star Workers' Weekly ISSN 0954-5891 Contents: See Page Two

The Northern Ireland Election The Gaa and . Ballot Wars Rule 42 Ian Paisley in his moment of victory reasserted the classical Unionist position that The Gaelic Athletic Association is an there could be no deal until the war was won. But the winning of a war which is not being affront to the modern world. It is a fought is problematical. And that is the Unionist dilemma. The practical alternative to voluntary association in the strict sense. crushing in war an enemy who is not fighting is to find peaceful means of humiliating Its players do not play for hire. But soccer him. Because the enemy remains the enemy. He is not the enemy because he fought. and rugby, though conducted on a com- He was the enemy before he went to war and he remains the enemy after he reverts to mercial basis, and therefore in harmony a peaceful mode of existence. War has nothing to do with it. Such is the position of the with globalist principles, do not rival its movement for which Northern Ireland was created. popularity in Ireland. Though they are commercial, they are unable to provide Dr. Paisley added that in any other country Gerry Adams would be locked up. And themselves with adequate stadiums for so he would be in this country—or is it these countries—if Ministers of Justice believed international games. The Gaa, though some of the things they say they are certain of. He is the head of a criminal gang, the conducted on a voluntary basis, has re- organiser of bank robberies, the supervisor of torture, and yet he remains scot-free in constructed Croke Park into a stadium Belfast and Dublin. which matches any of the famous soccer stadiums of the world. It has done so by Paisley takes in earnest what Michael McDowell says is the case. He did not need terrific voluntary effort, and it would have McDowell to tell him it was the case. But when he sees McDowell repeating what he done so if it had never received a penny has always said, and yet doing nothing about it, has he not grounds for his belief that from the state. Fenians are all tarred with the same brush and that the Ethiopian cannot change his skin? McDowell, despite his best efforts to walk in the path of righteousness and become a The Gaa also has a network of parish West Brit, remains an Ethiopian and a leopard with spots. grounds throughout the country, all main- tained to a high level. And they are not run Republican, Nationalist, Free Stater—what’s the difference? What Ulster Unionism by wealthy individuals who have a fancy arose against was a mild measure of Home Rule within the empire under Westminster to own a club, but by the members. The supervision. By compari- Gaa must be the institution with the son with that evil which highest community participation in its brought Ulster Unionism affairs in the world. It is a popular partici- into being, the Free State patory body which exists everywhere, was wild raving Republic- and it is a national body in that sense. One anism in a world gone mad. could even say it is the national body. It And the Free State, is not national in the sense that it is an christened a republic by organ of nationalist propaganda, but in McDowell’s hereditary the sense that it has a cohesive and structu- party, remains the funda- ral popular existence throughout the country. mental evil against which Ulster must be perpetually Other bodies whose proper function it on guard. Wars within is to be nationalist institutions of the state Ulster are transient events. have been de-nationalised. The Univer- They come and go, but the sities, for example. But the Gaa is beyond Fenian danger is present in the reach of the British Council and the

27.3.02 Irish Independent continued on page 2 continued on page 6 able, not to say undeserved, status. The C O N T E N T S North is absolutely beyond their ken. And Page every Questions & Answers audience on Ballot Wars (The Northern Ireland Election). Editorial 1 RTE appears to have been carefully The Gaa And Rule 42. Editorial 1 selected from them. Democratic Mandates & The 1916 Rising. Pat Muldowney (Report) 3 Election Results. Report of Northern Ireland results, Westminster Election, 5.5.05 4 They are greatly embarrassed by the False History? Editorial 5 persistence of real memory amongst the The Two Nations Theory. Ivor Kenna (Reader's Letter) 6 Northern Catholics, with whom they still French Referendum. John Martin 7 retain some residual sense of affinity. What To Hope From The Pope? Jack Lane 9 And they cannot understand why some- Politics In Northern Ireland, A Review Of The Year. Mark Langhammer (speech) 10 body doesn’t do something about it. Ireland's Intelligentsia BITE (more) Air. Seán McGouran (Part 2 of Barbican review) 13 Shorts. (The Orange Order & The Reform Movement; Syria & Lebanon; France's Patron Well the broadcasters did their best. Saint (1905-1980); The Spirit Of The Good Friday Agreement; Irish Times & Debate; They depicted a fantasy world, a kind of McDowell & Mandela; Bolkestein In France; Prince Rainier Dies; Greatest Frenchman) 15 soap opera world, in the hope that in this Art & Poetry: Two Reviews. (Reports of Luke Dodd's Conquering England age of soap opera it would displace the review and Bernard O'Donoghue on Yeats, The Love Poet by Michael Stack 16 actual world. But it had the contrary Kennedy At Chappaquiddick. (Reader's Letter) 18 effect, if anything. Ulster's Hope, or The New Gerrymander. Seán McGouran 19 Conclusion. John Martin (review of Das Kapital, part 12) 19 During the grand illusion of the “Frank Ryan, a great Irishman who always put Ireland first” (letter by McCartney propaganda a Queen’s Manus O'Riordan, report) 24 University Professor, Liam Kennedy, Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: placed himself at the head of the Work—a couple of thoughts p28 proclaimed revolt of the people against Cultural Vandalism In Cork: Terence McSwiney's Preface, left out of his book p26 Provo oppression by standing against They will even pay for Unification!; Poetry p25 Gerry Adams on an all-out programme in West Belfast. Adams had invited the Taoiseach, if he believed his own peace no less than in war. And the Free broadcasters have no more concern for propaganda, to stand a candidate against State is always in the grip of a diabolical factual truth than Dr. Goebbels and they him. But the Taoiseach, for all his bluster, compulsion to interfere. have an even greater belief in the suggest- is wise enough in his generation, and he ive power of propaganda. When C.C. O’Brien was born again he declined the challenge. So it was left to joined a Unionist Party in proof of his Professor Kennedy to raise the revolt. One of the buzz-words of the revisionist conversion. But, alas, it was only a move- The outcome was that Adams increased establishment of the Celtic Tiggers just ment of the intellect accompanied by a his vote by a large multiple of what now is “reinterpretation of memories”. gesture of good works. The will remained Professor Kennedy got ccc in total. This is a nicer way of saying false memory. unregenerate. And the intellect cannot Re-inventing is another way of putting it. always be watching itself. One day the old Though Kennedy lives in Northern Inventing Ireland is the title of one of the Conor escaped from the supervision of the Ireland—or at least in Queen’s University, anti-historical works of ideology in recent new and made a remark which horrified which is geographically situated there— times. You re-invent yourself, reinterpret the Unionist spirit. Whereupon a senior he comes from the Republic and he clearly your memories, and derive yourself from Unionist commented: “That’s what comes brought the mental world of Dublin 4 with a world that never existed. When the of having a cuckoo in the nest”. And it him to Belfast. His candidature demon- Republic was suddenly deluged with 8 was not a Paisleyite who said it, but one of strated how little the people of Belfast feel billions from Europe ten years ago there Trimble’s moderates. oppressed by the Provos. Kennedy was a mushroom growth of a new, mind- responded to the revelation in a graceless less, middle class. Modern money must and spiteful tirade against Adams in his The main feature of the election cam- circulate because if it doesn’t do so it post-election address. One might admire paign was the deployment of the entire doesn’t exist. The Celtic Tiggers are in him if he had directed his tirade against propaganda apparatus of two states, with substantial part a product of the necessary the electorate which failed to reinterpret RTE and the BBC at its core, in support of circulation of that money. There is its memories in response to his suggestion the SDLP, and the attempt to turn the pub undoubtedly a widely-dispersed entrepre- that it was oppressed. brawl in which Robert McCartney was neurial spirit in the South (there always killed into an IRA murder for the purpose has been)—but it was not what produced The SDLP candidate was Alex of collapsing the Republican vote. The the deluge of money. That was the product Atwood, who was quick off the mark with pretence was made that Sinn Fein was the of Charles Haughey’s European statecraft. support for the Chief Constable’s state- oppressor of the Northern Catholic The necessary circulation of that money ment about the Northern Bank robbery. community rather than its creation and threw up a large new middle class for His vote nosedived. representative, and it was hoped to implant whom the continuity of life, with its sense this as a false memory. The ideologists of social reality, was broken as effectively Although the Dublin Government who work in broadcasting live in the world as if they had all been transplanted to would neither arrest the criminals who of 1984—and the British Ministry of Hollywood. These people, who are the planned the bank robbery (according to Information, which was based in the BBC citizens of Invented Ireland, are the Celtic their certain knowledge) nor sponsor during the 2nd World War, was actually Tiggers who have reinterpreted memories candidates against Adams and Mc the inspiration of Orwell’s novel. Our appropriate to their exalted but inexplic- Guinness in their strongholds, it did send 2 two Cabinet Members North to canvass for the SDLP and solicit Unionist votes · Biteback · Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback for it in a couple of other constituencies, helping it to gain South Belfast (which is a Unionist constituency) due to a split Democratic Mandates And The 1916 Rising Unionist vote, and to hold Foyle (Derry), though with a reduced majority. (It is said Editorial Note: The following letter appeared in Village Magazine on 8th April 2005. that some Unionists voted SDLP to prevent The words within square brackets were omitted in published version. Sinn Fein becoming the largest party in the North—though in the event there was Your correspondent Pierce Martin says that the purpose of the 1916 Rising was to no danger of that with the UUP being impose pro-fascist ethnic nationalist domination on the whole of Ireland, and he says that reduced to one seat to the DUP’s 9. There the rebels destroyed a developed democratic system that had secured a Home Rule was, of course, no chance of the Unionists settlement. winning Derry.) In fact the modest measure of Home Rule enacted by the House of Commons was rendered meaningless by the combination of armed revolt by the Ulster Unionists, The strange thing is that the SDLP mutiny against Parliament by the British Army, and rejection of the decision of the went very Green for this election. And elected chamber by the unelected House of Lords and by the British Conservative and two Dublin Ministers, formally committed Unionist party. Prior to the Rising the electoral mandate of the British Government to a United Ireland went North for the expired, and the Unionists consolidated their armed revolt and defeat of the Home Rule express purpose of campaigning against Party by becoming part of the new, unelected government which assumed power in the only all-Ireland party. Britain and Ireland in the Spring of 1915. This was the sentence of death for the Irish Party which had sent thousands to war against Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and other The SDLP gained one seat but lost countries which had never invaded, conquered, expropriated, colonised or starved another. It lost Newry & Armagh by a Ireland. About 50000 of these were to die for an Empire which was a prototype for landslide to Sinn Fein’s Colm Murphy, militarism, conquest, world domination [and genocide]; and it was clear by 1916 that who was heckled and travestied on they had been duped by a bogus promise of Home Rule. In a typical ten minute period Questions & Answers recently. The seat it on the Western Front, the numbers of people slaughtered in the interests of British gained is likely to be lost the next time, Imperial aggrandisement, in a war engineered by Britain, was greater than the total because South Belfast is naturally a number of all those who died in the week-long Easter Rising against British Imperialism. Unionist seat. The reckoning is that it The unelected, self-appointed British government had no electoral or moral mandate would have been touch and go in Derry if to oppose the declaration of an Irish Republic—pending the holding of Irish elections— a Sinn Fein candidate with IRA credentials by a Provisional Irish Government in 1916. had contested it. (Everybody agrees that As to the 1918 elections, it is illusory to set the combined Home Rule Party/Ulster Mitchell McLaughlin is exclusively Sinn Unionist support against the Republican vote as Pierce Martin does. The Ulster Unionists Fein, even though the Taoiseach says that had gone into armed revolt, not against Republicans, but against the Home Rule Party. there is no such thing and that Sinn Fein is On the separatist side, the substantive difference between the Home Rulers and the just another name for the IRA.) But there Republicans was that the latter were prepared to face up to the overwhelming military is one safe SDLP seat: South Down. The force and violence that were the permanent basis of the British position in Ireland, and word ‘tribal’ is loosely and meaninglessly which had been nakedly demonstrated yet again in the destruction of the Home Rulers. used by supercilious commentators to The Home Rule remnant were part of the separatist tendency. They cannot be counted describe Northern Ireland politics but, if it among the loyalists who brought about their downfall. [The history of the Home Rule has a proper application anywhere, it is to Movement has been sadly neglected until recently. For a detailed and accurate account, McGrady’s seat in South Down. Or see The Rise and Fall of Imperial Ireland, by Pat Walsh, published by Athol Books, perhaps feudal would be a better word. 2004.] Anyhow the McGradys are a power in the Pierce Martin says that only a minority of Irish electors voted for independence. In region and the seat is Eddie’s as long as he fact the credibility of the Home Rule Party had already been shattered by the anti- cares to hold it. (Incidentally, his big vote democratic actions of the British and the Unionists before the 1916 Rising ever might have been enhanced by some happened; to the extent that by 1918 the Home Rulers were unable even to mount a Unionist support.) contest in many constituencies. Thus no vote was held in the areas where Sinn Fein was * strongest, so the overwhelming independence vote was only partially counted in 1918. It has become the fashion among the This independence vote was no temporary aberration. It was replicated in all the elections egg-heads and other nitwits of held in Ireland from 1918 to 1921 throughout the period of armed struggle by the IRA ‘constitutional nationalism’ to draw a in defence of Irish democracy against the military aggression of a superpower. comparison between Sinn Fein in 1926 Pat Muldowney and 2005. They recommend that Gerry Adams should do now what De Valera did constitutional party” (in Lemass’s words). Valera’s—and also similar to the relation- then. But they are remarkably ill-informed Fianna Fail entered the Free State Dail, ship of the two Unionist Parties with the about what De Valera did then. He taking the Oath of Allegiance to a foreign Loyalist paramilitaries. He has stayed resigned from Sinn Fein after failing to power with its fingers crossed. with Sinn Fein with the intention of win it over to his policies, and he not only bringing about a settlement in which the left the IRA in being, but relied on its What Gerry Adams is doing differs IRA would be disbanded. existence during the next seven or eight from what De Valera did in this way He years as a physical counter to the coercive has not resigned from Sinn Fein and Are the good people of ‘constitutional apparatus of the Treatyite Government. founded a new party whose relationship nationalism’ seriously suggesting that And he founded Fianna Fail as “a slightly wit the IRA would be similar to De Adams should emulate De Valera? Or 3 should we forgive them for they know not Civil War would have been in prospect So the IRA offer of a punishment what they say? —a genuine civil war this time. (The shooting was not rejected on the moral 1922 conflict is given the wrong name ground that the IRA was an illegitimate Eamon Phoenix (a Northern academic when it is called a civil war. Collins was body which had no right to do such things. historian of ‘constitutional nationalist’ in full agreement with the ideals of the It was rejected in support of a demand that outlook) was particularly eloquent and people he made war upon. He made war the IRA coercive power should be applied particularly ignorant on the historical on them as the lesser evil. Churchill had to the more difficult purpose of somehow comparison on Hearts & Minds (24.2.05). given him an ultimatum: either he would compelling a group of people to convict He said that De Valera, who was in the make war for the purpose of installing the themselves under the rules of evidence of political wilderness as a result of his Treaty or Britain would take the country the Queen’s Courts. rejection of the Treaty, might have stayed in hand once more. The conflict was in * the re indefinitely— fact a Treaty War, not a Civil War.) BBC, Northern Ireland, sent Noel “had it not been for the intense Thomson to Washington for St. Patrick’s pressure exerted by the Government of the day… led by William T. Cosgrave, De Valera defused the situation by Day to report on the absence of Sinn Fein who forced De Valera and his political forming a new Republican party which from the White House. When given an supporters into the Dail and eventually did not take Oaths as seriously as the interview with Bush’s new Special Envoy, they became the Government in 1932. It majority of Sinn Fein did, and which was Mitchell Reiss, he complained that the took De Valera… a mere five years from willing to perjure itself (with its fingers exclusion of the other parties along with abandoning violence and taking the hated crossed) in order to take power within the Sinn Fein eased the pressure on Sinn Fein. Oath of Allegiance in 1927 to becoming Treaty Dail and revoking the Treaty. He Reiss replied that Sinn Fein had a crucial the Government of the Irish Free State.” was backed informally by the IRA in this role in the situation: And now: project. The transfer of power was enacted Thomson: “So you say to Gerry “Bertie Ahern has thrown down the peacefully in 1932-3, in the sense that the Adams, the IRA must go away. Gerry gauntlet to Sinn Fein as Cosgrave did to military power which was available on Adams is in America this week saying De Valera in 1927.” both sides was not set in motion. the same thing… So it doesn’t give you The situation in the 26 Counties in much leverage, does it? You seem to be 1926 was that the Treatyite wing of Sinn The conduct of the Treatyite Cosgrave singing from the same sheet…” Fein, which was established in power on Government in using the Treaty Oath to Reiss: “Well, that’s very good news. And I’m looking forward to exploring a British mandate and with British arms in exclude Republicans who baulked at ways in which the U.S. can help Sinn 1922, had discarded the strategy of its perjury, which is praised by Eamon Phoenix, was long remembered. And Fein…” founder, Michael Collins. Collins had Thomson: “The difficulty is that even gained support for the Treaty, which Cosgrave’s party never again won an election. In defeat Cumann na nGaedheal/ the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, dismantled the Republic, by undertaking believes that Sinn Fein, the leaders of Fine Gael became a Fascist party. It to use the institutions established under Sinn Fein, and the IRA are inextricably adopted a Fascist programme and aligned the Treaty as “stepping stones” back to linked. So who indeed are you talking itself with Mussolini and France, returning the Republic. He undertook to use the to?” to the ways of Parliamentary democracy Treatyite institutions to subvert the Treaty. Reiss: “Well, I’m going to be talking only after it had been thwarted a every His colleagues discarded that strategy after to Mr. Adams and to all the leadership of turn by Fianna Fail. Sinn Fein and to the other political leaders his death and became Imperialists. as well. Again, you take the world as it The electorate voted for the Treaty PS An interesting piece of information is, not as you would always like it to be. under the influence of the British threat of about the McCartney affair emerged on The fact of the matter is that Sinn Fein “immediate and terrible war” in 1922-3. Prime Time on March 3rd. Michael Heney has a crucial role to play as we go forward But, as British power fell into confusion had spent the previous weekend with the in the peace process.” * and the prospect of a new British conquest McCartney sisters. Gerry Adams, after Tony Gregory (Independent Dublin receded, and as the Treatyite party became consultation with them, had made a strong TD, with revolutionary lineage) on the Imperialist, the voters began to elect statement in support of their demands. McCartney incident: Republicans in large numbers once more. Heney was asked what more they expected “Joe Higgins in the Dail described But the Treatyite Government used the Adams to do. He explained: the activites of the group in the Short Treaty Oath to keep elected Republicans “Well, I felt that they expected Strand as acting like an S.S. unit. And out of the Dail. They could only take their something from him. They said that that’s exactly what they were at” seats after taking an Oath of Allegiance to meeting with him had been heartening… (Questions & Answers, 21st April 2005). Britain. But the sort of language that they have used about this is, they say the IRA is a Where was the democracy in that state military organisation: they respond to of affairs? The voters might elect a military discipline. These people should majority of Republican TDs, but those be ordered, this is the thinking of the Election Results TDs could not take their seats without family and you can certainly understand 2005: Seats won & Vote share perjuring themselves or betraying their it, that the murderers have now to come SF 5, 24.46% ; SDLP 3, 17.6% ; UUP 1, mandates. clean and tell the truth. But of course 17.84% ; DUP 9, 33.89%; AP 0, 3.42% ; there’s a massive problem with that Others 0, 2.79%. If a Republican majority was elected, because you cannot compel the truth. the situation would be much the same Whoever is going to give evidence in 2001: Seats won & Vote share with relation to the Treaty Dail as it was in this case is going to have to do it SF 4, 21.70% ; SDLP 3, 21.00% ; UUP 6, 1919 with relation to the British voluntarily or it will be no use.” 26.80% ; DUP 5, 22.50%; AP 0, 3.60% ; Parliament.. Others 0, 3.91%. [PTO] 4 Selected Results 2005 West Tyrone Upper Bann (with 2001 result for the Party Buchanan Thomas DUP 7742 (-) Kelly Dolores SDLP 5747 (7,607) in brackets) Deeny Kieran (Hosp.) 11905 (-) O’Dowd John SF 9305 (10,770) South Antrim Doherty Pat SF 16960 (19,814) Simpson David DUP 16679 (15,037) Burnside David UUP 11059 (16,366) Hussey Derek UUP 2981 (14,774) Trimble David UUP 11281 (17,095) Cushinan Henry SF 4407 (4,160) McMenamin Eugene SDLP 3949 (2 other candidates stood) Ford David AP 3278 (1,969) (13,942) McClelland Noreen SDLP 4706 (5,336) McCrea William DUP 14507 (15,355) Belfast East Devenny Deborah SF 1029 (1,237) Empey Reg UUP 9275 (8,550) Long Naomi AP 3746 (5,832) False History? Muldoon Mary SDLP 844 (888) Mairead McGuinness, Fine Gael MEP, is participation in the Government of the Robinson Peter DUP 15152 (15,667) appeared on RTE’s Questions & Answers state. Democracy is a form of government (3 other candidates stood) on 7th March and she lectured Sinn Fein of a state, not a mode of contemplation of Belfast North MEP, Mary Lou Macdonald: high-minded sentiments, and the North was Cobain Fred UUP 2154 (4,904) “All of us have read history and we cut out of the whole business of governing Dodds Nigel DUP 13935 0 Yes understand it. And we all take different the state. Kelly Gerry SF 8747 (10,331) dimensions from it. But could we not Maginness Alban SDLP 4950 (8,592) respect our different interpretations of that Politicians and commentators and histor- (3 other candidates stood) history.” ians in the South have never given a moment’s thought to the ramifications of Belfast South This is in accordance with the revisionist exclusion from the political life of the state. Maskey Alexander SF 2882 (2,894) dogma that the conflict in the North is caused They even refuse to see that it is the case. McDonnell Alasdair SDLP 10339 (11,609) by a false interpretation of history. The That is why what they say about the North McGimpsey Michael UUP 7263 (17,008) wrong history was taught in the schools. has a fantasy air about it that would be Spratt Jimmy DUP 9104 (-) Catholics were taught to hate Protestants, appropriate to speculations about the mental (3 other candidates stood) and they were taught that Partition was a life of the man in the moon. Belfast West great injustice, and that is why there is Adams Gerry SF 24348 (27,096) sectarianism and anti-Partitionism. But the Two Northern Ireland Prime Ministers Attwood Alex SDLP 5033 (7,754) schoolbooks which engendered a fierce understood that Northern Ireland was an Dodds Diane DUP 3652 (2,641) sectarian anti-Partitionism are never cited, abnormal political structure in which normal McGimpsey Christopher UUP 779 (2,541) and we have been unable to find them. And democratic activity was not possible, and Kennedy Liam Ind 147 (-) there is a very different spirit in the therefore they discouraged political activity. (2 other candidates stood) schoolbooks we have found. They were Lords Craigavon and Brooke- borough, who were generally held in con- South Down Perhaps interpretation of history has tempt as backwoodsmen, but were invariably McGrady Eddie SDLP 21557 (24,136) something to do with attitudes to the North praised in this journal. Nesbitt Dermot UUP 4775 (9,173) in the Republic. But, if so, schoolbooks, or Ruane Caitríona SF 12417 (10,278) Wells Jim DUP 8815 (7,802) any other books, have little to do with it. Then along came a progressive Prime (1 other candidate stood) Minister and a progressive Taoiseach, Capt- We remember when Mairead McGuin- ain O’Neill and Sean Lemass. Neither of Fermanagh & S. Tyrone ness’s party came back into office as part of them understood Northern Ireland. Lemass Elliott Thomas UUP 8869 (17,686) a rainbow Coalition in 1947, after fifteen abandoned De Valera’s cautious attitude Foster Arlene DUP 14056 (-) years of Fascist wandering in the wilderness, and he browbeat the Nationalist Party into Gallagher Tommy SDLP 7230 (9,706) declared the 26 County state a Republic, role-playing the part of Official Opposition Gildernew Michelle SF 18638 (17,739) broke its vestigial connection with the at Stormont, as if it was the Parliament of a Foyle Empire, and launched a worldwide anti- democratic state. And O’Neill set about Durkan Mark SDLP 21119 (24,538) Partition campaign. De Valera did not initiate shaking up the North into democratic Hay William DUP 6557 (7,414) it. He seemed to disapprove. But, once the activity. Three years later the chaos began. McCann Eamonn (Soc.) 1649 (-) movement was launched, he had to join in. McLaughlin Mitchel SF 15162 (12,988) The campaign went on into the early fifties, The Northern Ireland in which there was Storey Earl UUP 1091 (8869) and there can be little doubt that it inspired no possibility of democratic politics suited (1 other candidate stood) the IRA invasion of the North in 1956. the Protestant community very well, and not Mid Ulster only because they were top dogs in it. They Armstrong Billy UUP 4853 0 No The Northern Catholics did not support are a remarkably unpolitical people. The McCrea Ian DUP 10665 (15,549) the invasion. It was easily suppressed. And best of them have usually disdained politics McGlone Patsy SDLP 7922 (8,376) Charles Haughey rounded up the IRA in the as vulgar and corrupt and fit only for grubby McGuinness Martin SF 21641 (25,502) South. individuals. The Catholic community is (1 other candidate stood) Provisional Republicanism had little to extraordinarily political and was deprived do with interpretations of history. It was of a democratic outlet for its political energies Newry and Armagh in 1921. The two together constituted the Berry Paul DUP 9311 0 (6,833) based on current experience of life in the region of the world least suited for devolved Bradley Dominic SDLP 12770 (20,784) strange variation taken on by the British government—a fact which must have been Kennedy Danny UUP 7025 (6,833) state in the Six Counties. There was no Murphy Conor SF 20965 (17,209) possibility there of democratic political plainly obvious to the British statesmen (1 other candidate stood) activity—activity whose logical culmination who set up Northern Ireland. 5 This is the stultifying constitutional framework in which the things called sectarianism and discrimination have The Gaa and Rule 42 continued flourished for eighty years, and could do nothing but flourish. It produced ideologists of the Oxbridge Universities. national venues for themselves, and a Provisional Sinn Fein, which is one of the And for that reason it is fiercely resented. campaign has been waged against the best things it produced. Gaa, for entirely political purposes, to An acquaintance of ours who lived in oblige it to let soccer and rugby be played Mary Lou Macdonald started to explain a Protestant housing estate in North Belfast in Croke Park. And this year the Gaa gave to her MEP colleague that Catholics in the moved out of it some years ago and got into the pressure, at least in principle. But North were motivated by experience of employment where there were large great practical difficulties lie in the way of actual life, rather than by interpretations numbers of Catholics. On the basis of this practical implementation. of history. But John Bowman would not experience he began to reflect on what it let her. It would, in any case, have been a waste of time because Mairead didn’t is that constitutes people into a community. Something like Euro 20 million would want to know. On the housing estate he had bumped into need to be spent to allow soccer and rugby the same people every day, but when he to be played in Croke Park. This is because returned to it after a few months he felt he the international soccer authorities require Letter To Editor was a stranger there. There was no wider physical segregation of supporters to pre- bond than continuous presence in the same vent hooliganism—something not needed The Two Nations Theory small physical space. But he observed for Gaelic games. Indeed separating rival I have been a reader of Brendan that Catholics had an instant rapport with supporters would work against the Gaa Clifford’s writings for nearly 40 years and one another, wherever they happened to ethos. Also, floodlighting would have to can well remember when he came up with come from, through the organic influence be installed to facilitate evening matches the Two Nations Theory. of the Gaa. for television, which are not now played. Economics had a lot to do with the As the numbers of matches for which TNT. Stalin, among other things, had Soccer is utterly unlike Gaelic in that these facilities would be required is small, defined a nation as a place having a respect. It has no definite local structure it is hard to see how the work could pay for common economic life. North-East and no organic social dimension. And itself. And, if the Government stumped Ireland had an economy, eg shipbuilding, relations between the supporters of Gaelic up the money, allowing the Gaa to profit that made sense in the context of the clubs are utterly unlike the relations bet- by hosting soccer and rugby at Croke British Empire but not in the context of ween the supporters of Soccer clubs. Park, that would only increase the pressure Ireland on its own. The decline of North- to concede professionalism to leading East Ireland industry means that there are Gaelic is played for the love of sport players, ending amateur ethos and the now less grounds for the TNT. and the glory of it. The players belong to playing of the games for their own sake. At the time that the TNT was put the areas they play for. But, though its forward, most revolutionaries throughout structure is strictly local, it has a well- In addition, the Gaa has been careful Europe fervently believed that “over 90% organised existence throughout the to keep the Dublin inner-city population of the people want revolution” and that country. And the Gaa is the only sporting which lives around its stadium on-side by “revolution is the main trend in the world body to take women’s games seriously. limiting the numbers of matches that are today”. I did not so belief, for reasons I played there. Hosting other sports would shall not go into here. It exists below, or beyond, political strain this relationship, particularly as other Ireland was regarded as the place most divisions. Its popularity is universal. And, supporters are not as well-behaved. If the suitable for revolution. And then Brendan for that reason, it was a major influence in locals are asked to put up with the incon- went and spoilt it all by revealing the overcoming the division of what is called venience of extra matches, there are plenty existence of a million Northern Ireland the Civil War. Cork hurling and Kerry of other Gaelic fixtures which would be Protestants who were certainly not in the football exerted an irresistible gravitational more suited to be played there. Wolfe Tone mode. Shortly afterwards, pull on Treatyites and anti-Treatyites alike. main trend revolutionism died the death in John Arnold, PRO to Bride Rovers Europe. The powerful revisionist lobby has (Cork) has explained why he thinks Rule We need to look at the situation in reason to hate it. It is immune to their 42 is important. Gaelic sports are in Ireland today. For many years, decreasing influence. Their power can get no purchase competition with the ‘sexy’, heavily- numbers of Protestants kept themselves on it. Professor Roy Foster has therefore promoted sports of soccer and rugby in racially pure by not marrying Catholics. condemned the Gaa as chauvinist, attracting participants and supporters. Despite their efforts, the Protestant, or irredentist, and negative. He only means “We can’t offer professional con- English if you prefer, bloodstock could that it doesn’t bother its head about him. tracts, or an international element, or not be maintained. The racial composition And, if it is irredentist for having a 32 weekend trips to premiership games— of the population of Ireland is now County structure, then so is the Church of the only thing we have is a magnificent practically homogeneous, apart, of course, Ireland. world-class stadium; it’s the only thing we have” (Sunday Independent 10.4.05). from Bengalis, Chinese, etc. Sharing it with other sports would There is little objective basis remaining But the failure of the commercial undermine the one major asset of the Gaa. for the existence of a second Irish nation. sports, in which the players are hired, to be It is like the grin on the face of the Cheshire successfully commercial has been seized Incidentally, Croke Park re-made itself Cat which remained long after the animal upon as a device for making a small chink whilst remaining open for matches. Why itself had vanished. in the self-sufficiency of the Gaa. Soccer can’t Lansdowne Road do the same? Ivor Kenna, London and rugby have failed to establish adequate 6 month’s issue it published a best selling pamphlet on the constitution in October 2004. It has also been campaigning against the Bolkestein directive since July of last year. The communist daily newspaper French Referendum l’Humanite has been an invaluable means of mobilising opposition to the The French referendum campaign has only 15 minutes to challenge him on the Constitution. not gone as well for the supporters of the EU Constitution. The communists are opposed to the EU Constitution as they would have liked. Emmanuelli opened aggressively by Constitution on economic grounds. They Since the end of March opinion polls have claiming that the Constitution was not claim that it is the only Constitution in the been consistently showing the “no” side “social”. This immediately put Sarkozy world that enshrines free market values. with between 52% and 58% support. on the defensive. The leading pro “free In my view this claim is justified. Almost Recently, after a huge propaganda cam- market” politician in France was reduced at the beginning of the Constitution Article paign, which involved bringing Jacques to claiming that it was “social”. He tried to i-3-2 indicates that the Union offers Delors out of retirement and passing the say that the European Trade Union freedom, security, justice without internal Constitution through the German Parlia- movement supported it. But Emmanuelli frontiers and an internal market where ment, the polls are breaking even, or countered by saying that he marched with competition is free and unrestricted. tending towards the ‘Yes’ side. tens of thousands of European Trade Unionists against the Bolkestein Directive Article i-3-2 indicates that the Union Why have there been such problems in Brussels and they were also against the works for the sustainable development of for the ‘Yes’ campaign? Last December Constitution. By the end of this brief debate Europe founded on balanced economic the socialists voted by a 60-40 majority Sarkozy was reeling, but fifteen minutes growth and on the stability of prices, a for the constitution in an internal referen- was far too short for a knockout blow to be highly competitive social market which dum. The socialist leader Francois Holland delivered. tends towards full employment and social was voted “man of the year” by one of the progress and an increased level of protect- In an article in the March issue of the French current affairs magazines and the ion and improvement of the environment. Irish Political Review I suggested that right wing government parties were It promotes scientific and technical French political culture can be understood overwhelmingly in favour. progress in terms of communist and Gaullist values. The ‘Yes’ side were hoping that follow- But there is a third political tendency. This At first glance the above article appears ing the vote of the socialists, left wing tendency likes to think of itself as being to have something for everyone. “Sustain- dissent would be kept to a minimum and progressive. It denounces the conservatism able development”, “balanced economic the referendum would pass on the ‘nod’. of France. “We must change”, it says and growth” and “improvement of the environ- “we must keep pace with international ment” sound ecological. “Social progress” But it is clear that the minority within developments”. It supports the EU and “full employment” sound socialist the Socialist Party which voted against the Constitution because “competition” and and the “highly competitive” and “stability party leadership last December is the most the “free market” is the wave of the future. of price” phrases sound capitalist if not political element. While the socialist leader Supporters of this view are found in the monetarist. of the ‘No’ campaign, former Prime Socialist Party as well as the Government However in my view the ecological Minister Lauren Fabius, has remained parties. They like to think of themselves and socialist sounding phrases are mere silent since losing the internal party as “modern”. But some people think that pious aspirations without substance. They referendum, other dissidents have been they belong to an older tradition. are political window dressing. There is no active. It is too late for the leadership to The pugnacious Emmanuelli came out indication of how these might be achieved silence them because there is no doubt with the following in a newspaper anywhere in the Constitution. On the other that the minority is now a significant interview to justify his opposition to the hand, the Constitution is extremely majority within the party. detailed as regards stability of price and socialist leadership: competition. In the absence of Fabius, the leader of “There was a majority of socialists the socialist ‘No’ campaign is Henri who supported Petain in 1940. Those Article i-4-1, for example, defines as a Emmanuelli. Emmanuelli looks like an who resisted have passed into posterity. fundamental liberty the free circulation of ageing Italian boxer. He is never going to Those who supported his policies are persons, services, products and capital. be a champion or even a contender: not held in opprobrium.” slick enough. But he has a few good fights Of course, that kind of talk was Section iii fleshes out how the object- left in him and this one could be his best. denounced as being ‘below the belt’. But ives in article i-3 might be achieved. Article could there be an element of truth in it? iii-177 says that to achieve the aims of His most recent bout was a head to This is not to say that the ‘Yes’ side are article i-3 there must be close coordination head with Nicolas Sarkozy in a television fascists, only that this tendency supports of the economic policies of member states programme called 100 Minutes To the dominant international political trend. in conformity with the principle of an Convince. The format has a leading politi- In 1940 it was Nazism and in 2005 it is open economy where competition is free. cian (in this case Sarkozy) giving his free market, globalist values. views for 100 minutes. In the course of the The second paragraph of this article programme he is challenged by journalists The campaign against the Constitution lists as a principal objective the stability and other politicians on various themes. has been largely driven by the French of prices and again indicates that the Union Unfortunately, Emmanuelli was allowed Communist Party. As indicated in last must conform to the principle of free 7 competition. In case there is any doubt, outside the Union are forbidden. This the third paragraph says that member States latter article has caused severe embarrass- However, although the opinion polls indicate that a majority might vote ‘No’, must respect the following principles: price ment to Chirac. Recently, the French one opinion poll also showed a majority stability, healthy monetary and public President advocated a “Tobin tax” (named after the Nobel Prize winning economist), hoped that the ‘Yes’ side would win! The finance polices and a stable balance of contradiction is explained by the fact that which is a tax on movements of Capital as payments. some ‘No’ voters fear the consequences Article iii-178 also refers to the a means of eliminating world poverty. He for Europe of a French ‘No’. They want to objectives contained in article i-3. It says now has to keep quiet about that because send a message to Europe but on the other that member states may act in respect of such a proposal would violate this article hand they fear the consequences of a the principle of a market economy where of the EU Constitution. majority ‘No’ will undermine it. This indi- there is free competition, favouring the Recently, the lack-lustre performance cates a certain fragility on the part of ‘No’ efficient allocation of resources. of Chirac has come in for criticism. It’s voters which could be exploited by the my suspicion that this is not due to ‘Yes’ campaign as polling day draws near. The pious aspirations of “social incompetence or lack of energy, but rather progress” and “full employment” etc in Another weakness on the ‘No’ side is his heart is not in it. that many of their campaigners are perceiv- article i-3 are not mentioned at all in these ed as extremists. Jean Marie Le Pen of the articles or anywhere else. Since the opinion polls began to show a ‘No’ majority the Eurocrats from other National Front is advocating a ‘No’ vote. Regarding the “stability of prices”, countries have been trying to find However, much to the chagrin of many on this will be implemented by the Central scapegoats. If it is not the “French political the ‘Yes’ side, this person has been unchar- Banks (Article iii-185-1). Article iii-188 class” it is the French people themselves. acteristically quiet during the campaign. guarantees their independence. Neither The view has been expressed that the One prominent ‘No’ campaigner on the member states’ Central Banks nor the French don’t really oppose the EU Consti- the “right” is Phillipe De Villiers. This European Central Bank can solicit or tution they are just using the issue to politician is considered to be a conservative accept instructions from member state sanction their government. In my view Catholic. He is also proud of his aristocratic governments or other institutions within this is patronising rubbish. lineage. He represents the Vendee region the Union. The Catholic Daily Newspaper La of France which is famous for its rebellion It is extremely difficult to see how any Croix conducted a detailed analysis of the against the French Revolution. Normally socialist could support this Constitution. reasons given for voting ‘No’. The paper, such a reactionary would be a liability for In the past there might have been an argu- which has taken an even handed editorial any political campaign. But worryingly for the political establishment, he has been ment for free market policies as a means line on the Constitution, concluded that appealing to mainstream French values. of disrupting local monopolies. But this the ‘No’ voters were not confusing the forthcoming referendum with a general One issue that has been raised during the was in the context of a large European campaign has been the level of cheap Social Fund and a generous Common election. On the contrary, following the focus group surveys that it commissioned, Chinese clothing imports resulting in job Agricultural Policy. It was also in the losses in France. De Villiers contrasted context of a small number of states with it concluded that the reasons given for voting ‘No’ were quite profound. the response of the USA to this problem broadly Social/Christian democratic with that of Europe. In the US protectionist values. Such free market policies were a measures were implemented almost There were broadly two reasons for means of encouraging greater economic immediately, whereas the European integration (i.e. an economy organised voting ‘No’. The first reason is not to commissioner, Peter Mandelson, decided across the European Community rather sanction the French Government, but to to implement a 6 stage consultative process sanction the European project itself which than on a national basis) and not an end in (in other words do nothing). De Villiers’s many French people consider to have itself. conclusion was that the EU is being run by become too “liberal” (i.e. free market free market dogmatists. But these conditions no longer apply. orientated). The French blame the transfer The growth and stability pact and now this of production from their country to low cost countries in Asia and Eastern Europe When a reactionary from France Constitution will place constraints on pub- accuses a senior British Labour Party lic expenditure policies designed to on “free market” policies imposed from Brussels. They also think that competition politician of being a “free market dogma- mitigate the effects of free market policies. tist”, that is a problem. It indicates that There is no doubt that since the end of the has undermined gains won by the labour movement such as the 35 hour week. The French values are diametrically opposed Kohl/Mitterand era free market policies to British values. If the French reject the are seen as good in themselves and not as Bolkestein Directive confirmed their negative views of European economic EU Constitution on 29th of May it will be a means to an end. The European Constitut- policies. because it is against the Constitution’s ion reflects this shift to the right. free market orientation and the undermin- ing of State control in relation to employ- Amid a plethora of pious aspirations The second reason given for voting ment law. On the other hand, if the British Article i-3-4 says that in its relations with ‘No’ relates to the French identity. The vote ‘No’ next year it will be because it is the rest of the world the Union will market researchers found that the French too ‘social’. Those two visions of Europe have a very particular relationship with contribute to “free and equitable trade”. It are not compatible. is very clear that free market values are the state. They perceive it as a protector, as a source of security. It is centralised fundamental to the European project. This In recent years British values have is not just an internal matter for the with clear national boundaries. Europe, on the other hand, represents the opposite. been in the ascendant and Continental European Union: these values define its politicians have not resisted the drift relationship with the rest of the world. It is diverse with provisional boundaries. The enlargement of the EU to the East and towards Anglo-American economic Article iii-156 says that restrictions in the proposed accession of Turkey, even if policies. A French rejection on the 29th of movements of Capital and payments it will not happen until 10 or 15 years, May could galvanise an alternative vision. between states of the Union and states have accentuated French fears. John Martin 8 the war as a crusade of Good against Evil. All others involved had definable vested interests in the conflict but Britain turned it into something else. The concept of wars against Evil is now centre-stage in What To Hope From The Pope? the Ameranglian scheme of things and is The reactions to the new Pope from “Pope Benedict XV, formerly causing similar havoc. the liberal Catholics have been predictable Giacomo della Chiesa (1854- 1922), and more predictable in Ireland than was elected to the papacy on September The First World War was justified to anywhere else. Some of the snidest 3rd, 1914, following the death of Pius X the masses on the basis that Evil incarnate references have come from that quarter. on August 20th, having served as a had appeared in the World in the shape of He is not a liberal and therefore he has let cardinal since May 1914. the Germans/Prussians/Huns and the “He was reputed to be a man with them down and the Catholic Church is on forces of Good were ranged against it. But renowned diplomatic talents, but he course for a disaster under him. We will how come the Pope of the day could only found his abilities—and unique position get support from the forces of this Evil in have to wait and see. The demise of a as a religious emissary of peace— his attempts for peace? This is a question Catholicism that does not adapt to ignored by the belligerent powers in the liberalism is one of the most oft repeated first World War. that the Irish Times commentator quoted mantras in recent history. But why is it not “Having unsuccessfully pushed the above did not seem to find any necessity obvious to the billion plus that follow idea of a general Christmas truce in to explain. It did not even occur to him. Catholicism and the many others who 1914 as an end to what he termed “the Was the Pope in cahoots with Evil in show respect for it, however grudgingly? suicide of Europe” (initially accepted by WWI? And was he in the same boat with There is no evidence that Benedict XVI is the Germans but dismissed by the Allies), Saddam Hussein—given that the late Pope any different from his predecessor in circumstances in Italy—where his took the same attitude to the war against regular intervention was resented as theological matters and one cannot doubt him? potentially weakening national fighting that the Catholic Church grew in influence resolve—further diluted his influence The Socialist and Communist move- under John Paul II. Maybe it declined in from 1915 onwards. ments tried valiantly to explain World Ireland but Ireland is not now, as it once “In short, the 1915 Treaty of London War I in more down-to-earth terms i.e. was, a reflection of the world in these included secret provisions whereby the that it was an inter-imperialist war and matters. It is now just a pale reflection of Allies agreed with Italy to ignore papal that all wars were economically driven. the Ameranglian cocoon. peace moves towards the Central Powers. Liberals had no credibility in the matter, “Consequently, the publication of his as it was the Great Liberal Party that proposed seven-point Peace Note of Why is the influence of the Catholic launched the war. But could the millions August 1917 was roundly ignored by all Church a growing influence if the liberal fighting and dying all be doing it for view of things was so self evidently right, parties except Austria-Hungary. “Despite requesting a role in the economic reasons or simply being used by as they themselves believe? Why indeed definition of the peace, the Vatican was the million for economic reasons time does the Papacy exist at all at this stage of excluded from the Paris Peace after time? If they were, then there was no history? Is it possible that there are things Conference in 1919.” obvious reason why they would not not dreamt of in the philosophy of The message that gets obscured here is continue doing so forever. But the idea of liberalism that the Papacy encapsulates that it was the Allies, and that means people dying by the million for the and are relevant? And does it by any Britain, who refused to countenance an economic benefits involved is chance encapsulate things that are more end to that war. This is a rather important unconvincing. If true, it would destroy important than the preoccupation of our matter to be clear about. any faith whatever in human beings. liberals? Among the many issues for Something else was clearly motivating which the Papacy is noted, but not given The First World War was the defining them and that clearly was the fight of due weight, is its position on war and moment of modern history. What was at Good against Evil. peace today. This is noted and passed issue was exactly what Benedict XV over, but is there anything more important said—”the suicide of Europe”—or more The bottom line for the leaders of these days? We hear plenty about the precisely the murder of European civilis- Western Civilisation—Bush and Blair theological arguments on sexual matters ation caused by Britain who launched it as today—is that they are defending Good but war and peace are hardly less important a World War—’the crime against Europe’ against Evil. This is always the final word, than these issues. as Roger Casement predicted before it the final argument, and it works. The actually began. In any case Benedict XV Mother of Parliaments and Congress can Benedict has put this issue centre stage got the measure of the issue at stake as the be relied on to succumb to this argument with his chosen name, as the last Benedict war did indeed prove to be the end of without fail. It is the clinching, unarguable- was best known for his efforts to stop European civilisation—not just in its against, argument that gets people in the World War I. The Irish Times reported a massive loss of life but in the emergence mood for blood. And the Papacy today is typical cockeyed version of Benedict XV’s of the elemental forces of society that as clearly not on the side of this Good as position on 20th April 2005: were set in motion and which caused it was not on its side in WWI. Yet the “Power ignored emissary of peace in massive slaughter and chaos within and Papacy is still around and apparently first World War outside Europe down to the present day. growing. Does no commentator see that “What’s in the name? Benedict XV this needs explaining? “Can Cardinal Ratzinger’s The crucial thing that ended European predecessor in name tell us anything civilisation was the morality introduced about the sort of papacy the new Pope The choice is clear—the Papacy for Benedict would like to fashion? by Britain, which launched and justified the last 100 years has been fundamentally 9 wrong or Western Civilisation has been fundamentally wrong, on the most basic issues of the bloodiest century of recorded Politics in Northern Ireland: history. A Review of the Year The explanation for this is that best set out by the American writer, Carroll Quig- Cllr. Mark Langhammer’s Speech to Irish Political Review group, ley. It is based on the different and Cork, 17th April 2005 irreconcilable conceptions of human Introduction: After the European Much of the rest has been about waiting nature. More specifically, what exactly is Elections in June 2004, which confirmed for the Westminster and local government good and evil in the world? The traditional the dominance of the DUP as the principal elections, which gives further opportunity Christian view now exemplified best by Protestant Party and Sinn Fein as the for Sinn Fein and the DUP to strengthen Catholicism is that there is not Good and principal Catholic Party, the past year has their respective communal hegemonies. Evil, but Good versus insufficient-Good seen a phoney war on ‘Talks’ pending an For the SDLP, the Westminster elections in the world—which is vastly different to election—both aiming to ‘dung out’ their may be terminal. seeing physical Evil inhabiting and respective communal sheds of stalking the world. The Catholic emphasis competition. Protestant politics: On the Unionist is working on ways and means of increas- The main event of the year was the side, since the Assembly Election in 2003, ing and spreading Good as the best way of Comprehensive Agreement in Decem- the DUP has gained a significant degree dealing with the lack of it. Evil is not ber, a piece of “high wire” choreography of hegemony within the Protestant given the positive incarnate form that aimed at re-establishing the institutions. community. The seriousness of their intent justifies the self-appointed Good wiping The political aspects of the Agreement was shown in the sidelining of Willie out what it declares to be Evil. were, it seems on the surface, ‘agreed’. McCrea as their candidate for Europe, What was not agreed was the requirement choosing Jim Allister—a more presentable These differing views of human nature for the IRA to disappear under terms set barrister—in a move that maintained their have a long and varied history and the by Ian Paisley. lead in the Euro elections (from which belief in positive incarnate Evil is currently After the impasse, the £26m Northern Paisley has stood down) in 2004. best exemplified by the Puritan view of Bank raid, and the fall-out from the murder The DUP position within the Com- life—the chosen, elect, of God who decide of Robert McCartney in Magennis’s Bar prehensive Agreement appeared to weaken who is evil and how they are therefore set have dominated the political discourse. considerably. On the face of it, the DUP up for destruction. This is the road to The Bank raid was quickly deemed by negotiating stance, based on its 2003 perpetual war and barbarity. It is the view the PSNI’s Hugh Orde to be the work of election pledge of “7 principles”, did not of the Bible—a horror story that Catholics the Provisional IRA. Evidence to back establish the accountability of the Exec- abhor and ignore as much as possible. The this up has not yet been forthcoming. utive Ministers to the Assembly. David Catholic view is positive, pragmatic in Bertie Ahern, based on the same Morrison set out, in the Irish Political seeking to counter the absence of Good. It security intelligence as seen by Orde, has Review, that the DUP had, in a real sense, is the modern polar opposite to this Puritan, taken a similar tack, with Sinn Fein under accommodated to the Agreement—and biblical, negative view of life which now attack from all elements within the Free that a repeat of Martin McGuinness’s dominates the West’s political thinking. State. decision on the 11+ or Bairbre de Brun’s And it is hardly an accident that it was the The McCartney murder has seen Sinn decision on acute hospitals, would have Liberal/ Puritan tradition, as personified Fein come under concerted political and (even under changed political arithmetic by H H Asquith, that set the world on its media pressure. Some figures from within since 2003) resulted in no change to the current course in August 1914. Republicanism, such as Tommy Mc decisions. Kearney, have pointed to the inevitability However, I have spoken to a number All the progressive political philoso- of contradictions between political activity of DUP MLAs (indeed I put this question phies from Liberalism to Social Democ- and maintaining the IRA in being, the IRA to Sammy Wilson in a pre election UTV racy, Socialism and now Communism increasingly being seen as an encum- programme) who think the reverse is the have effectively succumbed to the Good brance. Others, such as Anthony McIntyre, case. The DUP’s view is that Ministerial versus Evil view of things. Only the have concentrated on the “long leash” or autonomy is at an end, and that an Execu- Papacy stands against it. But no one dare “blind eye” approach to elements of the tive would not be formed until the statutory say the Papacy is on the side of Evil but IRA who were, in some localities, Ministerial Code is enacted. Like the that should be the logical conclusion. increasingly seen as criminal in character. Agreement itself, Paisley and Adams have McIntyre considered the Short Strand signed up to different versions/understand- This Pope has already forced people element to be such a criminal hard core. ings of the Agreement. Constructive to think about fundamentals. Where will it Asked on BBC’s Newsnight whether he ambiguity rules. Just as in the 1998 Agree- lead? He is also clearly a German and may considered a split likely, he responded “A ment, where the ‘words’ indicated that help do for Germany what John Paul II did split to what? To doing Red Diesel, or there was no requirement for actual for Poland. If he does Europe could be illicit vodka?” or words to that effect. decommissioning at all, just “best efforts transformed. Germans might regain the Whilst the British, and Southern of all parties”—the Comprehensive confidence to think again for themselves political establishment have been quick to Agreement could be taken to mean, in and if the Papacy becomes the vehicle for make political capital and ‘beat up on’ practice, whatever the DUP thinks it achieving that then we are in for a trans- Republicans, Sinn Fein face the problem means. formed, safer, saner and more enlightened that no one has to go very far to make these At the very least, the DUP will be more Europe. allegations up. effective in scrutinizing the Programme Jack Lane 10 for Government. The Ministerial Code mute a link with Fianna Fail—but little Republicans less surefooted than normal. will require a statutory basis—and this has been heard of this recently. Mark The IRA statement setting out their offer may be the DUP opportunity to copper Durkan appears to understand his to shoot the murderers of Robert fasten their understanding of the dilemma, and has made speeches and McCartney seemed foolish. The Comprehensive Agreement. Delays could positions about the “protections” of the subsequent statements of Martin be easily fabricated. The capacity for Good Friday Agreement being “carried McGuinness “advising” the McCartney referrals from the Assembly will increase. over” into any united Ireland. He hasn’t sisters on political activity were read, at grasped that Labour, the Greens and best, as patronising. The Alliance Party, with a greatly presumably the PDs wouldn’t fancy The McCartney issue has exposed to a reduced vote, retained all 6 of its Assembly ‘protection’ that meant any of their wider audience the matter of ‘leadership seats in 2003, have supported something northern votes in the Dail would be style’ and culture. The Sinn Fein leadership close to the DUP line—a Cabinet Govern- worthless—as is the case for the votes of appears collegiate and considered. The ment with a weighted majority, rather “Others” so protected in the Stormont set grass roots, at times and in some localities, than “designations”. Their main activity up. Their recent policy document, For A appear robotic. John Kelly’s recent in politics has been as the balance of United Ireland And The Agreement, was a criticism—in essence about leadership power in Belfast City Council, where 3 confusing piece of policy, which argued “control freakery”—have been Alliance seats hold the balance as between to continue the “protections” of the accentuated in the McCartney incident. Protestant Unionist and Catholic Agreement in a United Ireland—a sort of My own observations, in north Belfast, Nationalist. SDLP Eire Nua. It smacked of desperation. are that Sinn Fein at its grass roots can be The long term prognosis for Alliance And ineptitude, given that Durkan’s crudely territorial, ‘in your face’ and is poor, reduced to largely Unionist electoral hopes in Foyle may require (like sectarian. It appears excessively negative hinterland of the East with little residual Joe Hendron in West Belfast in 1992) the in instinct in regard to local issues, to the support within the Catholic community. support of East Bank Protestants. Alex point of whingeing, and rarely looks at The local Council elections of 2005 is Attwood’s City Council seat in West practical solutions to workaday local likely to confirm decline. Belfast may even go! In South Belfast, problems. It can’t send, for instance, one where Alastair McDonnell requires some representative to local meetings, rather Within this context, with the DUP of Alex Maskey’s votes to “come through preferring delegations of numbers of party appearing confident, and the British and the middle” he gratuitously invited members. I take this to be partly a military Irish Governments weighing in to put Michael McDowell to tour the constitu- culture—a closed, authoritarian method, pressure on Republicans (most recently ency with him. Inept. information on a ‘need to know’ basis— a over the issue of the Independent Within civic society Sinn Fein’s grip sort of democratic centralism. Adams Monitoring Commission on paramilitary is even stronger—with well developed appears to have recognized and acknow- activity)—Loyalist sectarian activity has newspaper, cultural and community ledged this tendency in recent statements. lessened. Parts of the PSNI [Police Service activity within its sphere of influence. In It is a culture, rooted in defence and of Northern Ireland] are making some addition to activity like the West Belfast conflict, which is understandable—but progress on clamping down on some Feile, the launch, by the Andersonstown will place a ceiling on Sinn Fein growth criminal activity, and the Criminal Assets News group of their Daily Ireland ultimately. Bureau is making modest inroads. Loyalist newspaper, shows political ambition. It is The energies of the Catholic com- areas, however, remain largely unpoliced too early to say whether that effort will munity will eventually want a broader territory, and the disentanglement of the survive and thrive, and it has announced canvass—that of national politics. Sinn police from its past relationships with redundancies in its staff after only a few Fein has been to the fore in trying to loyalist paramilitarism may take some months, but I wouldn’t bet against it develop and encompass that energy, but time. hanging on in a notoriously difficult and the ‘control freakery’ tendency and And the positive development of the competitive morning newspaper market. ‘democratic centralist’ way of organising Progressive Unionist Party has receded It has targeted the 12 or 13 Northern suggests that it will not be the only one. significantly from its high water mark. It counties, the 6 or 7 southern border coun- is in decline, with doubts as to whether ties have strong Sinn Fein support and no Collusion, Cory and intelligence Billy Hutchinson, for instance, will hang strong attachment to either the Northern activism: The issue of collusion, following onto his City Council seat in Oldpark Irish News or the Southern Examiner, the publication of the Cory reports which Independent or Times. recommended public inquiries in all cases Catholic politics: On the Catholic side, There is significant and growing the Canadian Judge examined. The British Sinn Fein confirmed its position as the contact between Sinn Fein and elements delayed publication, and eventually dominant force, likely to be further of the Protestant community at represent- published incomplete versions. They have confirmed in the May Westminster and ative level—with business leaders and now agreed to inquiries for all cases, with local Council elections. with Churches, but very little at grass the Finucane case deferred—as a delaying Bairbre de Brun defeated the SDLP’s roots level. Alex Maskey leads a group mechanism—until after legal proceedings. Martin Morgan comfortably in the June devoting itself to this work—work Following the conclusion of the case 2004 Euro elections. The SDLP is on interrupted by the bank raid and Mc against the Loyalist patsy, Ken Barrett, something of a cleft stick, as an allegedly Cartney murder (with a public spat the British Government has responded nationalist party restricted to the Northern between Maskey and Rev Ken Newell of with further delay through its Inquiries Ireland entity and with no real relevance the Presbyterian Church, a party to these Act—the purpose of which is to ensure to national island-wide political develop- talks). that information given to any tribunal is ment. Their minority status has caused politically restricted, with large parts of some SDLP people, such as Tom Kelly, to The McCartney incident has seen the hearings held “in camera”. 11 I take the Finucane case, given the Partnerships) agenda run by a Strategic responsibility and move centre stage. Joint efforts that have gone into frustrating Investment Board. government, with a generation without resolution, as being close to the heart of Stormont is, I believe, what is required. All the principal issues in Northern the British war secrets. Within this context the imperative Ireland have been Treasury driven: Cory (who was straightforward in his would be for political development in two * The reform (ie privatisation) of the directions. Firstly local political develop- examination) has been troublesome for Water Service ment could be enhanced within the the British. * The reform of the rating system auspices of the Review of Local The second issue is that the notion of a * The 2005-08 Spending Review, Administration. Secondly, a generation Peace and Reconciliation or Truth Com- implementing the Gershon Review without the prospect of Stormont would mission is being counterposed (by Chief efficiency savings (aside from reducing the aggravating * The reform of the Civil Service effects of state-funded communal politics) Constable Hugh Orde amongst others) as * Civil and public service pension tend to encourage the development of an alternative to “endless inquiries” or reform island-wide political development. “selective” inquiries. The British have * High levels of capital investment announced that a commission will through the Strategic Investment Board Review of Public Administration: I investigate and recommend whether and in education, health and transport. was involved in compiling a submission how such a body might go about its work. The local Ministers are all operating, in for the Labour Party on the Review of Although the idea comes at a time when this regard, on very short rope from the Public Administration. We proposed the the spotlight is shifting towards British Treasury. Ian Pearson, in particular, finds two urban areas (Belfast and Derry) and military and police intelligence activity— going through the motions a bit irritating. six counties as the basis not just for local and therefore appears as a cynical ploy— One gets the impression he’d rather just council governance—but as the adminis- the broad idea is not without some support. say “You can’t have it, Gordon says so!” trative units or building blocks for all local administration. We proposed more Seen as a follow-on from Columbia, The Future: Its appears to me that the powers of local councils offset by more Castlereagh (for which no one has been current political impasse will—in time— regulation to ensure fairness and equality. charged), the Stormontgate affair, and the require a fresh look. The Governments are The Review team has just reported, strange, and very public, attempted abduc- largely following the logic presented by “Micawber” like at present—in denial the Labour Party submission of tion of Bobby Tohill in 2004, it is clear and hoping that something will turn up. * Fewer Councils: The Review team that intelligence service political activism Doing nothing seems the least worst is still an important feature. The is understood to favour 7 Council areas option—with the underlying sense that with the political parties (through the NI Intelligence War, it seems to me, remains ‘doing nothing’ hurts Republicans more a central ‘endgame’ issue in political life Local Government Association) than the British. favouring 15. A third, compromise in Northern Ireland. option of 11 may be where the horse It seemed to me a year ago that the The Independent Monitoring Commis- trading settles at Good Friday Agreement was done for. sion, a creation developed outside the * Co Terminosity: ie all quangos, Paisley however, moved some distance scope of the Agreement (as a quid pro central government operational services within the “Comprehensive Agreement” quo, according to Mark Durkan, for and other bodies would ‘fit in’ to the The DUP have not prepared the Protestant local Council boundaries meeting the Sinn Fein demands for a ground for a ‘sell out’. Protestant society * Reduction of quangos: over 100 resolution of the “on the runs”) on the appears happy, ‘at ease’ even, with the quangos will go, including the Education prompting of the Alliance Party, and impasse. The ‘ordinary five/eights Prod’, and Library Boards supported by Trimble, is now regularly unlike the DUP, is not wedded at all to * Reduction of Health bodies from 22 investigating and reporting on paramilitary Stormont and doesn’t see the need. Paisley to 5 or 7. activity. The IMC report this Spring The consultation period finishes in late may, after the elections have seen a further resulted in sanctions against Sinn Fein September with the Minister making routing of the UUP, consider that there is following on the Northern Bank Robbery decisions by December. The local parties nowhere else to go other than into There is no similar counterbalance to don’t like the RPA report. It will lead to Stormont. Don’t assume that the relative investigate intelligence activism. a loss of capacity for the communal parties calm in Protestant working class areas —many fewer councillors. This should, will survive a Paisley ‘sell out’. in my opinion, be considered as an The influence of the Treasury: In unambiguously good thing. In regard to general social politics, and within the The Northern Star / Irish Political the capacity of communal politics, the old public service, both during and since the Review has taken the view from the outset adage of ‘Less is more’ applies. functioning of the Executive, the grip of that the British set out to use the Ceasefire The Review has proposed very simple, H.M. Treasury has grown significantly, to engineer a surrender—a tactic similar radical, and administratively sound propo- and at a very micro level. Just as the to that at the time of the 1918 Armistice. sals. They are in sharp contrast to the Treasury in England is at the heart of the That assessment looks stronger with the administrative pig’s ear of the Stormont service provision in Health, Education, passing of time, particularly as the light arrangements—and the need for 108 transport infrastructure and so on, so it is shines on the British role in the war. members at Stormont with little to occupy in Northern Ireland. Paul Boateng (who is themselves will increasingly be very hard about to move to a Commissioner post in Two Governments centre stage? So, to justify. The Review of Public Adminis- tration has played a straight bat and looked South Africa) acted as ‘enforcer’ ever assuming the Agreement is ‘done for’, at things in terms of administrative coherence more frequently over the Reform and what should we seek to develop? The basic fact is that Stormont doesn’t work. —but there’s no escaping that the NIO Reinvestment initiative, which was signed Without severe external pressure and may feel that the proposals are, in the by the Executive before it collapsed. This strong measures of compulsion, the thing absence of anything else, a useful “Plan is basically a Private Finance Initiative will not stick. The alternative to Stormont B” to the Agreement [equivalent to Southern Public Private is for the two Governments to accept joint Mark Langhammer April 2005 12 token, a great many people did not resent the Rising, and the Volunteers were Ireland’s Intelligentsia BITE (more) Air welcomed home from Internment, if not as heroes and prophets, at least as gallant Part 2 of a review of the guest appearance of the Abbey Theatre at the fighters. And the authorities were so Barbican, London, with its production of The Plough And The Stars intent on getting Irishmen into imperial “O’Casey’s searing political drama was successfully staged in London ten uniform that they gave the, now The Plough and The Stars is set at the years ago.) Boucicault wrote a Victorian Republican, Sinn Féin party the gift of a time of the bloody Easter Rising of 1916, melodrama, but clearly struck a chord in campaign against Conscription. the seminal event in the progress towards audiences. Whether O’Casey will have a an Irish state… Despite being on the similar effect in the long run is If these matters are not factored in to bread line and fighting for survival, the questionable—neither part of his play is the production of such a deeply political characters ignite the play with their really convincing—the genuinely comic play, it simply distorts it into a cartoonish banter, humour and rancour until tragedy caricature, or more of a cartoonish strikes and the full horror and waste of elements are probably in the Boucicault tradition. caricature than it is on the face of things. the fight for freedom is realised” Barnes said he took an operatic approach (Promotional brochure for Abbey to the play: Nora’s ‘mad scene’ reminded The first section, building up to the production, 2005). me of elements in the ballet Giselle. It Rising (or the appearance of the Figure in went on too long. (Cathy Belton made a the Window—Pearse), is quite On Thursday, 21st January, Graham good fist of it that night but somebody’s straightforward, if heavily distorted. This Sheffield (Artistic Director, The Barbican) mobile phone unfortunately went off at is a drama, not a social report, but all of the interviewed Ben Barnes, Director of The the crucial moment.) Abbey, and of its production of Sean men, as Stephen Regan remarked, are “buffoons”. Some of the distortion must O’Casey’s The Plough. Sheffield simply The first Talking Heads session have been designedly provocative. For asked some questions and let Barnes get involved Stephen Regan, Terence Brown, instance, there is no report of the ICA on with it, a good approach as Barnes is a and Ruth Dudley Edwards—Regan is (Irish Citizen Army) or Volunteers cutting very fluent speaker. He said a number of newly appointed Professor of English at and running in Easter Week as the play (discretely) interesting things: he was not Durham, “specialising in Modern Irish suggests. England’s propaganda machine a Dubliner, but came from Wexford literature” (according to Brown who is at would have noised such a turn of events (implying that he didn’t have standing Trinity College, Dublin, and was the Chair around the globe and back again. The of the session). As nobody had objections to armed Risings?). He said GPO was vacated, under very heavy fire, encountered the piece of paper with the London is the capital of “a country at because it was in flames. The audiences information about these discussions on it, war”, which surprised Sheffield. (Private of the time—who we were invited to I held up my hand to suggest that Brown Eye has a ‘Warballs’ column deriding any condemn, or feel superior to, in some of introduce himself. He appeared not to see mention of the Iraq imbroglio, but the Eye the discussions about the play staged at me, but he did not ‘see’ me the next three has not had to get a caravanserai like the the Barbican—were veterans of these times I held up my hand. paraphernalia for The Plough and the Stars events, or were ‘Widows of Easter Week’. through Heathrow.) Barnes bemoaned Regan was under the impression that the ‘blood sacrifice’ element in 1916: The latter loomed large in the he was discussing literature. (I got the “we have lived with the consequences of immediate aftermath of the Rising, not impression that he was not an habitué of that ever since”, and was echoed to the because of some ghoulish Catholic Irish the theatre, a bit of a disadvantage in word, by Ruth Dudley Edwards, the obsession with death and widowhood, but discussing such a ramshackle play, or following night. Unfortunately, Barnes because the men were interned. Internees drama in general.) He has a ‘neutral’ and his contemporaries in the artistic field included people who were not in the English accent and was quite interesting, Volunteers or Citizen Army, but happened tend to take their bearings from academics, and clearly bamboozled by the fact that to be ‘advanced Nationalists’. One of who have been pushing the ‘revisionist’ the political aspect of this play, dating these men, Herbert Pim (realising that line for decades—many of them taking as from 1926, is still ‘live’. He talked about dual-monarchist Sinn Féin, of which he their excuse the ‘Troubles’ of the North the “play as play”, mentioning “cartoon had been a member for ten years, had been (for which there was sufficient reason effects” attacking “vainglorious, suborned by the IRB—Irish Republican within Northern Ireland). nationalist politics”. (The only real Brotherhood—at the 1917 Convention) alternative in 1916 was vainglorious produced a Hymn To The UVF in early Barnes’s production brings out all the imperialist politics. Witness the off-hand 1918! For all the hard labour of the problems in The Plough. Admittedly, it is killing of the pacifist Sheehy-Skeffington. revisionists, 1916 and all that was not a not a ‘well-made play’, the first and last And witness the fact that his killer, series of simple events. two sets of Acts are out of ‘sync’ with each Colthurst-Bowen was declared ‘insane’, other. Barnes decided that O’Casey was served two years incarceration, and died Barnes described the men in the play in his bed in Canada in the 1920s). already partially into his ‘expressionist’ as being “used in this rising” (as opposed phase, and the scenes where Nora (the to other risings?); and declared that Jack Regan was not grinding a political axe, would-be genteel wife of Irish Citizen Clitheroe’s “real affinity” (admittedly in the other speakers were. Ruth Dudley Army officer Jack Clitheroe) in essence the character Nora’s eyes) “should be to Edwards, disingenuously introduced by goes mad are overwrought. In the her and family…”. The problem with this Terence Brown as the author of a “brave” Programme write-up about O’Casey it assertion is that the actual alternative for a biography of Pearse, being particularly was said that he played a part in Dion working class man to the socialist ICA shrill. She attacked the whole myth of Boucicault’s Con the Shaughran, a (made up of volunteers) was an imperial Easter Week, and described the Widows fabulously successful play that only fell uniform. He added that “very many people of Easter Week, who disrupted with others out of favour in Ireland in the 1960s. (It resented the Rising”, but, by the same the play’s premiere performances, as 13 “hand maidens” who “had to adopt the the ICA did not really exist outside of impression that the non-Irish in the cause for which they [surely their men- Dublin. audience were confused by the fact that folk?—SMcG] died”. This must be the 1916 and the foundation of the Irish State first time Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington has Stephen Regan said Yeats had a hand was a matter for debate in the twenty- first been described as being anybody’s ‘hand in the composition of The Plough, which century. maiden’ or patsy. Her husband was a may explain some of the openly hard-line pacifist, thus very different from provocative elements in it. O’Casey was Dudley Edwards and Terence Brown the Pearses’ mother and Connolly’s Secretary of the ICA and knew Connolly, (who has an easy-going attitude to the daughter. ‘Widow’ was stretched a very and knew that Connolly (a former Private concept ‘chairman’) had to accept the fact long way. Possibly Dudley Edwards hoped in the British Army) was not prone to that they lost this particular round of the that the audience was made up of students fantasy. Possibly O’Casey was. He seems battle to make the Irish embarrassed about susceptible to the ‘revisionist’ message. to have wanted the ICA to launch out on fighting for their political freedom. (The But it was not put across particularly well its own: a genuine, and totally pointless, term ‘technical knockout’ would cover on this occasion. Both Brown and Dudley ‘blood sacrifice’. the situation nicely.) Brown did mention Edwards told Regan that we were meant As regards opposition to the play, the fact that 1916 was the “foundational to laugh “with” Fluther Good. They were Regan claimed that Yeats had his famous myth” of the Irish State, and suggested very emphatic about it. Regan was clearly “You have disgraced yourselves again…” that the Rev. Shaw SJ’s essay of 1971 puzzled, as was the audience. He had speech from the stage prepared well in (written in 1966), was the beginning of suggested that we were meant to “laugh advance, and nipped round to the Irish ‘revisionism’. Which it was: in the sense at” Fluther Good and Peter Flynn, the Times office with a typescript ready for of rubbishing the Rising. (G.A. Hayes- gorgeously-uniformed uncle of Nora the next day’s edition. McCoy of the Military History Society of Clitheroe. Dudley Edwards and Brown expressed Ireland was quite capable, in the mid- —dismay is not strong enough a word, 1970s, of pointing out that the insurgents Fluther is pictured as a ‘public house genuine anger, is better—at such a point in Wexford in 1798 were better armed Republican’, especially during the speech being made, though they could not refute than the Crown forces, without feeling the by the Figure in the Window, who speaks it. Regan seemed to find the fact amusing, need to sneer at the rebels). a number of lines taken from Pearse’s in the sense that any publicity is better that speeches and writings over the period no publicity. He was introduced to the To be fair to Professor Brown, he prior to Easter Week, especially the ‘blood bitter political reality of this matter 79 mentioned Séamus Deane’s book Celtic sacrifice’ element. The production has years on! The fact is that The Plough and Twilights, a fairly feeble counterblast at two different people performing this role— Yeats’s speech were a convergence of two ‘revisionism’—presumably the feebleness in Hitlerian mode. The accusations of opposing sets of objections to the new was what recommended it to him. He also ‘fascism’ hinted at by the ‘revisionists’ Irish Free State. O’Casey, the simple- echoed something Ben Barnes said, to the bears some strange fruit here. We get minded Socialist (later Stalinist), yearned effect that the Abbey was the first national distorted feedback, as from electronic for a proto-Bolshevik 1916. Yeats felt theatre “in the world” to receive a State megaphones, reminiscent of those pseudo-aristocratic, quasi-Fascistic subsidy. Surely the Soviet State, with (doctored) films shown on telly featuring contempt for the plain bourgeois Republic- Lunacharsky as Minister of Culture, Hitler. But such things were not available in-all-but-name, Saorstát—despite the fact heavily subsidised theatres in their scores in 1916. The shadow of the Figure in the that the same Saorstát was excessively if not hundreds? The Palaces of Culture in Window is Nosferatu-like, squat and long- kind to him, making him a Senator and eastern Europe (the erstwhile ‘Soviet taloned. The effect was comic rather than putting him on all manner of Boards and Bloc’), much sneered-at in the 1950s, sinister, as was the plummy voice adopted Committees. mostly dated from the Hapsburg period by the actor. Pearse was a middle-class (presumably set up by Lueger and his ilk). Dubliner of a period when Irish people It was at this point that Dudley Edwards It may be true to say that these things were spoke in the tongue of their own region or said that “1916 was bad”, though that not national theatres, but municipal, Province: bourgeois north Germans cannot convey the actual emphasis: it was regional and provincial, though they derided Hitler for his plebeian, Austrian, more like “Nineteen Sixteen WAS BAD!” mostly had full professional staffs and accent. Shortly after this the audience was asked ensembles (something else sneered at in to participate, I was ignored. The first the good old days—these people were Clitheroe and another Citizen Army speaker expressed a fairly raw Republican mere ‘civil servants’!) man, Brennan, and their Volunteer friend viewpoint. He said that O’Casey was Lieutenant Langdon, celebrate the speech interesting in that the ‘Irish Renaissance’ I came to the slightly glum conclusion by throwing their glasses (as in drinking tended to be made up of middle class that Barnes and Brown meant the ‘English- vessels) through handy windows. Protestants and working class Catholics. speaking world’, in making their claim. Whatever point was being made here, And O’Casey was a working class And that the English-speaking world (and a point was being made, by O’Casey Protestant—not to mention a Socialist and actually means England, to the exclusion and by Ben Barnes) escaped me: possibly a Republican, This man went out of his of nearly all of the vital bits of the English- childishness was being hinted at. Earlier way to rebut everything Dudley Edwards speaking world. The USA is the heartland in the play-script, Clitheroe was shown as had said about 1916. His grandfather was of English-language culture and has been being jealous of Brennan because the latter a volunteer in the Citizen Army and was a since, at least, the 1920s. And Australia got a Captainship and he did not. He is at militant in the IT&G, and he was proud of has been producing ‘cultural product’ that this demonstration because “Commandant those facts. It was only afterwards that it is interesting since the 1950s. General Connolly” appointed him a struck me that he was probably saying that ‘Revisionism’ as put forward by Ruth Captain. Nora had opened, and hidden, he was a working class Dublin Protestant Dudley Edwards and Terence Brown really the letter with the details of this promotion. and Socialist-Republican. Stephen Regan seems to be a form of nostalgia for Imperial A ‘voice-off’, presumably Connolly’s, nodded in agreement at the first part of England, but the latter has settled down orders the “First Dublin Battalion, Irish this intervention. He nodded as vigorously into being a particularly obedient satellite Citizen Army” to “quick march”. when the speaker went on to defend of the USA. Connolly was anything but a fantasist, he “1916” . Someone in the audience Seán McGouran did not have battalions at his disposal, and applauded this intervention. One got the To Be Continued 14 precedes being; that what we are is what debate in Continental Europe and none we do; and that we have the choice “to here is that in Continental Europe there is do”. still such a thing as “journalism” whereas Shorts Was he the greatest philosopher of the in this country we have only “hacks”? twentieth century? It is impossible to say. The Orange Order & the Reform Movement He admitted that many of his ideas came McDowell and Mandela The Dublin and Wicklow District of from Heidegger. A few years ago the English comedian the Orange Order website has some But to the French he represented Ricky Gervaise said that prison was a interesting information on the Reform philosophy come down from on high and good deterrent because when Nelson Movement. The Reform Movement is the living in the world. He was philosophy Mandela was released he didn’t re-offend. made flesh: the toad who became a prince, A lot of people like Gervaise’s “cringe” group which last September had a well the man with the bottle glasses who loved publicised meeting in the Mansion House inducing humour. But when Michael Simone de Beauvoir; who proclaimed his McDowell declared that Bobby Sands was addressed by former Taoiseach, John solidarity with striking baggage handlers; a criminal no one laughed. He was quite Bruton. The following is an extract from who opposed French Imperialism in serious. It would be interesting to know the Order’s website: Algeria; whose house was blown up twice whether our justice minister regards by OAS fascists; who said “every anti- “In 1996 some members of the Mandela as an “ex con”. If Mandela was institution along with others got together communist is a dog”; who refused the Nobel Prize for literature because since not a criminal, what distinguishes Mand- to form the non-denominational Reform ela’s lawbreaking from that of Sands? Movement, which was launched in 1998. the Algerian war had ended it was of no Once again members of the Orange use to the world; who braved ridicule and addressed striking Renault factory workers Bolkestein in France Institution in the Republic, co-operating from the top of a barrel. The author of the notorious EU with others, were the first to re enter the France’s Patron Saint! Services Directive made a visit to Paris in political arena since independence. The April. Fritz Bolkestein has a holiday home Reform Movement represents all those The Spirit of the Good Friday Agreement in Maubeuge in Northern France and he who regard themselves as British.Irish, The IRA’s recent statements on the suggested that maybe it would be a good descendants of the old southern Unionist McCartney killing are interesting. It has thing if there was an influx of Polish tradition, Redmondite and post indicated that it was prepared to shoot plumbers because he couldn’t find any Nationalist. Along with others we are those responsible for the murder. The when he was on his holidays. This actively promoting greater integration McCartney family has requested it not to heartrending situation prompted an within these Islands; we would argue and it has acceded. Instead it has urged all inspirational suggestion from the socialist that the Republic of Ireland rejoins the those with information to make it available. mayor of that small town: “have you tried Commonwealth of nations.” The IRA has never accepted the British the yellow pages?” Apparently, there are We just thought readers would like to presence in Northern Ireland. Neither has 13 French plumbers in that small area. know! (More on this subject can be found in the a significant proportion of the Nationalist But maybe this misses the point. current issue of Church & State (Spring 2005). Ed.) population. The problem with not Perhaps Fritz prefers to pay Polish rather recognising the state and also not having than French rates. Syria and Lebanon a state of your own is that it is difficult to The situation in the Lebanon following control anti social behaviour within your Prince Rainier Dies the assassination of Rafic Hariri is very own community. Prison is not an option. So the old rogue finally snuffed it serious. It has enabled the USA with the Therefore punishment beatings, shootings within days of the Pope’s death. What can support of France to interfere its internal and killings are the only means of ensuring be said about Monaco? The principality affairs. UN resolution 1559 requiring the order. conspired with the Nazis during the withdrawal of Syrian forces is not a posit- The recent IRA statements indicate an Occupation of France and continues to ive development. It risks disrupting the accommodation with the British State, facilitate money laundering. The marriage of Grace Kelly, which was arranged by fragile balance of forces in that divided very much in the spirit of the Good Friday country. the American mafia, gave a glamorous Agreement. façade to the sordid economic edifice. The Hezbollah mobilised hundreds of De Gaulle was right. The whole thousands on the streets of Beirut to oppose Irish Times & Debate operation should be closed down. Syrian withdrawal. This group represents Mary Raftery, in an article on the the Shia Muslim minority in Lebanon and Bolkestein Directive, says the following: The Greatest Frenchman “That any serious debate on this should conducted a military campaign to push And De Gaulle was voted the greatest Israeli forces out of South Lebanon, which have passed Ireland by is a poor reflection on a Government which will shortly be by French television viewers. A similar happened in 2000. poll in Britain voted Churchill the greatest It is very clear that the US is up to no expecting us to march, sheep-like, into the polls to pass another piece of EU Briton and the Germans voted for good in the region. Its objective is to Adenauer. Adenauer and De Gaulle shaped isolate Iran and as a preliminary to weaken legislation—its new constitution” (The Irish Times, 10.3.05). the post war era in their respective Iran’s allies in the region: Syria and the countries, while Churchill’s influence on Hezbollah. Leaving aside the question of whether the proposed Constitution can be described post war Britain was negligible. The role of France in all this is very The French poll threw up the usual disappointing. It appears to have aband- accurately as a “piece of legislation”, it is amazing that she considers the responsib- absurdities. The tennis player and rock oned its independent foreign policy in the ility for political debate to rest with the singer Yannick Noah finished ahead of last year and is anxious to develop more Government. Not for the first time we ask the well known goalkeeper and writer friendly relations with the United States ourselves: is there an independent press in Albert Camus. Brigitte Bardot was even if this further destabilizes the Middle this country? Raftery seems to think that if considered greater than Balzac and East. the Government doesn’t initiate a debate, Maupassant. there will be no debate. She may be right, But then again, who can say for certain France’s Patron Saint (1905-1980) but we don’t expect such an open admis- that natural physical beauty is of less This year is the centenary of Jean Paul sion of the fact from a journalist. value than that which is crafted by great Sartre’s birth. He believed that existence Could it be that the real reason there is intellects? 15 The second Report concerns a meeting in Cork by one of Foster’s acolytes, Bernard O’Donoghue. It indicates that he is losing Art And Poetry: his way in his efforts to emulate his guru.

Two Reviews The Annual Yeats Lecture, UCC 18th March 2005. Editorial Note: Rarely are we delighted to reprint an extract from the Irish Times but the following review by Luke Dodd deserves to be up in lights. We note that this piece is not Yeats, The Love-Poet reproduced in the electronic version of the Irish Times, the self-proclaimed ‘journal of “There is no doubt that, in the record’. This is regrettable as it sums up Roy Foster for the sham that he is. Western European literary tradition, it is decidedly against a poet’s interests growing dominance of a native middle class to descend to the political, in our era REPORT: A Review of Conquering Eng- at least….” land, National Portrait Gallery, London in the latter half of the 19th century (not to mention the obliteration of half the population (Involved Imaginings: Tom Paulin by through death and emigration between 1840 Bernard O’Donoghue, p171 in The Chosen “Conquering England, curated by Roy Ground, Essays on the Contemporary and 1850, and the crystallisation of the Foster and Fintan Cullen, is an attempt to use Poetry of Northern Ireland. Edited by Neil centuries-old grievance against England). the collections of the National Portrait Gallery Corcoran, Wales, 1992.) in London (and loans from other institutions) “Similarly, the wealth of overtly racist images of Irish people from the 18th century to explore “the cultural and political diversity This year the Yeats lecture was of the Irish presence in London” during the onward is sidestepped even where they exist for some of the key individuals in the incorporated into the George Moore reign of Victoria, through visual representa- Conference and was given by Professor tions of the key players. The players in exhibition. An 1835 print of Daniel O’Connell question are members of the burgeoning with two Irish Whig politicians by John Doyle Bernard O’Donoghue, Oxford. There was middle class which emerged in post-Famine has been included. initial talk of the Professor’s paper being Ireland, who emigrated to London or spent “Would the context not have been greatly about Yeats And George Moore. given the significant time there, and includes O’Con- enriched by its juxtaposition alongside occasion but for some reason this was nell, Parnell, Years, Wilde, Boucicault, McLean’s 1829 broadsheet entitled A Sketch dropped. It was finally given as Yeats the Carson, Shaw, Lecky, Maclise, etc. of the Great Agi Tater showing O’Connell as Love-Poet and that was a loss because it “Despite the familiar nature of the subject a bloated potato tuber urinating through an would have made for interesting listening matter, the illustrative material on which the orifice entitled the “pope’s eye” onto to hear what O’Donoghue would have exhibition is based is not particularly well- “Protestant Ground”? It’s not that caricature made of the Yeats/Moore association. As known and largely ephemeral—photographs, is excluded—a Beerbohm watercolour from we assembled in Boole 2 at 2.30 p.m. after sketches, caricatures, and prints. Material 1904 pokes fun at a foppish Yeats and registering for the Conference, which was such as this requires a large degree of context- befuddled Moore—but where it is included, to run from the 18th—20th March, word the focus is decidedly soft. ualisation to impose a narrative on it. As is came through that our speaker was circling usually the case, representations of, or by, the “In a passage as insensitive as it is archaic, the catalogue refers to “the Irish penchant for over Cork and was unable to land due to Irish in England can rarely be taken at face fog. After an hour of this, the plane was value. The emigrant experience is very parti- street vending in the capital” in the context of a number of women who were discovered by diverted to Shannon and the Professor cular. It involves dislocation, a posture, a was ferried with due speed and arrived wariness, in the case of the Irish experience in artists while working as street sellers. The hastily, driven, as he later told us by a very England, it sometimes allowed a large degree word “penchant” hardly conveys the dire of personal license. poverty which characterised the lives of this kind man, Mr. O’Leary from Leap. John “One of the great difficulties of the underclass. Similarly, the language used to Fitzgerald, the Boole Librarian updated exhibition and catalogue is the attempt to describe the models themselves in some us from time to time about the whereabouts lump together the exploits and influence of instances perpetuates the stereotypical and of our lecturer and we were given tea/ very diverse professions—politicians, artists, patronising tone of contemporary accounts. coffee while we waited. Cullen writes of Julia Margaret Cameron’s artists’ models, writers, journalists. For Mr. Fitzgerald also told us that this example, none of the artists included in the portraits of Mary Ryan, in terms of her show come close to the achievements of “transformation of an exiled vagrant into an was the third lecture in the Annual Yeats some of the literary figures. This difficulty is angelic beauty”. One is reminded of de series, which was sponsored by the ESB. further compounded by a striking ahistoricism Valera’s image of “comely maidens”! Warwick Gould and Roy Foster had given which is, presumably, intended. Scant “Cullen also refers to Kathleen Newton the former two lectures and now our third who modelled for Tissot as “the product of an reference is made to the massive exodus of lecturer in this series was a man from Irish Catholic upbringing” and “convent-edu- Irish people to England, the historical context Cullen, Co. Cork who had moved to which had brought it about, and the general cated”, seeming to assume that here Oxford. He was also a poet himself with hostility toward the Irish which this exodus background somehow precluded her trans- generated. The subjects of this exhibition gressiveness. The curators fail to recognise several major collections to his credit and were not pioneers—they only make sense in that rescuing these women from obscurity had been awarded the Poetry Book Section the context of a much larger experience. To only to re-cast them as muse, mistress or wife Choice. (Fitzgerald neglected to inform be fair, the exhibition space is limited and the is a far cry from giving them a voice. the audience that O’Donoghue won the curators are explicit about the narrowness of “A great deal might be revealed if all the elements of this exhibition minus the captions Whitbread Prize for his collection their focus. But the picture that emerges is Gunpowder in 1995 and has since been cosy to the point of blandness. and catalogue were re-made elsewhere using “References to the Union between Ireland two different curators with different political shortlisted for the prestigious T.S. Eliot and England are rare, its blatant inequality is perspectives. I’m not saying that a different prize amongst others.) Fitzgerald told us ignored—the only reference to Ireland’s approach to the material would be any truer— that O’Donoghue had been published in colonial status is made by the Director of the material of this sort is amenable to any number the London Review of Books and the Irish of interpretations. However, a firm historical NPG, Sandy Nairne, in his introduction to the Times and was a notable scholar in Medi- context and some degree of sensitivity to the catalogue. The Famine is represented by a eval English and was a Director of the single painting—Robert George Kelly’s An representation of women would be Yeats Summer School in Sligo. O’Dono- Ejectment in Ireland from 1847-8—although fundamental starting points.” more than any other event, it led to the (Irish Times 18.3.05) ghue’s scholarly profile is again more 16 extensive than Fitzgerald concedes. He is Professor had given leaflets to John poetry was in itself a kind of cure. Illicit a renowned lecturer in Old and Middle Fitzgerald to distribute among the love doomed by social edict. Fidelity was English Language and Literature and the audience. On the A4 sheet were ten of the no reward at the cost of sexual fulfilment History Use and Theory of the English love poems by Yeats and now he referred as James Joyce made abundantly clear, a Language in Wadham College where he is to one of them, Broken Dreams (1915). man full of rage and lust. He proceeded to read from the poem about Yeats referred to medieval romance also the Warden. Gonne’s “small hands”, a perfect example but Christian peace and domestic beauty The Professor began by thanking us all of the particularist in Yeats. What struck were not in Yeats’s poetry. The hero of for our forbearance in waiting and by me was O’Donoghue’s reading of the the German epic Parsifal prayed to his recounting his experience in modern air- poem. He is a superb reader of poems— lover, not to God/Our Lady and this travel, which everyone seemed to empath- being a poet himself—yet he merely read appealed to Yeats—to drink only the love ise with. He went on to say how honoured the lines so mundanely as though they potion. (I would think from what I know he was to be taking part in these prestigious were mere ingredients in a food recipe. of Parsifal from Wagner’s opera of that lectures at UCC, following in the footsteps The Spur was a poem addressed to name that O’Donoghue is quite wrong of the great Warwick Gould and Roy another lover, Dorothy Wellesley and about that epic as Mike Ashman makes Foster. In a folksy way he recounted that showed a survival of lasciviousness/lust clear: “Pace generations of (mostly this was the college where all his sisters into his old age. But Bernard O’Donoghue British) critical opinion, Parsifal is not a studied and where he himself could have wished to address the fact that Maud Gonne ‘religious or ‘Christian’ work”, see gone except he left the country in 1962. had got written out as a major presence in Parsifal. Richard Wagner. John Calder. He had however studied for a year in the poetry of Yeats. She was a classic London. 1986.) O’Donoghue instanced Presentation College and spoke movingly version of a classic presence, from the Yeats’s poem Adam’s Curse and again the of the great spell effected on him by his troubadours to present day for this love- Professor read in a leaden way: teacher there—the great Dan Donovan. lorn poet, this unrequited lover. His “I had a thought for no one’s by your ears: Such was the latter’s effect on him that his approach could be seen as “sexual That you were beautiful, and that I strove initial intention of studying engineering harassment” in modern times. (Very little To love you in the old high way of love;” fell by the wayside as he found himself audience laughter here at the Professor’s This poem was written in 1902 after Gonne drawn more and more to Literature. lame attempt at humour.) had refused to marry the poet. So courtly love becomes important for Yeats, who O’Donoghue intended to focus on From the 19th century to modern era, sees in himself a heretic, but also a figure Yeats’s love poetry and Yeats as lover and from Fay Weldon to Flaubert’s Madame of refinement and nobility. (G. Moore therefore would be investigating the rather Bovary and Thomas Hardy’s The Well- would have laughed at such Yeatsian “private” Yeats rather than the “public” Beloved, we could see a tendency to fall in delusions of nobility and indeed he did.) one. He said that this aspect of Yeats is love with the unattainable. Arranged mar- neglected or sidelined in favour of the riage was seen as a better business. But O’Donoghue then talked of Constance great “public Yeats”—but he quickly why set out to look for the object of Gore-Booth and sotto voce called her praised Roy Foster’s “magisterial biog- unattainable love—the answer was Countess Markievicz. But bizarrely he raphy”. Yeats had many themes for his “courtly love”, “individual passion”—the just mentioned her, promising to come poetry, the occult being very prominent, modern word for it was “desire”. He also back to her. He never did, and this and then of course his great poems on old alluded here to C.S Lewis in 1932 and the happened a couple of times and always age, sickness, and exile—all put him in Provincial troubadours of 12th century. about the most interesting and political the foremost ranks of poets of the English (Though I would have thought it more matters. There was a strong feeling that language. interesting if he had acknowledged O’Donoghue was ‘losing it’ and Yeats’s great unrequited love was Lewis’s reading of metaphor, relating it to incoherence had set in. Maud Gonne— Love being one of the Yeats’s line, “wisdom speaks first in As O’Donoghue dilated about Maud classic themes of poetry like Birds and images”, see The Poetic Image by C.S. Gonne and her presence in the poetry of Lewis. Jonathan Cape, London, 1947, p25). Religion (Audience laughter). Elizabeth Yeats, there was a bit of a commotion in Butler Cullingford—a former Director of All spoke of the pain of love and this the lecture theatre. One by hesitant one, a the Yeats Summer School—rather insisted was at its most compelling in The Tower. number of young people, some in school on the issue of gender but for O’Donoghue Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne in 1902 uniforms, began to get up and the slap of the love poems were more important. A.N. and famously wrote that “the troubling of the upturning seats echoed throughout the Jeffares was one scholar who had written my life began in 1884”. O’Donoghue also room. Then gathering pace, a number of on this theme of what O’Donoghue was to referred to C.S. Lewis and “adultery”— students and others left the lecture much subsequently term “courtly love poetry”. another requisite for courtly love, though to the bewilderment of the rest of us, not But for the speaker what was really he didn’t use this word with regards to to mind the Professor himself. But I don’t important about these poems was the Yeats. (He could have added that the think that some of the audience were “particularist” in them. Prayer For My writer Rosamond Lehmann, Lewis’ lover surprised that others wanted to leave at Daughter might be thought unusual for a for some nine years might quibble with this point, or at any point. After O’Dono- love poem, even surprising for an obvious the “courtly” part of his description as she ghue had finished his lecture, a smiling reason but it was definitely constituted as never recovered from his betrayal of her John Fitzgerald told us all that the young a “medieval love poem”. with Jill Balcon. Of course Lehmann people had come up from a school in Cobh Maud Gonne was Yeats’s inamorata. herself had affairs as did all the and had to leave to get their train back Plutarch had Laura, Dante had Beatrice, Bloomsbury set, though even they would home. I could not blame for choosing and Keats had Fanny Bryce. But we never have had the effrontery to call their their train rather than this lecture. Amongst didn’t know anything about them; we sexual doings and dallyings “courtly”) many professors and fellow lecturers don’t know, for example, how big their during the following days, there was much heads were, so we were missing that Love poetry was a Middle Eastern anger over the way this incident occurred. “particularising aspect” that Yeats had convention from Arabia. But this didn’t As I watched a grinning Colbert Kearney, supplied. suit the West; passion was inimicable to Professor of English who mounted the the formulation of good society and family. stage to chair the Q & A session after O’ At the beginning of the lecture the O’Donoghue theorised that writing love Donoghue’s lecture, I sensed an academic 17 jealousy being played out. clearly was unable to answer it—and said intentionally the presence of Gonne and But the Oxford academic went on so—which came as a shock to many. her effect on his work. All the biographers speaking of Jung and the way Yeats do likewise, some more than the others. Q: Did Maud Gonne reflect Yeats’s transmuted his love for Gonne into love So how can O’Donoghue assert that Gonne for a kind of angel—this was a very politics? has been excised from the poet’s life? medieval thing, but then ‘medievalism A: (Due to the noise I didn’t catch all What indeed was all this brouhaha about the answer) More extreme and individual was in the air’. English tradition from the “courtly love”? 12th century onwards became the arche- politics are involved with Yeats. type for all subsequent love poetry. Pre- Q: Yeats was Gonne’s love? Could the answer lie in O’Donoghue’s A: Up to 1980 it was thought in Raphaelite poems, A.E. Houseman, own words quoted at the beginning of this influenced Yeats. Joy was one of the most scholarship that Yeats was sex-starved review in an almost forgotten essay? As a frequently recurring words in his poetry. but he was doing very well. He was an disciple/acolyte of Roy Foster, O’Dono- advocate of physical love as well. ghue has political baggage whether he Then came a reading from Vacillation Q: Could you explain the lines from likes it or not, but it is the type of baggage (1931-32). Though Yeats had an affair Broken Dreams beginning with “Your that drags him into an intellectual cul de with Olivia Shakespear, Gonne always small hands were not beautiful…? sac. He seems a good man fallen among remained in Yeats’s heart. Conor Cruise A: (Silence) Pause while the Professor revisionists and a sorry sight if this lecture O’Brien wrote a “great essay”, Passion looked perplexed by this American was anything to go by. The ESB should And Cunning: An Essay On The Politics woman’s question. He didn’t seem to want see the light and not waste our money on of W.B. Yeats. Yeats could be quite to be nasty but well the words are—self- any more of this intellectual meandering. calculating, as O’Brien points out, and explanatory—and he said quite kindly Michael Stack this was important. O’Donoghue thought words to this effect and that people become O’Brien was King Mark to Yeats’s Tristan. obsessed by their imperfections and perhaps Yeats was so obsessed. Letter to Editor The Gonne, in When You Are Old Q: You didn’t mention “romantic”? (1891), has a classic presence. Yeats A: (Long silence while Professor maintained that the first four lines were Kearney looked jolly.) Well . . . It was the Kennedy at Chappaquiddick not a translation—though O’Donoghue “courtly love tradition” but the romantic The Irish Political Review / The Northern argued that they were clearly from poets do not name the object. (This seemed Sta r, April 2005, page 5, made a brief reference Ronsard. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford very lame indeed.) to the Senator Edward Kennedy / called that type of attention “sexual Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, USA, July bullying”, but one couldn’t have courtly Looking over these notes, did O’Dono- 18-19, 1969 incident, in which Mary Jo bullying. John MacBride was the one ghue substantiate his theory that Yeats Kopechne drowned in his upside-down car who falsely loved Maud Gonne, according innovated by particularising, whilst that had entered the water from the side of Dike to Yeats, and so there were no prizes for remaining in the courtly tradition? I would Bridge. The reference included the assertion guessing who was the “true lover”. True have to answer “no”. Just a quick scan of that Edward Kennedy was the driver of the car. love loves the “pilgrim soul”—not the courtly love poetry reveals that “particular- In Edward Kennedy’s statement to the yellow hair, sexually. ising” was quite common. The troubadour police he said that he was the driver. However, Professor O’Donoghue put forward Bernart de Ventadour’s verses addressed several years ago I saw a television two propositions: to Eleanor of Aquitane were full of it: documentary that suggested that this may not 1. The political application of Yeats’s “ Ah, my good and longed-for have been the case and that Kennedy might ideas derived from Courtly Love and this beloved, with well formed figure sweet have exited the car a distance before the bridge, was his idea of the world. and slender, with fresh, pretty coloured leaving it to be driven by a drunken Kopechne. 2. Maud Gonne was a real “presence” skin…” The proposed reason for Kennedy leaving the in the poetry: she broke into his later years Chaucer’s Troilius and Criseyde also had car was that they were being followed by the with a great shock. this aspect of the particular: police and he did not want to risk a traffic stop “Her tender arms, her back full straight and and possible subsequent scandal of him, as a Cyril Cusack’s voice reading Broken soft, married man and US senator, being found Dreams was very memorable for Bernard Her slender flanks, all fleshy, smooth and alone with a woman in a car late at night. O’Donoghue. Yeats was 50 when he white…… Kennedy admitted to leaving the scene and wrote that poem in 1915. Maud Gonne Her snowy throat, her breasts full round only contacting the police later in the day. He retained her power—the poem Her Praise and light”. said that he did not contact the police at the has classic kind of love—her hands old, time because he was in shock. He denied passion versus society. The courtly love But to suggest, as O’Donoghue does, seeing nearby houses where he could have lady was individualised and identified in that Gonne has been written out of gone to for help, one of which he had passed Yeats—she was a “complete woman”. commentary on Yeats’s poetry is just 150 yards before the accident. And this, according to O’Donoghue, was wrong. In 1971, A. Norman Jeffares One might speculate whether Kennedy Yeats’s most remarkable and unique wrote a book on W.B. Yeats (published by would have ever gone to the police if were not achievement and he asserted that it was Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. London) in for the fact that his ownership of the car tied slightly written out of the Yeatsian which he devotes a chapter to Yeats as him to the death. tradition. Love Poet. There is no suggestion of the http://www.ytedk.com, an Internet site for “courtly love” tradition however. Terry “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About A Q&A Session followed, chaired by Eagleton in the Field Day pamphlet Crazy Ted Kennedy”. This site contains extensive Professor Colbert Kearney. As a lot of John and the Bishop (CUP, 1998) gives a coverage of the circumstances surrounding the people left the lecture at this juncture, a powerful, masterly reading of Gonne in infamous accident at Chappaquiddick”, quotes second exodus, it was difficult to hear the poetry of Yeats (see in particular pages Detective Bernie Flynn as saying that Kennedy what was going on. 290-291 where he is profoundly at odds was fleeing a policeman (though he thinks that A young man who asked a question at with what O’Donoghue says). And Roy Kennedy was driving when the car hit the the beginning on the significance of courtly Foster himself acknowledges that the great water). Rather than reporting the accident love for Yeats, challenging the whole Richard Ellman biography of the poet, immediately to the police, Kennedy got two basis of the lecture. O’Donoghue quite The Man And The Masks, centralised lawyer friends to help him try and rescue 18 Kopechne from the car. Kennedy used lawyer- were the products of them, after all). area with “nearly 400,000” people as client privilege to prevent them from giving opposed to the current less than 300,000. The boundary of Belfast has not any information to authorities. This would ensure that the Unionists will changed since then, and the city has turned The story crosses time and space, and again dominate the city—and would ‘Taig: the Catholics are not quite in a could be true of any place on any occasion: a enable them behave in the dog-in-a- majority, but they now dominate the child, who has received much help in the past manger manner everyone remembers from politics of the place. There have been a from a powerful parent, does not take the days when they were in the ascendant. responsibility for their actions. number of Catholic Mayors, even a Sinn I saw a similar story related several years Féin Mayor, and several Deputy Mayors According to Collins, the Electoral ago in the newspaper US Today. A wayward Yes, it’s a long way from dear old David Commission is also making a mess of the son of a brewing family, had an accident in an Bleakley and the other Lay Preachers of constituency boundaries of the Assembly open top car, with a waitress, who was the only the NILP. and Westminster seats in the interests of passenger, being thrown from his car and killed. maintaining Unionist majorities. This The drunk son did not call the police. He called One reason why the Catholics dominate will entail some very unfair differences in his father’s lawyer, who in turn called the the politics of the town is, as Jude Collins seat sizes; for instance, one of 20,000 police. He refused to provide information to put in in Daily Ireland (Thurs. 17.03.05), people between South Belfast (currently a the police, and would not even admit that he “…because a lot of Protestants, notably was driving (as opposed to being the passenger, the well-heeled variety who once lived in Sinn Féin possible seat within the next with the girl driving). He was never charged. the Malone Road area, couldn’t stand the few years), and North Down. (The The Real McCoy, USA thought of having taig neighbours and populations are to be 106,000 and 86,000 moved out…”. It is a point worth making, respectively.) especially as the middle classes are always Collins asks why the SDLP and Sinn in a hurry to blame the plebs for any Féin are allowing this to happen—but it is Ulster’s Hope, or sectarian bad vibes. surely more apposite to ask what the The New Gerrymander Apparently there are plans to change Westminster Government is doing this state of affairs. The Electoral allowing this to happen? It has been mentioned in this Commission is devising a now Council Seán McGouran publication that old Communist habits die hard. The successor bodies to the ex- Soviet Bloc Communist Parties have sometimes won elections fair and square— but lost them because they’d cheated. The Ulster Unionists were very fond of sometimes pointless bits of gerry- Conclusion mandering. As late as 1968 the Lord Review of Das Kapital, Part 12 Mayor of Belfast a man called Allen, who had a Dublin accent, boasted that they had succeeded in gerrymandering Belfast’s There is a difference in tone between in Part 4 in this series, for capitalism to boundaries. This was at a big, televised, the first two volumes of Capital on the one develop, the majority of the population municipal bean-feast, which was only hand and the third volume on the other. In must be denied a means of subsistence attended by Unionists in those halcyon Volume 1 the capitalist system is described and therefore be made available for days He seemed surprised to be asked if as a system of exploitation. The worker is exploitation by a capitalist class. this was the best way to run a democratic a wage slave but not in the same way as the city. And the Labour Party had been slaves of ancient times. He enters freely In all of this Marx points to a glaring caught red-handed attempting to do the into a contract with the capitalist. contradiction in the system. On the one same on London! hand capitalism abolishes private However the freedom of the worker is production or production by the producer What the Unionists were up to was limited by the conditions in which he for his own private needs. It “socialises” refusing to extend the boundaries out to finds himself. He does not have access to production in the sense that production is their natural limits. There would have the means of production so he is forced produced for society. On the other hand, been too many Taigs in Belfast, and they into a contract with the capitalist, who the ownership and control of production would have voted for—probably the NILP does own the means of production. The remains in private hands. (Northern Ireland Labour Party), or capitalist takes advantage of the weak possibly the Liberals. At the time, both position of the worker to give him a Volume 2 continues some of the themes these essentially ‘let’s-pretend’ groups subsistence wage. The value that the of Volume 1 but Marx also shows how were making serious inroads into the worker produces for the capitalist is greater vulnerable the capitalist system is to crisis. Unionist vote, especially the NILP. Sinn than the value that the capitalist pays for In particular, it has difficulties in reproduc- Féin and the Hibernian Nationalist Party his services. This is the source of the ing the means of production because of were nowhere, especially in Belfast. The capitalist’s profit. All value is created by time lags between the expenditure of now-defunct National Democrats were an the worker but a portion of that value is capital and the return of that capital in the attempt to blunt the edge of the Liberal expropriated by the capitalist. form of sales revenue. This problem is challenge, in particular among the growing exacerbated by the tendency of capitalism Catholic middle class. But they were not The unfavourable conditions in which to centralise and concentrate capital. In really very successful, as they had to the worker finds himself are not an order to increase the forces of production acknowledge the reality of the Welfare accident, but the product of a long period more and more capital is sunk into fixed State and the 1945 Education Act (they of historical development. As discussed capital. This causes periodic crises of 19 overproduction with the tendency for such of Capitalism. Marx was quite vague as to opposed. crises to become more intense and how the transition would be made from frequent. Capitalism to Socialism, but in Chapter There are errors in some of the details 27 of Volume 3 he indicated that the in Marx’s analysis of capitalism. But in all Having read the first two volumes of greater consolidation of trusts or joint the essentials Marx was correct. There are Capital the reader might have expected stock companies had paved the way for two insights of Marx which, if anything, the third volume to develop some of the the future expropriation by the whole of are more relevant today than they were in themes in the first two volumes. In particu- society. He also indicated that the his own time. The first insight is the idea lar, if he has also read the Communist development of monopolies would require that capitalism socialised production. The Manifesto it would have been reasonable greater state interference. manufacturer of machines cannot exist in to assume that Volume 3 would have been isolation from the manufacturer of a detailed working out of how the capitalist In my view Marx anticipated that consumer goods. What happens in one system was going to collapse and maybe competition in capitalism would event- branch of industry affects another branch. some hints as to how Communists might ually diminish as a result of the growth of These tendencies which were in their hasten the process. monopolies. These monopolies would be infancy in Marx’s time are now much more amenable to state interference in the more pronounced. The second insight is Maybe even Marx himself intended working class interest than numerous the idea that capitalism has a tendency to Volume 3 to be something along these different companies competing against incorporate the world into its system. The lines. However much of his analysis in the each other. The transition to social owner- current word for this phenomenon is third volume would not necessarily lead ship of the means of production would “Globalisation”. to this conclusion. While there is nothing also be easier if there were a few large in this volume that contradicts the other monopolies in different branches of SOCIALISED PRODUCTION two volumes, he shows that there is more industry. Marx noticed that capitalism had the to the system than exploitation and tendency to eliminate private production instability. At present in most countries in the or production orientated towards satisfying developed world a significant portion of the direct needs of the producer. Instead, While capitalism has a tendency for the state bureaucracy is dedicated to production becomes orientated towards instability, it is also constantly trying to preventing the developments which Marx producing for society. But this “socialised” find a state of equilibrium. The centrifugal anticipated. The brief of “Competition production is mediated through the market force of competition forces companies to Agencies” is to prevent anti-competitive system. It is through the market that constantly change to avoid going bankrupt. practices. Such agencies have draconian commodities are allocated to the Such changes constantly prevent the powers, including the searching of the consumers in society. In a sense, product- system from settling down into an private homes of executives for evidence ion is “indirectly social” because the equilibrium state. The centripetal force of of collusion among competitors. commodities are not directly allocated to the average rate of profit prevents innovat- Apparently, the right-wing supporters of the consumers in society. ions which have no profitable social use these agencies believe that the free market Marx was also aware that the various from continuing to be produced. As cannot be trusted to be left to its own branches of production did not work in explained in Part 8, production gravitates devices. It needs strong state intervention isolation from each other. In Volume 2 he around the average social rate of profit. If to ensure that it works in the way it is tried to understand the relationship a branch of production achieves a rate of supposed to. between the production of means of profit above the average social rate, there In my view such agencies do not act in production (i.e. plant and machinery, raw will be an increase in the amount of social the working class or consumer interest. materials etc) and the production of resources allocated to it. The opposite They are ideologically-based and exist consumer goods (See Part 6 of this series). occurs if a branch of production has a rate purely to ensure that the virtues of You will have to look long and hard to find of profit below the average social rate. “competition” are maintained. Such agen- even an attempt to deal with this issue in cies believe that it’s okay to break up modern economics literature. But the Marx described the Capitalist system companies, with all the disruption that connections between the various branches as revolutionary. Its historic task is to that causes to the livelihoods of those of production are now much more increase the forces of production. In none affected. It is also okay to ban low prices profound than in Marx’s time. Also the of his writings is it suggested that, under a if such prices are below the costs of a connection between the final consumer Communist society, the forces of competitor. Again this is done in the name and the production process is much closer. production would continue to increase. of competition. In my view there is nothing On the contrary, the task of Communism wrong with the development of Modern computer software incorporat- was to take advantage of the capitalist monopolies. Usually the monopolistic ing the principles of “Enterprise Resource forces of production to benefit society as company has achieved that situation by Planning” recognises that a company is a whole. (The problem for Russian being better than its competitors. Often a composed of different departments which Communists was that they had to perform monopoly can benefit from economies of have to be co-ordinated. Also, the the historic tasks of both Capitalism and scale. The socialist response to these company’s activities have to be co- Communism.) “natural developments” of capitalism ordinated withthe actiuities of its suppliers In many ways Communism is a should be to use the state to control prices, and customers. While such software conservative philosophy (See Sir Tony’s or to tax at a high rate, the profits which responds to new business practices, it also Nightmare by Jack Lane, Irish Political have resulted from the monopoly position. encourages greater links between Review, November 2003). Communism Competition legislation and the bureaucra- companies in the supply chain and helps seeks to end the disruption and instability cies which accompany it should be to standardise best management practice. 20 Such software necessitates a re- resources to ensure that its supplies were In the computer industry, Microsoft organisation of management structures. It of the required quality. The main and Intel dominate their respective market is sometimes said that the benefit of competitor to this company is a Swiss segments. purchasing such software is not so much multinational. Between them the two This tendency for standardisation of the software itself but that it forces companies control about 80% of the French production processes and component parts companies to re-examine their business market. Apparently, Heinz baby foods is not confined within industries, it cuts processes and develop stronger links with have no appeal to the discriminating palate across different industries. The same their suppliers and customers. Such of the average French baby! components are found in washing software has become so powerful, all- machines, domestic boilers, televisions encompassing and complicated that it may A manufacturer supplying to a retailer etc. In most cases the printed circuit board not be practical for it to be used by one must also have a close relationship with is manufactured by Siemens. company, even one large multinational his customer. It is no longer just a question company. The tendency to centralise data of sharing sales information. In many Some people complain that the in one place in a multinational company cases the manufacturer shares the same products of capitalism have become bland may be replaced by the centralisation of databases as the retailer so that he can and uninteresting. This criticism is often data across whole industries. There are respond to changes in the market quickly. made of motor cars, but on the other hand many people who believe that there will Often he will have “on line” access to the most people would say that motor cars be no Computer Departments in companies stocks of his products in the retailer’s nowadays are more reliable than those of any more. The Chief Executive of Oracle premises. thirty years ago. believes that in future Computer facilities Another effect of the greater socialisa- will be bought as a service with each tion or integration of the production This tendency for product company drawing off the same centralised processes is the tendency for production standardisation has had the effect of computer resource. The Internet will to become standardised. Henry Ford was diminishing the ground on which products facilitate this development. supposed to have once said that you can can compete. A few years ago I attended have any car as long as it’s black. Such a a business conference of a large multi- This process of greater integration or comment is greeted with derision national in which it was concluded that, socialisation of the production process nowadays. Modern manufacturers would because its products were essentially the has changed the role of managers. It used not have such an arrogant attitude towards same as those of its competitors, the only to be the case that the job of a purchasing their customers, and yet modern car way that it could gain market share was by director was to bully his suppliers into manufacturers produce cars which are far being better at marketing. giving lower prices. Although that aspect more similar to each other than the cars of the job has not disappeared, far more is produced by different companies in Henry This tendency is exacerbated by expected now. The purchasing director Ford’s day. In many cases the same “competition” legislation. In France the must understand the production processes manufacturer supplies the same spare part effect of introducing laws to ensure that of his suppliers as well as the production to all the car manufacturers in the world. all Supermarket chains received the same process of the company that he works for. The other feature of the car industry is that price and could not sell below their costs He must understand which spare parts or it is centralised. There are hardly more in any product has significantly reduced components that his suppliers produce are than a dozen car manufacturers in the the scope for price competition. Instead of cheaper and which are more expensive. world. And among this exclusive group giving discounts on the invoice, manu- He then must see if the products in his own there are joint venture agreements among facturers give “marketing support” to company can be redesigned to take account some of them. Although the car manu- Supermarkets. Ten years ago such of the cost structure of his suppliers. In facturing plants might be dispersed supermarkets saw themselves as distribut- order for this process to work the throughout the world, the design and ion agents. Now each supermarket has relationship between the two companies planning of production is centralised. Such become a “brand”. must be very close. centralised planning not only determines It is now recognised that the success of the production of the car manufacturers, CONSUMPTION a business is determined by the quality of but also determines the production of the In Volume 1 Marx described the its suppliers as well as the demands of its suppliers of the automobile components. “fetishism of commodities” as the tend- customers. I worked with a French baby This is very far from the “Jeffersonian” ency for exchanges between people to food manufacturer with over 40% market ideal of rugged individuals competing assume the fantastic appearance of a share in France. A significant proportion against each other in the “free market”. relationship between things. But Marx of that company’s resources were allocated could have had only an inkling of how to controlling the quality of its supplies. This tendency for standardisation and modern marketing would develop. This included frequent visits to its fruit centralisation is evident in most industries. Marketing gurus have succeeded in and vegetable suppliers. Such visits In the Central Heating Industry practically convincing people that commodities have involved communicating with its suppliers all Oil burners, the main component in an magical properties. The BMW and what pesticides are or are not acceptable. Oil boiler are manufactured by a company Mercedes brands communicate an image For pesticides that are acceptable the called Riello. Practically all gas valves in about the owners of commodities with company also instructs its suppliers when Gas boilers are manufactured by Honey- these brands. Nike and Adidas obtain a and how often they should be applied. well. An American company manufactures very significant premium in price over Suppliers accept regular inspections by practically all the fluid used to close and other similar types of sportswear. At least the company to check that its policies are open thermostatic radiator valves. A 10% of the price of most consumer implemented. It is difficult to see how a Danish company, Grundfos, dominates products is accounted for by marketing smaller competitor would have the the pump market etc etc. expenditure. I would guess that the 21 percentage for the above mentioned brands Such a move will, of course, be agriculture are the industries which create is even higher. Marketing expenditure is denounced by the Globalists. International value. In general, service industries one of the wasteful consequences of capital wants unfettered access to national facilitate consumption from the wealth competition between similar products. markets, including the market for compan- that has been generated in the other two ies (the stock market). But what is in the sectors. A decline in manufacturing in the The links between the various interests of International capital is not developed world will also lead to a decline production processes in the supply chain necessarily in the interests of ordinary in its service industries. extend to the end point of the process, people. Of course, some of the service which is the act of consumption. It is At present International Capital can industries could be sustained if the sometimes said that in the “free market”, play countries off each other in order to developed world was to “live off” the in contrast to a “command economy” like obtain favourable tax treatment and developing world. The wealth of the world the Soviet Union, the consumer has reduced wage costs. Ireland is an example would be generated in the Third World freedom of choice. He is free in the sense of a country which has benefited from this and the vast profits would return to the that ultimately he makes the consumption game. It can be quite distasteful to listen to developed world to finance its service decision within the constraints of his right wing politicians in Ireland, such as industries. But the wealth generated could income. But he is not “free” to be left to his Charlie McCreevy and Mary Harney, boast only return to the owners of capital and own devices in making such choices. Vast about the virtues of their low tax policies. maybe those participating in pension resources are devoted to understanding But if other countries, such as France and funds. These people’s consumption would his fears, needs and desires with a view to Germany, decided to reduce their Corpor- be expected to support the service manipulating those emotions for the ation Tax rates and reduce public industries of the developed world. A purpose of buying commodities. expenditure, International capital would minority of “oligarchs” would keep the move to those countries at the expense of rest of us in low-paying service jobs. This CREATION OF THE WORLD MARKET Ireland. All that such a policy would is not a vision that I find particularly Marx noticed that the capitalist system achieve would be to increase the wealth of attractive. had a tendency for expansion which would international capital at the expense of the lead to the creation of a world market. The Some people say that farmers and States in Europe. tendency of Globalisation continues to be workers in Europe are selfish for wanting a characteristic of capitalism today. Capital A second reason why Ireland has to preserve their lifestyles. But why should has no national loyalties. Its ability to de- benefited from this game is that it is part of such groups give up their lifestyles? Who skill labour gives it the flexibility to locate the European Union. The protectionist, will benefit from free access to the almost anywhere in the world. This is “anti free market” policies of this Union European market? The lifting of undermining the living standards of the make a country within the Union more agricultural tariffs will benefit the working class in the developed world. attractive for International Capital than, Capitalist farms of the USA, South say, a country in the developing world. America, Australia, New Zealand and the An example of a company which is owners (e.g. Unilever) of large plantations experiencing the vicissitudes of Irish right wing politicians and journal- in the Third World. The European Globalisation is the French food company, ists should stop pretending that the success consumer might benefit from cuts in prices, Danone. of the Irish economy is for reasons other but the quality controls in other countries than the real reasons because in future are not as strict as in Europe. I think it is This company was founded in the Ireland might receive a taste of its own unlikely that the small farmer in Africa or 1960s by Antoine Riboud who comes medicine. The accession of the Eastern Asia producing for his home market is too from a Catholic family in Lyon. The culture European countries into the Union does worried about EU tariffs. The lifting of was one of respect for the workers. It still not augur well for Ireland. Is it too late for trade tariffs will benefit international boasts of this culture today. Although it is the Irish to discover the benefits of tax capital with no guarantee of any benefit the biggest food company in France, it is harmonisation across the Union? accruing to the workers of the Third World. small by comparison with other multi- national food companies such as Nestle, The problem with these developments Unilever and Coca Cola. Its size makes it A POLITICAL RESPONSE How should a political party, represent- is that Capital is organised on an vulnerable to a takeover. Although its ing workers’ interests, respond to these international scale. It seeks with the help exposure to the stock market has weakened developments? It should first of all of institutions like the WTO, IMF and its national ties it still has its head office in understand the problem. The problem is World Bank to maximise its sphere of Paris. All of this will change if it is bought. that international manufacturing capital influence by disabling states from It is likely that the culture of the group will by definition can move to anywhere in the interfering with its activities. In contrast change with adverse consequences for the world. Rights which have been won in the the State, which is the means by which workers. The best hope for the workers is developed world are being eroded as political parties can implement their an intervention by the French Government, capital moves to countries with lower policies, is organised by and large on which is not unlikely given that Jacques labour costs. national lines. Chirac has in the past being willing to protect French national interests. The There are some who believe that such Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to French Government party knows that there developments are inevitable, and even underestimate the power of the State. If is a significant proportion of the working desirable, and that there will be a division the State was so impotent the supporters class that feels that the national bourgeoisie of labour between manufacturing in the of the free market would not spend so has “sold out” to international capital. developing world and service industries much time castigating it. Chirac’s party is not willing to lose such in the developed world. But, as explained conservative votes to the National Front. in Part 9 of this series, manufacturing and At the very least a political party acting 22 in the working class interest should support conquer their home markets and then, and happens when such services are left to national and supra-national institutions only then, launch their products on the market forces. which preserve agricultural and industrial world market. However there are, to say the least, a production in the developed world. In But such policies are vigorously number of practical difficulties in implem- practical terms the Common Agricultural opposed by the WTO, IMF and World enting such a policy of social ownership Policy should be supported and demands Bank because they are not in the interests for manufacturing industry. The most for European agriculture to be organised of international capital. If we want to help obvious difficulty is that production is on free market lines should be resisted. If the Developing world we should oppose organised on an international scale. The we want to support developing countries the policies of these institutions which subsidiaries of a multi-national located in we should help them develop their own impose free market policies on poor one country often supply most of their industries and the means to protect their countries which even the most right-wing products to another subsidiary of the same fledgling industries. This includes of governments in the Developed world multi-national in another country and vice allowing them to protect themselves from would not consider implementing at home. versa. A State which decided to expropriate the dumping of cheap agricultural products If we want to help Third World countries such companies would quickly find itself (including EU products) from abroad. we should oppose the policy of the cut off from the International production European bank which only releases funds process. This would likely lead to a rapid If EU tariffs against imports are to Third World countries if those countries diminution of that country’s standard of necessary to protect manufacturing comply with the policies of the IMF. living. industry in Europe so be it! International Capital wants it both ways. On the one While the State has in the past being an OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION hand it wants to avail of cheap labour from effective engine for developing industry So far in this article I have advocated the developing world. On the other hand it (e.g. the Soviet Union in the 1930s), the policies which are conservative or wants to have unrestricted access to the social, or at least the state ownership, of defensive. They seek to prevent the living purchasing power of the developed world. the means of production has not proved to standards of working people in the Why should it have it all its own way? be an efficient means of allocating developed world from being eroded. But Why should workers sacrifice their hard- society’s resources (e.g. the Soviet Union Marx advocated the social ownership of fought gains? French workers might in the Brezhnev era). the means of production. How can this be wonder: what is the point of having a 35 achieved? As I have indicated in Part 8 of this hour week if you don’t have a job? series Marx himself showed in Volume 3 There is an overwhelming argument that the capitalist system effectively It is sometimes said that such protect- for the state control of the transport allocated resources and was constantly ionist policies would damage industry in infrastructure. This is because a transport adjusting itself in response to crises. He the developing world. But the industry system has what economists call positive never indicated how such resources would that is talked about is usually owned by externalities. This means that there are be allocated under a system of social American, European and Japanese social benefits over and above the benefits ownership. Also, many of the weaknesses capitalists. It just happens to be located in to the direct supplier and consumer of the of the system, which Marx identified in the Third World. “product”. For example a good transport Volume 2, were solved by Keynesian system is a precondition for the develop- policies pursued by the State (e.g. the If it is accepted that the lifting of trade ment of the economy. Also a good public “New Deal” and State expenditure policies barriers by the EU would undermine the transport system is a means of reducing of F.D. Roosevelt). livelihoods of farmers and workers in traffic on the roads. But such social Europe, the onus is on the advocates of benefits would not be taken into account A few years ago Pat Murphy of the Globalism to prove that such policies by a private investor in transport. If left to Larkin Centre expressed the view that the would ameliorate the position of the poor the market, there would be investment socialist movement made an error in trying in the Third World. But does anyone, that would be less than the social optimum. to abolish private property and to seek to outside the Economics departments of A cursory comparison of the transport obtain the social ownership of the means Universities, seriously believe that the systems of Britain and France illustrates of production. Arguably, such a view is poor Third World farmer is bursting to this point. not inconsistent with Marx’s analysis in launch his products on the European and Volume 3! The same arguments can be used for American markets? Does anyone seriously Health and Education. There are social Production is socialised but is privately believe that the only things preventing benefits in having a healthy and educated owned according to Marx. But what does him from competing against the society. Also, in the case of the health private ownership of production through multinational food companies are the services, the supplier (i.e. the doctor) the ownership of capital mean? Ownership policies of the CAP and the protectionism determines the demand for the service. A can be thought of as a continuum. At one of the USA? doctor operating in the free market would end there is individual private ownership, The potential capitalists in the Third have a vested interest in oversubscribing. and at the other there is social ownership. World in the twenty-first century are no It is no accident that the USA has the In between these points there are various different from the potential capitalists of highest per capita health expenditure. forms of collective ownership. Germany in the 19th century and those of Japan in the twentieth century. If they are A similar argument can be made for In Volume 3 Chapter 22 Marx refers to to emerge they will have to be nurtured Pensions. The customer is dependent on Money capital (i.e. deposits in the banks) behind the protectionist walls of their the expertise of the supplier of the service. as an undifferentiated mass, indifferent to respective states. Like the German and The recent scandals in Britain regarding which sphere of production it is invested Japanese capitalists they will first have to overselling of pension funds show what in. It is controlled by bankers “the 23 representatives of social capital”. Once might approach the form of social property. Report the deposit is made, the depositor loses all “Frank Ryan, a great Irishman who control of his capital. The bankers decide CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION always put Ireland first” how the collective funds are invested. At Ownership of capital is one thing and the time they make their investment or control is something else. I have indicated I presume that when Ryle Dwyer loans to borrowers, they are not interested that the owners of capital don’t have denounces Frank Ryan’s November 1932 in the individual sources of the funds. control of it. But neither do the bankers, slogan of “No free speech for traitors”, in While ownership is individual the fund managers or chief executives of large his review of a new Ryan biography by collective funds are controlled by multinationals. In a sense they are just as Adrian Hoar (“Irish Examiner”, April 9), administrators that don’t own the capital. much slaves to the system as the workers, it is not the word “traitors” that he is even if their chains are made of gold. The objecting to. Indeed, in your issue of April In Chapter 27 he refers to the capital of system has a logic of its own which is 17 last year, it was Ryle Dwyer who used Joint Stock companies as being “capital beyond human control. the term “treacherous” to describe the directly endowed with the form of social April 1932 conspiracy between the leaders capital”. The functioning capitalist is The system demands more production, of the Cumann na nGaedheal opposition transformed into the mere administrator more consumption. Desires are stimulated and the British Government to try and of other people’s capital. There is a divorce and new desires are manufactured: all in bring down de Valera’s newly-elected between the owner of capital and the the interest of maximising “shareholder Irish Government. manager of capital. return” or the rate of profit regardless of If he is objecting to its “no free speech” the consequences for the environment and component, he will also find that on the Nowadays it is possible to buy “tracker people participating in the system. very day after it had been uttered de Valera bonds” which invest funds in the stock himself denounced Ryan on that account markets of Europe, the United States and On the other hand, workers’ represent- and, not for the first time, called him a Japan in order to give an average rate of ation, underpinned by the collective fool. But within a matter of years Ryan return equal to these stock markets. The ownership of capital, might modify the was to achieve political maturity, and owner of such bonds has no more control system. While such a representation will Hoar’s biography proceeds to portray, in over them than the depositor in a bank. also want to maximise the return on its the author’s own words, Ryan’s “conver- capital, this will be only one of many sion to democratic politics”. Marx believed that this consolidation considerations. It might be willing to It is a pity then, that Ryle Dwyer or centralisation of capital paved the way sacrifice production for reduced working trivialises Ryan as “the Communist “towards the re-conversion of capital into hours or to avoid damaging the environ- agitator who died in a Nazi bed”. For one the property of producers, although no ment. Workers’ representatives might be thing, as Hoar also details, at no stage of longer as the private property of less willing to spend money on marketing his life was Ryan ever a Communist, and producers, but rather as the property of expenditure, since such expenditure will he also remained a devout Catholic associated producers, as outright social be superfluous if there is a more democratic throughout. More importantly, during his property” (Volume 3, Chapter 27). organisation of production. final years in Germany, Ryan unequivoc- ally pledged his 100 percent support for It is clear that Marx believed that This would seem to be the best hope of de Valera’s policy of wartime neutrality, Socialism would develop within the bringing some sense to the system and to and worked tirelessly on its behalf. Small existing forms of the capitalist system. finally make it act in the social interest. wonder, then, that towards the end of his Capitalism not only socialised production The alternative of frenzied production and own life, in a 1975 interview with the but had also the tendency to socialise consumption if continued will make life veteran journalist Michael McInerney, de capital. The only outstanding matter for unbearable. Valera now described as “this great the socialist movement was that capital John Martin Irishman” the man whom, with good was still owned on an individual basis. Editorial Note: A slightly amended version of reason, he had previously denounced as this review of Capital will be appearing in book an “amadán” or “fool” during the 1931-32 The task of socialists should be to form from Athol Books. period. As Dev further stated: “Frank Ryan transfer the private property of the owners always put Ireland first, at home or abroad. of capital to the workers. Such workers’ Audio He has earned his place in history”. capital would be owned collectively and A DEFENCE OF CORK I have addressed this issue in greater workers would elect representatives to POLITICAL CULTURE detail, under the heading of “Was Frank manage this collective property. I would IN THE WAR OF Ryan a collaborator?”, in an appendix that see this as a gradual process which could INDEPENDENCE 1919-22 appears in the recently-published second be facilitated by the tax system or by state edition of my father Michael O’Riordan’s loans, as was done to transfer Irish landed Dr Brian P Murphy osb book.,”Connolly Column—The story of property from the British landlord class to the Irishmen who fought for the Spanish the native Irish tenant class. You can listen to this public meeting, Republic”. Manus O’Riordan which was held in Cork on 15th April, on (Sent to Irish Examiner, 19 April 2005) Such collective property would not be the Internet at the following address: “social property” in the sense that it would extend to all aspects of production, but http://radio.indymedia.org/news/ Check out what's new on would be connected to individual 2005/04/4572.php the Athol site: enterprises. However, as the connections between the various branches of product- There is no charge. ion deepen, such collective ownership www.atholbooks.org 24 . WORK continued English ruling faction having, for their which EU leaders are expected to sign- own political designs, corrupted the off at their summit in Brussels tomorrow. Orangemen with power and flattery, “The Pact, designed to keep the episode in which Cork played a unique Eurozone economy stable, was all but enabled them to establish an ascendancy, and magnificent role and the conflict scuppered two years ago when member not only over Ulster, but indirectly by shaped the political culture of Cork for states refused to take action against their vote over the South. This becoming generations. Reference to it (and its France and Germany for continuously intolerable, some sincere but misguided having budgets more than 3% in the red. celebration) would be most appropriate in Catholics in the North joined the “The key to breaking the log jam in the year of Cork as Cultural capital of organisation known as The Ancient Order the end was to agree to let Germany off- Europe. Instead we have nothing short of Of Hibernians. This was, in effect, a sort set the cost of reunification and an exercise in cultural vandalism by Ms reconstruction of the former Eastern of Catholic Freemasonry to counter the Quill caused no doubt by her total Germany against its budget deficit. Orange Freemasonry, but like Orangeism, ignorance of the significance of what “The wording agreed by finance it was a political and not a religious MacSwiney had written. No wonder ministers at an emergency meeting in weapon. Brussels over the weekend however does Cork’s official celebration of culture is Further, as a political weapon, it not specifically refer to Germany but to such a pathetic affair with people like Ms. extended all through Ireland during the the ‘unification of Europe’ if it has a Quill at the helm. last years of the Irish Parliamentary detrimental effect on the growth and To seek to partly rectify the matter we fiscal burden of a member state. Movement. In Cork, for example, it reproduce MacSwiney’s introduction “This would allow other countries to completely controlled the city life for some below. make similar claims to Germany in the years, but the rapid rise of the Republican future, including if Ireland was to be Movement brought about the equally rapid unified, a Government source confirmed. Author’s Preface fall of Hibernianism. At the present “However, economic studies carried It was my intention to publish these moment it has as little influence in the out in the past suggest that scrapping the articles in book form as soon as possible. public life of Cork as Sir Edward Carson Border would have a beneficial rather I had them typed for the purpose. I had no than a detrimental effect on the country himself. The great bulk of its one-time time for revision save to insert in the typed as a whole” (Irish Examiner, 22.3.2005). members have joined the Republican copy words or lines omitted from the Movement. This demonstrates clearly original printed matter. I also made an “A referendum North and South on that anything in the nature of a sectarian the unification of Ireland should be held occasional verbal alteration in the original. movement is essentially repugnant to the sooner rather than later, SDLP leader One article, however, that on “Intellectual Irish people. As I have pointed out, the Mark Durkan said yesterday. Freedom”, though written in the series in Hibernian Order, when created, became “The Good Friday Agreement allows the place in which it now stands, was not for a referendum to be held, built specifies at once a political weapon, but Ireland has printed with them. It is now published for that another cannot be held thereafter for discarded that, and other such weapons, the first time. a period of seven years. for those with which she is carving out the Mr. Durkan declined to give an exact destinies of the Republic. For a time, timeframe. RELIGION however, Hibernianism created an “Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs I wish to make a note on the article unnatural atmosphere of sectarian rivalry Minister, Dermot Ahern said last night under his heading to avoid a possible in Ireland. That has now happily passed the Fianna Fail economic model is a misconception amongst people outside workable template for a united Ireland. away. At the time, however, of the writing Ireland. In Ireland there is no religious “The Fianna Fail goal of an equal of the article on Religion it was at its dissension, but there is religious opportunity society, could be ‘practically height, and this fact coloured the writing insincerity. English politicians, to serve and credibly advanced’ on an all-Ireland of the article. On re-reading it considering basis because it is coupled with policies the end of dividing Ireland, have worked the publication of the present work I was of wealth creation, he told an SDLP on the religious feelings of the North, inclined to suppress it, but decided that it meeting in Newry. suggesting the danger of Catholic ought to be included because it bears “It guarantees that a United Ireland ascendancy. There is not now, and there will not mean a return to high unemploy- directly on the evil of materialism in never was, any such danger, but our ment, emigration and national debt,” he religious bodies, which is a matter of enemies, by raising the cry, sowed discord said. grave concern to every religious in the North, with the aim of destroying “He congratulated the SDLP on their community in the world. Irish unity document unveiled yesterday, Irish unity. It should be borne in mind that T. MacS. saying it was timely and significant.” when the Republican Standard was first (Irish Independent, 22.3.2005). raised in the field in Ireland, in the Rising Brixton Prison, **************************************************************** of 1798, Catholics and Protestants in the Sept., 1920 POETRY North were united in the cause. Belfast “Poetry is the last activity left in the was the first home of Republicanism in world which is practised by people with Ireland. This is the truth of the matter. ************************************************************************ no commercial expectations and that The present-day cleavage is an unnatural THEY WILL EVEN PAY FOR UNIFICATION! gives it a great dignity, I think. thing created by Ireland’s enemies to hold “Finance Minister Brian Cowen will “If you have ‘things to say’, or a her in subjection and will disappear with have an additional 1.6 billion Euros to mode of seeing things that nobody else spend on infrastructure next year political Freedom. has, so that no matter how good or how following changes to the EU’s Stability bad you might be there would be nobody It has had, however, in our day, one and Growth Pact. unhappy effect, only for a rime, else like you, then you have the essential “Development aid and the cost of any characteristic of a writer” (Anthony fortunately, and this is disappearing. I future unification of the country could Cronin, the poet. Ev. Echo, Cork, 5.2.2005). refer to the rise of Hibernianism. The also be allowed under the revised rules, ****************************************************************************************************************************************

25 WORK continued 1887. Of the Haymarket Five, four were In the land and city of Connolly and Germans. Larkin, they decided to march on April “It is highly likely that the American 30, the Dublin Council of Trade Unions would be celebrated, he not only changed workers’ initiative of 1 May, 1886 would organised a march and public meeting on our concept of May Day, but he also have had only the faintest echo in the the theme of “Fight for the rights and broke the link that had always existed country and abroad if the Chicago events, between our May Day festivities and entitlements of migrant workers”. alongside those of May 1, had not stirred But by far the most riveting, if not those of the old pagan religious festivals. up sympathy for the labour movement in “With the coming of Communism, revolutionary action of the world’s May all countries of the world. Days, was that organised by the Cork May Day began to be associated with a “In 1889, the International Congress Council of Trade Union’s “Sponsored Wax massive show of power on the part of the in Paris adopted a proposal to hold an Soviet Union, and other communist international demonstration again on by Union Officials and Activists” at a countries. Their annual military parade, May 1, 1890 in favour of a shorter local beauty saloon. ‘Fair Dinkum’! and political speeches, became a trend working day. Could it be that some members of the which worried the Catholic Church, to “As a tribute to the martyrs of CCTU mistook May 1 for April 1? such an extent that Pope Pius XII resolved Chicago, from one who was hanged on There was a time when the CCTU held to turn the day into a religious feast, 11 November, 1887, it might be a place of respect in the life of the city, rather than a festival of socialism. opportune to quote the dying words of alas, the local Freemasons would have a “He declared, in 1955, that 1st May August Spies, a hero with prophetic higher profile than todays ‘wax’ men! It was to be observed as a day of veneration vision: ‘The day will come when our for St. Joseph, who, up to this date, had, is surely sad! silence will be more powerful than the Mao Tse Tung sent the academics and since the fourteenth century, always been voices you stifle today’” (Ireland’s Own, students into the countryside with spade honoured on 19th March. 6.5.2005). “From now on, the saint was to have and hoe, and called it the “The Great two holy days a year, but on May Day, to In the St. Joseph The Worker article by Proletarian Cultural Revolution” 1966- bend somewhat to the ideal of socialism, Ms Lawler, she refers America and 1969. Maybe we should start thinking he was to be known as St. Joseph the about doing the same to some of today’s Worker” (Ireland’s Own, 6.5.2005). Canada: “…but, for reasons best known to themselves, both America and Canada Trade Union leaders! We should at least start thinking! “WORKERS IN HISTORY” chose the first Monday in September as “Workers In History—The First of their national holiday for the workers”. May or Labour Day” by Ita Marguet. ****************************************************************** The following article explains why: “TO WORK OR NOT?” by the late Bob “The origins of Labour Day date back “To counteract the growing, militant to demands for better working and living Cotter, a Cork Postal worker, published in tradition of May Day, the American “Labour Comment” November, 2004. conditions. Its centenary year was Federation of Labour leaders fostered celebrated around the world on May 1st, the observance only of Labour Day, the ****************************************************************** 1986. first Monday in September. This day “The blossoming of workers’ solidar- had originally been adopted on a local ity as a result of the industrial conglo- scale in 1885 and later was recognized merations of the nineteenth century gave by the various State governments as an Cultural vandalism workers a chance to know one another, antidote to the May First celebrations. organise and formulate their demands as Another antidote was inaugurated by in Cork one body. the Hoover administration with the aid Terence MacSwiney’s Principles Of “It was at this time that there emerged of the A. F. of L. leaders by proclaiming Freedom‚ was republished recently by the phenomenon of ‘class consciousness’ May 1 as Child Health Day. Cork City Libraries with a Foreword by which was to become more and more “The real meaning of this sudden Maureen Quill to mark the Cork 2005 clearly defined as the working class interest in child welfare, however, may European Capital of Culture. What was began to understand its role in society. be gleaned from the following reference “The First of May 1886 was launched rather odd was that Ms Quill saw fit to to the subject in a report submitted by dispense with MacSwiney’s own Preface as the first Labour Day in history. The the Executive Council to the 1928 Chicago Arbeiter Zeitung issued in this which appeared in the original edition and Convention of the A. F. of L. ‘The formed part of the work. This was his last new dawn with ‘The First of May, whose Communists still maintain May 1 as published work, written as he began his historical significance will only be Labor Day. Hereafter, May 1 will be understood and appreciated in the years known as Child Health Day, as the hunger strike. She replaced it with a to come, is here. President is directed by the resolution Foreword of her own which tells us “Workers abandoned their machines passed by Congress to issue a proclam- absolutely nothing new about MacSwiney. on 1 May, 1886, and the first slogan was ation calling upon people of the United His introduction was one of the most ‘8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours States to observe May 1 as Child Health interesting parts of the book because it of education’. Day. The object is to create sentiment dealt with a very practical issue—the “Two days later, following a three- for year-round protection of the health month strike at the MacCormack factory demise of Hibernianism and specifically of children. It is a most worthy purpose. its demise in Cork. The fact that he wrote in Chicago, an incident between strikers At the same time May 1 no longer will be and strike breakers degenerated when about this issue in the circumstances in known as either strike day or Communist which he did shows the importance he police shot two strikers” (Ireland’s Own, Day ’” (History Of May Day, Alexander placed on it and he was quite right to do so. 6.5.2005) Trachtenberg, New York, 1929). On 4th May , 1886, a further eight workers “Millions of workers from Tokyo to The background to this whole episode of were killed, along with seven police, this Havana and across Europe took to the Hibernianism is one of the most interesting, was the Haymarket Square incident, which streets yesterday in May Day rallies” significant and ignored aspects of the Irish lead to the hangings on 11th November, (Irish Independent, 2.5.2005). independence movement. It was also an continued on page 25 26 WORK continued discovered that while getting married, careers should take time to learn about moving house and having a baby may top themselves by listening to themselves the list of life’s traumas, handing in your because many have a false impression of notice of work outranks them in the stress what they are really like,” says Bolt. ********************************************************** league. Todays workforce is all hip, spitting with “. . . labour is best overseen by the people Only the trauma of family bereavement confidence, not like the old gang. But one who actually perform it.” ranked higher than pre-resignation nerves. unchanging, and irrefutable fundamental ********************************************************** Tim Bates, the consultancy’s managing is that we still all work for a wage! director, says: “When we ran our first Booker T. Washington, one of Amer- lifestyle survey five years ago, job ********************************************************** ica’s great educators, was born into slavery. resignation was barely mentioned as a “CHOOSE a job that you love and you He worked as a labourer in furnaces high stress factor”. will never have to work a day in your life.” and mines to pay for his education and CONFUCIUS later created a university, Tuskegee As a former long-term Unilever ********************************************************** Institute, for 3,000 black students. executive-turned-consultant, Peter Bolt, The image creators used tell us that the Washington, who died aged 59 from in his book, The Whole Manager, has this cultural merit of ‘Coronation Street’ was overwork, wrote: view: its capacity to reflect ordinary working- “No race can prosper until it learns “The way we work does not favour class life, now some sensible people are that there is as much dignity in tilling a individuals …uncertainty is stressful but beginning to think the opposite is field as in writing a poem.” the reasons for it should be thought out. There is not right or wrong, according to happening : life is a mere reflection of the We have to work : so let’s make the the book, and once managers at all levels new ‘Coronation Street’. best of it, let’s attempt to get some satis- can manage themselves stress will be The editor of “Labour and Trade Union faction out of it, but alas, it is the total minimised. Review” puts it a much better way. After opposite in the workplace today. Work is “The key to achieving this is a couple of recent visits to Ireland, John preparation. Just as professional athletes portrayed as a misery—it is the lowest Clayden said he thought we were losing it need to prepare for specific events and form of life. a little: “Before long people will need maintain levels of fitness, so executives counselling after a shower of rain”. should plan for events, using a diary to Charles Haughey made a remark to the The prevalent culture is the quick buck. map out what needs to be done day by effect that “most people lead miserable Cop it and hop it! From the overpaid thugs day, and set aside time to think through lives”. Millions of people in the Amer- of Old Trafford to the wailing Millionaires ongoing problems. Many people feel anglia world spend huge chunks of their of U2 churning out their defeatist and that work pressures are so great that they spare time watching television—could you nihilist culture day and night. don’t have time to indulge in forward think of anything more miserable or The money you earn is always planning, to which Mr. Bolt says that soulless than that! appreciated much more than the money work is pressurised because they do not that comes your way by chance—well, plan ahead. “‘There are talented people who ********************************************************** that’s how it used be! Not anymore. stumble when promoted because they “HE had come away with the knowledge This is now being replaced by a don’t have a clue what to do next. As the that physical work is the best bedfellow something-for-nothing culture. The new pressure mounts they feel that the only for despair” (The Trick of the Ga Bolga by peers are the Pop and Sport gurus. way to survive is to work harder, watch Patrick McGinley, Flamingo) More people say that there is no point their backs and engage in questionable working for something when you can get practices.” ********************************************************** it by just taking it easy. A lot of younger He does not blame individuals for any people see their parents working longer failure to manage well, but says it is the IRELAND’S OWN hours and stressed and don’t want to do system that gives them little help and A lot of people, especially on the left that. understanding of the way that work works. of politics would find it hard to believe Consumption is the new god and “The long-hours syndrome, imported from that on this May Day, the only serious Production (Work) is the enemy: America where the past millennium ended reference to the day of the worker the “ …a new focus of popular attention with talk of sleeping in the office, is being present writer could find was in the May away from production and towards sustained by bosses who say that gaining week edition of Ireland’s Own. Yes, consumption” (The Image, Boorstin, work experience is more important than Ireland’s Own published in Wexford. Pelican, 1960, p69). earning salaries,” he says. What was even better, this magazine “But there is little help given in how which is a source of great reading satis- to move forward. When I ask young HOW WORK WORKS! people coming into the workplace if faction for thousands of ordinary working “Learn How Work Works”, no four people, especially in rural Ireland, words could more aptly sum up the con- they are benefiting from this work experience, many say they find the provided two perspectives of May 1st. temporary workplace. Modern system confusing.” We include extracts from both! management do not know how ‘work “Those new to the workplace should works’. The proof is there to see. stick to their personal values because “ST. JOSEPH THE WORKER” Stress has seeped into our working and there is nothing wrong with feeling by Teresa Lawler. personal lives to such an extent that we confused. They shouldn’t feel they have almost take it for granted. It is the biggest to play the corporate game. There are “When Pope Pius XII decreed, in health risk in the workplace today. many senior managers who have climbed 1955, that May 1st should be the day on In the year 2000, The Charles Fellowes to the top and are still not happy.” which the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker Partnership, a recruitment consultancy, “Graduates starting out on their continued on page 26 27 VOLUME 23 No. 5 CORK ISSN 0790-1712 WORK —a couple of thoughts “Work as punishment implies a There have been many books about Despite this : Protestantism, Socialism curious equation. Punishment is work—how to motivate staff, how to beat and Communism in their scholarship and society’s response to a criminal act, the office bully, how to time-manage propaganda dwell little on the intrinsic and the sentence of ‘hard labour’ was working hours—there have been very few concept of work or what it is all about. It deemed the most severe punishment, books by workers and even fewer on the seems to be a mere means to an end. short of death, that society could subject of work itself. administer. Using this reasoning the For all their faults, it has been the vast multitudes of everyday workers all over the earth who were engaged PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC Catholic scholars who have searched at in hard labour all the days of their Of course, the Reformation and its greatest length to reconcile the need to lives might have asked what crime Protestant offspring take tremendous pride work, to come to terms with that need, and they had committed. in proclaiming “the Protestant work ethic”, I suppose, make work a friend instead of “None asked, of course, but the claiming it created the modern world, an enemy. presumption was clear : work is base with all that is materially progressive You can divorce your mate, but in the and degrading and those who do it are emanating from the sturdy, unyielding main, work is a partner for life! equated with slaves and criminals and principles of Protestantism. rightfully assigned to the lowest level According to them, the rest of us Karol Wojtyla, could claim to be the of society.” Christians and Pagans were all slackers— only Pope who worked in a factory—he The above extract comes from an OK, we never gave the task of labour our was the first to accept that such an American book titled: How To Tell When full effort in the way Protestants did. experience stood in his stead. You’re Tired—A Brief Examination Of Max Weber’s theories about the Work by Reg Theriault, a former San In choosing the title, Benedictus, the influence upon economic life of Protestant- Francisco longshoreman. It is a gem, the German Joseph Ratzinger acknowledged ism in general and Puritanism in particular 188 pages are full of insights from the that the carpenter was just as entitled to a are a good example: workplace, but that single statement would say in the world as the Bishop or the “In his well-known study of capital- stick in the mind of any worker! Broker! ism, Max Weber quotes the saying, that ‘one does not work to live, one lives to “Idleness is the enemy of the soul, In the month of May, we celebrate the work’, which nowadays no one has much and so monks should be occupied at day of the worker : May Day. While difficulty in understanding : it expresses some times with manual labour and at secularists lay claim to sole copyright, the current opinion” (Josef Pieper, certain times with holy reading” (Rule you’d have difficulty coming across too Leisure, The Basis Of Culture, 1952). of Benedict). many elaborations of the intrinsic or Subscribers to the magazine are regularly John Coffey, who runs the Uneeda philosophical meaning of work.*** offered special rates on other publications Bookshop in Cork summed it all up a few years ago, when asked by the Evening Francis Bacon first published his Irish Political Review is published Echo who his heros were: famous series of essays in 1625. He wrote by the IPR Group: write to— “The ordinary man who clocks on for of Truth, he wrote of Death, he wrote of PO Box 339, Belfast BT12 4GQ or work from nine to five to support his Fortune. His essays dwelt on the most PO Box 6589, London, N7 6SG. family. I think those kind of people are essential concepts of both spiritual and Labour Comment, amazing.” C/O Shandon St. P.O., Cork City material life—but he never mentioned I believe Joseph Ratzinger was petrified Work! with what he witnessed in the 1968 Berlin Subscription by Post: and Paris student faction-fighting—if the A. C. Grayling, who is Reader in Euro 25 / £17.50 for 12 issues Philosophy at Birbeck College, University new Pope based his fears on the political Electronic Subscription: of London, wrote a series of Essays in outcome and the roles played since by that similar vein in 2001, explaining the whys Euro 15 / £12 for 12 issues crop of socialist student leaders—was the (or Euro 1.30 / £1.10 per issue) and wherefores of objective and subjective man far wrong—Jose Manuel Barroso, You can also order both postal and Jack Straw, Tony Blair, Pat Rabbitte. life like Hate and Fear but again no mention electronic subscriptions from: of Work. www.atholbooks.org continued on page 27