George Orwell has never been unfashionable, and is in vogue now more than ever. His writing, best represented by his many essays on a variety of subjects, rather than the more celebrated novels, presage in myriad ways the problems we face today.
Those famous novels 1984 (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) are visionary works depicting totalitarian societies, but in a more significant way it is the cornucopia of themes broached in his essays that anticipate a present era of thought control.
Orwell despised abstractions, especially nationalism, but also extremism on the left. Accordingly, in his essays we find focus on the particular and daily life. All political concerns are deemed local. Indeed, his works is identifiable as part of British tradition of empiricism with its distrust of grand ideas and gestures.
Mumbo-Jumbo
Orwell would have no time for the mumbo-jumbo of post-modernism and structuralism, just as he dismissed the ideological psychobabble of fascism and Communism. Instead he venerated the common sense of the ordinary person, and was deeply sensitive to how ideologies crushed the human spirit.
Yet he was also aware of how seductive ideologies could be, anticipating what Zizek has called ‘ideological misidentification’ – that includes voting for those who will undermine your interests, as blue collar America did in electing Trump; or believing what you read in The Daily Mail about foreigners.
Orwell is nonetheless firmly opposed to the mentality of the mob. Were he alive today, he would surely be a genuine tribune for those on the margins of society, but decidedly against the recrudescence of Populism and appeals to bigotry.
The casual racism he despised, now so evident in many cultures including Britain, was shaped by his experiences of British colonial barbarism in Burma, as indeed was his hatred of the death penalty, invoked in his short story A Hanging (1931), which was based on personal experience.
Orwell would definitely understand how, through social media and the machinations of Cambridge Analytical the ordinary man is manipulated – brainwashed even – by subliminal messaging and online influencers. Perhaps the docile uncritical consumerism we are creating is best represented in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World (1932), a companion piece to 1984 and Animal Farm for understanding our troubled zeitgeist. Either way, both Orwell and Huxley saw what was coming.
Throughout his writing Orwell emerges as the champion of the underdog, and zealous opponent of vulgar nationalism, whether emanating from state authorities, or the untutored blatherings of brainwashed victims.
Orwell had no truck with popular prejudice, esteeming instead basic decency. Doubtless, he would recognise how the populace could be whipped into a mass frenzy today and vote in crypto-fascists or even for Brexit. He was sensitive to how popular decency could be corrupted by propaganda into anti-Semitism and the portrayal of Eastern Europeans as degenerates, as he addresses in Notes on Nationalism (1945).
Uncommon beliefs
Orwell thus is a believer in the common sense of the common man, but not popular prejudice or vulgar nationalism, or especially not the racism that spills forth from the mouths of those subjected to propaganda.
He is prescient about how an ordinary person intuitively believes in the Rule of Law. Thus, in ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ (1940) he argues that the English believe in law, not power. He further opines in ‘Inside The Whale’ (1940) that this stems from a lack of experience of violence and illegality: ‘With all its injustices England is still the land of habeas corpus and the overwhelming majority of English people have no experience of violence and illegality.’
Homage to Catalonia (1938) is an account of his his Spanish sojourn fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s fascists. There he saw clearly how extremism of both left and right has no restraints or humanitarian boundaries, and that a society morphs rapidly into lawless banditry.
Dotty Dreamland
The dotty dreamland of England, then and now, is suffused with moderation, incrementalism and a lack of experience of licensed thuggery. This is the basic decency Orwell finds in the novels of Charles Dickens, along with a sympathy for the underdog.
Living in London I now recognise that the British do not seem to understand, rightly so – and certainly do not tolerate – the manipulation or abuse of law by power.
In this, arguably, they stand alone in Europe, where we see the law used as a tool of oppression in Spain by proto-fascists, who have imprisoned those with the temerity to hold a peaceful independence referendum; not to mention the crypto-Nazi enclave of Orban’s Hungary, and with the rise of La Liga in Italy; more insidious in Ireland is the undermining of decency and corporate takeover.
The championing of the underdog is a noticeable feature of British life, and the obligation to vindicate the rule of law against the interests of the powerful is still taken seriously, unlike in Ireland which endorses the interests of the corporations to such an extent that the state resists a tax windfall of €13 billion.
It is not for nothing that the reasonable man test, or the notional man on the Clapham Omnibus, is intrinsic to British legalism and the Rule of Law.
That is perhaps why the British became so resistant to the idea of their interests being undermined by faceless bureaucrats for Europe, although tragically the result of Brexit may be to deliver them into the hands of a worse set of faceless bureaucrats in the shape of the American corporatocracy.
In ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ (1940) Orwell emphasises how the British are repelled by miscarriages of justice, and believe in holding power accountable, which demands impartial administration of justice by independent officials, who are not bought or compromised. This originates in patterns of independent and generally depoliticised appointment not evident in most other European jurisdictions.
Use of language
Orwell is highly attuned to the misuse of language. A prevalent theme is how expression should be clear and unequivocal, in a plain style emphasising the virtues of informality and flexibility. Thus he sedulously exposes techno-babble, and the notorious doublespeak encapsulated by slogans such as ‘four legs good two legs better’ from Animal Farm, which anticipate the arrival of political spin doctors. In short, he saw post-truth coming.
This includes the fakery of our present narratives, where innocent slogans conceal and occlude a multitude of evils. So terms like ‘austerity’ or ‘fiscal stabilization’, or even ‘ethnic cleansing’, are adopted to mask individual and societal destruction.
Similarly, the anodyne word ‘evacuation’ was used neutrally by Nazi Reinhardt Heydrich at the Wanassee Conference in 1942 to convey crimes against humanity and genocide. Today sloganing by advertisers, hucksters and snake oil salesmen of all shapes and hues are inducing a form of corporate fascism, and state-sponsored murder.
1984 is a novel about the totalitarian left, as well as the right. Orwell had a ringside seat on the evils of both in Barcelona during The Spanish Civil War, documented brilliantly in Homage to Catalonia (1938).
Piquant Irony
It is a piquant irony of intellectual discourse that the left should have embraced the meandering nonsense of post structuralism from the 1960’s onwards only to see it appropriated by the alt right. Truth is not truth Donald as he must have been advised, and Mr .Giuliani echoes.
Thus as Derrida can change meaning from one sentence to another, so can Trump or Bannon.
In The Politics and The English Language” (1947) Orwell cauterises the elevation of grammar and syntax as indicia of anything, and focuses on the precise use of language and the avoidance of cliché, or what he terms Americanisms.
In fact, focusing on grammatical form, at the expense of content, is the classic sign of a box-ticking pedantic and second-class intelligence, or an establishment ruse designed to avoid engagement with arguments of substance.
The post truth universe that he saw on the horizon is a feature of most his writing. Thus, in ‘Looking Back at The Spanish Civil War’ (1942) he observes that totalitarianism denies that objective truth exists, and in ‘Notes on Nationalism’ (1945) he points out presciently: ‘Since nothing is ever proved or disproved, the most unmistakeable fact can be impudently denied.’
These are tactics evident in Mr. Giuliani aforementioned denial of objective truth and Ryanair’s Mr. O’Leary denial of climate change. An approach which, by being reported on, rather than dismissed outright, is given a veneer of respectability
It is also increasingly evident that that those in power blind themselves to their outright criminality, as long as it comes from their own side, including the Neo-Cons and Blairite proponents of just war, known euphemistically as ‘humanitarian interventions.’
Increasingly, the true subversives among the state and corporate oligarchy inflict criminality on others with impunity. As Orwell writes in his ‘Notes on Nationalism’ (1945): ‘There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when our side commits it.’
They ask: are you with us or against us? One of us, or representing the demonised and excluded Other. This is particularly prescient in an age of increasing fractiousness, intolerance and division.
Orwell chose the middle way, however difficult that path may be. Today being reasonable is often not viable. Alas, he who shouts loudest gains most in our present distorted politics.
The Enemies of Truth
In ‘The Prevention of Literature’ (1946) we find Orwell revealing that the enemies of truth and freedom of thought to be press lords and bureaucrats. Then as now, and let us add for good measure include social media manipulators and multinational corporations.
Perhaps his definitive essay is ‘How The Poor Die’ (1929), a crucial text for these times of austerity, where social supports are being steadily withdrawn. The unthinking consequences of an awful ideology, or rather a deliberately planned extermination of anyone deemed unworthy, alongside the cartelisation of wealth into ever decreasing bands, and hands.
The focus of Orwell is of course also on secularism and the Enlightenment; the repudiation of false Christian values.
In an essay on Jonathan Swift the author of Gulliver’s Travels he suggests the one-time Dean of St. Patricks Cathedral rejected the Christian idea of an afterlife, a view commended by Orwell. Swift himself was also highly attuned to the interests of the poor in Ireland, subjected to the excesses of Malthusian capitalism, a theme which he brilliantly parodies in his disturbing ‘A Modest Proposal’. (1729). The consumption of babies is used to highlight a meltdown in human fellowship familiar to our present time.
So there we have it, George Orwell, dead in 1950 but not as Dead as Doornails. Right back in fashion in fact and on the money.
Why? Well in essence his own time of totalitarianism, economic meltdown, fascism and propagandistic post-truth are replicated in our own, while his fiction, and especially his essays, are an intellectual counterweight more relevant than ever.
Let us thus secularly worship Eric Blair, not Tony Blair. He was the prince of journalists, a writer of mystic prescience and curiously, perhaps the single most relevant intellectual for our day and age.
All references are from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (Secker and Warburg 1968).
In 2015 comic Frankie Boyle penned a darkly titled article ‘What if David Cameron is an evil genius?’ Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, Boyle – citing plans to erase the Human Rights Act from U.K. law – wondered whether Cameron was, ‘A shrewd and malevolent psychopath who thinks two moves deeper into the game than any of his opponents?’
Having secured an overall Conservative majority in the general election earlier that year, Boyle marvelled at how the Prime Minister had ‘managed to set England against Scotland, Scotland against Labour. He had given his enemies the referendums [Alternative Vote 2011, and Scottish Independence 2015] they asked for, and won’, leaving erstwhile coalition partner Nick Clegg ‘looking like one of those terrified mouse faces that you find in an owl pellet.’
A year on, in 2016, however, aged just forty-nine, David Cameron’s career was effectively over as his boldest gamble failed when the U.K. electorate voted, by a narrow majority, to leave the E.U.. Right-wing Populism had upset a carefully laid plan to rid the Conservative ‘brand’ of visceral Euroscepticism, and maintain a two-track Union to the benefit of trade and commerce. As Cameron admits, the centre-right could not hold.
Actually Boyle’s closing assessment of Cameron as a ‘sort of bored viceroy engaged in the handover of power from government to corporations’ seems closer to the mark. Really David Cameron seems to be neither a genius nor a psychopath, but instead a recognisable product of a privileged upbringing and an archaic political system – with a skewed democracy running under a first-past-the-post voting system maintaining a ruling centre right consensus, and an ‘unwritten’ constitution bringing uncertainties in an era of regular referendums.
The personality that emerges in a recently published autobiography For the Record is of a savvy and hard-working insider, lacking in profound insight or deep learning, and beholden to a mercantile outlook as the son of a stockbroker. In another era he might have had a fine career in the East India Company before taking a seat in Parliament to plot imperial escapades.
This autobiography dangles morsels of gossip from ‘blue on blue’ Conservative feuding – especially with one-time friends, including current Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – but incessant retrospective justification, often with cherrypicked data, makes for a generally tedious, and long, read. Regrets are in terms of tactical choices: anyone expecting that a fall from power would bring profound questioning of the nature of conservatism in the twenty-first century will be disappointed.
The closing paragraph, in which he spells out advice he will proffer to future prime ministers conveys an essential banality, oddly reminiscent of the adventure books of Captain W. E. Johns, with Cameron assuming the role of Biggles, and George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer his loyal sidekick Algie:
Whoever they are, I will tell them this. That Britain is the greatest country on earth. Our greatness is derived not from our size, but from our people – their decency, their talent, and that special British spirit. There is no need for new ideology or systems, we have the best one here: democracy. We are lucky that this political system enables politicians to act upon what I think motivates most of them: the national interest and public service. And if you listen hard, beyond the sound and the fury, you will hear that this quiet patriotism and belief in democracy is what unites people too. Remember that as you pick up the baton and lead. I will be willing you on as you do.
Cameron’s apparently simplistic patriotism – born of faith in the enduring greatness of the British ‘spirit’ – coincided with an avowed ‘little ‘e’ and little ‘s’ ‘euroscepticism.’ This prevarication over Britain’s relationship with Europe played a crucial role in producing a career-defining Brexit. The attempt, and essential failure, to renegotiate a deal with the EU prior to the referendum left an unmistakable impression that EU membership was a relationship of convenience to be borne stoically, involving competing nation-states, rather than one of interdependence and mutual benefit.
Schooldays and Oxford
Cameron presents a picture of growing up among a happy, bibulous family including two sisters and one brother, featuring an especially affectionate father-son relationship. This did not, however, prevent him from being packed off to boarding school at the tender age of seven.
There he recalls: ‘At bath time we had to line up naked in front of a row of Victorian metal baths and wait for the headmaster, James Edwards, to blow a whistle before we got in.’ Punishment he says was, ‘old-fashioned. They included frequent beatings with the smooth side of an ebony clothes brush.’
Such childhood experiences have long forged ‘the stiff upper lip’ characteristic of the upper strata of British society, with medieval origins in the fostering of noble sons as page boys to aristocratic peers. Over centuries, hardened by emotional suppression in childhood, many among this ruling class have been inured to the suffering of racial and social ‘inferiors’, assuming a combination of hard work and punishment for wrongdoing to be a panacea for societal ills.
Yet Cameron is clearly no dinosaur of a bygone age in the apparent mould of his fellow Conservative Jacob Rees Mogg, and he includes tender reminiscences of a severely disabled son Ivan, who passed away before he took office in 2009, and an apparently loving relationship with Samantha his wife, to whom the book is dedicated.
Nonetheless, a residual harshness is evident in his attitude towards crime – with an emphasis on deterrence – and poverty, with frequent allusion to the ‘medicine’ of fiscal measures required to restore the U.K.’s economic fortunes after the Crash of 2007-2008. Work would set the poor free, conveniently to the benefit of a wealthy elite.
After prep school came Eton College, like his ‘father, grandfather, mother’s father and his father’, where the teenage Cameron had a brush with authority – having been caught smoking pot – before knuckling down sufficiently to gain entry to Brasenose College, Oxford, and later earn a first class degree in oft-derided – by Boris Johnson not least[i] – PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics); incidentally he dismisses the account of what he did with a pig’s head while a member of the Bullingdon Club as ‘false and ludicrous.’
During his time at Eton Cameron first encountered the economic ideas that have informed his political outlook since the 1990s, when he worked under the right-wing Chancellor Norman Lemont. From the start he says, ‘it was the radical monetarists and free marketeers who seemed to have the new and exciting ideas.’
This indicates approval for what Naomi Klein describes as the ‘Shock Doctrine’[ii] espoused by Milton Friedman – the idea of using a political crisis to bring budgetary austerity in order to generate conditions favourable to rapid economic growth. Any recovery generally enriches an economic elite, with the consolation of high employment for the wider society, however precarious and poorly paid.
‘Compassionate’ Conservatism
Cameron styles himself a ‘Thatcherist rather than a Thatcherite,’ a distinction appearing to be a branding exercise as opposed to any substantial divergence from the outlook of his predecessor, whose uncompromising policies established a predominantly post-industrial and unequal society reliant on a London-based financial services industry, over the course of eleven seismic years in power between 1979 and 1990.
He reveals: ‘I wasn’t always convinced by her approach, and thought some of the rough edges needed to come off. But on the big things – trade union reform, rejecting unilateral nuclear disarmament, our alliance with Ronal Reagan’s America, privatization, Europe – she was absolutely right.’ Essentially, Cameron recognized that ironing out “rough edges” would be necessary to make the Conservative Party electable after Tony Blair had shifted New Labour to the political centre ground.
He even hails the architect of New Labour: ‘Tony Blair was the post-Thatcher leader the British people wanted’ he says, combining, ‘pro-enterprise economics with a more compassionate approach to social policy and public services.’
Cameron recognised that taking the Thatcherite (or Thatcherist) project any further had become electorally impossible, at least in the short term. In fairness to him, levels of inequality, while remaining significantly higher than other advanced northern European economies,[iii] stabilized rather than widened during his tenure, and universal healthcare through the NHS was maintained.
Cameron spells out the changes in emphasis he believed were required to make his party electable: ‘Instead of tax cuts, crime and Europe, we needed to shift our focus onto the issues the Conservative Party had ignored: health, education, and tackling entrenched poverty … women and ethnic minorities.’ As Conservative leader from 2005 and Prime Minister from 2010, Cameron embraced non-economic causes such as marriage equality, and made sure to be pictured alongside women and members of ethnic minorities. To some of extent the exercise of ironing out “the rough edges” was assisted further by going into coalition with the Lib-Dems under the ineffectual Nick Clegg in 2010.
Over the course of his tenure, in close collaboration with his friend George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Cameron rewarded wealth acquisition by reducing the highest rate of income tax from 50 to 40 per cent and slashing corporation tax went from 28 to 17 per cent. He quotes approvingly J.M. Keynes description of the ‘animal spirits’ motivating enterprise, disregarding the altruism often underpinning innovation.
As with Thatcher’s idea of an ‘Ownership Society’, his government fed aspirations for house ownership through a 2013 ‘Help to Buy’ scheme for council houses, which only seems to have inflated property values while the market was under supplied. An increase in the rate of VAT from 17.5 to 20%, alongside reductions in the welfare budget no doubt impelled many into taking up employment, but much of this was low paid and precarious – with zero hours contracts increasingly the norm. This job insecurity and low pay may account for what is described as the ‘productivity puzzle’ in the U.K. whereby, as of 2018, labour productivity was 18.3% below its pre-downturn trend.[iv]
Damningly, as of 2018 – two years after he had left office – almost a million-and-a-half were reliant on food banks.[v] Yet his (scary) ‘assessment now is that we didn’t cut enough. We could have done more, even more quickly, as smaller countries like Ireland had done successfully.’
On Europe, he and his fellow Modernisers that included Boris Johnson ‘were all convinced that the Conservative Party had become, and should remain, a Eurosceptic party’, but that ‘banging on about Europe’ … was damaging.’ Thus, crucially, he refused to tackle the issue head on, and as Prime Minister postured among his European colleagues, insisting on British exceptionalism to the public gallery.
Environment and the ‘Big Society’
The rebranding of Conservatism also embraced environmentalism, memorably conveyed through a much-derided photograph of Cameron astride a sledge pulled by huskies inside the Arctic circle, which was intended to convey his acceptance of the reality of Climate Change.
During his period in power significant progress was certainly made in terms of wind energy generation in the U.K., although it is unclear whether government policies facilitated this as opposed to technological advances, and the country’s favourable weather conditions. Cameron’s government certainly did not embark on any serious divestment from fossil fuels.
He also displays little concern for biodiversity, bemoaning how the Environmental Agency ‘seemed to worry more these days about newts and butterflies than homes and livelihoods,’ and reveals support for badger culling as a means of combating bovine T.B..
As Prime Minister he acknowledges an overriding consideration to maintain rising GDP, which is given almost aphrodisiacal qualities:
When your GDP is on the up, your power rises with it. Your global stature increases, public confidence grows, your party’s fortunes rise, and your economy’s success sparks the interests of investors. Growth begets growth … But when GDP is stagnating or shrinking (or at least when you are told it is – the provisional figures don’t always turn out to be true), you’re in a permanent state of precariousness.
Absent is any discussion of whether a politics predicated on economic-growth-without-end, involving intermittent recessions, is capable of generating any kind of environmental equilibrium for human beings living on planet Earth.
Another aspect of Cameron’s Compassionate Conservative formula was the so-called ‘Big Society’, which called for a revival of volunteering. It is an idea not without merit – a non-remunerative space of interaction between private enterprise and the state – however easy it may be to satirise as a patrician fantasy world of village fetes and pumpkin-growing-competitions.
An absence of engagement, however – in this book at least – with theories of social capital indicate, like much else about Compassionate Conservatism, that it is a veneer masking an overwhelming dedication to free market economics. This approach diverged from other northern European states, where living standards were generally maintained after the Crash.
Referendum
After becoming leader of the opposition in 2005, Cameron used his first PMQ, in which he was pitted against Tony Blair, to raise the failure of the Labour government to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Although he did not make a career of deriding the European project, his public utterances revealed suspicion throughout. Ultimately, pursuing a “small ‘e’ and small ‘s’ euroscepticism” agenda would make arguments in favour of the European project ring hollow.
Nonetheless, having emerged with a successful result from the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, in part thanks to the intervention of his one-time sparring partner Gordon Brown, and the Alternative Vote in 2011, Cameron chose to take on the major challenge of an ‘in-out’ European referendum. He wished to settle the argument once and for all within the Conservative party, as the emergence of UKIP under the ‘charismatic’ Nigel Farage was threatening its right flank.
In hindsight Cameron recognizes that he ‘had allowed expectations about what could be achieved through a renegotiation to become too high.’ But failure to control close lieutenants within Conservative ranks would be his ultimate undoing.
Both Old Etonians and Oxford graduates, Johnson and Cameron were seen as fellow ‘Modernisers’ within Conservative ranks: ‘I liked Boris and he made me laugh.’ Cameron tells us, ‘But I didn’t always trust him.’ He provides an amusing picture of an occasional tennis partner: ‘Boris’s style on the court is like the rest of his life: aggressive, wildly unorthodox (he often uses an ancient wooden racquet) and extremely competitive.’
This aggression appeared to border on lunacy at times, as when, on one Johnson family visit to the Prime Minister’s country residence at Chequers, in a highly competitive game of football on the front lawn, Boris slide-tackled one of his own children, ‘so vigorously they had to retire hurt.’
As Mayor of London Cameron says, ‘Boris was the one who was full of jealousies and paranoias.’ At one time he informed Cameron that after the end of his second spell as Mayor he would finish with public life altogether: ‘I’m leaving public life after this. People say I want to be an MP. I don’t. I’m not going to do that.’
In the event Johnson resumed his parliamentary career, and when it came to the referendum he initially dithered – by his own admission ‘veering all over the place like a broken shopping trolley’ – before deciding to give the Leave campaign his wholehearted backing.
We gain insights into what appears to be almost a domestic drama as Cameron reveals how prior to this decision Boris’s wife Marina, ‘rather effectively shouted him down, saying ‘Dave’s thought it through. I’m not sure you have. Why don’t you let the prime minister get on with it?’ – or words to that effect.’ Apparently fixated on the issue of the supremacy of EU law, Johnson consoled himself that ‘Brexit would be crushed like the toad beneath the harrow.’
In a rare moment of insight Cameron intuits his opponents’ motivations: ‘Whichever senior Tory politician took the lead on the Brexit side – so loaded with images of patriotism, independence and romance – would become the darling of the party. He didn’t want to risk someone else with a high profile – Michael Gove in particular – to win that crown.’
foam-flecked Faragist
Ironically, Cameron himself persuaded the Sunday Times journalist, and fellow Oxford graduate, Michael Gove to seek a parliamentary seat. Gove went on to serve as a reform-minded Education Secretary during Cameron’s first administration, and turned out to be a star turn at Cabinet meetings: ‘He’d link together two stories of the day, something from popular culture, something from the other side of the world, and then deliver it with Carry On campness.’
What Cameron regards, however, as the poisonous influence of his advisor Dominic Cummings brought disputes with the teaching profession, and in a reshuffle Gove was demoted to Chief Whip, with a diminished income. This rankled with Gove’s wife the journalist Sarah Vine at least, who ominously described a ‘shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret.’
Although in Cameron’s estimation Gove, unlike Johnson, was a true Brexit believer, he had counselled against holding a referendum, and indicated he would only play a minimal role in the campaign. So the ‘ferocity and mendacity’ of his (and Johnson’s) tactics arrived as a shock. Dismissal of experts along with false claims about expenditure on the NHS came with anti-immigrant invective: ‘Michael Gove, the liberal-minded, carefully considered Conservative intellectual, had become a foam-flecked Faragist warning that the entire Turkish population was about to come and live in Britain.’
Cameron reveals wounds of betrayal when he says that both Gove and Johnson, ‘behaved appallingly, attacking their own government, turning a blind eye on their side’s unpleasant actions and becoming ambassadors for the expert-trashing, truth-twisting age of populism.’
End of days
The referendum result left Cameron with little choice but to resign, plunging the country into an enduring constitutional crisis. The crocodile-tear-stained-text he received from Johnson is worth recalling: ‘Dave, I am sorry to have been out of touch but couldn’t think what to say and now I am absolutely miserable about your decision. You have been a superb PM and leader and the country owes you eternally.’
One conclusion is that Cameron was a political lightweight who simply merged New Labour’s techniques in political spin with old school monetarist Thatcherite (or ‘Thatcherist’) economic policies. This may have been conducive to economic growth, with the U.K. emerging as an employment powerhouse in the wake of the Crash, attracting hundreds of thousands of workers from more sluggish European economies that generally afforded greater labour protection. But the uncertainties of boom and bust seem to have demanded scapegoats in the shape of immigrants, leaving the country vulnerable to a populist surge.
The poverty of Cameron’s ideas is revealed in a paradoxical attitude towards monarchy:
I have always been a passionate monarchist, but never able to explain precisely why. A person’s future should be determined by their talent and hard work, not by the accident of their birth – my whole political life has been dedicated to that meritocratic ideal.
Also, reliance on the spectacle of the London Olympics to relieve social tensions is oddly reminiscent of Ancient Rome: ‘They seemed to be an antidote to so much that was wrong in our country. To the social breakdown we’d seen in the riots, proof that young people were a positive force.’
And yet, despite his obvious deficiencies, foreign misadventures (including Libya) and shameful disregard for poverty, one cannot help feeling a certain nostalgia for his period in office. Then at least the Rule of Law seemed assured and the “rough edges” of conservatism were considered problematic.
For the Record by David Cameron, William Collins, London, 2019.
[i] Sonia Purnell, ‘Boris Johnson and David Cameron: How a rivalry that began at Eton spilled out on to the main stage of British politics’, February 23rd, 2016, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-and-david-cameron-how-a-rivalry-that-began-at-eton-spilled-out-on-to-the-main-stage-of-a6891856.html
[ii] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2007.
[iv] Untitled, ‘UK productivity continues lost decade’, April 5th, 2019, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47826195
[v] May Bulman, ‘Food bank use in UK reaches highest rate on record as benefits fail to cover basic costs’, 24th of April, 2018, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-bank-uk-benefits-trussell-trust-cost-of-living-highest-rate-a8317001.html
As the United Kingdom inches perilously closer to a ‘no deal’ Brexit, Frank Armstrong recalls the European Union’s origins as an antidote to destructive and ill-conceived nationalism, which tore the continent apart for thirty years between 1914 and 1945. He argues that explanations for British exceptionalism should not be reduced to post-imperialist delusions, instead highlighting a long-standing failure to make adequate provision for post-industrial ‘rust belts’, regions witnessing a recrudescence of nationalism right across the continent. He also interprets Brexit as a product of competing nationalistic forces within the U.K., proposing the E.U. should avoid an acrimonious separation, and leave the door ajar for a return. Finally, he identifies necessary reforms to the E.U. Treaty to avoid the very real possibility of a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’ threatening the wider union.
Community Origins
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’[i] Grey’s foreboding ran contrary to the dominant ‘it’ll be over by Christmas’ view. From that war’s outbreak the continent descended into thirty years of almost continuous violence and instability – with non-combatant civilians often victims of collective punishment.
At the Paris Peace Conferences in 1919 ascendant ‘Wilsonian’ ideas of democracy and self-determination swept away multicultural empires, (Hapsburg-Austrian, Hohenzollern-German, Romanov-Russian and even Ottoman-Turkish) which for centuries accommodated multiple ethno-linguistic ‘nationalities’, ruled by a transnational aristocratic caste.
Cobbling together states based on often plastic identities proved problematic almost everywhere, however, as dispersals of nationalities rarely cohered with distinct geographic frontiers. Moreover, many nations possessed insufficient populations to make up viable sovereign entities, engendering dual- (Czechoslovakia[ii]) and multiple- (Yugoslavia) nation-states. Meanwhile, in violation of ‘Wilsonian’ principles of self-determination, the Peacemakers prohibited any unification between Germany and German-speaking Austria.
Throughout the inter-war years, across Europe, a significant challenge for many governments lay in accommodating German minorities – the volksdeutsche that had settled in Central and Eastern Europe over the course of the Middle Ages – but also others such as Hungarians living beyond their rump state. This poisoned relations between newly emerged countries from the outset, while embedding seemingly implacably hostile minorities within states such as Czechoslovakia, and others.
Establishing what Benedict Anderson referred to as the ‘imagined community’[iii] of the nation as the basis for a state, also elevated racial notions of a single volk, or people, with ‘blood’ attachments to a particular territory. This further estranged widely scattered, and linguistically heterogeneous, Jewish communities – without a state of their own or any prospect of creating one in Europe – from dominant national groups. Jews became convenient scapegoats, characterised as either bloodsucking-capitalist-Rothschilds, or transnational-Communist-ideologues, depending on political expediency.
The U.K. was among the few European countries where anti-Semitism was not rife in this period. Indeed, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British Empire committed to ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, to the consternation of its indigenous population. By the 1920s, however, the British were confronting a distinct fraying of imperial bonds (or really bondage), beginning with the concession of Dominion Status to the recalcitrant Irish in 1921, and threatening the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, India, which finally gained independence in 1946.
A Community to End all Wars
By 1945 World War II had stained the continent with the blood of almost fifty million. Nazi, and to a lesser extent Soviet and other states’, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide introduced greater ‘national’ homogeneity, with Jews the main victims, but also most of the volksdeutsche were often brutally corralled into the two German states that emerged in the wake of the thirty year conflagration.
As Europeans drew breath many – including Winston Churchill who coined the term a ‘United States of Europe’[iv] – identified the need for a political entity to safeguard what would have seemed a fragile peace, and confront the encroachment of the Soviet Union – and even the United States. The experience of total war brought by nationalist excesses proved cathartic.
The European Community, proceeding from the European Coal and Steel Pact of 1951, and culminating in the Treaty of Rome in 1957, might reasonably be held up as the most successful peace process in history, coinciding with, if not incubating, an epoch of unprecedented stability and prosperity for Western Europe at least. Establishing close economic ties could, in the words of French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’[v]
Seemingly irreconcilable French and Germans, especially, found common cause in rebuilding their countries and raising the standard of living – with the assistance from the United States through the Marshall Plan. A nascent supranational identity eroded the dominant idea of the nation – along with its implicit racial ideas of a distinctive volk – although any pan-European identity relied more on rational construction than emotional identification.
Vitally, a hybrid ‘social market’ – an accommodation between capitalism and socialism that emerged across post-war Europe – brought, or coincided with, the so-called ‘Miracle on the Rhine’, or Wirtschaftswunder (‘post-war economic miracle’) in Germany, Les Trente Glorieuses (1946-75) in France and Il Miracolo Economico to Italy. Affection for the European project was nourished by the rising living standards of a substantial majority across Western Europe.
Under conditions where individual states, in general, sheltered citizens from ‘cradle to grave’ from naked market forces, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, a Common Market – the defining feature of European Law – worked to the benefit of the majority; at least until the oil shocks of the mid-1970s brought that sustained period of broad-based development to a close, jeopardising an unspoken European social contract.
The one notable Western European democracy that declined to sign the Treaty of Rome was the U.K.. This ensured the organisation’s legal system was based on the Civil Law tradition of France rather than British Common Law, or a hybrid of both. Importantly also, Charles de Gaulle’s ‘non’ to British membership in 1967, reinforced British exceptionalism: a sense that they were of Europe but not from Europe – an island apart from the continent belonging to an Anglo- or Atlantic- sphere. Thus, when Britain (and Ireland) finally acceded to membership in 1973 it joined an institution whose still recognisable form had already crystallized, and at a less economically dynamic stage in European history.
Left and Right Opposition
It is commonly assumed that, from the outset and beyond, it has been the U.K.’s idea of itself as a global Empire that brought aloofness from the European Community.[vi] In fact, a succession of post-war Tory leaders including Winston Churchill, Harold MacMillan, Edward Health, John Major – if not Anthony Eden and Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Theresa May to the same extent – have been decidedly pro-European, viewing what became the European Union in 1992 as a guarantor of free trade on the continent. Even the current Tory Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, famously vacillated before urging a ‘leave’ vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[vii]
On the other hand, the Community was initially identified by many on the left in Britain as a Capitalist club, working to the detriment of workers, in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Thus the U.K.’s Post-War Labour government declined an invitation to join the European Coal and Steel Pact in 1951. In response Churchill, then still Tory leader, inveighed against the decision in front of the House of Commons, maintaining that ‘The whole movement of the world is towards an interdependence of nations.’[viii]
Indeed, from the outset, across Europe, the main opposition to the Community emanated from the radical left, Communist Party and others. But as long as states provided adequately for needy citizens agitation against the Community remained marginal. In the U.K.’s case, the ‘Bennite’[ix] wing of the Labour Party led opposition to membership in 1973, an enduring standpoint in the Party – albeit prominent ‘Bennites’ such as Shadow Chancellor John McDonald now advocate another referendum and a ‘remain’ vote.
Importantly, the Community’s defining liberalism does not extend to the treatment of the agricultural sector, long protected through trade tariffs and embargos from cheaper exports imports from beyond the continent. To an extent this contradiction was the basis of the Community itself – offering French farmers German prices for their produce brought (or bought) necessary electoral support, as well as guarding against dependence on imports from beyond the continent in the event of another world war.
The effect has been to preserve millions of small- and medium-sized farms that would otherwise have become commercially unviable. Controversially, however, the Common Agricultural Policy used to suck up to two-thirds of the Community’s budget, and still accounted for almost forty percent in 2018.[x] Moreover, the subsidy regime has proved regressive, rewarding wealthy, including super-wealthy, landowners,[xi] and is insufficiently attentive to the environmental damage of farming systems, including traditional pastoralism that prevents necessary re-afforestation and re-wilding.
In contrast, the populations of post-industrial regions – ‘rust belts’ – such as the North and Midlands of England, north-east France and elsewhere, have been given little European assistance since much heavy industry has pulled out. Historically these areas offered staunch support for left-wing parties, but loyalties have shifted in recent times, with UKIP and the Brexit Party, as well as the French National Front in particular, gaining traction among working class voters.
The expansion of the Union into Eastern and Central Europe in the 1990s has also worked to the detriment of these regions, with increased competition for employment in Western Europe, and re-location of multinationals to low-wage Central and Eastern European economies.
Indeed, the demise of the Soviet Union crippled the ‘hard’ left across the continent, with Communist Parties losing both an important patron, and exemplar. By the 1990s most European socialist parties, including the U.K.’s ‘New’ Labour Party had shifted to a broadly pro-European, and even neo-liberal, outlook.
An ensuing vacuum has been opportunistically filled by a range of Far Right or nationalist parties, opposed to the supranational Europe project. Populist parties have gained support in economically depressed post-industrial regions, where atavistic appeals are often made to the nation or volk, targeting constituents ill-served by the Common Market.
Furthermore, since the 1960s most European countries have experienced an influx of overseas migrants, mainly drawn from former colonies. That the Union guarantees the free movement of labour has brought a misleading association with an ensuing multiculturalism. This is despite immigration from beyond Europe being subject to the laws of individuals states, a point affirmed in the Dublin Regulation of 2013 on refugees.[xii] This requires, in most cases, that an asylum seeker’s application is processed in the first EU member state he or she sets foot in.
Explaining the Referendum Result
Ironically, it has been elements within the Tory party, the long-standing champion of the free trade the Community brought to the continent, which came to the fore in opposing the Union. The opposition of ‘Shire Tories’ may have come as no surprise, but the referendum also revealed deep antipathy towards the Europe Union in the economically depressed regions of the Midlands and North.[xiii]
This should have come as no surprise. Since Britain’s entry into the Community heavy industry has continued to depart these regions, helped along by Thatcherite privatisations throughout the 1980s that worked to the benefit of speculators in the City of London. Crucially, the British media focused working class malcontents on the European Union, with constant emphasis on Britain’s heroic role in World War II, and enduring stereotypes of Nazi Germans and cowardly French.
British working class antipathy towards Europe can also be explained by a lingering – not altogether without foundation – left-wing view that indigenous industry cannot recover under free trade conditions, and without state-aid grants, currently prohibited under European law.
Moreover, as indicated, the U.K. entered the Community at a stage of economic decline across the continent, and with a sense of unbelonging. Importantly, unlike within the founding states, there is no collective memory to draw on of thirty glorious years of growth and development under European suzerainty.
Also, the U.K. lay at a remove from the extremes of cathartic bloodletting during World War II. Notwithstanding the experience of the Blitz, and the loss of hundreds-of-thousands of men-under-arms, the country was spared Nazi occupation – the apotheosis of state-sponsored racism.
Increasingly strident national identities within the U.K. itself now also shape attitudes towards the supra-national institution; on the basis that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend’ Scottish nationalism is identified with a European affiliation, while Northern Ireland Unionism is antipathetic. Thus Brexit signifies, and fuels, a fissuring of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Also, strikingly, a majority of English Brexiteers are more concerned with leaving Europe than preserving the Union.[xiv] A willingness to shrink one’s state hardly equates to residual imperialist ambitions.
Brexit Effect
It seems Brexit cannot be avoided, and Europe (including the Irish government) should refrain from counter-productive meddling in U.K. politics. Its electorate cast the dye, and recent election results for the European Parliament indicate there are no regrets.[xv] A face-saving resolution can surely be found to the so-called ‘Backstop,’ especially given the U.K. has undertaken to respect the terms of the Common Travel Area,[xvi] allowing for unhindered movement and reciprocal employment opportunities for Irish and U.K. nationals.
It now appears that both Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have softened their stances on preserving all aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement[xvii], putting it up to the Irish government to offer alternatives. But the uncompromising, and occasionally nationalistic,[xviii] rhetoric of Taoiseach Varadkar and Foreign Minister Coveney leave the minority Irish government vulnerable to attack from current partners Fianna Fáil, and opponents Sinn Féin.
The total volume of trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic amounted to just over £5 billion in 2016,[xix] suggesting the challenge of equipping the border to check in-coming container traffic is not insurmountable. The key to preventing further Troubles surely lies in addressing the impoverishment and ghettoization of areas such as the Creggan in Derry.
Of far greater concern for the Republic should be the extent to which trade flows are dependent on the Holyhead ‘land bridge’, rather than through direct links to the continent. Previously, this led to the boorish comment from the new Home Secretary Priti Patel that the threat of food shortages could be used as a weapon in negotiations over the Backstop.[xx]
Clearly the current Tory leadership, and membership, is hell-bent on ‘delivering’ on Brexit. But their preferred outcome is presumably a compromise deal, but they are at least courting the possibility of crashing out.
A period beyond the Union would acquaint dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteers – especially those Prosecco-quaffing ‘Shire Tories’ – with a salutary lesson in the perils of life outside a substantial free-trade block. For starters, the prices of many foodstuffs, and beverages, will rise through the weakness of the pound and potential retaliatory tariffs. The Cabinet Office’s leaked Operation Yellowhammer document even anticipates food shortages.[xxi]
A period of stagflation is on the horizon with many multinational companies poised to pull out. But if a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government were to come to power, it would surely introduce state aids to assist fledgling industries, which might flourish under protectionist conditions, with a weak pound conducive to exports. Whether such a regime could resist a tendency towards over-bureaucratization, historically evident in command economies, remains to be seen. But the alternative of business-as-usual in many regions under E.U. is just as unpalatable to many living there.
Politically, Brexit may finally prompt the U.K. to settle on a written constitution, the absence of which has brewed such confusion, including the latest prorogation of Parliament. Much of the uncertainty around the Brexit referendum, and beyond, is linked to the absence of a clear text explaining the powers of the various arms of government. Ultimately, it seems likely that a majority in the U.K. will wish to return, but for this to happen undue punishment should be avoided.
How to Save Europe
If a ‘take it or leave it’ ‘in/out’ vote had been placed before other European electorates in all likelihood some would have chosen to push the exit button too. Even in Ireland – the beneficiary of disproportionate financial supports due to a substantial agricultural sector – two recent referendums on extending the European treaty have yielded negative votes, only reversed after clamorous support from the main political parties and mainstream media.
Likewise, the French and Dutch electorates rejected the European Constitution in 2005,[xxii] but were ignored, while the populations of both Switzerland and Norway have repeatedly chosen to remain outside.
As the poet Micheal O’Siadhail put it: ‘Starred blue flag so dutifully raised, / Still not fluttering in our chambered hearts’[xxiii]: Lacking symbols such as a football team to support, or other singular cultural representations, the European Union has not invented a lasting idea of itself beyond its liberal freedoms. These are now associated with a permissive Globalisation benefiting rapacious and tax-avoiding multinational corporations, and often working to the detriment of working people. Moreover, an extensive and exceedingly well-remunerated[xxiv] E.U. bureaucracy is associated with unnecessary red tape – and not only in the U.K..
The Brexit vote should give rise to profound questioning of the laws and institutions of the E.U.. Lest we forget, European leaders displayed palpable disregard for the welfare of the Greek and Irish populations during their economic crises; as Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole put it in response to Ireland’s EU/IMF Bailout in 2010:
There is no European solidarity. And there is not even a genuine sense of self-interest. The sadistic pleasures of punishment have trumped the sensible calculation that an Ireland enslaved by debt is not much use to anyone.[xxv]
A worldwide economic crisis impoverished many parts of the continent, and the E.U. became an agent of a doctrinaire austerity, often to the benefit of speculators.
What it means to be ‘European’
For the European Union to develop lasting legitimacy among a new generation – increasingly removed from the bloodletting if the first half of the twentieth century – it needs to be seen to do more than maintain the liberty to move goods, services, capital and labour. It should inspire loyalty by guaranteeing basic socio-economic rights, including inter alia basic sustenance, a dwelling, health and education, and defend human rights violations in countries such as Spain – where draconian measures curb freedom of expression, and have led to outrageous prison sentences being handed down to Catalan separatists for having the temerity to hold a referendum.
This requires a re-negotiation of the Treaty, along with abandonment of grandiose notions of a European super-state, and army. It could involve the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into E.U. law. We also need to see far greater institutional accountability, with all forms of lobbying being completely transparent, and outlandish salary scales re-assessed. The Commission ought to be democratised, with Commissioners perhaps being elected from a Europe-wide list, instead of positions being in the gift of national governments – resulting in political ‘fixers’ such as our own Commissioner Phil Hogan being promoted without democratic oversight.
Far greater burden- (and benefit-) sharing of refugees is also required – meaning the Dublin Regulation should be scrapped. This would take pressure of states such as Italy and Greece that have had to accommodate a disproportionate share.
Our ‘European’ identity should be disentangled from blood and a Judeo-Christian heritage; instead being a European should be equated with taking pride in one’s region’s culture and history, while holding a curiosity for others, available to visit via a continental rail network that is a unifying-symbol of progress. To this end, legislation offering all eighteen-year-old-Europeans a free Inter-rail pass is to be lauded.[xxvi]
A European identity should become modern in the sense of understanding global environmental responsibilities; along with recognising that a certain income threshold is required for human flourishing, beyond which gains are marginal.
A failure to reform is likely to result in a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’, with states such as Italy, Hungary and Poland succumbing to Populist, anti-EU political parties. A progressive supra-national alternative to inward-looking nationalism must be offered, but if states are unwilling to accede to a greater focus on environmental protection, human rights, income support and inclusivity then these should be permitted to leave, or be shown the door, and face the harsh realities of life outside the Union, just like the U.K..
There is much worth saving about the European ideal. In particular, as we stare down the barrel of an environmental crisis threatening humanity’s very survival, we require an E.U.-led Green New Deal, including reform to the CAP so as to make it more equitable and focused on environmental protection.
Europe can be a beacon to the rest of the world, and the development of a symbiotic relationship with nature can inspire a new generation, countering obsolete nationalist ideas of racial belonging.
Let us leave the light on also, and the door ajar, to allow the U.K. to return, whether United or not.
[i] [/efn_note]Viscount Grey of Fallodon: Twenty-Five Years 1892–1916, New York, 1925, p. 20[/efn_note]
[ii] At least in name. There were also German, Ruthenian (Ukrainian) and Hungarian minorities, as well as Jews drawn from different nationalities, along with a substantial partially nomadic Romany community.
[iii] Benedict Anderson Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London, Verso, 1983, pp.6-7.
[iv] Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Made History, Hodder, London, 2015, p.301
In 2016 the Department of Education and Skill’s outlined its latest scheme for Gaeltacht (designated Irish-language) districts: ‘Policy on Gaeltacht Education 2017 – 2022’. It aims to reverse the adoption of English as the primary language of these areas, a process which is pretty well complete.
Irish speakers are now in a minority in twenty out of the twenty-six ‘Gaeltacht Language Planning Areas’, often with numbers which are quite miniscule.[i]
The new education scheme is, nonetheless, being implemented throughout the defined districts. Each school’s Management Committee was offered the choice of becoming a designated ‘Gaeltacht School’, and 106 out of 133 primary schools agreed, as did 27 of the 28 secondary schools at that time, with the last one joining in subsequently. [ii]
Their participation is entirely unsurprising, however, given it qualifies any school for extra teaching staff and other resources to implement an enhanced Irish-language curriculum, as well as to teach the general curriculum through Irish. Remarkably, no English at all is taught to any children for the first two years of their primary schooling.
This plan will fail as all such Revival of Irish plans have done, and for the same reason. They derive from a defective belief that official action can reverse the people’s choice to speak English. It is simply impossible to sustain a separate language community as a relic of the past among an overwhelmingly English-speaking nation, even assuming the parents of the children concerned are actually seeking this.
Is this a new insight? Hardly! In 1963 ‘The Final Report of The Commission on the Restoration of the Irish Language’ was clear:
The preservation and strengthening of the Gaeltacht, therefore, must not be approached as if it were an attempt to preserve in one corner of the country an aboriginal reservation to remind us of the past…
In any case, the new Gaeltacht Education Policy is not a scheme to preserve a Gaeltacht, but to re-invent one. It is a sort of linguistic Jurassic Park experiment, where the captive school children are expected to mutate into an Irish-speaking tribe after a spell inside the Department of Education’s fantasy laboratory.
Of course it won’t happen. Today’s infants will emerge in due course from their Irish-medium ‘Gaeltacht’ designated schools as native English-speakers. As adults they will live their lives in the English-speaking world, of which they are already a part.
In 1990 Reg Hindley the author of The Death of the Irish Language painted a revealing picture of children in Gaeltacht areas:
the problem is not usually one of downright mendacity, much as it feels it when being assured by respectable people in positions of considerable trust that the children in their area all speak Irish excellently and are devoted to it, whereas the infants in the playground are playing loudly in English and the teenagers of whom one enquired directions where chatting in English when interrupted. [iii]
But the account of a deviant Sassenach was denounced by Irish language enthusiasts, and his research dismissed with contumely.[iv]
Nonetheless, in 2017 a Department of Education report on an Achill Island school bluntly stated that ‘the pupils speak only English.’[v]
In 2018 another Department report on the new Gaeltacht Education scheme itself said: ‘There are significant challenges in encouraging teenagers to speak Irish among themselves in social situations in the school environment.’[vi]
Thus, it seems the schoolchildren chat in their home language as soon as they can get away from their teachers. What a surprise!
In 2004 a ‘Study of Gaeltacht Schools’ carried out for COGG (the ‘Council for Gaeltacht and Gaelscoil Education’) said that ‘English is the main language used by pupils in normal conversational interactions in the vast majority of Gaeltacht schools.’
Subsequently, in 2014, a report by NUIG ‘Analysis of Bilingual Competence – language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht” revealed:
Unbalanced bilingualism or dominant bilingualism is the norm. English is the dominant language since it is the language in which they exhibit greater ability. Irish is the weaker language or it is the weaker language for the majority of pupils … From the point of view of formal linguistics, the majority of pupils function better in English, since it is the language in which they have the greater ability.
These facts about Irish-language use in Gaeltacht areas is of course well-known to State officials, considering that altering them is the stated purpose of their grand experiment.
A moral question arises here around using pupils as guinea pigs. On this point, Joe Mac Donncha in the Dublin Review of Books opined:
One might well ask, at this stage, if it is morally tenable for the state to continue to encourage parents in Gaeltacht communities to raise their children through the medium of Irish when the state itself is aware, or should be aware, that those children will struggle to acquire native-speaker competence in their first language, given the linguistic dynamics of the current Gaeltacht.[vii]
So why is this still happening? The answer is that it is a matter of a fixed political ideology, and it is in the nature of ideologues that they are immune to external influence, moral or otherwise. And as we know, when social engineers have the power to carry out their schemes, they often acquire a sense of absolute entitlement to do so.
Spare a thought for the school children concerned who choose to speak English whenever they are able. We may ask what entitles the Department to impose such ‘revivalist’ policies on them especially in many districts that have long since abandoned Irish.
‘Saving’ the Irish language may serve the interests of a coterie of enthusiasts, but does anyone care whether or not it benefits the children concerned?
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[i] Untitled, ‘Cainteoirí laethúla ina mionlach i 20 den 26 ceantar pleanála teanga sa Ghaeltacht – figiúirí nua daonáirimh’, July 20th, 2017, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/cainteoiri-laethula-ina-mionlach-i-21-den-26-ceantar-pleanala-teanga-sa-ghaeltacht-figiuiri-nua-daonairimh/
[ii] Untitled, ‘Na cúiseanna nach dteastaíonn stádas ‘Gaeltachta’ ó 27 scoil sa Ghaeltacht’, May 14th, 2019, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/na-cuiseanna-nach-dteastaionn-stadas-gaeltachta-o-27-scoil-sa-ghaeltacht/
[iii] Reg Hindley, The Death of the Irish Language, Routledge, London, 1990, p.59
[iv] For example: ‘Buried Alive – A Reply to Reg Hindley’s The Death of the Irish Language’. Dáil Uí Chadhain, 1991
[v] Unknown, ‘Achill Island pupils ‘speak only English’ The Sunday Times, December 10th, 2017.
[vi] ‘Schools participating in the Gaeltacht School Recognition Scheme’ September-December 2018, Department of Education and Skills.
[vii] Joe Mac Donncha, ‘The Death of a language’, Dublin Review of Books, April, 2015
Fact is a poor story-teller. It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequentially and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion. It works up an interesting situation, and then leaves it in the air to follow an issue that has nothing to do with the point; it has no sense of climax and whittles away its dramatic effects in irrelevance. Somerset Maugham[i]
And so the Brexit drama continues, wending inconclusively through the House of Commons as a post-modern farce premeditated by Franz Kafka. It must, nonetheless, be counted a success of sorts given the column inches it has generated. Like an episode of Channel 4’s ‘Big Brother’ it is difficult to take one’s eyes off this distracting blight on the politics of our archipelago of islands.
Perhaps what Brexit has revealed, above all, is that the UK’s unusual unwritten constitution[ii] – arguably a contradiction in terms – is not fit for purpose. When a majority unexpectedly voted in a referendum in 2017 against remaining in the European Union, it was unclear what should happen next. A court challenge was required to assert parliamentary sovereignty[iii], which is now as divided as the country on the matter. Speaker John Bercow recently invoked a precedent from the reign of James I, having been accused of acting ‘unconstitutionally’ for breaking with other precedents.[iv] The mind boggles at the pick and mix of Conventions from which fundamental laws derive.
That referendum was David Cameron’s brainchild for keeping troglodyte Eurosceptic colleagues off his back. The outcome was not supposed to happen. His strategists probably assumed that recalcitrant Mondeo Men, and Shire Tories unable to get over the smoking ban in pubs, were a lost cause. But they surely did not expect the working class of Stoke and Sunderland to put their two fingers up at the European Union in such numbers; never mind they had been incubated on unwholesome doses of Euro-trashing by the Red Tops, amidst repeated identification of the Union with Nazi Germany.[v]
Conservative Party top brass had been, after all, solidly Remain; the Parliamentary Labour Party could be relied on – even Jeremy Corbyn’s previously doctrinaire opposition had softened into a lukewarm Remain – while the Lib Dems were gushingly Europhile; and the SNP saw in the Union a counterweight to the ‘auld enemy’.
UKIP seemed an anachronism, a busted flush electorally, barely mustering a single MP, making the political earthquake all the more startling.
An amorphous and secretive – but identifiable and enduring nonetheless – Deep British State (DBS) is doing all in its power to avert damage to trade and industry; devaluation of the pound; and to prevent London’s property bubble from bursting. Make no mistake a fabled no-deal brexocide would damage corporations and wealthy individuals, with a rise in unemployment and even food shortages looming for the working class. The pillars of a profoundly unequal but at least functioning economy are shaking, but Brexit is only one aspect of a wider difficulty.
the DBS
The financiers, captains of industry, press barons, and elements within the BBC, are presided over by a permanent civil service, including the intelligence services MI5 and MI6. These not entirely comic Sir Humphreys keep a vigilant watch over the political officeholders, often intellectual inferiors, without the distinction of an Oxbridge education. At the highest level of government there are well documented connections to major corporations, including the armaments industry[vi], allowing good fellows to secure pleasant retirements, where the only crash disturbing the evening air comes from willow and ash meeting above the village green.
The prospect of another referendum became politically impossible once the volume of True Believers in the Conservative Party became apparent. With a smell of Dunkirk in their nostrils, some relish Brexit at almost any cost. The DBS are struggling to contain this rowdy element, which could do serious damage to the economy, but this is the devil they know.
After her disastrous performance in the 2017 election, the ‘May-bot’ became as lame as any duck can be. No doubt she has been eyeing up a comfortable pile among wheat fields in rural Oxfordshire since – where good Tories go to die. A favourable retirement package requires her to align closely with the DBS.
The really scary outcome for the DBS is a Jeremy Corbyn-led, Labour Government. The City of London is petrified lest a large proportion of its vast wealth derived from speculation is seized. So an immediate election must be avoided, with only one winner possible in another round of Corbyn-May. Thus, according to the lead story in The Telegraph on March 30th: ‘Snap election under Theresa May would ‘annihilate’ the Conservatives, senior Tories warn’.[vii]
Corbyn, defying expectations, masterfully played his strongest card to offer a so-called People’s Vote – a referendum rerun – at a pivotal moment in the game. As the BBC’s Andrew Marr put it:
Corbyn’s greatest political skill may turn out to be his talent for delay. He lets events come to him. Under his bo tree, he quietly sits, and sits, and takes the hits – as, for instance, on the referendum issue – waiting for his moment.[viii]
Having averted deep ruptures in his own party over Brexit, at least compared to Tory factionalism, Corbyn allowed centrist opponents, including Chuka Umunna, to resign from the party to form the so-called Independent Group. Who’d have thought the bearded lefty could be so cunning?
So a deal, however humiliating, is pushed through, and the DUP are surely being offered the required sweeteners in exchange for the Backstop; having been informed a refusal will see them being thrown to the wolves – howling rosaries in Gaelic.
The DBS is playing for time, seeking an orderly but irrelevant Brexit, and then for someone reasonable to emerge from within Conservative ranks, now May has obligingly agreed to fall on her sword. The chauvinist bluster of the likes of Boorish Johnson, Rabidly Dominic or Jacob Really-Smug do not inspire confidence, but Populism may be required to counteract the radical appeal of Corbyn, who has the DBS firmly in his sights.
A Very British Coup
Former Bennite Labour MP Chris Mullin’s 1982 novel A Very British Coup imagines the possibly of a genuinely left-wing Labour Prime Minister coming to power. The fictional Labour leader Harry Perkins wins a general election on a platform of radical change to a floundering economy serving a privileged few.
Perkins is frustrated, however, at every turn as he endeavours to withdraw the U.K. from NATO and re-nationalise industries. Collusion between the permanent government, including Intelligence services, media barons and the captains of industry leads to his premature resignation – A Very British Coup – and replacement with a malleable, New Labour, government.
Although originally from Sheffield in the North of England, Harry Perkins bears a striking resemblance to one Jeremy Corbyn. Thus:
Harry Perkins made a fetish of travelling on public transport telling one official: ‘I am afraid it is necessary, Inspector. You see, my party wants to phase out the private motor car in cities and encourage people to use public transport instead.[ix]
On entering office he addresses an uncooperative Governor of the Bank of England: ‘What’s the point in having elections if, regardless of outcome, a handful of speculators in the City of London and their friends abroad continue to call the shots?’[x]
Perkins also dismisses New Labour centrism in a manner reminiscent of Corbyn: ‘We offer the electorate a choice between two Tory parties and they choose the real one;’[xi] and confronts a centre-left media that often pays lip service to promoting meaningful change: ‘The Guardian agonised for ten column inches before concluding that, although Labour’s plans made sense, “Now was not the time.”’[xii]
In the novel the DBS, many with links to the arms industry, are determined to maintain the American alliance and resist de-nuclearization. Thus, Sir Peregrine Craddock the fictional head of ‘DI5’, ‘had long regarded CND as the most subversive organisations on DI5’s books. Its subversive nature lay in the breath of its appeal.’[xiii]
Perkins, like Corbyn, invokes the possibility of a neutral Europe ‘which had haunted Pentagon defence planners for so long.’ Also, as with the current Labour leader, Perkins arrives from the point of view: ‘apparently supported by documentary evidence, which saw America as the centre of a worldwide network of tyranny, terrorism and suppression.’[xiv]
Little is said in the novel on Britain’s relationship with the Europe Community. This reflects how the Labour Left’s historic opposition Europe was based on an assessment that the E.E.C. was set up in the interest of capitalists, and used as a pawn against the Soviet Union by American Cold Warriors. This is quite unlike the sense of cultural exceptionalism and even outright racism motivating ardent Brexiters.
‘Eventually Socialists run out of other people’s money’
The DBS assumes that a Corbyn-led government will interfere with an economy still, broadly, dominated by free market doctrine, albeit the NHS remains largely untouchable.
Free market ‘reforms’ were unleashed by Margaret Thatcher throughout the 1980s as her dictum, ‘Eventually Socialists run out of other people’s money’[xv] became preeminent. The relative brutality of the adjustments impoverished large swathes of the country. The rust belts of the North, Midlands, and even Wales, would ultimately vote for Brexit.
Thatcherite policies were tempered slightly under John Major, and more so with the advent of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour, but the adjustments, especially privatisation of essential government services including railways, endured and in some cases continued.
At the end of Conservative rule in 1996 Britain was the most unequal society in the Western world, with the gap between rich and poor as great as in Nigeria. By then the worst-off were living on roughly the same incomes as their equivalents in Hungary.[xvi] Inequality actually deepened under Blair and Brown[xvii], albeit outright poverty diminished[xviii], but the Crash led to welfare cuts, while inequality deepened apace.
Armed to the teeth
The DBS is also profoundly worried by the turn U.K. foreign policy would take under a Corbyn-led government. This could jeopardise the valuable armaments industry that Corbyn has inveighed against throughout his career.
In 2016 The Independent reported that that U.K. was the second leading exporter of armaments in the world.[xix] Saudi Arabia alone pays £10 billion for equipment[xx] as it pursues a dirty war against Yemen. Just this month Jeremy Hunt visited the kingdom, and we may safely assume contracts were discussed. The DBS is intimately linked and lobbied by the leading companies, as the organisation Campaign Against the Arms Trade reveals.[xxi]
Furthermore, a Zionist lobby in the U.K. has long exerted influence over U.K. foreign policy, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which led to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. This is hardly a controversial point, and there are many good reasons for this, not least sympathy for the idea of a Jewish homeland in the wake of the Holocaust. The Labour Party itself has a long tradition of support for Israel.
Corbyn, however, has stood with immigrants from Third Wold countries deeply opposed to Zionism throughout his career. This brought him into contact with unhelpful figures espousing implacable hostility. But there is no evidence of Corbyn advocating a military invasion of Israel or questioning its right to exist as sovereign state.
He did, however, make ill-judged comments during his years in the political wilderness, comparing ISIS to Israel, and calling for Hamas and Hezbollah to be treated as ‘friends.’[xxii] To his credit he has, however, apologised for these statements. As a consistent advocate of the rule of law, and multilateralism, there is no reason to be believe Corbyn has any concern other than vindicating the human rights of Palestinians, and respecting international law.
The accusation that Corbyn is anti-Semitic is simply a way of getting at him. The virtuous, ascetic and seemingly incorruptible character needs to be darkened, and prominent members of the Jewish community, including from within the Parliamentary Labour Party, are lined up to level the accusation.
Some of his colleagues, including Ken Livingston, have made unacceptable comments, but Corbyn has never stooped to racial stereotyping Jews. His quarrel with Zionism is political, and he has collaborated with left-wing Jews including the American Mike Marqusee.
Corbyn’s alliances with what he perceives as comrade anti-imperialists in the Irish Republican movement also brought accusations of treachery. To many, however, especially the young, the disadvantaged and those from immigrant backgrounds, he is a hero, who shares their own critical views on the domestic and international policies of successive U.K. governments.
Getting it right more often than not
Corbyn has leveraged popular global causes to engineer domestic political success. After Afghanistan he correctly predicted that George W. Bush would link the terrorist attacks with the ‘axis of evil’ – Iraq, North Korea and Iran – to justify an invasion of Iraq. This was ridiculed by the media and the majority of MPs.
Subsequently, during the febrile period before the U.S-led invasion of Iraq, supported by Tony Blair, Corbyn was granted a rare audience with the Labour Prime Minister. ‘One question’, he asked, ‘Why are we doing it?’, to which Blair testily replied, ‘Because it is the right thing to do,’. Corbyn responded ‘That’s not an answer.’[xxiii]
A platform of wealth readjustment, especially advocating transfers from older property owners to younger people, including students, proved extremely popular during the 2017 election. The demographic supporting Corbyn is growing, and well-equipped to play the data wars that modern elections require.
Corbyn’s challenge, as with any aspiring socialist movement – whether that failing in Venezuela or those delivering across Scandinavia – is to ensure that state dominance of the means of production does not diminish innovation or lead to bureaucratization. Socialists must learn from the mistakes of the past, both in the U.K. in the 1970s when the trade unions ground the country to a halt and, more obviously, the extremes of Communism in Eastern Europe.
Perhaps the most pernicious influence of Thatcherism, and neo-liberalism generally, is the dominance of the view that state services are automatically inferior to those provided by private enterprise, and that civil servants do not take pride in their work in the absence of incentives. In many cases this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For a true revival in the U.K.’s fortune a greater sense of national cohesion seems required. This need not involve a lasting break with the European Union, but could require a loser arrangement within the United Kingdom itself, with individual ‘nations’ granted increased autonomy, or even full independence. A written constitution and the abolition of monarchy would also be salutary.
Under Corbyn, England could accept its lot as a medium-sized country, guaranteeing a basic level of income for all, and operating within supranational institutions. The trade-off for would be a decisive end to imperialist ambitions, including abandonment of the vastly expensive nuclear weapon programme. This will, however, be resisted by vested interests seeking to preserve the status quo within the DBS.
In 2016, at one of his lowest ebbs politically, and with even long-standiy supporters losing heart, Corbyn was addressed by David Cameron in the House of Commons in the manner of a school prefect dismissing a lackey: ‘For heaven’s sake, man, go!’[xxiv]
In the interim Cameron has become a widely-derided irrelevance, while Corbyn is the front-runner to become the next Prime Minister. The question is whether the apparent disorder of Brexit will be resolved by this unlikely leader. If Corbyn does come to power he confronts the real possibility of A Very British Coup, whittling away its dramatic effects.
[vi] The website of the Campaign Against the Arms Industries (https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/influence) provides details of high level contacts and ex-public servants working in the arms industry.
[vii] Edwark Malnick and Nick ‘Snap election under Theresa May would ‘annihilate’ the Conservatives, senior Tories warn
[xviii] Robert Joyce and Luke Sibieta, ‘Labour’s record on poverty and inequality’, June 6th 2013, Institute for Fiscal Studies, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6738, accessed 30/3/19.
Just a few years ago the prospect of Irish unity seemed remote. However, things are changing. Power-sharing has broken down and the Northern Assembly has been suspended for over two years. On top of that, a combination of a demographic shift in favour of Catholics, and the Brexit-influenced warming of some Protestant voters towards Irish unity means the idea of a pro-reunification majority in both jurisdictions emerging cannot be ruled out.
There remain, however, serious obstacles to unity south of the border. For one thing, many Southern taxpayers may think twice if asked to replicate the very high level of subsidy currently provided by Westminster to the North. But money is only money. It would take a brave political leader in the South to propose a ‘no’ vote in a unity referendum on financial grounds. A more important obstacle, therefore, may be the issues of symbols and identity.
The Good Friday Agreement guarantees ‘parity of esteem’ and ‘just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities’ in Northern Ireland. Were this principle to be applied to the Southern state, it could involve changes to many symbols and arrangements that are emotionally important to large numbers of citizens.
Would Southern voters, for instance, be willing to accept unification if it meant having to compromise on the Irish/Gaelic nature of the symbols of the State. Securing a State that reflected and promoted a Gaelic cultural identity, was a central goal of the Irish national revolution and, as things stand, the symbols of the Irish state reflect this primacy of Nationalist and Republican symbols.
If a united Ireland meant replacing the tricolor with a neutral alternative; replacing terms like Dáil and Taoiseach with ‘Assembly’ and ‘Prime Minister’; dropping mandatory Irish in school and downgrading the Irish language in the constitution; many voters may begin to wonder if unity is a price worth paying.
After all, in the Treaty negotiations of 1921, the 1925 crisis over the Boundary Commission, in World War II and during the Troubles, when faced with a choice between obtaining or protecting the independence of the South from the UK and abandoning Northern nationalists, Southern leaders have consistently chosen the former.
The possibility that unification is blocked due to opposition from Southern voters cannot be discounted. However, it should also be considered whether, under the Good Friday Agreement, unification needs to raise the issue of symbolic changes at all.
As the Brexit process has slowly been teaching the British government, the political effects of the Good Friday Agreement cannot be localized to Northern Ireland, and even affect decisions taken at U.K. level.
However, that is not the case for the symbolic arrangements. Under the Good Friday Agreement the requirement of parity of esteem for both traditions is localized to Northern Ireland, and does not affect the symbolic arrangements of the U.K. as a whole. For the U.K. as a whole, the national flag remains the Union Jack, the national anthem remains ‘God Save the Queen’ and state bodies display British and monarchical symbols.
Therefore, under the Good Friday Agreement structures, should Northern Ireland join the Republic, there would still be an obligation to ensure parity between nationalist and unionist symbols within Northern Ireland. But such an obligation would remain localized to Northern Ireland and would not necessarily be extended to the symbolic arrangements and identity of the Republic.
This approach would give Unionists recognition of the legitimacy of their British identity, just as Northern Nationalists now have recognition of their Irish identity. And presumably, Northern Ireland would retain autonomous institutions characterized by power-sharing, with power being devolved from Dublin instead of London.
But just as Northern Nationalists are currently required to accept that Northern Ireland is part of a larger state with a British identity, post-unification Unionists would be required to accept that Northern Ireland was part of a larger state with an Irish identity, provided that within Northern Ireland itself, parity of esteem was ensured.
With the issue of reunification increasingly likely to come on the agenda in the medium term, it would be wise for citizens in the Republic to start thinking about what they would and would not be willing to sacrifice for unity.
Of course, as a matter of prudent politics, it may be better for some symbolic concessions to be made by the Republic in order to smooth any process of unification, but such concessions are not necessarily required by the Good Friday Agreement. Indeed, given the emotional importance of symbols such as the flag and language, it may be that a smooth process of reunification would also require reassurance to nationalists in the South that the wholesale change of symbols precious to them would not be required.
Ronan McCrea is Professor of Constitutional and European Law at University College London
After working for the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice at global conferences, Sean McCabe is now relishing the chance to represent the local concerns of his Phibsborough community. He intends to bring meaningful improvements to people’s lives, and help build community-owned initiative to tackle threats posed by climate change and inequality. Cassandra Voices interviews this first-time independent candidate in the May 24th election.
What motivated you to enter politics?
I think we are all in politics whether we like it or not. In January 2010 I moved to Calcutta, India where I spent a little under two years working in a hospice, serving people whose lives were devastated and extinguished by poverty. It was a formative time. The depth of injustice made me angry and shaped how I understood life and my opportunities in it. I made a promise to myself that I would use whatever ability I have to serve people. I think lots of us feel like that – we want to contribute positively to society and support the people around us – but maybe we don’t necessarily look to politics as an avenue to achieve this. Back then, in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis, I didn’t have much faith in the political system.
My understanding evolved in the years after I returned home. It took time to find the type of work I wanted to do. I had studied physics and worked in finance for several years, so transitioning to people-focused work was not easily done. That was a difficult time, full of uncertainty which, after time, can lead you to doubt the path you’re on. If anyone told me then I would go on to spend five years working closely with Mary Robinson, I’d have thought they were mad.
But that’s how it turned out. My work with the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice shaped my understanding of political engagement, and the right to participate in society. A focus of our work was ensuring that people with lived experience of the impacts of climate change had their voices heard during international negotiations around climate and sustainable development. I had the opportunity to listen to, and learn from, many conversations where community leaders, mostly women, told their truth to world leaders and decision-makers. I grew to understand the importance of meaningful participation in addressing injustice. In this time I also became involved in projects related to homelessness, Direct Provision and mental health.
The injustices that exist in Ireland and elsewhere will only be overcome by communities engaging directly with the decision-making processes that affect our lives. Similarly, to tackle climate change and build a sustainable, safe future, we will have to ensure that anyone can participate meaningfully in the design of action, and benefit from sustainable development. So in answer to the question, I am not motivated to enter politics, I am motivated to play my part in addressing the serious challenges of our time. I see participation as fundamental to addressing these challenges and that is why I am running in the local elections.
Are there specifics polices for your local area that you are focusing on?
We are hoping to secure a voice for the Phibsborough community on Dublin City Council. Due to adjustments to the Local Area boundaries, 2019 is the first time all of Phibsborough will be voting in the same constituency. This gives us an important opportunity to address a lack of long-term investment in the area.
I want to ensure the redevelopment of Dalymount Park goes ahead. It offers a wonderful opportunity to significantly enhance community life in the area as the plans includes cultural and recreational facilities. A concerted political push is required to ensure it receives the funding it requires. I also want to address the issue of traffic in Phibsborough. Despite relatively low levels of car ownership, the community is dominated by the roads that divide it. I want to work to deliver infrastructure improvements that ensure that pedestrians and cyclists can move safely and effectively. I want to see Bus Connects and Metro North developed in as inclusive a manner as possible to avoid potentially regressive impacts on the area.
I will also work to ensure the community start seeing the benefits of climate action through renewable energy cooperatives that can reduce heating and electricity bills, as well as carbon footprints.
We are taking note of lots of other issues coming up on the doorsteps, including illegal dumping which suggests a lack of pride in the area that we aim to address.
Another concern is the prevalence of anti-social behaviour and crime. This needs to be addressed firstly with enhanced community policing, but also through development and enhancement of youth services.
I also want to help create a local food cooperative along with more allotments and urban gardens which will enhance biodiversity.
Why did you choose to run in the local elections rather than a general election?
They are different very different roles. My decision to run in the local elections is based on a belief that local government has a very important role to play in mobilising the action required to create a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable world.
I was in New York in September 2015 for the adoption of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2030 Agenda was signed by 193 countries and applies to all. Through it, world leaders committed to eradicating poverty, addressing inequality, and protecting our planet for present and future generations.
During the celebrations at the United Nations Headquarters I remember feeling a million miles away from the communities that this agenda is supposed to help. I felt the ambition was not matched by a concrete understanding of how ownership would be passed to regular people and communities. We must have communities around the world that are empowered with the information, tools and resources to implement the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals contained within the 2030 Agenda. Only then will we be able to create the world free of suffering and want which the 2030 Agenda calls for.
The past three decades have seen the edge being taken off community agency in Ireland with people encouraged to view themselves as individual consumers, rather than citizens and community members. But that spirit still exists and is ready to build a fairer, sustainable and more compassionate society, it just needs to be set free.
I love living in Phibsborough because I’m surrounded by people who dedicate their time and energy to their community. There is an abundance of grassroots organisations, actively enhancing social, cultural and environmental wellbeing. Even Bohs is a collective, member-owned football club run by volunteers. It’s remarkable!
Local government should be facilitating and building on this active engagement. Together we can channel the agency that exists within our communities and develop a new approach to local governance in Ireland; one based on deliberative democracy, where people participate meaningfully in the decision-making processes, to the benefit of everybody.
To address poverty, inequality and climate change, we must start with local solutions, building the world we want from the ground up.
How do you intend to get yourself elected?
I want this campaign to be inclusive and participative, and we are planning a few community-based direct-action projects that will hopefully encourage people to consider the role of local government in their lives.
Traditional canvassing also plays an important role. A great team has been coming out with me, as we seek to understand the specific needs of the community.
This is a grassroots campaign. We would love for people to join in and take part – even if they have no prior experience in this kind of thing. The more people we have, the more we can do. We want to have fun doing it too. People can get involved by messaging us through Facebook or sending me an email on smccabe@outlook.ie.
How do you overcome voter apathy?
I’m not sure I have the resources to address that as an individual candidate. I want to avoid the type of cynical campaigning that I think contributes to voter apathy. We have a set of principles that govern our campaign which include taking the people we meet, and their concerns, seriously; avoiding echo chambers; not stealing ideas from, or taking credit for, community initiatives; not undermining other candidates; and ensuring complete transparency. We are publishing the campaign incomings and outgoings live online. My hope is that constituents will recognise our approach has integrity and that this will encourage participation in local politics.
Why did you choose to run as an independent rather seeking the nomination of one of the established political parties?
I don’t really see the point of political parties at a local level. Local government should be about empowering communities by electing representatives to the council that give them a direct channel to the decision-making table. Party politics is the antithesis of this. As a member of a political party, I think it seems inevitable that, on occasion, it would be necessary to put the interests of the party ahead of the community. That just seems wrong to me. I want to see community-led local government, where deliberative approaches are used to seek common ground, sharing the benefits and burdens of administration across the city.
Which of the parties would your ideas tend to align you with and are there any political parties that you would not work with?
That is hard to answer. I prefer to see public representatives as individuals and decide how best to work with them based on the substance of the proposals they wish to bring forward. Unfortunately however, especially at local level, party politics can cloud decision-making processes and risk obscuring priorities.
Which writers have inspired your political ideas?
That’s a difficult question. I don’t sit around reading books on political theory. I’m inspired by writers like John Steinbeck, Boris Pasternack, Amartya Sen and Maya Angelou. I just finished reading Fredrick Douglas’s Narrative which is a remarkable account of unrelenting courage in the face of oppression in all its forms. Musicians like Luke Kelly, Woody Guthrie, Harry Bellefonte, Dominic Behan, Kris Kristofferson, Ewan MacColl and Paul Robeson, and their life stories, have shaped my political outlook as much as writers.
What is the burning political question of our time?
I suppose the simple answer is how are we going to muster the political courage to tackle climate change. The more complex answer is how to build a movement based on solidarity to secure climate justice. Climate change confronts us with our interdependence. No country or leader alone can change course. If we do not find a way of including everyone in a transition to a green, low carbon economy, then we are facing an existential crisis.
The impacts could occur a lot sooner than most people are anticipating, and there is no technological silver bullet to save us. We need solidarity – locally, nationally and globally. The children’s climate strike gives me hope. They are fighting for their future. Our communities and our leaders must listen to them.
What further ambitions do you have for your political career?
Right now, I’m only concerned with running an inclusive and participatory campaign until the May 24th local election. Let’s see what happens then. Whether successful or not, my ambition is to continue working with the community to play my part in addressing the challenges we face. I have no grand plan!
If you were Taoiseach for the day what would you do?
Not much that can be achieved in a single day. I would probably pay a surprise visit to a Direct Provision centre and then spend the night typing up detailed notes of my conversations there for whoever was taking up the office after me.
I have previously warned that austerity economics and moral relativism are giving rise to a new fascism, last seen between the World Wars. First published in English in 1926, perhaps the most influential text of that period was Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of The West, which blamed Slavic and other ‘degenerate’ races for Europe’s impoverishment. The counterpoint of his argument was that ‘noble’ Aryan blood, whether Germanic or Anglo Saxon, was the highest expression of humanity. This slow train of pseudo-scientific conjecture terminated in the nightmare of the Holocaust, or Shoah.
Until recently merely of historic concern, debased Social Darwinism is back in vogue. I fear a new corporatised Shoah of economic liquidation and social-atomisation is on the horizon. The rehabilitation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s reputation by Steve Bannon, and others, is laying the tracks.
The words of Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in Brazil after fleeing Hitler’s Europe are returning to haunt us: ‘I feel that Europe, in its state of degeneracy has passed its own death sentence.’[i]
There is evident an increasingly differentiation between ‘them’ and ‘us’, involving unedifying forms of class warfare and demonization of those outside the dominant culture, whether foreigner, migrant or displaced. ‘Killing an Arab’, the central theme of expurgation of ‘the other’ in Albert Camus’s L’Etranger ‘The Outsider’ is writ large in our culture.
Within this discourse lies the vexed question of immigration or mass migration. Who should be expelled? Who can stay? And why?
The mainstream Left – the hopeless and incoherent Left – has hitherto uncritically endorsed mass migration and diversity, equating any form of immigration control with incipient fascism. This is the soppy, unthinking multi-culturalism of ‘Nadia’ Guardian reader. During the Blairite regime one of his ministers Barbara Roche, gave carte blanche to unrestrained abuse of the asylum system, telling officials, ‘Asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in Britain. Removal takes too long and it’s emotional.’[ii] How times have changed.
A Wandering Cosmopolitan
Let me lay my multi-racial and cosmopolitan cards on the table. I am a mongrel breed of Irish Catholic – a disease from which I am still recovering – Austrian Catholic; with a soupcon of Jewry, and distant Welsh. Educated in Britain, America, and Ireland, and much travelled, I am a shaggy dog of various stamps. Labels of multiculturalism and internationalism are plastered all over me. Paddington bear from Peru arrived in London. I have no built-in prejudice against other races in the pot.
I believe in the idea of the best man or woman for the job, but baulk at political correctness, affirmative action or quotas, and all other self-protectionist strategies that justify the promotion of the indigent or semi-competent. I also believe that anyone should be given the opportunity to develop and fulfil their potential in a chosen fields, now increasingly difficult in a world of zero-hour or short-term contracts.
Britain in Brexit limbo is a crucible for these cross current. Babylondon, a Babel’s Tower of voices and many vices; a petri-dish for immigration policies over which I have had a ringside seat in London’s extradition courts for the past year
It is taking on the appearance of the coliseum with non-nationals being thrown to the lions, for the amusement of a generation of global political leaders on a spectrum from Caligula to Nero; Gore Vidal’s ‘United States of Amnesia’[iii] has gone viral.
In the 1930s the UK was a refuge for those extirpated by fascism. Freud fled to the UK in 1938, alongside numerous Jewish intellectuals, including the historian Eric Hobsbawm and jurist Hersh Lauterpacht, who nourished the UK’s intellectual life for decades. That was then, and British tolerance, an indicium of the national character, is not as open to the reception of the poor huddled masses today, while under Trump, America is developing a siege mentality.
The idea of American universities being staffed by left-wing intellectuals such as Thomas Adorno and Hannah Arendt, as in the 1950s, is now decidedly quaint. In Trump-land even moderate liberalism is an invitation to censure or disempowerment by squeamish authorities. A quick word from our sponsors. A quiet petition. A public shaming for the temerity to speak the truth in Post-Truth-land.
The New Determinants
The reception of the genuinely talented, who add spice to the melting pot, is still desired by the UK authorities, and perhaps America. The question has narrowed to what adds and what detracts? These new determinants are increasingly based on financial calculation, or on the requirements of the service industry; servility and obsequiousness have acquired a new currency.
As a result of its colonial heritage, the UK had to accommodate former imperial subjects from the Caribbean, South Asia, and even its neighbouring island. Now the Home Office is rigorously scrutinising all claims, as I discovered in the case of a white South African client invoking the ancestral clause.
The apocalyptic warning by Enoch Powell at the time of mass immigration in the 1960s was of ‘Rivers of Blood’. The inflammatory racism was reprehensible, but Powell’s prophecy was not entirely without foundation.
The question of how those communities would ultimately integrate has been inadequately settled, with Asians in a city like Bradford still ghettoized: a sealed-off and closed community, not so much Rivers of Blood, as opposite sides of the fence.
Norman Tebbit’s famous remark that to be properly British one should have to pass a cricket test of loyalty is apposite in that many second generation Asians still support Pakistan or India in cricket. The same can be said of the Irish in their preferred sports.
Upon migrating anywhere it is surely advisable to wear the colours of the host nation, without necessarily negating your own inheritance. There is an obligation to adapt and make reasonable accommodations, and the host nation may absorb aspects of your culture too, just as the Indian curry has been taken to the bosom of the UK, all too literally in some cases.
Caribbean, and indeed Irish communities, have settled better, but racially targeted police surveillance was a phenomenon in places such as Brixton, and IRA bombings led to the false prosecution of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six.
Acceptance is often on the terms of the host nation. The integrated Irish now excel at light entertainment, from Danny La Rue to Graham Norton via Tony Clare. They offer amusement but not much more. Perhaps we have found our level, considering public intellectualism is virtually extinct in Ireland. At home, indulgence of ‘the craic’ has brought sub-Trumpean political discourse, and the circus clowns of our political, legal and media classes.
New Species of Racism
The Labour Left in its present UK incarnation displays a distinctly contradictory attitude towards multiculturalism, and indeed racism. Ken Livingston was surely not an isolated case of virulent antisemitism. Unfortunately anti-Zionism easily morphs into outright antisemitism in supposedly radical left circles. Why?
Even before fascism there was widespread hatred of the shadowy figure of the cosmopolitan Jewish financier, epitomised by members of the Rothschild family. Anti-capitalism easily falls prey to fictitious Zionist financial conspiracies to rule the world, regurgitating tropes from the Protocols of Zion forgery. The ingenuity and wit of hard-working Jewish communities around the world is rarely acknowledged. This attitude is not evident across the Left, and certainly not in Corbyn. But it is there.
Also – and here I enter transgressive territory – the rise of antisemitism is linked to the influence of the rich Asian community within the Labour Party. The hostility of Islam towards Israel and Judaism has transmuted into discernible antisemitic attitudes in a purportedly tolerant and multicultural party. The Jewish community can be forgiven for sensing a throwback to another era.
Brexit extremists are also hostile to multiculturalism, and inheritors of Enoch Powell’s odious strain of English nationalism. The objection to Europe is at one level an objection to undeserved immigrants poaching ‘our’ jobs. It is Spenglerian in that much of the ire is directed against the Slavic ‘degenerate’ races, and despairs at how a ‘nanny’ state permits degenerate lifestyles among the indigenous English working class.
Puritanism often morphs into sexually-sanitised racism, just as J. Edgar Hoover targeted Martin Luther King’s tomboy promiscuity. It is no coincidence that non-nationals are often portrayed as sexually degenerate, while the religious mania of the U.S. Republican Party promotes a generally hypocritical sexual purity.
We are seeing a growing hostility towards miscegenation, mixed marriages and corruption of bloodlines. This is apparent in Ireland, where members of the blue-blooded, ‘Anglo-Norman’, Fine Gael party display an absurd sense of entitlement.
The Right also adduces arguments about abuse of welfare or health care entitlements by migrants. Socio-economic rights are often denied altogether. It all leads to the impression that migrants are sponging off us.
Other disturbing trends are also on the rise. The vigilante Catholic Right inveighs against alleged paedophiliac Asian men, while ignoring the litany of its own abuses.
Britain is enmeshed in Brexit dialogue, and arguments about multiculturalism are also pertinent in other jurisdictions. Indeed it has become the burning European issue.
Thus in France their version of a cricket test was to ban the wearing of garments such as the hijab in public institutions. This was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in S.A.S. in 2014[iv]; where it was justified within the parameters of secular ordre publique. The consequences were profound: civil unrest, bombs, and murder of journalists and cartoonists.
Yet orthodox Islam has no truck with the core Enlightenment principle of freedom of speech, which an English judge describes as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’. As Stephen Sedley points out, the word ‘lifeblood’ is particularly apt, since ‘free speech enables opinion and fact to be carried round the body politic.’[v]
But extremism is not restricted to Islam. The Marxist and gay Italian film director Pasolini may have alienated the Roman Church, and mafia, in his 1971 One Hundred Days of Sodom to the extent that he was murdered at their behest on a beach near Rome, with a gay hustler framed for the crime.
Let us nonetheless hesitate before regulating expressions of culture, particularly as Muslim women see their dress code as an expression of who they are, and ignore the views of some American feminists. The Turkish secular state set up by Ataturk took a similar exclusionary stance towards religious garments; yet, as Orhan Pamuk’s splendid 2002 novel Snow illustrated Turkey was still beset by religious fundamentalism. Liberty demands tolerance of cultural distinctions, albeit there are limits.
It is clear that excessive multicultural tolerance has permitted the rise of religious fundamentalism, extremism, and indeed terrorism in ‘Londonistan’. Fundamentalism is not, however, limited to Islam, and actually the word can be traced to descriptions of early twentieth century Protestantism. Catholicism has a similar strain – seen vividly throughout Irish history under autocrats such as Archbishop McQuaid.
The Outsider
I recently read The Meursault Investigation, written by the Algerian writer Kemal Daoud in 2015. The book is a rebuke to the greatest Algerian, and indeed French, writer of the last century Albert Camus, and his iconic The Outsider, about, as aforementioned, killing an Arab.
The book is implicitly critical of Camus’s putative racism or imperialism, or at least, a lack of empathy with the murdered Arab. It is certainly not univocally hostile, and the author himself has been the subject of a fatwa, and clearly despises what Camus presaged, namely the rise of religious extremism; one aspect of the multicultural meltdown.
The book concludes with a consideration which Camus would identify with, namely how do we hold on to the precious commodity of truth?
The attribution of racism to Camus has been made by others, including Edward Said in his 1993 Culture and Imperialism, which argued he essentially approved of French dominion over Algeria. But Camus is unfairly criticised. He was in origin a member of the French community in Algeria, doubly despised by mainland French as a pied noir outsider, and by the Islamic majority population of Algeria as an occupier.
Above all he was a product of the Enlightenment, and the French tradition of letters and reason. A devotee of Voltaire with an epigrammatic style redolent of Pascal. There is an austerity about his prose, but also a romantic lyricism born of a mongrel Algerian background.
In his writing on Algeria – as in his 1951 The Rebel, a book length treatment of secular extremism in the French Revolution – there is a distaste for fundamentalism, secular or religious, which is why he remains relevant. It should be stressed that he advocated co-existence between the transplanted French and native Islamic population in Algeria and condemned the torture and the death penalty inflicted on the Islamic population by the French authorities, graphically conveyed in the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers.
This all seems impeccable multiculturalism, but Camus saw clearly that there was going to be bloodletting in Algeria. He despised religious fervour, just as he had contempt for the secular extremism of the French Revolutionary Terror. Those qualities of middle-of-the-road restraint are in short supply today.
So what conclusions do I draw from limbo Brexit-land, and with Euro-wide fascism and racism on the rise, about multi-culturalism?
Here are some tentative, provocative and perhaps disturbing conclusions.
The liberal consensus based on such values as the Rule of Law, humanism, tolerance, the promotion of excellence irrespective of race, and affirmative action to compensation for historic discrimination has broken down. In an Age of Extremes, the Left and the Right are demonising each other. Reason and moderation are in desperately short supply, as are the Enlightenment values of Camus. Alas, extremism will continue to rise even in multicultural Britain.
The Extradition Courts in which I appear are going to be flooded with cases resulting in deportations of ‘undesirables’. Only economically productive non-nationals will be allowed to remain in post-Brexit Britain. All non-nationals, perhaps even Irish, will become part of the precariat. Racially motivated crimes and targeting will continue apace, unchecked by an increasingly authoritarian state.
Merkel’s Open Door policy cannot last, there are limits to the number the continent can accommodate, and the interests of indigenous workers are damaged by an incessant stream of migrants willing to work for less and longer.
But given the state of Europe with fascist enclaves in Hungary, Poland and the iridescent fascism in Austria – no to mention the deep-seated extremism of Irish neo-liberalism – Britain will probably be the last place to see the Rivers of Blood flow. There are still residues of those precious qualities of rationality, rigour, tolerance and humanism espoused by Camus.
All is not lost in Britain, but even in the polyglot cosmopolis – the ultimate melting pot that is London – the sense is that multicultural tolerance has been eroded substantially, and is being replaced by fractious intolerance, class warfare, intimidation and social fragmentation. The European experiment is over, in truth, having contributed to its downfall, but islands of humanity endure.
[v] Stephen Sedley, ‘The Right to Know’, 10th of August, 2010, The London Review of Books, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n15/stephen-sedley/the-right-to-know, accessed 6/2/19.
As a freshly UK-embedded Irish barrister I am adjusting from confronting Ireland’s problems to addressing those of my new home. Worlds’apart, in a global village. In terms of Brexit, as far as the Irish media is concerned the Backstop, and a recrudescence of the ‘Irish Question’, is the only story, but from my perspective the border issue pales by comparison with the precarious position of Irish nationals resident on the UK mainland. All bets are off. In the Westminster extradition courts there is a growing apprehension among all non-nationals, amidst a descent into political farce. Eastern Europeans in particular are on red alert.
I recently immersed myself in the Brexit literature (word used advisedly), a choice not unlike Christopher Hitchens consenting to undergo waterboarding. Most offer blow-by-blow accounts, and are an utter waste of time.
By far the most useful and simultaneously useless book to emerge has been from that august man of letters, Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole. His Heroic Failure Brexit and The Politics of Pain (London, Apollo, 2018) suffers from a cultural myopia bordering on xenophobia. This account by an Irish-resident journalist is useless at providing any insight into the English character, but serves, nonetheless, as a useful vantage on the general superficiality of Irish political discourse.
O’Toole rightly inveighs against neo-liberalism throughout his text, but fails to recognise the extent to which the Brexit vote was in certain respects a reaction to the rampages of this pernicious ideology of free market free-for-all. For some, Brexit embodies an attempt to preserve an innate decency in the English character, rather than selling-out to multinational or Eurocractic control.
There endures a residue of decency in ‘old’ England – informed by secular and Christian socialist or liberal values – which are dying out rather faster in Ireland. Moreover, many argue that the UK should run a mile from the imposition of the austerity policies that liquidated the social structures of Ireland and Greece.
O’Toole’s argument that Jacob Rees-Mogg, and others, are seeking detachment for the sake of further wealth accumulation is valid, but the denunciation of Brexit as economic folly and a lapse towards an unrealistic autarky is less persuasive. Seeing Brexit as simply a manifestation of national self-pity, combining grievance and superiority, or a racist attempt to curb immigration, neglects to consider the rising indignation that many British justifiably feel at the encroachment of faceless bureaucrats intent on imposing austerity. This is coupled with a rising contempt for a New Labour-led political correctness that never confronted the downsides, in terms of labour protection and integration, of mass migration.
It is not simply a product of racism, a label O’Toole is too fond of flinging. Quoting Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is the sort of simplification favoured by those who reach for the Hitler label at student debates.
Lazy Stereotypes
Neo-liberalism favours immigration in order to drive down labour costs. O’Toole is thus passively endorsing that which he purports to condemn when he decries how lazy the UK workforce has become. He ought to acknowledge that the Irish workforce has not always been renowned for its commitment, which protected some of us from a premature death through exhaustion. Indeed the flâneur is a fabled specimen in Irish literature.
As the jokes runs (in a droll Dublin accent): an Irish professor of literature was asked by his Spanish host at a conference in Spain whether there was a Gaelic word similar to the Spanish mañana. ‘Sure’ said the professor, ‘we have five words similar to mañana, but none convey quite the same sense of urgency.’
Like O’Toole, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar favours a productive, early-rising population, shoehorned into unthinking and robotic work, leading to death on the instalment plan; zero hour contracts; meaningless corporate jobs; and the siphoning off of wealth to vulture funds controlled by off-shore multi-nationals.
I vote for more leisure time. Who knows, it might lead the charmless O’Toole, and Varadkar his intellectual consort, to greater depths of analysis and cultural refinement.
Fintan O’Toole fails to comprehend that Ireland is the perfect little neo-liberal shit storm, which has prompted the aforementioned Rees-Mogg to invest in our little meltdown, after the double-whammy of liquidation by the ECB and American transitional corporations.
Britain, in its post-Brexit phase, cannot be described, as O’Toole purports to, in a reductive way. Yes, it is a society in existential crisis, but with many cross-currents. One cannot reduce this to a superiority complex, or colonial hangover. The pantomime villain qualities ascribed by O’Toole to the UK’s political caste are increasingly evident in politicians the world over.
Boris Johnson may be an opportunistic clown, but he rarely put a foot wrong as Mayor of London. His books are even sometimes well written. If he is a clown he is a more civilised prankster than our gang of horribles: the tasteless Varadkar, gombeen Kenny, blathering drunk Cowen, and the good ol’ boys of the Law Library.
Boris Johnson: a superior clown to our own vaudeville acts..
O’Toole commits the common Irish error of confusing speaking seriously on serious issues, which he does not understand, with being serious. Gravitas should be leavened with wit, not outright hysterical or self-righteous condemnation. The clownish but observant Johnson actually realises the necessity for laughter in the darkness, in common with the more sinister congeniality of the arch-Machiavellian Michael Gove. They are smarter than O’Toole allows.
Turning the lens
The unvarying narrative in the mainstream Irish media is that Brexit is a disaster, not just for Ireland but also the UK. About this I am not so sure. Cultural imperialism and splendid isolationism are distasteful aspects of the British character, but Europe was always an uncomfortable fit for other reasons too. Snap judgments are misleading.
Irish commentaries inevitably turn to what is in it for ‘us’, whether Europe, Brexit or anything else. Grubby calculation is an increasingly odious national characteristic, which clouds any assessment of whether it is the right path from a British perspective.
Let us recall that the Irish brand of disaster capitalism involves the state providing tax breaks for multi-nationals, and appeasing Canadian and American vulture funds; the destruction of not just the working class but increasingly the middle. According to Social Justice Ireland, last year 790,000 people were living in poverty, of whom 250,000 were children.[i] How is this possible when GDP per capita is at almost seventy-five thousand euro?
Though he condemns neo-liberalism, and indeed endorses legitimate outrage against European excesses, O’Toole is incapable of turning his lens on Ireland’s failings; or the receding possibility of reforming an EU increasingly beholden to corporate lobbyists.
Superiority and self-pity are characteristic of Irish attitudes too: the no longer purring Celtic Tiger is a Paper Tiger. For generations we endured the lachrymose nationalism of a failing state, now we talk ourselves up as the best little country in the world. As Flann O’ Brians put it: ‘Moderation we find is a difficult thing to get in this country.’[ii]
This sentimental patriotism fed into a grotesque over-estimate of our exceptionalism, which now permits the Mussolini-lite fascism, embodied by the grandstanding Varadkar, to go unchecked. Give me the incrementalism and resistance to the grandiosity of grand ideals that are a hallmark of historic British decency – tempering other aspects of the national character – any day.
The English Sausage
On a more mundane level, over breakfast in Bloomsbury, I reflected on the humble English sausage which helps gives an appreciation of the national character. Reading O’Toole’s overblown account of the British objection to EU bureaucratic regulation I found it a pity that he failed to mention the British sausage.
The sausage is a geopolitical signifier. Its fate a precursor to Brexit, the fons et origo of all that has gone horribly wrong.
Cast minds back to a kerfuffle at the inception of the EU, regarding the standardisation of the British sausage, and how incensed people became. With hindsight we see what could have gone wrong, and now has.
As an Irishman, albeit one who is partly Austrian, and an internationalist – effectively now a mongrel warrior – I recall how we derided the British for being so small-minded about their precious sausage. Hindsight is of course twenty-twenty vision. The British were perhaps right, then and now. They were outraged, and continue to be, by a foreign order of bean counters telling them what to do, and preaching to them about standards. And what role models and standards emanate from the EU exactly?
Then the story descended into silly season farce, but I think it remains emblematic and prescient of the tensions that have always existed between Britain and the EU.
If they regulate a sausage then who is next among the pantheon of eccentrics that populate English public life, excoriated by O’Toole. People are increasingly standardised, like sausages, in modern Ireland. As an unapologetic eccentric, I am dismissive of technocratic robots and muppets. If the political consensus leads to neo-liberalism then give me the oddness O’Toole attacks, any day.
The reclamation by O’Toole of British decency towards the end of the book, citing Orwell and parts of the Bloomsbury set, does not atone for the cack-handedness of his analysis of the English character.
Face it Fintan there is something rotten in the state of Brussels
Let us focus on what has been wrong with the EU from the outset, and which O’Toole unsatisfactorily broaches. Foremost has been the appointment of faceless bureaucrats at levels removed from local concerns, who impose a levelling conformity – here I am providing a clear distinction between standards and standardisation. Technocrats are invariably drawn from a privileged elite, selected through education for conformity, political-correctness and reliability. Then they are insulated in their silo bubble of privilege from the experiences of the common person.
The salaries, junkets and gravy trains engender a bland sub-Americana esperenta by degrees; an Orwellian doublespeak that passes for education, breeding compliance and homogeneous uniformity.
The idea that breaking down trade barriers and permitting the free movement of labour (including myself), capital and goods would promote tolerance, and enable cultural exchanges, amid the fiction of economic growth-without-end, made superficial sense at the outset. The very simple idea of Erasmus programmes and scholarly exchange has been a boon. The benefits are considerable, but the downside is increasingly apparent.
Let us face it Fintan, the EU has become an instrument of international global capitalism, encouraging the mass migration of workers who are willing to work for less, and harder, than their domestic counterparts. Nothing wrong with hard graft and thrift, but what if indigenous jobs are threatened, and employment rights done away with? Why should people feel compelled to work themselves to an early grave, as in Japan? Unrestricted labour mobility suits the corporate agenda, but not workers. The British are entitled to be lazier or less hard-working than their European counterparts.
Brexit is certainly in part an objection to mass migration. The moral evil of racism has been at work, but that should not be used as an excuse to suspend all judgment on the desirability of mass migration. A sovereign country ought to have some control over who enters, and on what terms; while those who settle in a new land should expect to make reasonable cultural accommodations. If unrestrained, multiculturalism can generate extremism among indigenous and new arrivals.
The other major downside of a German-led EU has been the imposition of austerity policies, generating social fragmentation and breakdown, in Greece and Ireland in particular. Austerity, as all the best evidence indicates, rips societies apart and delays economic recovery. It represents the triumph of what Naomi Klein termed the corporatocracy,[iii] bringing control of the world to the mega-rich, who inflict poverty-by-degrees on the rest. Thus the transnational law firms and multinational corporations lobby the EU for TTIP, which would permit them to sue local governments for any diminution in their clients’ profits.
Our increasingly neo-liberalist EU promotes the boom and bust cycle of the shock doctrine, pioneered when Milton Friedman visited Pinochet in Chile in the 1970’s to unleash his brainwashed Chicago graduates on the local population; just as Ireland was treated after the Bailout.
Growth and development is achieved not by austerity but by the mixed social democratic economy, which provides incentives, but allows individuals to recover if there businesses fail.
A Sovereign Nation
Let us turn now to the vexed question of sovereignty, or domestic jurisdiction, not simply policing borders, but the internal assertion of national protectionism. Brexit, at one level, is no different from the Boston Tea Party, a nationalist assertion, insisting enough is enough, particularly if a foreign power is draining, not contributing to, the well-being of the local population.
The protection of small and local business is crucial, even ‘Forthright Grantham grocer’s girl’, Margaret Thatcher, another devotee of Milton Freedman, conceded as much. Now, seemingly inexorably, the local bookstore is giving way to the chain shop, while the bakers, butchers and greengrocers are superseded by the supermarket. European standardisation has facilitated this baleful transition. Communities, being torn apart in Ireland, are built from the bottom up. Small is beautiful. There are as many antiquarian bookstores in the small town of Dorking as there are now in Dublin.
Theresa May has proceeded with caution, amidst mounting opposition, towards a smooth exit. She and her more moderate cohorts must know that a deal has to be struck in the national interest, now that the path of risk has been chosen. Britain being Britain it has, in a cri de coeur, insisted on its rights being respected. It still has values and pride, unlike Ireland, which meekly accepted the role of a vassal state during the Bailout.
Fintan, this is a difficult but unpalatable truth: the British people may have been right in thinking that there is no future for the EU. Could it be time to consider an Irexit? For just as the medieval Hanseatic League collapsed, so will the EU. A rising fascist triumphalism has already attained power in Hungary, Poland and Italy. It may be time to circle the wagons of democracy and the Rule of Law, for a spell at least.
If our contemporary Hanseatic league is collapsing, a negotiated departure of our own may have a salutary outcome, giving way to looser affiliations, and a greater degree of national autonomy to protect indigenous populations against the rampages of global capitalism. Perhaps the British have grasped we are facing a gathering storm, and are muddling through. It might of course end in disaster, but their difficulties in many respects compare favourably to our Irish dependence on footloose multinational corporations, and an EU-subsidised agri-food industry.
Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, whose portrait ages while he is blessed with a seemingly eternal youth, in his account of Brexit, Fintan O’Toole shies away from reflecting on failings in his own land. His book demonizes the assertive neighbour, along the well-trodden path of lachrymose patriots, and ignores what is staring him in the face.
THE LONG READ: In the last edition ‘How Irish Propaganda Operates’ explored how political and media duopolies uphold a dominant consensus of steady economic growth and rising rents, to the benefit of a shrinking, propertied elite. The Irish media sector is commented upon in a 2018 survey of press freedoms by Reporters Without Borders which found that the ‘highly concentrated nature of media ownership in Ireland continues to pose a major threat to press freedom, and contributed to Ireland’s two-place fall in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index.’ They also pointed to the chilling effect of high awards in defamation actions.[i] Curiously, however, that report neglected to mention the 2018 acquisition by the Irish Times of the Cork-based Landmark Media group, which includes the Irish Examiner, to create the current print duopoly.
As regards the ‘crucial constituency’ of farmers supporting the political duopoly, and concomitant failure of the government to compel reductions in GHG emissions – of which the agricultural sector produces over one third of the national total[ii] – a recent report found Ireland was the worst-performing state at tackling climate change in the EU.[iii]
This sequel explores how the Internet, especially social media, is shaping the future of Irish politics. The wider global context is a rise in support for the Far Right, a tendency to which Ireland is not immune. This resurgence is prompted by deepening inequality, and the political, moral and economic failure of the Russian Communist model, but also disorientation in the wake of technological change;and a fundamental failure at the heart of liberalism to identify universal values. We may be on the brink of a new age of barbarism, but cannot afford to give up hope of reforming state and supranational institutions.
I –Changing Politics
To my surprise a few months ago I received email correspondence from Leo Varadkar: ‘Blooming hell’, I thought to myself, ‘His Early-Riserliness, contacting me!’. ‘Perhaps he’s ready to commit to decarbonisation, public housing and basic income, and is looking to this hitherto unheralded journalist for advice. Now where did I leave my singlet…’
My ego crumpled on discovering it was political spam with a sender address of finegael@fiinegael.ie. There would, alas, be no warm breakfast awaiting on Merrion Square after we had buddied-up at the gym.
Then I got annoyed. I had never given my email address to anyone from that organisation, let alone consented to receive Mr Varadkar’s grimacing impressions of a vlogger. I decided, however, against channelling subsequent missives straight into the ‘junk’ folder – where I would consign other unsolicited mail – to see how the story unfolded.
The emails are an intermittent reminder of just who is in charge of this country, and what he and his party pals are up to. There is little sophistication or depth to the presentations – boil-in-the-bag corporate fare – but they leach into my consciousness like the jingle on an annoying commercial, or ear worm. I may yet complain to the Data Protection Commissioner, but will settle for writing this article, for the time being at least.
With its ample resources, Fine Gael has been fastest out of the new technology blocks among Irish political parties. We may assume the rest are catching up, or will go the way of the Progressive Democrats.
The din from online chatter is rising, and parties are steeling themselves for a long digital ground war. Politics has travelled a great distance since Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal account of Democracy in America (1830) declared that ‘nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment.’[iv]
Now we are confronted with a barrage of information from multiple sources on a digital screen. It is early days, in historical terms, in our relationship with a new technology, but our neural pathways are already being reconfigured in ways we do not yet comprehend. Just as the invention of writing altered how the brain processes and retains information, so it has been with the Internet.
As the character Mark Renton puts it in the original Trainspotting: ‘Diane was right. The world is changing. Music is changing. Drugs are changing. Even men and women are changing. One thousand years from now, there will be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me.’ Politics is changing too, and the calibre of some of those in power is an indictment on the failure of more of us to get involved: as Micheal O’Siadhail warned: ‘the thieves of power / Come noiselessly in nights of apathy.’[v]
Political parties have been using focus groups, analogous to those used in the advertising industry, to test the popularity of policies for decades. Analysis of Internet browsing offers far greater and wider insights. A graphic presentation produced by Eoin Tierney for a previous article in Cassandra Voices illustrates the extent of our data leakage.[vi] Unless we take various precautions, records of our online movements are available to the highest- – or best-connected – bidder.
Some years ago I attended a conference at which one of the speakers was said to be, in hushed tones, ‘Obama’s scientific advisor’. He described how the former president’s second campaign team had made use of extensive data mining – tapping into data from Amazon purchases in particular as I recall – but warned the other side ‘would catch up in time for the next election’.
Pandora’s box had been prised open, and various troll armies have since crawled out, now led by an aging commander-in-chief with disconcertingly bright hair, while in the background another short, middle-aged man – who looks suspiciously like a trophy hunter clad in combat apparel – is whipping the troops into a frenzy. But it is important to recognise that the supposed good guys actually began this particular arms race.
Anarchic social media offers rich bounties for these excavations. In particular Facebook has an addictive quality built around the narcissistic pleasure of external validation. Its dystopian possibilities are powerfully conveyed in ‘Nosedive’ (2016), an episode of Netflix’s Dark Mirror, in which individuals rate each other from one to five stars based on social interactions. High aggregate scores are a passage to wealth and privilege, while low ratings spell poverty and exclusion. The main character ‘Lacie’ sees her attempts at social climbing implode spectacularly, ending in despair, poverty and isolation. It is as bleak a prophecy as you could find on the damage social media could wreak if we are not very careful.
Since a whistleblower revealed the sinister machinations of Cambridge Analytica on Facebook the fear that our political preferences are being conditioned by artificial intelligence tools has risen to panic in some quarters. Their trick appears to involve outspoken contributors taking ‘ownership’ of subtly positioned political messages, which confirm, amplify and ultimately modify opinions.
The commentariat links this to a quarter of Europeans now voting for Far Right parties[vii], and there is some truth to this contention. But mainstream media may be overstating Facebook’s role for their own purposes. Discrediting social media is part of ongoing attempts to salvage the sunset technology of the newspaper, which makes the case for regulation and taxation of the former. But the Internet is a multi-headed hydra, and the trolls are usually ahead of the game. Insulated and seemingly innocent WhatsApp groups are the next target, as was the case during the recent Brazilian election[viii]. We need better, transparent social media not rid of it altogether.
Twitter, unlike Facebook’s ‘secret sauce’ algorithm deciding what we see on our feeds, has kept its own feed mainly organic, although advertising is increasingly apparent, and relative anonymity seems to bring out the worst qualities in keyboard warriors. Donald Trump’s brand of hectoring nonsense seems to be ideally suited to that medium, at least to his fifty million followers. He won the presidential election with most major newspapers bitterly ranged against his Nativist agenda.
Twitter permits direct access to those who specialise in this attenuated form of speech – its one hundred and forty characters the social media equivalent of a haiku. The interactivity is key, with famous figures accessible as never before. This can even have geopolitical ramifications. At an EU summit last year British Prime Minister Theresa May offered to mediate between Europe and the U.S., to which Dalia Grybauskaitė, the president of Lithuania replied there was ‘no necessity for a bridge’, when they could all communicate with the American president via Twitter.[ix]
Irish politicians have not transitioned entirely into new media – the state broadcaster and print duopoly remain the main political battleground, or talking shop – but Twitter is an increasingly powerful vehicle for individual campaigns, and the intimacy of the Facebook environment suits it to subtle messaging.
Until we go about fixing the Internet, including social media platforms, a level of paranoia is justifiable. If Varadkar and his advisors are willing to harvest email accounts, what else are they willing to do? We know he has already floated the idea of creating anonymous accounts to make positive comments under online stories on popular news websites.[x] We have no way of knowing what conversations go on when Varadkar meets Mark Zuckerberg. Ultimately ‘we the people’ must eventually assert control over the social media we use, and integrate it into the fabric of democracy.
II – Inequality
The disorientation of technological change is only one aspect of the profound changes occurring in societies around the world. The era of the Internet coincides with, and is partly generating, unprecedented inequality – to the extent that just eight billionaires control half the human planet’s financial wealth.[xi]
As elsewhere, in Ireland we see disturbing concentrations, especially expressed in property, insulated by our political and print media duopoly from significant taxation. Thus, the wealthiest top five percent in the country own over forty percent of its wealth, with eighty-five per cent of that held in property and land. In the last financial year a mere €500 million (or just 1%) out of total tax receipts of over €50 billion, derived from land or property.[xii]
Indicatively, between 1996 and 2012 the number of qualified accountants in the state grew by a staggering eight-three percent to number 27,112. A sign of the times is that there were just 6,729 Catholic priests and nuns at that point[xiii], indicating we have moved from worship of God to Mammon.
The accountancy profession assists individuals and companies in financial consolidation. This can lapse into unethical forms of tax avoidance as was revealed in the Paradise Papers, where ‘top five’ accountancy firms channelled assets or income through countries with low taxation regimes.
High professional fees make accountants vested interests in asset preservation, and in the process many are stakeholders in the political and media duopoly. The wider influence can be seen in an obsession with imaginary money as a measure of value. In a previous article for Cassandra Voices Diarmuid Lyng identifies a ‘reducing eye – the Súil Mildeagach’ at work in contemporary Ireland which sees only uses and benefits; where ‘a cow is looked on as pounds of beef, and a tree is assessed for the length of its timber.’[xiv]
The decline of the Irish left, especially if the Labour party is counted as such, is part of a global social democratic downward spiral, seen vividly in the precipitous fall in support for the German SPD. This can partly be traced to the economic, political, and moral failure – and ultimate demise – of the Soviet Union at the end of the last century. In response, Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ in the U.K., and Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party in the U.S. moved into the centre- or even the centre-right ground, and pursued latter-day colonialism.
The rightward drift of traditionally left-wing parties has brought an ideological vacuum now being filled by the Populist Right, which appropriate Marxist analysis, decrying capital flight and corrupt state institutions. Ironically, it is generally the New Labour old guard and Clinton Democrats that are to the fore in defending free trade arrangements, including the European Union, which is increasingly beholden to corporate lobbyists, and NAFTA. Previously free trade had been one of the major planks of conservative parties around the world, but these (including the Republican Party and the Tories in the UK), are increasingly in thrall to Far Right factions.
The ‘old’ Left is not entirely dead. The success of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies in the U.K. Labour Party in building the largest socialist party in Europe in the face of unstinting media opposition, including in the apparently left-wing Guardian, has been highly impressive.[xv] In the last election, Corbyn’s supporters bypassed mainstream media and used memes and vlogs to powerful effect online, besides grass roots activism through the Momentum organisation.
Spain’s Podemos is also bucking the trend in the face of a hostile mainstream media. It shows that social media, in concert with grass roots organisation, remains a conduit for left-wing agendas. The fear is, however, that that space is increasingly dominated by the highest bidders, who generally do not advocate that their wealth should be subject to greater taxation.
What differentiates the New Right or what used to be called the Far Right – or just plain fascists – from the Left is a marked rejection of universal values applying to all of humankind. The appeal is always to ‘our’ people, ‘our’ families, and ‘ourselves’, certainly not, ‘them’, ‘that lot’, or ‘those’ foreigners who are amassing on ‘our’ frontiers.
Fascism plays to selfish self-interest, and individual striving for status as part of an identity seen in opposition to others. Left-wing arguments are a weapon to be deployed against pampered ‘elites’, but leaders like Trump aspire to the same pampering once they have ‘drained the swamp’. Many of his supporters also aspire to climb the greasy pole that leads to a notional Trump Tower.
A comparatively generous social welfare system – in part a legacy of Labour’s period in office between 2011 and 2016 – is one reason Ireland is largely bucking the trend in terms of developing a rebranded fascism. Also, historically, our over-bearing near neighbour has been the target of nationalist ire, and we do not carry the same racist colonial baggage afflicting relations between indigenous and migrants seen elsewhere. Moreover, for all its faults, Catholicism does not distinguish between people on the basis of ethnicity or race. But the universalism of the Old Left and Catholicism are fading away and, as in the 1930s, Ireland is not immune from continental movements, especially as the Housing Crisis and evictions ensue.
Ascendant neo-liberalism does not encourage xenophobia. It is bad for business. Migration keeps down labour costs, and ethnic variety generates economic dynamism. The late Peter Sutherland, neo-liberal high priest, was one prominent supporter of tolerance.[xvi] But free movement of people is only an addendum – almost a good will gesture – to the core principal of neo-liberalism: the free movement of capital and individual enrichment. Contemporary fascism pitilessly highlights any policy failings relating to integration policies, while only superficially addressing capital flight, as unscrupulous politicians like Trump (and others) are often self-interested players themselves.
III – Wasted Lives
The late Zygmunt Bauman argued that economic migrants become scapegoats as long as the real powerbrokers of a neo-liberal Globalisation are untouchable. In his book Wasted Lives (2010) he contends:
Refugees and immigrants coming from ‘far away’ yet making a bid to settle in the neighbourhood, are uniquely suitable for the role of the effigy to be burnt as the spectre of ‘global forces’, feared and resented for doing their job without consulting those whom its outcome is bound to affect. After all, asylum-seekers and ‘economic migrants’ are collective replicas (an alter ego? fellow traveller? mirror images? caricatures?) of the new power elite of the globalised world, widely (and with reason) suspected to be the true villain of the piece.
Like that elite, he considers:
they are untied to any place, shifty, unpredictable. Like that elite, they epitomise the unfathomable ‘space of flows’ where the roots of the present-day precariousness of the human condition are sunk. Seeking in vain for other, more adequate outlets, fears and anxieties rub off on targets close to hand and re-emerge as popular resentment and fear of the ‘aliens nearby’. Uncertainty cannot be defused or dispersed in a direct confrontation with the other embodiment of extraterritoriality: the global elite drifting beyond the reach of human control. That elite is much too powerful to be confronted and challenged point-blank, even if its exact location was known (which it is not). Refugees on the other hand, are a clearly visible, and sitting, target for the surplus anguish.[xvii]
This kind of scapegoating is beginning to be seen in Ireland. A small online publication www.theliberal.ie offers a news carousel, previously plagiarized[xviii], alongside vindictive comments about migrants. One headline from November 12th read: ‘Uproar from locals as Wicklow hotel set to become direct provision centre’, the ‘report’ by James Brennan went on to say:
‘Locals are said to be “very concerned” over the proposed centre with one social media telling The Liberal: “Locals have held meetings about it and have both privately and publicly stated that they’re very concerned about the new centre. There will be uproar if this goes through”.
More disgraceful even than this ‘post-truth’ abandonment of evidential standards, is a headline to another ‘report’ written by James Brennan, which read: ‘As more migrant Direct Provision centres pop up, a 48-yr-old homeless Irish man DIES on the street in Waterford’. The message is clear: it is a zero sum game between homeless Irish dying on the streets, and migrants who are being provided for. The publication was also vocal in its support of Peter Casey’s Presidential candidacy. He made incendiary comments about members of the minority Traveller community – a traditional Irish scapegoat.
Interestingly, the editor and owner of the magazine, Leo Sherlock, is the brother of Cora Sherlock, deputy chairperson of the Pro-Life Campaign. Well accustomed to the emotive language of protecting ‘our own’, it could be that the Pro-Life campaign will provide the resources and know-how for a new campaign against immigrants, just as in America the Far Right has moved from anti-abortion to anti-migrant.
In a disturbing turn of events, investigative journalist Gemma O’Doherty has adopted anti-migrant slogans from the Far Right playbook, especially attacking George Soros.[xix] She recently tweeted that his ‘twisted Open Society Foundation … seeks to destroy nation states’.[xx] Also, her Youtube channel recently featured an interview with John Waters in which both interviewer and interviewee conveyed the idea of a migrant tide overwhelming Ireland[xxi], a country more sparsely populated today than in the mid-nineteenth century.
As wealth inequality rises, and homelessness increases, in this small open economy a desperation sets in that is easily manipulated. The Celtic Tiger has become a Paper Tiger, where most of the population does not enjoy the fruits of extravagant economic growth. For most rising gross domestic product leads to rent hikes and unaffordable property. As Bauman explains, in circumstances where the global elite are untouchable, outrage against vulnerable outsiders is likely to follow.
IV – The Mediated People
Technology is leaving a profound impression on all our minds. The smart phone is altering homo sapiens at a profound level of consciousness. We are now, as Bill McKibben puts it, a ‘mediated species’:
Everyone I know seems a little ashamed of the compulsive phone-checking, but it is, circa 2017, our species-specific calling card, as surely as the bobbing head-thrust identifies the pigeon. No one much likes spending half the workday on e-mail, but that’s what work is for many of us. Our accelerating disappearance into the digital ether now defines us—we are the mediated people, whose contact with one another and the world around us is now mostly veiled by a screen. We threaten to rebel, just as we threaten to move to Canada after an election. But we don’t; the current is too fierce to swim to shore.[xxii]
The compulsive checking is attritional and ultimately lonesome, as we avoid direct contact with one another. George Steiner attributes these habits to a ‘dread of solitude, an incapacity to experience it productively’[xxiii], which afflicts the young, but this extends well into old age.
Linked to the advance of the smart phone is a declining opportunity for book reading. The Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye identifies the properties of the book with the preservation of democracy itself. It is he says the:
by-product of the art of writing, and the technological instrument that makes democracy a working possibility – avoiding all rhetorical tricks designed to induce hypnosis in an audience, relying on nothing but the inner force and continuity of the argument … Behind the book is the larger social context of a body of written documents to which there is public access, the guarantee of the fairness of that internal debate on which democracy rests.
The book is non-linear, he says, allowing us to flick back and forth: ‘we follow a line while we are reading but the book itself is a stationary visual focus of a community.’
He distinguishes this from:
the electronic media that increases the amount of linear experience, of things seen and heard that are quickly forgotten. One sees the effects on students: a superficial alertness combined with increased difficulty preserving the intellectual continuity that is the chief characteristic of education.[xxiv]
Frye was writing in the 1970s when electronic media meant television. He might despair at contemporary attention spans, with kids unhinged and transfixed by a Snapchat that brings the inbuilt obsolescence of a social media posting to the next level. But he might also encounter knowledge and insights far exceeding those he found in his own less technology-addled students.
We have developed remarkable specialisms through advances in book-learning, but these are increasingly remote from one another. The Internet brings more generalised understandings – new horizons of knowledge – which could de-mystify formerly esoteric fields and inaugurate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (d.1832) vision of weltliteratur, ‘world literature’, and perhaps more clearly, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (d. 1716) dream of a bibliotheca universalis, a ‘universal library’, where expert insight could be available to all, everywhere. It could really lead us into thinking more globally. But this beast needs considerable taming.
The raging digital torrent is inherently unstable, as the content on any screen (including this article) can easily be tampered with. This makes it easy to develop superficial arguments that shift with circumstances. But latter-day fascists are arguably less ominous a presence in the absence of complex ideological statements, conventionally expressed in books, such as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, or even Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. As the dissident Soviet writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn put it: ‘Shakespeare’s villains stopped short at ten or so cadavers. Because they had no ideology.’[xxv] Thus, even the book, which performs an important role in preserving democracy, can, paradoxically, be used to undermine it. Similarly, the Internet can have positive and negative effects on our politics.
The online contributor may exert an influence on the outcome of elections and referenda but there is a sedentarism to his political participation. How many people attended Donald Trump’s inauguration? Historically, any political credo lacking a clearly outlined ideology tends to lack durability. What will remain of Trumpism after Trump? This recalls Percy Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’: ‘Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Similarly, the incipient Irish Far Right lacks a convincing ideologue. John Waters has an intellect to be reckoned with, but it is difficult to see how he can reconcile the universal values of the Catholic faith he espouses with the xenophobia evident in Far Right movements. Moreover, Ireland is an increasingly liberal society – even decriminalisation of marijuana cannot be far off – where Catholicism is commonly disparaged, but the policies of the duopoly which brought the rise in rents, and a Housing Crisis, threatens a new form of serfdom, or rage on the streets.
V – A New Age of Barbarism
Apart from technological shifts, and the moral and political vacuum brought by the demise of the Soviet Union, which permitted a corporate takeover of societies, the value system of a dominant neo-liberalism rests on decidedly shaky foundations. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre identified a ruling ‘Emotivism’: ‘the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.’[xxvi]
In other words we operate at a time when justice, including economic justice, is seen as an expression of arbitrary norms. MacIntyre traces this to the Enlightenment, when David Hume and later Fredrich Nietzsche led the attack on the universal values which the Aristotelian philosophical tradition had laid down. Thus, Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics begins: ‘Every art and every scientific inquiry and similarly every action and purpose, may be said to aim for some good.’[xxvii] In contrast liberalism, or Emotivism, identifies no “good”, only self-interest.
In what is a remarkable passage MacIntyre despairs at the onset of a new age of barbarism:
It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our present predicament. We are waiting not for Godot, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict.[xxviii]
So what are Irish “men and women of good will” to do in these times? Retreat from the Dublin metropolis and carve out cooperative self-sufficient communities? This is one alternative. But the European imperium has not been lost entirely, and the pressing environmental problems of our time require world governance. Moreover, multilateralism is the only way to preserve peace in the nuclear age.
The institutions of the Irish state and European Union at present do not serve the interests of the people, but this could change if a broad Left-Green alliance, espousing universal values, is forged. In this respect, Irish progressives should get behind a new group, led by the economist Thomas Piketty, offering prescriptions for a fairer and more sustainable Europe.[xxix]
Irish Democracy is in for a long bumpy ride as we struggle to contain our online urges and the challenge of grotesque inequalities. To counteract a slide into barbarism, we must think globally and act locally, doing what we can in our own way, and never succumbing to despair. In these times we also need artists to sustain us.
Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com
[i] Reporters Without Borders, ‘Ireland: Unhealthy Concenrtation’, World Press Freedom Index 2018, https://rsf.org/en/ireland, accessed 12/12/18.
[ii] Ciaran Moran, ‘Emissions from agriculture increase by almost 3pc in 2017 due to dairy expansion’, Irish Independent, December 8th, 2018.
[iii] Jeo Leogue, ‘Ireland worst performing European country at tackling climate change’ Irish Examiner, December 10th, 2018.
[iv] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Henry Reeve, Hertfordshire, Wordworth Editors Ltd, 1998, p.220.
[v] Micheal O’Siadhail, The Five Quintets, Waco, Baylor University Press, 2018, p.149
[vi] Eoin Tierney, ‘A Guide to Preventing Data Leakage’, Cassandra Voices, June 1st, 2018.
[vii] Paul Lewis, Seán Clarke, Caelainn Barr, Josh Holder and Niko Kommenda, ‘Revealed: one in four Europeans vote populist’, The Guardian, 20th of November, 2018.
[viii] Tom Phillips, ‘Bolsonaro business backers accused of illegal Whatsapp fake news campaign’, The Guardian, 18th of October, 2018.
[ix] Andrew Rawnsley, ‘Mrs May discovers you can’t be a bridge builder and a bridge burner’, The Guardian, 5th of February, 2017.
[x] Diarmaid Ferriter, ‘‘Leo Varadkar: A Very Modern Taoiseach’ is shallow, flimsy and exaggerated’, Irish Times, September 8th, 2018.
[xi] Melanie Curtin, ‘These 8 Men Control Half the Wealth on Earth’, Inc., undated.
[xii] David McWilliams, ‘Why do we tax income instead of wealth?’, October 9th, 2018, http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/why-do-we-tax-income-instead-of-wealth/, accessed 10/12/18.
[xiii] Tony Farmar, The History of Irish Book Publishing, Stroud, The History Press, 2018, p.12
[xiv] Diarmuid Lyng, ‘A Hurler’s Silver Branch Perception’, Cassandra Voices, June 1st, 2018.
[xvi] Ruadhán Mac Cormaic ‘Selfishness on refugees has brought EU ‘to its knees’, Irish Times, December 26th, 2015.
[xvii] Zygmunt Baumann, Wasted Lives, Modernity and its Outcasts, Oxford, Polity Press, 2004.
[xviii] Joe Leogue, ‘TheLiberal.ie goes offline amid plagiarism row’, Irish Examiner, January 10th, 2017.
[xix] Jon Henley, ‘Enemy of nationalists: George Soros and his liberal campaigns’, The Guardian, 29th of May, 2018.
[xx] Gemma O’Doherty, ‘George Soros names 5 Irish MEPs @MarianHarkin @LNBDublin @MaireadMcGMEP @SeanKellyMEP @brianhayesMEP as proven or potential allies of his twisted Open Society Foundation which seeks to destroy nation states. Which of them will deny this?’, December 1st, 2018, 12:32pm. https://twitter.com/gemmaod1/status/1068965965940043777, accessed 11/12/18.
