Cassandra Voices

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  • The Last Christmas

    The afternoon of Christmas Eve, just as it’s beginning to get dark, Mum opens the  black oak sideboard in the hall.

    We crowd around, the little ones shoving and pushing. Frantic to see the treasures inside.

    The whole house already smells of Christmas – the ham simmered overnight in its blanket of floury paste, now stripped and baking in the oven with bay leaves, cloves and onions. The Christmas tree, fetched by Dad with two of the bigger ones earlier in the day, waiting for its decorations in the dining room, smells of forest and cut wood. A wobbling stack of ivy pulled off the granite walls in the garden for winding through the bannisters, sprigs of holly for tucking behind pictures, sits by the stairs.

    Mum lifts the fairy lights up from their bed of tissue paper, dried needles from last year’s tree rustling in the hollows in their cardboard Mickey Mouse box. The tissue paper,  re-used year after year, feels like soft cloth.

    It’s Eldest Brother’s job to check each bulb inside its plastic casing. ‘Gently’ says Mum.

    The lights never work first time.

    Eldest Brother, breathing hard, protruding tongue clasped between teeth, his go to concentration mode, says it’s a closed circuit. It can’t work until all the bulbs are A.1. I’ve no idea what closed circuit means. But I like the sound of the words. Closed circuit. A One.

    The little ones, jigging with impatience, carol: ‘Put them on the tree!’

    Eldest Brother hunts through tissue paper for spare bulbs. Miraculously two appear. Sellotaped to a piece of card and stowed safely away by Mum last Christmas.

    The spare bulbs work! The little ones go silent as Eldest Brother gingerly carries the lights over to the tree. A bump against Dad’s chair and they all go off again. No!

    Everyone has ideas where the lights should go. Up higher! You’ve missed the bottom branches! The yellow ones are hidden!

    ‘Too many bloody Indians’,  Eldest Brother complains.

    Mum is now taking out the glass balls and bag of tinsel. One ball has smashed, its jagged edges sticking up like a broken eggshell.

    Next the cardboard box marked Calor Gas tied with yellow satin ribbon. Inside are the crib figures wrapped in more tissue. A larger cardboard box, decorated with ivy, a painted yellow star inexpertly fixed over the centre, awaits. The figures, sent by Mum’s cousin in Germany, are very beautiful. A young Madonna, a baby Jesus with a detachable gold crown and upraised arms in a crib made of briars, old man Joseph grasping a shepherd’s crook fixed through a hole in his fisted hand, forever getting lost as the little ones take it out to play with. ‘Where’s Joseph’s crook?’  There’s a lying down brown cow, a standing grey donkey. The three kings bearing gifts must be hidden behind the box until after Christmas and its their turn to arrive.

    After Christmas? An unimaginable concept.

    The little ones argue over who gets to put Baby Jesus into his manger. The bigger little one thumps the smaller one in the back: ‘You did it last year.’

    Howls of outrage.

    ‘Look’ says Mum, ‘here comes the music box.’

    Also from Mum’s cousin in Germany, the music box is a wooden cylinder painted gold and indigo. Wound up, it solemnly twirls, plucking out Silent Night, sending kneeling angels holding golden trumpets, around and around.

    ‘Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!’ goes Eldest Brother. ‘What?’  ‘German for Silent Night’, says Middle sister.  Eldest Brother claps his heels together and does a Nazi salute. All the big ones laugh. But I feel afraid. Everything about Hitler, the Nazis, the War, the terrible camps, frightens me. Could it all happen here?  A tank appear at the end of our road?

    The little ones jostle to wind the music box up, send the angels twirling.

    Mum holds up ‘Flying Santa on a Goose’. Bought in Woolworths by one of the big ones he immediately stole the show. Looped from the light over the dinner table, Santa, a skinny rakish version, sits astride a goose with articulated, real feather wings that go up and down as he sails backwards and forwards over the heaped plates, the crackers, the red wine, the silver candelabras – until OOPS! he’s sailed too close to the lighted candles.  A strong smell of burning. The goose feathers, Santa’s beard, are singed! Dismay from the little ones: Santa. The big ones shout with laughter. Mum laughs so she gets tears in her eyes.

    Finally here’s the Christmas fairy. She’s from Mum’s childhood and has her own box. The little ones are a bit frightened of her. She looks like one of those dolls that might snap awake at midnight and do stuff.

    A perfect china face, china arms and legs, a soft fabric body. Real, pale blonde hair, a small pursed mouth, blue eyes, a tiny patch of rouge on each cheek. She is wearing an ankle length dress made of real satin trimmed with lace.

    Eldest Brother, standing on one of the dining room chairs, ties her to the top of the tree using the yellow satin ribbon that holds the crib box together. We crowd around the tree: ‘A little bit to the left!’  ‘No a little bit more to the right!’ Eldest Brother gets fed up: ‘She’s fine.’

    Christmas fairy, a little lopsided, looks down disapprovingly.

    It’s dark. Dad comes in. He’s smiling a lot. His hat on the back of his head. Even before the front door closes the young artist who took him out drinking is speeding away from the house in a battered cream estate.

    Dad walks unsteadily around the hall, arms out: ‘My darlings’.  Mum goes: ‘Oh for heaven’s sake’. Dad can’t stop smiling: ‘All my ducklings.’ He puts a hand on my shoulder. He avoids Mum’s eye.  ‘I shink maybe I’ll go up to bed’. ‘Good idea’, Mum says in a voice that means Goodbye and Good riddance. ‘Happy Crissmass’ Dad says, standing swaying at the bottom of the stairs, waving a bony hand.  ‘Go on’ Mum says.

    None of us says anything. We don’t mind Dad being drunk. But we don’t want Mum to be cross. Not on Christmas Eve. One of the big ones goes down to the kitchen.

    When all the glass balls, small ones and big ones, have been hung on the tree, the tinsel draped and the crib set up with the music box beside it, the big ones say they’re going to make supper in the kitchen. There’s ‘too much going on in the dining room’.  The big ones have made Mum sit down and have a sherry while they cook. The bottle says ‘Dry Sherry’. No matter how many ways I try to think it , I can’t work it out: how can a liquid be dry?

    We’re allowed our first slices of ham. It’s delicious! Sweet and warm and juicy and chewy all at the same time.  I wonder how long can eating and happiness last?

    *****

    It’s Christmas morning! We’re all awake before it’s light. Mum and Dad have left a long, grey, hand knitted stocking at the end of every bed. The bulging stockings, knitted by Granny, spend the rest of the year in the sideboard. They all have that special Christmas smell.

    We reef open the Santa presents – a potatoe gun, bubbles, a false nose and moustache set, a board game with a wooden spinning top. At the bottom, always, a tangerine.

    We stand outside Mum and Dad’s bedroom door. ‘When can we go down?’ Sleepy voices from inside call out: ‘Go back to bed. It’s not even six o’clock.’.

    By eight Mum and Dad have come down. Big Sister has started breakfast. Everyone is hungry. Us young ones because we’ve already been awake for hours. Mum and Dad and the big ones because they’ve been at midnight mass, wrapped presents and sneaked them into our rooms in the Santa stockings.

    The big presents are still all under the tree. Dad says we have to line up, outside the dining room door, littlest first, . He puts the Messiah on the gramophone, the hundred voices swelling up and filling the house, Hallelujah! Halleluhah! Ha,le,eh,eh,luh,jah! He tells us Handel cried when he first heard it performed. In Dublin. We only half listen. All we want to do is get inside.

    One, Two, THREE – and Mum opens the door.

    We thunder in.

    Mum and Dad stand either side of the tree, calling out our names. There are the big presents under the tree from them first. Then presents from Granny. Then smaller presents from uncles and aunts. The big ones get presents from girlfriends and boyfriends.

    Silence as presents are ripped open. Shouts of delight. Everyone makes a pile in separate areas.

    By the time the excitement has started to die down the big ones are bringing in breakfast. Because it’s Christmas they’ve cooked extra, piling the rashers and sausages, the black and white puddings, the tomatoes, onto the big oval dish. They bring the eggs and the toast in separately.  It’s always the best breakfast of the year.  Mum and Dad, at either end of the dining table, give each other a quick look: first stage of Christmas successfully completed.

    The preparations for the big Christmas dinner start immediately after breakfast is cleared away. Chopping onions, squeezing sausages out of their skins to make the stuffing for the turkey. Scrubbing and peeling the enamel basin full of potatoes. Making the bread sauce. Getting the plum pudding onto the stove for one last boil. Cleaning the brussels sprouts. Scrubbing the carrots. Checking the trifle in the pantry has properly set. Shoving fistfuls of stuffing into the turkey’s  yawning cavities.

    Next a small party of us are off with Mum and Dad to visit the maternity hospital where Mum’s father was once Master. The matron, large and spotless, has coffee, sherry, Christmas cake, mince pies laid out. Fig rolls and squash for us younger ones. She treats Mum like a beloved, special daughter. Mum looks beautiful in her green tweed suit, the gold watch brooch she won for a Point to Point on the lapel.

    Every year Mum brings in ‘layettes’ for the new-borns whose own Mums don’t have much money. Mum and the sewing lady who comes to the house to ‘turn’ sheets, make clothes, re-line old jackets, ‘turn’ cuffs, make a few every time the sewing lady comes. They’re set aside in the sewing chest of drawers, ready for Christmas.

    Mum and Dad both have sherry. Then coffee. We have mince pies, burning our tongues on the scalding fruit.

    ‘Why are they called ‘mince’pies’?’ we ask Dad in the car on the way home. Dad says it goes back to the 16th Century. They used to be made with real meat. Even, sometimes, tripe. ‘No’ we scream, making getting sick noises. Dad, who can persuade us to eat almost anything, hasn’t succeeded in getting anyone to eat tripe. It’s good for you!  Every so often Dad buys some in the butchers and cooks it up in a saucepan of milk with half an onion. Mum says it smells horrible. I say it looks like floor cloths.  Mum says it smells even worse than floor cloths. Nobody will taste a mouthful.

    ‘Dad. No! Yuck!’.

    By the time we get back to the house the older ones have Frank Sinatra on the gramophone and the house is filled with the smell of Christmas dinner cooking.  We younger ones bring our presents up to the drawing room where Eldest Brother has lit the  huge Christmas fire  – long curved black turves, chopped logs that smell of Sundays in the country.

    Dad goes to collect Granny, Mum’s mother, to bring her over for the big feast. We sit her in Mum’s chair by the fire.

    We hear screaming downstairs. A plate smashing. Big Sister and Mum have got into a fight. Dad goes down to calm things. We hear raised voices.  A door slams. My brother laughs: ‘Madame having one of her fits’. He means Big Sister. Granny pretends not to hear. Dad comes back: ‘Help is needed’ he says. The middle ones, groaning, get up and go down.

    Finally the call comes: Dinner’s ready!

    We force ourselves not to charge down the stairs shouting and jostling,  remembering Granny and how old she is. Her arm feels like a dry stick inside her soft woollen sleeve. Dad, holding out a crooked arm, says he will ‘escort’ her.

    The dining room is beautiful. The sideboard and the table are lit with candles, decorated with ivy and holly, a circle of crackers in the centre, the sideboard crowded with huge glistening turkey, the ham, bowls of heaped mashed potatoe, a dish of roast potatoes, bowls of brussels sprouts and carrots, silver boats of bread sauce, the gravy boats, a dish of cranberry sauce.

    All the best cutlery is out. The best china. The nicest glasses. The best napkins.

    Dad carves. There’s quiet as everyone waits. Another wait for gravy, bread sauce, cranberry sauce to be passed around. You look at your plate, so beautiful with the meats and stuffing and roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy and sauces.

    Everyone has to wait until the last person is sitting down, before you can begin.

    Yes!

    Pieces of delicious turkey meat dipped in gravy, roast potatoes cooked in turkey juices, mashed potatoe with butter dripping down the sides, ham with cranberry sauce, stuffing. Every mouthful is delicious. The turkey bought from a farmer Dad knows in Meath. The ham ordered from the pork butcher in town. The potatoes, brussels sprouts and carrots from Dad’s garden.

    The grown-ups and the big ones have wine. Granny, no higher at the table than the little ones, a shrinking doll in satin and pearls and silvered hair, raises her glass, smiling. To Christmas! shout the big ones.

    My brother, carving knife and fork raised, calls out: ‘Who’s for seconds?’ The adults decline as we smaller ones line up. My brother always gives himself the best bits when he carves, and seconds never taste as good as firsts, still, I can’t resist. ‘No thirds’ Mum says, ‘that’s just greedy’.

    More Christmas please, more!

    A rest and then, puddings.

    The dinner plates are cleared. The plum pudding is carried in. Then the trifle. Dad pours a glass of brandy over the plum pudding and holds a match to it. Blue flames dance and curl around its moist sides. We all want to get bits with the blue flames still going but they flicker out as the plate lands. Brandy butter runs down the hot sides. There’s trifle for those who don’t like plum pudding. Or for greedy ones – like me ! – who want both.

    For the grown ups there’s a special wine Dad has bought for Mum – a desert wine. ‘Do they make wines in the desert?’ The big ones laugh. ‘Of course not!’ ‘It means a wine you have with your pudding, silly.’

    Finally it’s time to pull the crackers. You cross your arms in front of you and share a cracker with the person either side. You pull like mad because you want to get the toy, the hat and the joke. Even though the grown-ups say they’re always rubbish, everyone pulls hard. There’s a little explosion, the smell pop guns make, a scattering of rolled up paper hats, toys and jokes. One of the littles sitting beside my brother screams. ‘He got TWO!’ Dad finds another cracker and pulls it with them, making sure they win.

    We all hope to get  good joke and make everyone laugh:

    ‘What did the stamp say to the envelope? Stick with me and we’ll go places’.

    ‘How did the human cannonball lose his job? He got fired’.

    ‘What is the nearest thing to Silver?  The Lone Ranger’s bottom.’

    The grown-ups, now in great form, laugh like anything. We young ones all want to own the fish that middle sister got in her cracker. It’s made of red, see-through cellophane. When you lay it on your outstretched palm both ends curl upwards – as if the fish was alive.

    Finally it’s time to clear up.

    When the last dishes, cup, plates, have been carried into the kitchen and washed, the meats, puddings, turkey, ham, trifle put away in the pantry, everyone gathers upstairs in the drawing room where Dad has stoked the fire up into a fresh blaze.

    Granny is going to stay the night. She tells us stories about growing up in Chile. About how Mum and her brother used to ride out on their ponies, for miles and miles. How Mum was afraid of nothing. Mum looks stern. We know, though she never says, she doesn’t like Granny. We don’t really know why. Big Sister says Granny was very bossy when Mum was young. We can’t picture it. Tiny ancient  little Granny was so bossy she made Mum cross? Forever? It doesn’t make sense.

    Dad suggests we all play the ‘truth’ game. Mum says no, that game always ends in trouble. We take out the new Cluedo. Eldest Brother wins: Colonel Mustard. In the study. With the rope. Mum says, ‘that game is going to give them nightmares’, but she’s not cross.

    *****

    It’s January by the time the tree has to come down. The soft, early dark light of December has been replaced with the harsh grey blue light of January. There have been fights. Big sister has broken up with her boyfriend. ‘Oh do blow your nose,’ Mum says, which makes Big sister howl even more loudly and rush out of the room.

    The tree has to be taken out of its bucket filled with stones and pulled out through the back door and down into the garden.

    Middle sister says how come there is always one ball left on the tree no matter what? The ball this year, a small purple one, clatters across the tiles as Eldest Brother drags the tree out, leaving a trail of pine needles. Mum says, ‘Someone get the hoover’. ‘Hey Someone! Get the hoover would you!’ says Middle sister. ‘Don’t you be cheeky’, says Mum .

    In the garden my brother hacks off the Christmas tree branches with a small red handled hatchet, piling the lopped branches up in a rough stack. ‘Stand back’ he says and throws on a cupful of paraffin. Whumpf! The hacked branches, the armless tree, spitting and crackling go up in a shaking blue haze. I see Mum looking out the window. Suspicious. Her face saying: What did that boy throw on the fire to make it blaze like that? I thought I’d told him not to.

    Inside everything has been packed away into the sideboard – the Mickey Mouse Christmas lights, the crib figures from Germany, the singing angels from Germany, Flying Santa on a goose with his singed beard,  the plastic bag of tinsel, the glass balls, the long grey hand knitted stockings.

    All back into the dark of the sideboard until next Christmas.

    Middle sister has taken out the hoover. Pine needles go rushing up the metal tube in a storm of clicking. Like dried out, dead insects.

    *****

    Dad is in bed. He’s not feeling well.

    Christmas is over.

    How could any of us have known it was to be the last Christmas? The last happiness?

    How could any of us have imagined it was the beginning of the end?

    We didn’t. How could we?

    Feature Image: wikicommons

  • Poem: Krismastime

    Krismastime

    It’s Krismastime
    Get confetti
    Slug wile
    Midnight
    Fly heights
    Seeing worlds beam by beam
    Don’t be a revolutionary,
    Be a revolution.
    Rise of the mind
    Ascension time
    Compassion is the fashion
    Send the bird
    With the scrolls in his talon
    Falcons mean business
    Business means fun
    How to game the game and crush a few outmoded systems at the same time?
    Don’t ask me
    I just twerk here
    Moonless
    Goonless
    Step free
    I exited the mind
    Fundamental
    Chronic got me healing
    Got me happy
    Got me rapping
    Why wait for daytime
    Moment is right now
    How long can it stretch?
    Til we spun and run out all the decks
    Oh, there goes the hex.
    3rd eye runs shit
    Left eye got infrastructure inside
    Yes it’s Styles Time
    Rhyme spree
    More Eiffel Tower than plastic marquee
    Good vibes
    No end of faces
    To clock the other times
    Moment is iconic
    We all got cured by bubonic
    Thanks gang
    8 billion
    We got one thing in common:
    Wuhan

  • Lebanon: 5,000 Kilometres Away

    Beirut, Mar Elias, 26 November, 7pm.

    Despite the cold wave that hit the city this week (8 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 in the Mediterranean), my mother and sister left all the windows and doors open, to prevent the worst. They are – as I type – sitting in my sister’s room in the middle of the apartment. They moved away from the balconies, from the saloon, where chandeliers could fall on their heads. They sat there with a heater and they said they were praying. Praying? I come from a family that does not pray. Well, my sister has started a tradition lately. Transmission in my family is inverted it seems….

    We talked for 15 minutes and then, short of words, I stayed there. I’ve been 45 minutes on the phone, not talking anymore, just in the background, just listening, tele-transporting myself to the house, trying to be present for them, for the neighborhood, for my childhood, for my upbringing, for myself in fact, in silence. A phone call to hear silence, and to witness a bombardment. Waiting with them, for the bombardment. To add some absurdity to the absurdity, I do not want them to wait alone, so I am waiting from afar with them on the phone. Waiting for the sound.

    My mother and sister are also waiting for my other sister, who is blocked in the Hamra traffic. Since the evacuation order was issued an hour ago, people ran off and are acting according to the “safety” measurement. An urban nightmare. My mother and sister are 600 metres away from a location listed as a targeted spot, as part of a list of targeted spots. My mother and sister believe and trust that they are okay and that they will be okay and that everything will be alright.

    They asked me to hang up as my brother needs to talk to mother. I had to hang-up.

    I am 5000 kilometres away, yet I do not feel that I am okay nor do I feel that I am alright. Actually, I do not share their opinion. I am scared, just like last October, when I was scared when the tension started. I am scared like last November, when two monsters were threatening to “Flatten Beirut, like [they] are flattening Gaza”. I am not a geopolitical expert; I have good sensors though. My skin is full of those. I feel events, people and situations (precisely the reason why I am geographically away from Mar Elias at the moment). And what my mother and sister are living now, I also feel it so acutely. My mother’s tone of voice betrays her stoic words. This lady saw it all, she is strong but her voice is shaking. She cannot fake it any longer… I feel ashamed to be away and that she has to see more, more of it, more of the same. Shame. I returned to Beirut in 2018 and had my share until mid-2024. So all I can do is call back and stay on the phone.

    –  Please let me stay with you, do not hang up.

    I am a scared mother, I am scared. I am scared just like we had to hide in the corridor for long nights in 1989 when the “East-West” War was on. When, for some reason, we were stuck in a corridor despite being totally outside the “East-West” logic. I am scared just like in 1990, during the War of Liberation, when we had to run, father and I, from Verdun up-hill home, using walls as our only shelter, moving like lizards, from wall to wall until we reached home, when his forty-five-year-old body was hiding mine of 5 years old. It is striking how I can still remember his body twitching.  I am scared, just like in 2006, when our house was shaking like an autumn leaf because of its proximity to the southern suburb area.

    –   Mama, how do you feel? What did you eat for lunch?
    –   I cooked green beans and rice, and …

    Mother’s voice is cut, muted for a moment; it agonizes for seconds.

    –  Mama! Are you okay?
    –  I am okay. I think something blew off… the floor shook a bit.
    –  Mama, are you okay?
    –  Yes, yes, I am fine… It is done, it’s over. “That was it!”, she adds in a reassuring tone, as if nothing happened, not to scare me. 

    Then I hear the cry she tames. But I hear it. She swallows it, as she is so good at hiding emotions, suffocating them. I learned a bit of that from her. At least, only when it comes to crying… for the rest I am very explicit. I feel the silent water in my eyes, flooding water as silent as hers.

    Silence.

    That was it: the promised, announced, planned and advertised attack on my mother’s area. Not Hezbollah’s area, not a single-one-of-them area – I will forever refuse such a takeover of my area, as it is simply my mother’s area. That swallowing of something in her throat felt like a violent mutilation. I witnessed my mother’s breath cut by the IDF. My mother who had to silently watch the Israeli soldiers hiding in her parking lot, during the civil war when they entered Beirut West, and specifically our neighborhood, and regularly visited Ali Alwan from the Murabitoun – a collaborating spy. 1981. My mother, whose home office got hit by their bombing, when they were looking for Yaser Arafat, who was located a few buildings away. 1982. My mother, who is not knowledgeable of any military artillery, had a Milan (Missile d’Infanterie Léger Antichar) hitting her roof, and therefore she knows all about Milan missiles. Mother is an expert in Milan missiles actually. She recognizes those, as every militia man went up to observe it under her guidance, before collecting it from her place. She dealt, however, with the dusty remains of the aftermath alone.

    Then she remembered I am still here, as I remained silent and was only capable of writing frenetically. She overcame her emotions, with an unusual sharing of details:

    –  Lily, I am glad you are away. The air is polluted, dusty, black powder on all surfaces here. You cannot touch a surface. You cannot breathe well. Every day, I thank God for being alive and for you being away.

    –  Well, mama I know how cumbersome I am to you…

    –  No, you wouldn’t have been able to run. You wouldn’t have taken it.

    –  I cannot run anymore as much as I did since the Explosion, mama. Also, I am not only a runner… it is not the only activity I live for….

    –  Lily, water is scarce and cleaning your 15 meters’ balcony every day and planting bulbs and seeds weekly wouldn’t be easy… you would not have really dealt with the rationing …

    –  You didn’t tell me that last time we spoke.

    –  Do you really need to know everything? You’re tiring, you always want to know everything….

    She has been actually lying, since I left she has been lying. She avoids telling me whatever goes wrong. I always discover the truth later.

    Then she screams: “Nathalie, do not step on the balcony! Stay inside”.

    –  Lily, we need to take a phone call; someone is calling us.

    She hangs up on me for the second time.

     

    Dublin, Portobello, 26 November, 6pm.

    I feel alone and lonely and utterly sad. I am in an early time zone, and I feel left behind, not only in space but also in time. I do not want to be there; she is perfectly right. My nervous system would not be up to it. She knows her kids well, despite the opacity and the thick curtains of hidden emotions we built between each other, her and I. She is tougher and so are my sisters. Maybe because I left at 22. They never left. She never left, she never left Lebanon, never left Mar Elias. It’s her hood, that made it ours, as per our matriarchy.

    I called again in ten minutes. They didn’t even talk to me; they opened the line and continued conversing. Nathalie tells mother: “The ceasefire has been announced”. My sister should be delusional. A ceasefire while we just got “raped”? How is that possible?

    I open my news channels. “Israel approves ceasefire deal with Lebanon, continues to heavily strike Beirut and various areas”, Beirut Today.

    It’s surreal.

    Middle East Eye (MEE) reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said his war cabinet had approved a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon that will pause fighting for 60 days. He promised that Israel’s war on Gaza will continue. US and Arab officials told Middle East Eye that under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon. Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence along the border and move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, the sources said. The Lebanese army is expected to deploy in south Lebanon, with at least 5,000 troops set to patrol the border area along with an existing UN peacekeeping force. An international committee, including the US and France, will be established to supervise the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. Hezbollah is yet to comment on the deal. US President Joe Biden will speak later on Tuesday. A senior US official told MEE that Israel will not be granted the right to attack Lebanon based on any suspicious movements”.

    I have not been sleeping well. I have been sleeping either little or lightly. I’ve also been having nightmares, night sweats and uneasy mornings. Last night, I slept light and little. I was late and have a deadline tonight. David, a recently made friend, texts: “Phibsborough this evening, we can listen to traditional music, do you want to join? “Music? The Irish’s best skill… I have not eaten yet, I had a work meeting. I am hungry, I also need to pee, and work and sleep early if I can, but the silence is heavy. Irish Music. It is like finding evidence of God when one was just doubting the concept. My eyes are itching. I scrub my eyes, bite my nails’ skin, it tastes salty. My eyes should be salty. I want water on my body and water in my eyes.

    I finally stand and walk in circles, something I often do when lost in my own cage of thoughts… I start looking for eye drops. I need eye drops for sensitive eyes and maybe to be around people making music. Because it’s been months of sonic booms, thunder of bombardments, knocks of explosives, bursts of war tokens, and ongoing buzz, yet all I need is music. My ears feel a deep, deep silence though: a silence similar to a soundless bombing. I imagine that I am deaf. What if I became deaf for real? The silent break in my mother’s voice swallowing the attack, absorbing the shock, stayed in a cochlear space in my body, more profound than any sound I have ever heard.

    It is silent peace time, and time for traditional Irish lyre…

    Feature Image: Moment Israeli strike hits building in Beirut’s southern suburbs | AFP

  • Putting the ‘Public’ Back into Enterprise

    Part I of this series examined Mario Draghi’s recent proposals for reforming the E.U.’s economic model. It explained how one key tool was missing from his new industrial policy toolkit. That missing tool was public enterprise. Here in part II, we take a closer look at commercial State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Particularly regarding their role at times of market failure, and how they can be used to channel investment into promising new sectors, with positive spillovers.

    The role of SOEs as drivers of Irish industrial policy may seem like a thing of the past, or at least very much peripheral to Ireland’s tax-driven industrial strategy. However, a new debate is starting to take root. Although long overdue, it should be welcomed, particularly when we consider different options for how the €14 billion Apple tax receipts should be invested.

    Note the government’s proposal to use some of the funds for their shared equity scheme is exactly the opposite of what’s needed.

    A New Debate or a New Departure?

    As part of their pre-election campaigning the various Irish parties of the broad left offered different public enterprise solutions for various challenges.

    For instance, both People Before Profit and Labour called for the establishment of a new construction related SOE. There are differences in how each proposed it would operate in practice. Part III takes a closer look at these. It will also briefly touch on the Spanish government’s recent announcement that it’s to establish a new housing SOE, and ICTU’s call for the creation of ‘a new housing semi-state- Housing Ireland.’

    Sinn Féin in their election manifesto called for existing SOEs like the ESB to drastically increase the number of craft apprenticeship places they offer (electricians, plumbers, etc), to help address shortages of key skills and improve workforce planning. They’ve also called for €2.5 billion of the Apple money to be used by the state to take equity stakes in joint energy ventures undertaken by the ESB and private providers.

    The Social Democrats, for their part, called for an increase to Bord na Móna’s capacity to deliver large renewable energy projects (onshore and offshore wind). They also had Dr Rory Hearne elected as one of their new TDs, so it’s possible his previous research on a new national home-building agency could influence party policy in this respect.

    So, it’s clear that we’re noticing something of a shift away from a narrow (and reductive?) focus on tax and spend; toward a more ambitious and positive conception of the role of the state in helping to shape markets, and drive socio-economic outcomes.

    President Michael D. Higgins in a speech last year celebrating the 20th of anniversary of TASC highlighted the ‘dearth of progressive or heterodox policy debates’ over the last few decades. Something he rightly attributed to the ‘dominance of neoliberalism’ and its ‘economic orthodoxies’.

    Mainstream (neoclassical) economic theory says remarkably little about SOEs. This is despite their scale, scope, and importance in the history of economic development and industrialisation. In an Irish context, they have traditionally entered public consciousness at times of some proposed privatisation, or in reflection on the failures of past privatisations.

    It’s time our thinking evolved. Michéal Martin said the Irish left ‘doesn’t get our enterprise economy’. The problem is that there are many people who feel they aren’t ‘getting’ much out of it. Perhaps it’s time we put the ‘public’ back into enterprise.

    The Business of the State

    So, what’s the purpose of the state directly entering commercial activities via SOEs? The most common rationale is correcting market failure, and the OECD/EU provide several theoretical reasons:

    • The private sector’s not providing sufficient goods/services, which are deemed necessary.
    • The need to provide public goods (housing, health, education) which a free-market system won’t provide adequately.
    • The decision to become involved in an activity where the private sector overproduces certain undesirable good with negative externalities (e.g. pollution, carbon emissions)

    Other supportive arguments include the countercyclical function they can serve in terms of investment expenditures/employment during a downturn. Their ability to promote industrialisation by launching new industries that may have significant start-up costs and the requirement for long-term investments. Their use as vehicles for innovation, knowledge dissemination, and technological spillovers. Lastly, for national security reasons and to contend with monopolistic sectors.

    There’s no one size fits all model when it comes to SOEs. In practice there’s significant variation observed. There are commercial and non-commercial SOEs. They can be owned at the national level (e.g. Government Ministry), the sub-national level (municipal/local authority) or through some other entity (e.g. a sovereign wealth/development fund or a Central Bank).

    There’s different levels of ownership and control observed, ranging from full state ownership to a more limited shareholding. Some have shares privately held, with others having some equity traded publicly. The degree of control also varies from those directly answerable to a Minister/Department, to those subject in more indirect control. Part III returns to the variation in organisational structure in an Irish context.

    Despite the large-scale privatisations that have occurred with the ascendancy of neoliberalism, the relative importance of state ownership has increased in recent decades (OECD 2023). Data-driven research over the last quarter of a century has been somewhat limited, but we are currently seeing something of a resurgence.

    This is partly being driven by the ‘renewed interest’ in SOEs amongst policymakers (World Bank 2023). But also, by a multilateral institutional realisation that the footprint of the state in commercial activities is far larger than previously thought (figure 1).

    As the OECD (2023) notes, the number of SOEs in the list of top 500 global companies has tripled, and at the end of 2022 ‘the public sector held almost 11% of global market capitalisation of listed companies, amounting to $10.6 trillion, with public sector ownership in some markets amounting to over 30% of listed equity’.

    SOEs in the 21st Century

    SOEs are major actors in most economies holding assets of $45 trillion, equivalent to 50% of world GDP (IMF 2020). They’re also active across a wide range of sectors (figure 2). China’s sharp rise (see part 1) has supported the ongoing re-evaluation of the state’s role in the economy. But in the West the Financial Crisis (2008), Covid-19 and the energy crisis, which all saw partial/full nationalisations, government backed recapitalisations and a host of other state subsidies, has also fed into the ongoing re-evaluation.

    In 2009 the Harvard International Review argued that there was ‘no reason to believe’ that the SOEs of the 21st century would be like their counterparts from the 1980s/1990s. Criticisms of that period centred on the favouritism shown by the state, governance issues, inefficiencies, and so on.

    This assessment proved to be prophetic as extensive OECD research (2021) found that the ‘noteworthy trend’ has been that ‘states are operating increasingly like professional investors.’ That is, most had a commitment to ‘competitive neutrality’ meaning favouritism was not shown toward SOEs, and competition law and public procurement law were used to create a level playing field.

    They also noted for corporate governance it was now ‘common practice’ to have auditing and accounting standards (International Financial Reporting Standards) equivalent to stock market listed companies.

    MacCarthaigh (2008) in a review of Irish SOEs found that performance indicators were used extensively, with their use having increased significantly from previous years. Financial results and profitability were the focus, but other societal performance metrics like environmental and corporate social responsibility were also observed.

    Notwithstanding the recent work by multilateral institutions, academic research on SOEs over the last quarter of a century has been somewhat limited. The results of extant studies are also relatively mixed and lacking consensus. Table 1 provides an overview of some studies that have been carried out.

    SOEs have been studied across a range of issues, including: profitability performance vs private firms; level of innovation vs private firms; general performance following privatisation; effects on economic growth etc.

    There are some studies which found private firms tend to perform better in terms of profitability, with others finding no such evidence following privatisation, or that this brings higher costs in the provision of formerly public goods. Some found SOEs to be more innovative than their private sector counterparts.

    One study, examining their effect on economic growth, found that it was neither negative nor positive per se. Rather, their effect was conditioned by the institutional environment they operated within, meaning in the presence of good quality institutions their effect was positive, and in the presence of poor-quality institutions their effect was negative.

    This reminds me of something a former professor of mine once said. The answer to any question in economics is always – ‘it depends’! SOEs are not some kind of magic bullet. How they perform will depend on a range of factors. These factors can also apply to private firms.

    Factors like whether its organisational structure is sound. The presence of sound management and a board with a strategic vision, which are in alignment with its shareholder goals;[1] a good understanding of the market conditions they are operating within etc.

    Where they have differed in the past is that private firms could be quicker to exit a market when it was no longer competitively viable.[2] The case of Irish Steel – nationalised to save jobs – is a good case in point. It continued well past its sell by date, despite no longer being economically viable.

    But SOEs like private firms can adapt to a changed environment. For example, Bord na Móna went from being a major peat harvester to making good progress in renewable energy.[3]

    Lastly, it must be noted that SOEs may not be solely driven by maximising profit, measured via financial metrics (gross/net profit margin; return on equity (ROE); return on assets (ROA), etc).

    As commercial enterprises they will still need to make a profit, but they often have a so-called double bottom line, meaning they also look to maximise a second objective, such as capital investment, social impact, environmental performance, etc.

    So, comparing their profitability to private firms which are explicitly profit maximising is not necessarily a fair comparison. Next, we’ll take a brief look at specific Irish SOEs in historical perspective.

    Table 1
    Authors & year Research area/concern Findings Comment/limitations/ implications
    Shirley & Walsh

    (2000)

    		 Reviewed 52 studies (1980s to 1990s) which examined the difference in performance between SOEs and private corporations. They reported that there were only five studies indicating that SOEs outperformed private corporations Only monitored firms in monopolistic utility sectors
    Omran

    (2004)

    		 Examined the performance of 54 newly privatized Egyptian firms against a matching number of SOEs (1994-98) His analyses showed that privatized firms did not exhibit significant improvements in their performance relative to SOEs. These findings questioned the benefits of Egyptian privatization Cautioned that ‘changing ownership’ has no instant magical effect on performance, and greater consideration should be given to market structure or the power of competition
    Anderson (2007) Examined the impact of privatisation in Latin America (Ecuador), in relation to natural monopolies and public goods The privatisation of SOEs in involved in the provision of public goods can head to lower output and higher costs in the long run Noted that for Ecuador to develop the public sector still needed to play a significant role in developing human capital and physical infrastructure
    Mazucatto (2013) Examines the role of the state/public funding in the US economy’s success. Tackles the myth of neoclassical economics which juxtaposes a supposedly bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector The role of government as both a risk-taking funder of innovation and a market creator is widely understood. Public/state-funded investments in innovation and technology has been the driver of success, rather than free market doctrine Correctly recognises that governments form an essential role in the innovation chain. Points out that state has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. Sometimes successfully sometimes not.
    Benassi & Landoni

    (2018)

    		 Deals with the role of SOEs in innovation processes through two case studies (STMicroelectronics in the semiconductor and Thales Alenia Space in the space industry Illustrates how SOEs can contribute to innovation by exploring new opportunities and recombining different sources of knowledge. Highlights the conditions under which success can be realised. Highlights how these SOEs succeeded through a continuous wave of agreements, mergers and acquisitions. This has bearing for some of the proposals Mario Draghi has made (see part 1)
    Asian Development Bank (2019) Using a large sample of firms with cross sectional data, compares SOEs to private firms across various financial performance measures Found that SOEs ‘be less profitable than privately owned enterprises’. Argues SOEs should shift to profit maximising behaviour, although this runs counter to the double bottom line they often have
    Lee et al

    (2021)

    		 Examined the innovation performance of SOEs vs private corporations in Asian middle-income countries (2012-15) The authors note ‘somewhat surprisingly’ they found that SOEs in the study population tended to innovate more than private firms Noted the scarce data availability for empirical comparisons, meaning survey data was used instead
    Szarzec et al (2021) Examined the effect of SOEs on economic growth in 30 European countries (2010-16) Impact of SOEs on economic growth is not good or bad per se, but conditioned on the level of institutional quality. SOEs are positive on economic growth in a good quality institutional environment, and negative for poor quality institutional environments
    Castelnovo (2022) Analyses the innovation performance of more than 2000 SOEs vs private firms, using patent applications as a proxy for innovation value Results suggest that cross-industry heterogeneity exists. Overall, SOEs innovative performance is comparable or even superior to that of private firms Paper restricts attention to developed countries (EU Member States). Therefore, its findings cannot be generalized to developing countries

     

    Poolbeg Generating Station Ringsend, Dublin.

    Irish SOEs in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

    In the wake of the financial crisis (2008-10) a report for the Department of Enterprise noted that there was renewed global interest in SOEs in ‘promoting economic development’, and their ‘significant contribution to the economic and social development of Ireland since independence’ (FORFÁS 2011).

    At the time there were calls by ICTU to establish a strategic investment bank ‘to address the collapse in domestic demand’, to help support infrastructure investment and address the loss of jobs.[4] Such calls went unheeded. Instead, we got the below value sale of An Bord Gais and the attempted privatisation of our water services.

    Let’s briefly consider some of our current and former SOEs in historical perspective (see below), before considering some of the impacts of privatisation.

    • the ESB,
    • the Irish Shipping Company,
    • the National Building Agency,
    • Telecom Éireann,
    • ICC Bank,
    • Aer Lingus

    ESB

    At the time of independence/partition agriculture was Ireland’s main industrial sector. Yet most farms had no electricity or light, severely hampering profitability, productivity, and incomes (Schoen 2002). The ESB in helping to electrify the state had an immediate impact on economic, social, and industrial development, and average sector level income.

    Today it remains a large employer (supporting 0.5% of total employment). It’s a major capital investor (€6.7bn in the period 2018-23) and continues to provide strong returns to the state in the form of taxes, payroll, purchases, and dividends (€2.7bn in 2023). 

    The Irish Shipping Company

    The outbreak of WW2 threatened supply chains as many private shipping operators were unable to service Ireland. According to the old Department of Industry and Commerce, in 1939 only 5% of the total tonnage required for the Irish import and export trade was provided by Irish-owned vessels. During World War II, the U.S. initially refused to enter the warzone around Irish waters, meaning they couldn’t transport directly to Ireland.

    Other ships moved to the British register leaving a crisis in the availability of ships for transporting imported/exported goods. The establishment of the Irish Shipping Company was vital for the continued importation of energy supplies, as well as supporting exporting businesses in maintaining their trade routes, incomes, and employment. It was also considered essential to the preservation of Irish neutrality.

    National Building Agency

    The shift toward trade liberalisation and our FDI-led model in the 1960s was at first impeded by a lack of housing, as neither the private sector nor local authorities could meet demand. The National Building Agency was established for ‘facilitating industrial expansion through the provision of houses and ancillary services.’

    It soon undertook multiple large-scale developments and won plaudits from across the aisle. Even Fine Gael’s arch-conservative T.D. Oliver J Flanagan stated: ‘In my own constituency the NBA have provided what I consider to be the best type of houses that I have ever seen erected, in record time and to a plan and a design second to none.’[5]

    It was noted during one debate of the period how it had worked closely with the IDA, and after a decade in existence it had constructed multiple large scale developments, having ‘brought new techniques to Irish workers’, and ‘coordinated very well with the trade union movement’. The NBA was also an early pioneer in modular built structures and underfloor heating.

    Telecom Eireann

    The onset of the Celtic Tiger has multiple explanatory factors, but one often neglected was the quality of our telecommunications network infrastructure (Harris 2005). Thanks to the heavy capital investment of Telecom Eireann, by the early 1990s the network was amongst the most digitalised and modern in the world, and essential to attracting emerging ICT and financial services industries.

    At its height it provided employment to 18,000 workers, and by the mid-1990s the telecommunications infrastructure had become 100% digitised. It was privatised in 1999 as Eircom (now EIR).

    ICC Bank

    The Industrial Credit Corporation (ICC Bank), first established as a strategic industry lender, later became key to the SME sector. It made strategic equity investments in venture capital in the software sector, which was one of the successful indigenous export industries to emerge from the Celtic Tiger period (Kirby 2011).

    It expanded steadily, enjoying consistent profitability, and made equity investments totalling £36.9 million. At the time of privatisation (2001) it had grown its balance sheet to €3 billion.

    Aer Lingus

    Aer Lingus when it was an SOE was very entrepreneurial in its diversification activities, designed to mitigate the cyclical nature of the aviation industry (Sweeney 2004). It diversified into activities like financial, computer and engineering related services.

    It established successful subsidiaries like Airmotive, TEAM, Aviation Traders Engineering, Aer Turas, Pegasus and Futura, to name but a few. Aer Lingus, and its then employee Tony Ryan, can also lay claim to leasing one of the world’s first aircraft, which helped to create a global industry (aircraft leasing) in which Ireland now holds a 65% market share (PWC).

    Today Ireland’s remaining SOEs continue to contribute to the Exchequer, not merely in terms of employment and taxes paid, but also in terms of the dividends they have returned to the state. For example, in the period 2013 -2020 they contributed almost €2.5bn (Table 2). To put this in perspective, that is somewhere around where the final cost of the new National Children’s hospital will land.

    We can see from the foregoing the significant contribution that public enterprise has played throughout the state’s short history. And whilst there will always be those who assert that ‘the state has no business in business’, the above examples should demonstrate how erroneous that thinking is.

    It should, however, be said that when it comes to economic planning on the part of the state, it has often been found wanting (Casey 2022). The relationship between SOEs and the Irish government has often lacked ‘clearly articulated policy or objectives’ meaning public debate has rarely evolved beyond ‘the issue of privatisation’ (MacCarthaigh 2008).

    Table2 : Dividend payments to the exchequer from SOEs (2013-2020)

    Irish Privatisation in Perspective

    The importance of SOEs in Ireland has declined in relative and absolute terms since the early 1990s, through a combination of privatisation and the growth in the economy. In the 1980s SOEs employed ninety-one thousand people, accounting for 8% of total employment, falling to less than half that number and 2% of total employment by 2008.

    The wave of privatisations, with the ascendency of neoliberalism, saw major state divestment in sectors like construction, transport, telecommunications, other utilities, and finance (Parker 2021). In Ireland, arguably the biggest privatisation since the foundation of the state wasn’t from the sale of a single SOE, but rather the sale of more than half of all the public housing stock (Sweeney 2004).

    Ireland’s experience with privatisation largely mirrors the mixed results and disappointments seen elsewhere, as Table 3 sets out.[6] Despite promises of greater efficiency, cheaper and superior quality services/infrastructure, etc; often the reality failed to match the hype.

    In certain instances, privatisation had very costly consequences for households, businesses, the state, and its competitiveness.[7] As we can see below (table 3), four of the six SOEs (TE, ICC, IS and BG) were all profitable at the time of their sale, one of which had reached record profitability, and were returning dividends to the state.

    Of the two which were loss making; the Irish Shipping Company had been ‘a viable and successful state enterprise’ (Barrett 2004) before it made significant losses from speculative charter agreements, entered into by management without the approval of its shareholders (Minister for Finance/Transport).

    In the case of Irish Steel, major changes in global steel markets beginning in the 1980s, meant it became a significant loss maker and was no longer commercially viable. It was sold for £1 in 1996 and the new private entity would shut its doors in 2001.

    The impact of the privatisations of late 1990s/early 2000s were particularly acute. The sale of Telecom Eireann led to two leverage buyouts (think private equity) with much asset stripping and loading the company up with debt. There was then significant underinvestment meaning Ireland lagged behind EU peers in broadband connection for a long time.

    This privatisation was described as the ‘the biggest own goal’ for the state, next to the blanket bank guarantee. Although some of the proceeds of the sale were used to capitalise Ireland’s first sovereign wealth fund (the National Pension Reserve Fund), this of course would later be raided to bail out the banks.

    ICC bank was sold in 2001 despite being quite profitable and returning increasing dividends to the state. The proceeds of these sales were used ‘to cut direct taxes, incentivise property investment and so boosted the Crash’ (Sweeney 2018). In other words, successful public enterprise was sold off, partly used to lower taxes, and fuel the crash, and partly put aside in a new sovereign wealth fund, which would then be used to pay for the cleaning up of the mess.

    Bord Gáis, which was described as ‘extremely efficient in operational terms’, was sold under pressure from the Troika, and for less than its worth. Between 1976 and 2009 it had returned €689 million in dividends to the state. At the time it was still in public ownership, Ireland had one of the lowest energy costs in the EU, a situation which has now been drastically reversed.

    Table 3
    SOE, lifespan & industry Rationale for existence Max employees Performance prior to privatisation Aftermath of privatisation
    Telecom Éireann

    (1983-99)

    Communication

    		 To roll out digital telephone switching technology along with extensive fibre optic. 18,000 ·        Went from loss making (-£83 million) in 1983-84, to earning profits of £94 million by 1990-91.

    ·        In 1998 it made pre-tax profits of IR£223m, up 9%, on turnover of IR£1.35 billion.

    ·        By the early 1990s, the Irish network was amongst the most modern and most digitalised in the world and by the mid-1990s had become 100% digitally switched.

    ·        In 1999 it had debts of €340 million which rose to €4.27 billion by 2007 after privatisation.[8]

     

    		 Underwent two leveraged buyouts (LBOs), asset stripping, loading company up with debt, significant underinvestment, Ireland lagged behind EU peers in broadband connection for a long time.

     

    A report by ICTU noted that next to the blanket bank guarantee, the privatisation of Telecom Eireann ranked as “the biggest own goal” for the state.
    Industrial Credit Corporation – ICC Bank

    (1933-01)

    Finance

    		 Setup as strategic lender for industrial expansion.

    Later acted as key lender to SMEs, indigenous businesses, and venture capital.

    		 358 ·        Expanded steadily, enjoyed consistent profitability, and made equity investments totalling £36.9 million.

    ·        Grew its balance sheet through its own efforts to almost £3 billion at the time of privatisation.

    ·        Paid regular and increasing dividends to the Exchequer over the previous two decades.

    ·        In the five years before privatisation, dividend payments amounted to £14 million, while corporation tax payments in the same period came to £10 million.

    ·        The bank made a profit of €47 million the year before it was sold.

    		 Return on assets (ROA) declined after privatisation, asset size increased (Reeves).

     

    Post-crash, loss of ICC cited in support for establishing State Investment Bank (NESC 2013), (ICTU 2011).

     

    Credit demand muted after GFC, accessing finance today for SMEs remains a challenge with 66% having difficulties.[9]
    Irish Shipping Company

    (1941-1984)

    Transport

    		 Setup to protect imports and exports during WW2, to promote greater self-sufficiency and protect neutrality. 300 ·        Liquidated following significant losses from speculative charter agreements entered into without the approval of its shareholders (Minister for Finance/Transport).

    ·        Liquidation cost £101 million, which was £13 million more than allowing the company to keep trading.[10] Its ships were sold off.

    ·        Prior to this mistake with the charter agreements it was “a viable and successful state enterprise” (Barrett 2004).

    ·        It was described as having “offered good careers to many” and brought “benefits to our commercial reputation as a nation”.[11]

    		 Claims cost of liquidation would be £50 million whereas C&AG reports for 1984, 1985 and 1986 estimated in excess of £100 million.
    Irish Steel

    (1947-96)

    Basic Materials

    		 Initially nationalised to “save jobs” 1,200 ·        Loss of competitiveness from other EU markets and declining steel prices.

    ·        Although modest profitability in the 1950s/1960s, problems emerged in the 1970s and despite significant state investment in 1980s, and workforce changes (90s) it made a loss of £20.7 million (1993-94) and a loss of £5.8 million (1994-95).

    ·        Serious environmental damage caused from dumping of toxic materials.

    		 Often cited as a “white elephant” project.

    Was not viable as a commercial enterprise. Firoz (2003) argues that the significant drop in steel prices in the 1990s was a major problem for producers without trade protections, strong state subsidies, and increased competition from the developing world (China).
    Irish Sugar Greencore

    (1933-91)

    Agribusiness

    		Commercial and wider social reasons like promoting regional development and employment in the West 1,757 (1991) ·        Experienced rapid growth and improvement in the pre-privatization period.

    ·        Heavy investment in the 1980s and diversified into other agribusiness streams.

    ·        Turnover in the year ending September 1990 was £271 million, which was also a record year for net profits £18.4 million.

    		 In the decade post privatisation, its performance was not strongly associated with improved financial performance and productivity.[12]
    Bord Gais Energy

    (1976-13)

    Energy

    		 Established (Gas Act 1976) as owner of the national gas transmission & distribution systems, mandated with development and maintenance of the natural gas network. 1000 est. (2013) ·        Under pressure from the Troika the lucrative energy supplier valued at €1.5 billion was sold for only €1.1 billion, because no reserve auction price had been set.[13]

    ·        BGE had yielded rising profits with an EBITDA of €91 million in 2013.

    ·        It paid dividends of €689 million between 1976 and 2009,[14] the paid €30 million (2010), €33 million (2011) and €28.3 (2012).

    ·        It lost its profitable wind farms, plants and the right to supply gas to nearly a million customers in Ireland.

    ·        The SOE was a heavy infrastructural investor and was described as “extremely efficient in operational terms”.[15]

    		 Sold for less than valuation amidst much parliamentary/public criticism.

     

    Advisers’ fees for the privatisation amounted to €27 million.

     

    Irish electricity prices were 26% above EU average (Eurostat 2022), with Bord Gais like other suppliers having raised prices multiple times in 2022.


    Conclusion

    The late great Tony Benn once said there will always be those who don’t want public enterprise to survive, even where it succeeds. For instance, David Luhnow of the Wall Street Journal, recently issued sharp criticism of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for saying she wanted her country to place a greater focus on its SOEs. He said it was like the economic evidence of the last half century had been forgotten.

    But what evidence does he think she has forgotten? Joseph Stiglitz recently pointed out that after forty years the numbers in: ‘growth has slowed, and the fruits of that growth went overwhelmingly to a very few at the top. As wages stagnate and the stock market soared, income and wealth flowed up rather than trickling down’.

    It’s not enough for the broad left to say that neoliberalism and privatisation has failed. We need to have a coherent program to start reversing it. One element of such a strategy could be public enterprise. The point here is not that the Irish state should return to direct involvement in previous areas it operated in like agribusiness or steel production, or even that SOEs are always the best option for addressing socio-economic problems or promoting industrial development.

    Rather it’s to recognise that in certain circumstances SOEs are the only actors capable of doing this when the private sector fails. It’s also to acknowledge that they can also be entrepreneurial actors, making the necessary long-term investments in transformational infrastructure, technologies and industries, when the private sector is unwilling or unable.

    [1] For mismanagement and misalignment can lead to ruin, as in the case of the Irish Shipping Company, which prior to its engagement of speculative charter agreements had long been a profitable and successful company.

    [2] Irish Steel is clearly an example of this where political pressure kept the entity alive well past its sell by date.

    [3] It recently announced the biggest change of land use in modern Irish history, 125,000 acres of bog land will soon be repurposed for wind, biomass and solar energy.

    [4] https://www.ictu.ie/news/jobs-plan-fails-deal-demand-deficit

    [5] https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1969-10-29/41/

    [6] Other SOEs privatised but not dealt with in Table 3 include Irish Life, TSB, the Agricultural Credit Corporation, Irish National Petroleum, British and Irish Line, BOI/AIB and Aer Lingus.

    [7] Poor access to broadband, housing crisis harming competitiveness, loss of dividends to the exchequer, proceeds of sale of privatisations of 2000s was used to reduce direct taxes rather than reinvestment, this helped to fuel property speculation, at time country was running surpluses, exacerbated the crash, etc.

    [8] https://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/policy/econconf/Reeves_Palcic01022013.pdf

    [9] https://p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2022/02/17/two-thirds-of-irish-smes-struggle-to-access-credit/

    [10] Recalling Irish Shipping liquidation – The Irish Times

    [11] https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1984-11-14/28/?highlight%5B0%5D=financed&highlight%5B1%5D=finance&highlight%5B2%5D=bill&highlight%5B3%5D=1932

    [12] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2015.1061643

    [13] https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/tni_privatising_industry_in_europe.pdf

    [14] https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2009-02-03/7/

    [15] http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/11/04/the-benefits-of-increased-investment-and-efficiency-in-public-infrastructure-and-utilities/

  • Fiction: Everything Human

    “Have you ever been alone in an old theatre at night? There are no places on earth more haunted than theatres. An old theatre houses the ghosts of all things, at least, all things human. Cemeteries are where bodies go, not lives. Not like,’ he paused and looked up at the ceiling, ‘the theatre. We must use the imagination gifted to us. I mean, use the spectre of the performance, the trace of bygone acts. I don’t mean the supernatural. I mean the real ghosts, the people who really did live and die. Odd, that the supernatural would create the natural and then stay hidden within it. Anyway, I’m losing my train of thought, where was I? Ah yes, I remember. Think! Of all the actors and musicians of bygone centuries who have been forgotten, left to the wind whispering. And what goes for actors goes a thousandfold for humankind. I’m talking about the ones who made the theatre from nothing. The ones who brought the whole thing into existence. Most have been forgotten certainly, but have they been forgotten without trace? Hardly. We are actors because we want to make the thing last. What dreams they must have had! Yes, what dreams.” He turned his head away, fighting tears. “Think to when they were back stage on their opening nights, those sacred nights. Butterflies turning into eagles, soaring high to the Gods.” Fenwick made a quick flitting gesture with his hand accompanied by a half whistle through his teeth. “I remember that night better than any night of my life. With my fellow students. There on the stage we bowed on the final night of the run. It was a beautiful thing.” Now tears showed. “The faces of the audience were partially obscured in the dark, but we heard them. And how. How we wept with happiness. Joy swept into our souls, and kept.” His eyes glazed in the light of time’s memory. “And in that moment, everything was possible. To be loved, by strangers, and have evidence of it, to really feel it, that was their dream. And ours. To win and to be loved. To become a part of a dream, and know it. The most beautiful thing in the world, to save a life out there somewhere. That is our hope. That is us.”

    “My mother used to say you can tell the goodness of a person in their eyes.” Said Mary, who was one of the young actors.

    “Did she?” Replied Fenwick, after deliberating for a moment or two.

    Fenwick reclined in the tattered leather-bound chair and craved for the tobacco he had recently prohibited, knowing that he would likely soon succumb. He planned to keep going until all the hairs on his head were white, and then, and only then, give up. Fenwick was sitting with the young actors in one of the dressing rooms of an old London theatre, the mirror bordered with lightbulbs, surrounded by his ghosts, and speaking to the youngsters as if they were an audience that had paid to see him act. He wasn’t officially their teacher; it was more a play of mutual admiration. There they were, the younger ones, just sitting on the cushioned floor looking up at him through their smoke and hanging on his every word. He paused for a moment and took a good drink. He listened carefully to the gentle rattling of the melting ice cubes. It warmed his whole being and in the electric light he suddenly felt at one with the entire universe. No fear at all. His wide-open eyes seemed to be glaring past his surroundings, deep into some other place.

    “There was a woman I once knew that had the same dream as us.” His face became suddenly melancholy. “In her small hometown by the sea in the north of England her beauty was infamous. It had driven at least one young man to take his own life and sent four more completely mad, and they are only the ones that are known of. She was a legacy of the Viking shield maidens, a daughter of Freya, marooned in the twentieth century’. They waited for him to continue and glanced at each other before looking back up at him, cajoling him into revealing some secret worth knowing. They thought, perhaps because of the way he held his age, that he possessed wisdom.

    “Yes, she was beautiful.” He looked back in time. “Beautiful in an other-worldly, divine way. She had that thing that is impossible to describe in words, one of the things in this world that are beyond language. She possessed the genius of evolution. How it affected her I can’t really tell, but whatever it was, it became a desire to escape her little home town by the sea. That’s what she told me. She had walked alone on rainy northern nights, through the empty streets, thinking her beauty and talent were being wasted with every passing day. So, when the opportunity came to retake all those lost moments she grasped them in her fist, put them in her mouth and breathed them back into her soul. No one could ever take that away from her. And no-one ever did. Her moment of first success was her first true love. When the crowd cheered her for the first time, that night in the theatre in Manchester, she changed, because her soul had been satisfied. That’s what happens when you get what you want. You change.”

    “What happened to her?” His melancholy expression turned even more grave.

    “I suppose I will never know.” He said and returned to his whiskey.

    The two young actors had just graduated from drama school and were at the theatre to audition for a new play about a man who had gone rogue through music. For the last two years they had both been players in an immersive theatre company, which is where they had met. They were eager and anxious to learn. Spending time around Fenwick gave them solace, and occasionally invigorated their ambition. He reminded them that inspiration is only a part of the thing. They both imagined the woman he spoke about in their minds and wondered who she could have been. Mary looked up at Fenwick and said,

    “But surely as actors it is what is within that counts? Soul marks us out, as a profession I mean.” Fenwick smiled. The innocence of the young actor uplifted him. The moment made his own soul glimmer.

    “Yes, my dears. Quite right. Quite right.” He said. He went to silent thinking, and then Charles said,

    “But in our profession, how you look has meaning surely. I mean how you appear, and people prefer beautiful things to look at don’t they?  Or you put on make-up and prosthetics to make the character look more ugly, more despicable. But the appearance is still there, dictating to the audience thoughts. To engage the audience’s perception, isn’t that our work?  I think ours is the shallowest profession of them all, the one most based on appearances.”

    “Our job is to tantalise.” Said Fenwick. He rattled the ice cubes among the whiskey. “We don’t save lives. Like doctors.”

    “Oh?” Said Mary as her eyebrows raised like they were being winched to her hair. “I’ve seen it happen, oh yes Fenwick I have. Those at the end of their tether with life, inspired by what they have seen, art I mean………….’ She paused for a draw on her cigarette, ‘so he could ‘live on.’ At this Fenwick’s expression flickered between reminiscence and hope.

    “It happened to me with music.” Said Charles.

    “Aesthete’s value image, but that doesn’t make us shallow, necessarily. In the English language at least, image is close to imagination.”

    “As sophistry to sophistication” added Mary. She stood up in search of the next glass of wine. Fenwick wobbled momentarily due to the speed of her response.

    “Yes.” He said before he continued. “It is soul but then again it isn’t. It’s pretending. We are actors. We pretend. The nurse or the soldier deal with actual misery, actual death. We are pretenders. But that’s alright, it’s not a sin in itself. Real beauty can’t be pretended. So don’t take it for granted.”

    “But surely some performances, on stage, contain real beauty?”

    “Well in those moments they are not pretending then. They can’t be. They are acting out real emotions, do you see the trick? Be thankful for the gifts God has bestowed upon you. I wish I had your looks! Things could have been a lot different if I had. I was destined to rely on character more’s the pity, it was ‘you know who’s decree’ and his eyes reached to the heavens as his index finger joined in the upward.

    “But isn’t that what theatre is about? Character? If not, aren’t we just models on a cat walk?” Fenwick returned to his Glenlivet as Mary smiled, first at Charles for his remark and then more broadly at Fenwick who seemed to her in momentary retreat.

    “Our job is to make them gasp. Draw them out from their armchairs. Those pompous in their happiness we must encourage to remember the grave. But, don’t overdo it of course.” He tapped his fingers rapidly on invisible air. “We must make those that won’t forgive weep. That is our job. Our solemn duty. We must leave the rest to the writers, or do it ourselves, if inspiration takes us.”

    “Have you ever written anything Fenwick?”

    “Oh yes, but it’s true most of it went on the fire. When it comes to writing I only have one piece of advice. Write what you want to hear. Maybe it’s something no one else will say. And don’t let bitterness guide your pen. I must have thrown a thousand reems on the fire to discover it.” The young actors didn’t understand what he meant. Charles looked up at the clock on the wall. Soon it would be time to mount the stage and nerves were jangling.

    “I have to go in five minutes, can I ask you, may I be so bold……. any advice for the audition?’ Charles asked the slumped Fenwick as he stood up and brushed himself down. The reclining actor’s response was immediate.

    “Use your nerves. Let’s not call it fear quite yet. And remember, when you go on that stage, it’s life that you go to honour. Remember those that came before, and those yet to arrive of course.”

    “I shall try and remember that. Thank-you Fenwick.”

    “A ti.” Said Fenwick as his fellow actors kissed him goodbye and left the dressing room. The door closed and Fenwick’s world fell again into silence. He poured a little water into the ashtray to aid the extinguishing of his cigarette and then gazed into the dressing room mirror. He wondered why it was common in theatrical dressing rooms to have the mirror so well lit. All those light bulbs. He himself always wanted to hide before a performance. ‘The actor needs to know his own face is why’, he thought again. It was part of his character to keep coming to the same conclusions. He stared at himself unconsciously in the mirror. He didn’t even notice he was doing it until the wrinkled lines of all those long years jumped out at him. He hadn’t always looked like this. So strange how time changes the body, he thought. He could just make out in the reflection his six-year-old face and ten and fifteen and twenty-one and thirty-three and forty-eight and fifty-seven and all the fast times he had spent in between.

    The eyes in his head connected with the eyes in the mirror. They had lost none of their fire. He wondered what happens when dreams are fulfilled and wondered also whether the reward was happiness. The inevitable cannot be avoided. Old age was forcing him to ask certain questions which he didn’t seem to will. Questions that he never asked when he was young. Even though he was on the verge of old age he had the strong feeling that the great adventure always lay ahead. Maybe the great adventure was death. Maybe not. He didn’t know. Perhaps the true nature of things was a ludicrous sort of beauty. Then by accident he detected a flicker of fear in his own eyes. He wasn’t, in his nature, a man that dwelt on death, life provided enough of a preoccupation. When death or the expanding universe arose in his mind, neurons would fire, and his imagination would malfunction, sealing him in the firm grip of reality’s laws. He preferred the primary to the secondary world, unlike Ireton. He didn’t regard his imagination as one of the senses.

    Still the face in the mirror stared back at him in the unwavering light. With each moment the image became less and less familiar until in the silent stupor of the room his mind registered the reflection as an imposter. A stranger yet to be understood, let alone befriended. But the expression in the reflection suggested the image wanted to converse with him. There was something that talking could expose that thinking never could. The image in the mirror dissolved and suddenly reappeared, metamorphosised into a man he used to know. It was an actor he had worked with in a theatre in Bristol when he was young. He saw the image of the face of this man from his distant past and became overawed with a dreadful panicked sense of fear that had within moments brought him to a fevered nausea. “Hello again.” Said the face in the mirror silently. Fenwick’s teeth began to peel back over his lips in terror and he put his arm over his eyes as if to protect him from the terrible light. He shouted “Go away!” Trembling with emotion. He rubbed over his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket but when he looked again in the mirror all he saw was his old face looking back at him in astonishment, framed by the glowing lightbulbs.

    Fenwick picked up a handkerchief and dabbed at his sweating face. He recalled beyond doubt that the shocking vision he had seen in the mirror was an actor he once knew. The actor’s name was Joseph. He had committed suicide by throwing himself off the Woolwich ferry into the black soul dark murk of the Thames only one week previously. It had been reported in The Evening Standard in a small clip on the back pages and he had been alerted to the news by one of his colleagues at the theatre. The news had caused a fissure in Fenwick’s mind. He didn’t mean for the man to die, he just wanted the job, that was all. It wasn’t malevolence. Charles and Mary went to lunch the following week and sat by the window of a pub near Holborn as the rain against the window made them both tingle.

    “I met Fenwick this morning.”

    “How is he?”

    “He seemed a bit troubled. A bit distant.” Said Charles.

    “You think so?”

    “Something has got to him. He was wan looking. Like he hadn’t slept properly for a while. He looked depressed to me. Like he was suffering.”

    “Poor Fenwick. I wonder what it could be.” Said Charles. Secretly Mary knew. The summer before she had stayed briefly with Joseph on the Isle of Wight. They soon developed a symbiotic friendship which had fully blossomed within a few long days. When news reached her that Joseph was dead, she fainted in front of the cast of the play, a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the repertory theatre at Frinton-On-Sea. And now as she slowly caressed the edge of her gin and tonic tumbler a look of great sadness came naturally in her eyes, a look that Charles registered. He knew her well enough and for a fleeting moment thought that she might be hiding something, some secret perhaps.

    “I was hoping you might know.” She said.

    That same afternoon Fenwick, (pronounced Fennick to himself and those that knew him and Fen-wick by those who didn’t, postmen, dole officer’s and the like) decided to leave the theatre and go for a walk over the river into the west end. It was an autumn day in England, the perfect conditions for facing depression and for clarifying moods. He walked through the thousand colour park and nature extracted his fear and anxiety. He became calm, like he was a child again on the green leafy sidings on the railway tracks on summers days in south London, where death did not exist.

    He liked to walk alone sometimes. But only sometimes. He would occasionally boast to people how happy he was in his own company, but the reality was since his childhood and all through his life he needed the company of others almost, at times, to the point of craving. That’s why his hermit allusions were myth. But then again, he saw the ability he had to delude himself as a great strength. He walked from his small flat on the council estate where he lived alone, along the busy streets of cars and buses until he came to the bridge that spanned the river and stopped to light a cigarette. He looked over the water and used imagination and memory to envisage Soho in his mind’s eye, an area of the world that was to him in hiatus. He recalled what the man had said to him about the glory days of London in the late 1960’s, the colour and the genius. “The best place……………….’ he paused for thought ‘in the world.’ His dreaming continued after the cigarette had singed his fingers. “Where are they all now?” He wondered. He imagined bodies in graves, decomposed, eaten by millipedes and worms. “There is a kind of beauty to all truth, even the most melancholic kind’ he thought. The autumn wind picked up and dry, dead leaves began to hit against the lower part of his legs. He walked across the bridge and stopped half way where he turned three hundred and sixty degrees to take in the scene. “Good old London.” He said aloud. Once he had imbibed his fill he carried on his way, concerned if he looked too long, he might break the spell. To Fenwick, London was a country. It was its own entity, its own nation almost, with its own particular history, its own customs, its own laws and above all, its own imagination. It could never be one thing because it was always changing. He would smile inwardly when the claim was made that there were greater cities in the world. He looked at the sunlight dancing on the Thames and saw Blake and Shakespeare in the mortal impermanence of the water. ‘Even Mozart has played here’ he thought.

    For the thousandth time he got on the escalator at London Bridge station and descended to the bowels. It was, until that day, the place he hated most. The dreary concourse churning out the same old stream. He looked at the crowd like bees in the hive, heads down, eyes fixed and drifting, ignoring each other as they went about their dull games. It was as if everyone’s life was on pause until they got somewhere else. He felt the old rancour conjured up by the soulless place. And then, suddenly, as he glided down the escalator, he saw it all differently. He saw the man with the hands in his pockets on his way out of London to visit his elderly Grandparents. It was kindness extant. He saw a woman carrying a violin case and wondered what music might be played soon. He saw two old friends meeting. What he had loathed, shunned and dreaded for so long, in a moment, became the source of all love.

    When he was away from the river and walking the streets towards the Strand, he retreated into his private thoughts watching the people busying themselves going here and there. His mind turned slowly to his own work. Out of all professions, the aging process is perhaps strangest of all for the actor. There are ways of making a young actor look convincingly old, but not the other way around. That’s how it was, at this time, for Fenwick. He no longer desired to look at his own face, (at least not for long anyway). He felt he had the face the people who rejected him deserved.

    He sometimes walked around London on his own precisely because it made him lonely, or perhaps more accurately, because it made him feel alone. As if he were apart and a part from, and of the human race. Once, when he was walking through Victoria Underground Station at rush hour, he saw a man lying on the floor having a heart attack. It’s true there was a ticket guard that worked there crouched over the ailing man calling his colleague for assistance but he never forgot the image of the droves of people that walked by en masse, as if they were a great herd of wildebeest, and a lion had come to take one of them away.

    It was just after midday. Thinking a couple of drinks would underpin the excitement and freedom of the morning he thought he would walk in the direction of one of his favourite London pubs, The Forlorn Hope, to greet midday with a clink. The one thing that could correctly steer his aimless London walks was booze or ‘the sauce’ or ‘the source’ as he was sometimes heard saying.

    Fenwick had become an actor at the age of sixteen when he appeared in a local play at the amateur dramatic society. He only had one line ‘I haven’t seen him today; did you try the Red Lion?’ a line which he never forgot. He was an actor constantly on the cusp, like the vast majority of that said profession, but he had had some good roles, some in west end theatres and a few notable television and film appearances during the 1970’s and 1980’s but by the last decade of the twentieth century his career had waned and, as in his private life, he struggled for even a walk on part. The keen glimmer in his stare remained true however. As he approached his 67th year he had remained remarkedly untouched by a lifetime’s hard living and he expected to keel over any day now, or worse, the thing that he really did secretly fear or let us say did well to keep locked away at the back of his mind was some sort of illness that would gift him a slow, lingering death where his memory would die before his body. A great insult he felt to those who never lingered when they did have life in them.

    Dark clouds appeared overhead and doused Fleet Street in rain so Fenwick made a twenty second walk to the nearest pub whose sign outside seemed to him like two open arms ready for a hug and he ducked in through the door just as two patrons were leaving with their faces contorting to the prospect of getting wet. He thanked them for keeping the door open for him and entered. He thought of what he had said about the ghosts that haunt the theatres and concluded it must also be true of pubs. He pushed his damp white hair to one side and he pressed his handkerchief to dry his face which came alive at its removal at the spectacle of the pub he had overlooked for many years. He used to go to Fleet Street in the great days of the newspaper, when the secrets of Whitehall were disseminated over strong beer and ploughman’s lunches. Now it was no more. Modern technology, or ‘progress,’ had seen to that.

    It would do until the rain passed, or he found someone to share a cab into Soho with. Hackney carriages had always been a great luxury to Fenwick, when it came to drink and walk or be driven sober, he would without exception opt for the former. He looked around the pub and saw the youngsters in suits on their lunchtime sojourn knowing that every working person there, which was almost the entire clientele, would soon vacate and he could even have the pub to himself.

    “Can I get a large Rioja please?” He spied the assortment of crisps and nuts behind the bar but then decided against eating as it was a Monday and he remembered that was the day he liked to fast. He turned around to see a man hunched at the bar and smiled as they made eye contact.

    “What the fuck are you looking at. You ain’t fucking Millwall.” The man spiked in an aggressive way. Fenwick turned his head and looked away and remembered the irrefutable logic of an old friend of his that had once said in response to Fenwick’s story about being the victim of a robbery ‘there’s cunts out there old son.’ Fenwick turned to the aggressive stranger and said “Wonderful thing chance. Have a good day.” He smiled at the aggressive young man and absolved himself of spiteful thoughts. The slightly bewildered man had no response. He turned, tutted and absconded, confused at having been forgiven.

    Fenwick had arranged to meet Ireton at the Dog and Bell but the torrential London rain was keeping him ensconced for the duration of the bottle of claret. Paradise. He savoured every mouthful of the elixir, courting the rain and venerating all that grows. He looked out at the people rushing around on fleet street in the rain and realised not only was he alive, but that he had done some good living. “Heaven is dying and knowing you brought at least a little love into the world. If I could write a letter from heaven that is what it would say. Alas, it looks like there is only oblivion out there.” He looked up at the clock on the wall and noticed that he was already late for his meeting with Ireton. They were old friends, different in character but similar in spirit. They had been friends since their early twenties. Fenwick had a dislike of British politics and a liking of England, Ireton had a loathing of Thatcher and her clan, and a strong desire to leave England behind. ‘Too many memories’ he said in an all-encompassing way. He had never welcomed the thought of a life in one place. He had in fact lived in many places and claimed once to Fenwick that he was only in London for work and it had been ‘twelve long dark years since’.

    Ireton entered the near empty pub and breathed in the aroma. He swirled it from his nostrils to his senses and then finally his mind as he rolled the smell of the carpet and the dish washed stagnant beer tang around, as if they were at the bottom of a wine glass. He looked around and saw Fenwick in the corner reading the racing post. This meant he was skint until payday. He always gambled when he was down to his last. It had always been like that. Resting by his glass of mild was a collection of Heaney’s poems. He was like that too.

    ‘Ah. There you are. I thought you were getting the bus,’ said Fenwick.

    “Solvitur ambulando.” Replied Ireton.

    ‘On the sauce already?’

    ‘The source?’

    ‘The sauce.’

    ‘The source of the sauce?’

    ‘No, I mean the sauce of the source.’

    ‘What is this sorcery? I can assure you I am in no way indebted to the black arts.’

    ‘Glad to hear it, I had my doubts.’ Unglazed, the eyes of Ireton made their way to the bar where he ordered two Glenfiddich’s, a pint of Guiness and a pint of amber ale from a landlord in a shirt and tie.

    “So, how have you been? Any work on the horizon? I see you’re reading the racing post. You’ve been thespianing.’ It was their euphemism for unemployment. To the two old friend’s unemployment was nothing to be ashamed of. In their own ways they had had the best times of their lives when unemployed, poor by choice, and free, with the constant support of sunshine and music. It was much harder psychologically to have nothing when it was cold. This, explained Fenwick, was the motivating factor of western history. “There’s an audition next week for an advert for a gin company. They want someone to play the waiter in some restaurant or other. Worth getting out of bed for.”

    “When are you going to try and do some serious work?”

    “You mean the comedy?”

    “Yes.”

    “Your guess is as good as mine. Cheers.” And they lifted their glasses and clinked. Before he downed the drink, he took a moment to notice the light shining through the amber gold liquid which made him think of the universe and evolution at almost the same moment, as he had done the night before. The whiskey rolled down his throat leaving the afterburn of the Scots in its wake.

    “How about you. Still at the same place?

    “Do you mean have I been sacked since last week?’

    “Yes.’

    ‘No.”

    They sat in silence in the corner of the pub both having the simultaneous thought that work was becoming more relevant and less interesting the older they got.

    “Let’s go outside for a smoke.” They bemoaned the smoking ban as they walked outside into the cold day but although they missed the freedom of the old days, they both accepted it was probably for the best. The thought of cancer always invigorated Fenwick, but never enough to ever make him give up.

    “I read this today.” Said Ireton and he produced a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘The highest goal of art is not to show the world as it really is but to show it what it could be.’

    He looked at his friend long and hard.

    “Maybe the worst thing in this world is to live in fear. Or should I say, devote yourself to comfort? Did you have the chance to do different things with your life but worried always about the loss of what you have. When you die you lose everything, and die we must. We only have our adventures, in the end.” Said Fenwick, in a failed attempt at a direct response.

    The next day Fenwick received the news he had failed the audition. In the moment of rejection his mind turned to Joseph, and to her. Her memory becoming more distant and vivid as each season changed. He looked into the shaving mirror, splashed the razor around in the foamy sink and wondered to himself whether enough books had been written, or was there still room for more. Should there be a new literature for this century, or should we just borrow from the past from now on. He felt a flex of guilt at even thinking the thought. He thought about Ireton’s note. ‘Of course there should be new art’ he said to himself.

    Feature Image: Donald Tong

  • Ode to the Christmas Pub

    – A seasonal riff on the opening paragraph of Moby Dick –

    Call me Andy. Not long ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me amongst mortal company, I tended to sail about a little in Dublin City, brought hither and thither on impulsive winds to see the more ignored though not necessarily unexplored taverns of this dirty old town. It’s a way I have of driving off the spleen, of regulating apathy, of cracking through the thin yet heavy crust of my autopilot’s baked-in habits. Whenever I feel myself grown grim about the spiritual loins; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; when I find myself involuntarily pausing before a coffin warehouse, or randomly bringing up the rear of every Stag or Hen party I meet (before being politely asked to leave); and especially when my temper gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a Herculean moral effort to prevent myself from deliberately stepping out into a road of oncoming traffic, or to move myself on from idling beneath a city crane’s precariously borne weight of 50 tonnes of devastating concrete, or methodically pushing people’s children into the street – then, I account it high time to retire to the nearest, most obscenely and prematurely festively decorated Irish pub, as soon as I can: least I be, gentle reader, the tragic cause of some senseless tragedy done. The Christmas pub is my substitution for the poison and the noose. With a philosophical flourish I can throw myself upon the white rails, on the mirror and the razor-blade. And I quietly take to the drink. For I hunger and I thirst not for the brittle unconsecrated words of the Living but for the grave-bitten guidance and the admonitions of the Dead; for those same words with their different sense are only spoken to me from the lipless mouths of the ghosts of my Christmases past, future and present. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men, in their degree, sometime or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the fairy-lit darkness of this time of year.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

     

  • Public Intellectuals: Fyodor Dostoevsky

    In an age of unrestrained Russian-bashing, the figure of Fyodor Dostoevsky might seem a provocative choice for this Public Intellectual series. He remains, however, in my view, the greatest writer of prose fiction who has ever lived. His greatest novels The Devils/Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) are, frankly, unsurpassed in world literature.

    As I see it, other great Russian novels of his time, Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev and Anna Karenina (1878) by Leo Tolstoy are just a notch below; perhaps reaching the heights of Crime and Punishment (1866) or The Idiot (1869), the two lesser of his four great novels.

    This is to assume that his other works are of lesser value. Yet in the novella Notes from an Underground (1864) as well as White Knights (1848) Dostoevsky surpasses The Death of Ivan Illich (1886) by Tolstoy.

    The anti-hero of Notes from an Underground anticipates a form of government where:  

    All human actions will then of course be calculated, mathematically, like logarithm tables up to 108,000, and recorded in a calendar; or even better, well-intentioned publications will then appear … in which everything will be so precisely calculated and recorded that there will no longer be deliberate acts or adventures in the world.

    This he suggests would create a reaction, in the form of a dictator:

    I, for example, wouldn’t be at all surprised if, in the midst of all this reasonableness that is to come, suddenly and quite unaccountably some gentleman with an ignoble, or rather a reactionary and mocking physiognomy were to appear and, arms akimbo, say to us all: ‘Now, gentlemen, what about giving all this reasonableness a good kick with the sole purpose of sending all those logarithms to hell for a while so we can live for a while in accordance with our own stupid will!

    In fact, across Russian literature only Nikolai Gogol and Anton Chekhov wrote better short story writers. Besides being a master of the short story form, Chekhov was primarily a playwright. Unprecedented in world letters, he is almost the equal of Dostoevsky, but not quite!

    In Russian letters thereafter only the great novels of Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and the Margarita (1967) and The White Guard (1925) the latter of which perfectly encapsulates – unlike our official media – the reasons for Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Many Russians (and indeed some Ukrainians) view what was the breadbasket of the Russian empire as integral to and inseparable from Russia itself.

    Portrait by Vasily Perov, c. 1872

    Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?

    In a famous monograph (1959), Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?, George Steiner argued that the two authors represent polar opposites in the Western canon, the former epic, utopian, and aspiring to achieve heaven on earth – with all its attendant dangers. The latter, for all his peasant Christianity and hatred of nihilism, asserting the pre-eminence of free will, while portraying a world beset by evil, intrigue and deceit.

    The great Russian effete of a later era Vladimir Nabokov, lecturing in exile in Columbia University claimed he despised Dostoevsky’s vulgarity and excess. Of course, unlike Nabokov, Tolstoy or Turgenev – the latter of whom Dostoevsky had a fractious relationship – Dostoevsky was not an aristocrat. He was not a blue blood. His father was a ‘mere’ country doctor, murdered after a descent into dissolution and an echo, Freud argues in Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928), of the central theme of The Brothers Karamazov. Moreover, Dostoevsky was profoundly anti-Catholic

    It should also be said that Dostoevsky was an editor, journalist, and social critic, which could be a dangerous role to play in Czarist Russia. He was really a philosopher in that all his great books are novels of ideas, and display in all its fullness the eschatological imagination. An intellectual of the highest rank, and superb jurist and penologist, not just in terms of the immense amount of attention devoted to questions of justice and the criminal process in his work – not least the trial of Dmitri Karamazov – but also heavily influenced by his penal servitude in Siberia.

    Also, uncomfortably for this writer at least, he was a deeply religious man, and there was no hypocrisy evident in this outlook. He acquired a deep religious faith from his mother during his childhood, quite contrary to the secular temper of his age. While I distrust this, I understand in Freudian terms its aetiology.

    He was, however, deeply anti-Catholic. At one point his apparetnly omniscient Idiot, Prince Myshkin exclaims:

    In my opinion Roman Catholicism isn’t even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinate to that idea, beginning with faith. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne and took up the sword; and since then everything has gone on in the same way, except they’ve added lies, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, wickedness. They have trifled with the most sacred, truthful, innocent, ardent feelings of the people, have bartered it all for money, for base temporal power. And isn’t that the teachings of the Antichrist?’

    Dostoevsky, 1847.

    Early Period

    In his school years, splendidly documented by his great biographer Joseph Frank he intervened to protect children against thugs. On his way to the prestigious engineering school, where he was accepted in 1831, he was horrified by an act of savage brutality against a peasant he witnessed at a coach station. Later, through his hugely influential periodical Diary Of A Writer – not unlike Charles Dickens’ Household Words or All The Year Round towards the end of his life – he declaimed against a brutal flogging of a serf by an aristocrat, who was put on trial and justly punished. There is no doubt that from the get-go his sympathies were with the little man. Thus, like Charles Dickens he was the chronicler of his time in Time.

    Thus, for his entire life no matter how famous he became he was always an advocate for the poor, students if they had legitimate grievances, those falsely accused, unless, unforgivably, they were Jewish. Poor Folks (1845) is of course his first novel and is a huge success and a minor masterpiece. It is, however, an elaboration of that greater Russian work Dead Souls (1842) by Gogol whose awful theme is the purchasing of dead peasants’ souls for profit. The ultimate extension of the landlord class. This is again prescient for our times.

    Poor Folks was acclaimed as the first exercise in social realism, and the plight of self-abnegation before corporate feudalism. Here we find words relevant to our neoliberal age: ‘Judge whether one was right to abuse oneself for no reason and be reduced to undignified mortification.’ Today’s serfs are subject to social media targeting in an age of surveillance and consumer capitalism. Our very identities are mined for data.

    Poor Folks was followed by The Double (1846), which though not among his great novels expresses the split personality – a dominant theme in his oeuvre to come –  as later do Oscar Wilde in A Picture of Dorian Grey (1891), Robert Louis Stephenson in Jekyll and Hyde (1886), and more recently Naomi Kleins’ Doppleganger A Trip into the Mirror World.

    Vissarion Belinsky

    Belinsky

    During this early period Dostoevsky came under the influence of the intellectual Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky who was torn between the veneration of the poor – a form of Christian humanism – and an overarching commitment to materialism. The book expresses that conflict.

    The success of Poor Folk led him to being welcomed into intellectual circles. An unfortunate association with the Petrashevsky Circle, however, led to him being exiled to Siberia and then conscripted into the army. Moreover, he strongly believed he was about to be executed as the Tsar staged a mock execution of him and his co-conspirators in Samonkey Square. Interestingly, one of those involved in his persecution was Ivan Nabokov, a distant relative of Vladimir Nabokov.

    This terrifying event it is said to have turned his head grey. It scarred him for life and was fictionally recreated in The Idiot (1869). We may assume that the description of the plight of a person sentenced to death by the state in The Idiot is biographical, considering his own experience of narrowly avoiding the Czarist firing squad. By comparison with the fate of a person assailed and killed by brigands he says: ‘the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no greater agony than that’. He asks: ‘Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness?’

    That and Siberia, where he underwent extreme hardship led to the fascination that engendered Crime and Punishment. In Siberia, as diarised by his biographer, he became less interested and mistrustful of the application of the letter, as opposed to the spirit of the law. Dostoevsky was never a literalist in legal interpretation terms, and was acutely conscious of the law’s failings. He was treated barbarically and barely survived. The law and its failings went on to dominate much of the rest of his fiction.

    He returned a felon but quickly contributed to Time magazine, along with several other journals thereafter as editor and contributor, and to his next defining book The House of The Dead (1854), which offers a far better examination of the gulags than Solzhenitsyn.

    Hans Hobern’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb.

    Nihilism

    This period of incarceration led to the development of a complex dialectic through his life. His hatred of nihilism – a phrase actually coined by Turgenev for the character Bazharov in his masterpiece Fathers and Sons (1862), alongside his warm embrace of Young Russia, a movement recalling Thomas Davis in Ireland and Disraeli in Britain. It was a progressive movement for reform in Russia, not least in seeking to ameliorate the conditions of the serfs.

    Dostoevsky despised the nihilistic attitude, expressed ironically in Turgenev’s masterpiece: ‘That is not our business let us have a grand clearance first.’

    The Russia of his lifetime, from Nicolas I onwards, was a time of great political turbulence and the development of revolutionary cabals often to reform the plight of the serfs. There was also a dialectic perfectly conveyed between Turgenev and Dostoevsky of a need for Russia to become more European. Turgenev, the aristocratic exile, argued for to become more autarchic. Dostoevsky sided with the poor folk and Mother Russia but not in a shrill way. The idea he coined, evident as early as 1861, was Pan Humanism, within a Russia influenced, but not dominated, by Westernisation.

    The success led to a degree of European decadence, and for the rest of his life he was often abroad and in debt, though finally happily married after a string of unhappy relationships to Anna, his stenographer who he adored and was most attentive to.

    What became a gambling addiction developed during his peripatetic European travels, and put enormous stress on his wife. Yet, in a moment of epiphany, after essentially losing the family silver, he finally gave it all up. His great novella The Gambler (1866) offers a frenzied portrayal of an illness, which destroys lives – as I have witnessed during my professional career. It also provides a lacerating attack on enduring national cultures. Here, Russians are portrayed as gambling riskily and haphazardly, Germans methodically and in a philistine way, while the French display an elegant decadence. How times have changed.

    Prior to The Gambler there arrived the seminal existential text, unique in his oeuvre, Notes from Underground (1865), which predates Sartre and Camus by an epoch but is no doubt influenced by Kierkegaard.

    The self-reflexiveness of the narrator in that he is both accused and accuser, torn between rational egoism and a concern for others. This is the Dostoevsky dilemma, and a prelude to the themes of the great novels to follow.

    So on to Crime and Punishment (1868), written for the establishment Russian magazine Messenger, and a final step towards financial stability. It is his most famous and widely read work. To say it is not his best work would be true, but misleading in that within it scope it remains one of the great works of European literature.

    The novel is the prototypical detective novel. Without this there is no Wilkie Collins or Raymond Chandler. The anti-hero Raskolnikov is torn between a nihilism inspiring an Übermensch sense of superiority, and a Christian piety. Here Dostoevsky anticipates the serial killers and corporate monsters of our age.

    The prosecutor Petrovich is the voice of atonement and represents Dostoevsky’s sense of guilt before God. The book is also a condemnation of extremism and lawlessness.

    When the prosecutor first hauls Raskolnikov into custody he expresses curiosity about an article that Raskolnikov wrote called ‘On Crime’, in which he suggests that certain rare individuals – the benefactors and geniuses of mankind – enjoy a right to ‘step across’ legal or moral boundaries if those boundaries act as an obstruction to the success of their idea. The prosecutor, in a much kinder way than the approach offered by Camus in The Outsider (1942) – who was hugely influenced by Dostoevsky not least in his play of The Possessed/Devils (1959) – finally forces him to confess.

    The Idiot (1871) is the book that pleased Dostoevsky the most – and is arguably his most disciplined novel – and there is much of him in it. The central character of Prince Myshkin was much influenced by Dostoevsky seeing Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ (1529) painting. No doubt it expresses his deep faith in the decent and Christian man.

    Yet Myshkin’s other-worldliness is the cause of his self-destruction, along with death and chaos wrought on others. The crucible of Russia at that time augments dark Dostoevsky’s mysticism. It is deeply personal and invokes his mock execution and epilepsy. It is a work that is curiously relevant to our time of vaccines, compliance and control, where 90% of humanity are to be treated as cattle, a process which can be achieved through re-education and vogueish Social Darwinism.

    Joachim Schnürle

    The Devils

    This brings us to the great citadel of world literature and in my view the greatest novel ever written The Devils (1868). At the time Dostoevsky was much influenced by the malign neglect of the civilised anarchist Herzen and his criticism that nihilists wished to abandon books, science and instead embrace destruction. Herzen in a famous polemic, echoing Dostoevsky’s own ideas I suspect, argued that Shakespeare and Raphaël were higher in the pantheon than socialism, nationalism or the emancipation of the serfs. The immediate sensation which precipitated the novels was the activities of the real life murderous Nechaev, a model for many of The Devils.

    Towards the end of The Devils, one of the conspirators Lyamshin is put on trial and asked ‘Why so many murders, scandals and outrages committed?’ He responds that it was to promote:

    the systematic undermining of every foundation, the systematic destruction of society and all its principles; to demoralize everyone and make hodge-podge of everything, and then, when society was on the point of collapse – sick, depressed, cynical and sceptical, but still with a perpetual desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self-preservation – suddenly to gain control of it.

    The novel is the greatest condemnation of extremism in the history of ideas, containing his essential credo that once you have rejected Christ it is possible to go to inordinate lengths of evil. The book provides almost a replica of the current political climate where anarchy and extremism prevail, and in the midst of it all is the crucial figure of native Dostoevsky ambivalence, Stavrogin – a man who is torn between good and bad impulses, but the nihilism and decadence prevail.

    The essential argument is that materialism, nihilism and decadence will stop at nothing and boundary after boundary will be crossed in the descent towards the personal and societal abyss.

    Dostoevsky response, or antidote, is to assert that humanity must take collective responsibility in a Christian way. Thus, when Stavrogin reveals his appalling crime to the elder Tikhon, the latter responds by asking the forgiveness of Stavrogin: ‘Having sinned, each man has sinned against all men, and each man is responsible in some way for the sins of others. There is no isolated sin. I’m a great sinner, perhaps greater than you.’

    After its publication, and his resumption of journalistic activities with The Diary of a Writer (1873-1881) he was widely acknowledged as the greatest living writer in Russia. He finally settled in his homeland, holding court both in letter and visitations to an increasingly enamoured public. In essence, he became the moral conscience of Russia.

    Though the Diary of a Writer – finally published in totality by Scribner’s – contains some of his greatest short stories. He also rages against injustice and took a keen interest in the criminal process.

    Dostoyevsky’s notes for Chapter 5 of The Brothers Karamazov.

    The Brothers Karamazov

    Thereafter he began his final novel The Brothers Karamazov. His sensitivity to injustice, it must be said, is afflicted with one blind spot, lest this piece be represented as hagiographical! He showed a lifelong hatred of Jews, who he and Turgenev too often caricatured, in the most vicious of terms. When a Jew was correctly acquitted, he bemoaned the verdict. In this sense he a creature of his time, but also trespassed a moral boundary.

    His antisemitism was a product of at times, a Little Russian mentality and his sense of the volk, so there is a negative and abhorrent mysticism here of old tensions, resurfacing in our age. Also, his embrace of what might be described as Populism at this stage has dangerous relevance to our time.

    Many of his great books were written like cliffhangers under enormous stress explaining the fervid prose, and as every book of his final novel – three years in genesis – came out the public reacted in a way not unlike the London public’s reaction to the death of Little Nell. His work, along with his literary peers, forged Russian consciousness, for better or worse.

    This culminated in a famous face off where all the intelligentsia of Russia attended an event to celebrate Pushkin’s anniversary. A feud had been brewing for decades between two opposite visions of Mother Russia, one represented by Turgenev with his condescending attitude towards the poor folk and his internationalism; the other by Dostoevsky who represented the Christian Tsarist nationalist strain.

    Dostoevsky’s great speech at the banquet is well worth reading. It effectively destroys the reputation of Turgenev and had the impact at the time of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream.’ It ends in a beautiful expression of compromise and Pan Humanism, envisioning a Christian Russia sympathetic to the poor, but receptive to other cultures, urging respect for tradition but acknowledging a need for reform and tolerance.

    It arrived while he was writing The Brothers Karamazov, by which time the debts, the epilepsy, the chaotic lifestyle and huge fame had taken their toll, He was writing around the clock to complete it, with old father time breathing down his neck.

    This book is a foundation stone of literate moderate civilisation, containing everything of the selfless Christianity and love he espoused, embodied in the character of Aloysha, who is a more modulated version of Myshkin from The Idiot. It contains some of the greatest passages in literature, including The Grand Inquisitor dialogue, and culminates in over one hundred pages of the trial of Dmitry Karamazov for parricide.

    It should be said that like Dickens, Dostoevsky distrusted lawyers, not least their tendency to allow their eloquence to overflow at the expense of the truth, and their blindness to the moral consequences of their action. The representation of the defence speech in Karamazov is deliberately weak. Even though, as the book makes clear, Dmitry is morally guilty for his monster father’s death, he is not legally guilty. Yet the defence lawyers seem to rely on the mercy plea, and on a confused argument suggesting implicitly some people deserve to be killed. Not exactly a full throttle defence, but one recently evident in Ireland.

    Dostoyevsky identifies a broad moral continuum between a capacity for the highest and basest thoughts and deeds. If any character represents the views of Dostoyevsky himself it is perhaps the chief prosecutor Ippolit Krillovitch, who, uncannily, like the author, dies within a few months of the novel’s central events: the apparent patricide, and aftermath, of the wily and debauched Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. His sons represent different faces of a timeless character, and in the ensuing trial Krillovitch draws attention to the inadequacies of each. So searing are the insights that Dimitri is prompted to thank his own prosecutor, admitting that he: ‘told me a lot about myself that I didn’t know’.

    Krillovitch describes those of the Karmazov ilk as having: ‘natures with such a broad sweep… capable of encompassing all manner of opposites, of contemplating both extremes at one and the same time – that which is above us, the extremity of the loftiest ideals, and that which is below us, the extremity of the most iniquitous degradation.’ He adds: ‘others have their Hamlets; so far, we Russians have only our Karamazovs.’ That Karamazov archetype surely extends beyond Russia.

    The reception to The Brothers Karamazov was ecstatic, and his finances looked permanently healthy, but accounts of the time show how frail he had become. The multiple social engagement at this stage were not helpful and a stroke occurred after some final pieces in Diary of a Writer, many published after his death.

    All of Russia mourned the death of a man who had been sent to Siberia. They had lost their great writer and intellect.

    Dostoevsky’s funeral,

    Legacy

    For our present age there is much to ponder over Dostoyevksy’s legacy. First is the need for the assertion of Christian, or humanist values. This includes the establishment of community, even if, as I would argue, this remains secular in its guidance. Moreover, we must protect the poor, the falsely accused and the defenceless. Moral nihilism in all its guises must also be opposed. And the devastating effect of extremism should be portrayed.

    We should also be alive to the excesses of Dostoevsky in a tendency towards Populism, veneration of an abstract volk and the denunciation of minorities, including Jews.

    Overall, he stands as the greatest intellect literature has produced, a mystic and theoretician, as well as a practical journalist. Moreover, the novels contain far more insightful philosophy than most arid books of philosophy,

    Along with Leonardo da Vinci, and even more so than Shakespeare, I would go so far as to say that he is the greatest genius that has ever drawn breath. I suspect he would have been distrustful of da Vinci’s cosmopolitanism and veneration of science. Sparks will surely fly if they ever meet!

  • “It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image” A Conversation with George Azar

    Born in 1959, George Azar was the descendant of Lebanese olive farmers who had set sail from Beirut a century earlier. They settled in South Philadelphia, a working-class enclave—later immortalized in the ‘Rocky’ films. It contained a mix of Italians, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Lebanese families, a tough, mafia-controlled neighborhood where people staked their claims street by street. There was an old man on his block nicknamed “Titanic” because he had survived the 1912 disaster by scrambling up from steerage into a lifeboat. Tales of migration, survival, and identity—woven into the fabric of his youth—shaped Azar’s worldview long before he ever picked up a camera.

    A shepherd in a field of flowers: the cover of George’s book, ‘Palestine: A Photographic Journey’

    After graduating from UC Berkeley in Political Science, he postponed graduate school to see  first-hand a war he had only read about. He covered the Lebanese Civil War as a front line news photographer, immersing himself in the conflict. In retrospect, he says, it was his South Philly upbringing—where kids carried weapons, race wars were common and identities were constantly in negotiation—that equipped him to navigate Beirut’s sectarian divides.

    Girls on a hill in Beita, West Bank

    The war brought moments that could be scripted for an absurdist play, like the teenage Shia gunmen and snipers who called themselves “The Smurfs”. The dissonance between their youthful naïveté, and the brutal violence they lived mirrored the contradictions his photography sought to capture.

    ‘Nero’ of the Smurfs with adapted gun

    South Philly equipped Azar with more than just street smarts. He grew up in Philadelphia fight gyms. Boxing was a skill which served him well, not for throwing punches, but for knowing how to take them—and also, crucially, anticipating when they were coming. Those skills and instincts likewise served him in the unpredictable and brutal world of war photography.

    Crying old man and kids looking on, Bedawi, Tripoli

    Azar learned the unwritten rules of the new industry where the pictures most in demand were ‘Bang Bang’ photos: high-drama, front-line images that convey the raw violence of war.

    The ‘Smurfs’, west side of the Green Line, Beirut, 1984

    His first photo, captioned Machine Gun Alley, marked his entry into the profession. A strong image from the front line sold for $60, while a photo of a woman firing a weapon might land on front pages worldwide. Some photographers gave in to the temptation to stage scenes. Azar found the practice indefensible. “To me, it is abhorrent to stage an image.” The power of photojournalism lies in its truth, he says—a principle he now imparts to his students at the American University of Beirut as missiles rain down on the city once again.

    The Smurfs shooting their longe-range weapon

    But the photographs Azar values most capture often quiet, deeply human moments: an elderly man weeping into his bed; a mother standing amidst the ruins of her Gaza kitchen; the Palestinian shepherd in a field of yellow wildflowers that graces the cover of his book, ‘Palestine, A Photographic Journey’ (UC Press, 1991).

    PLO fighters walking past burning oil refineries towards the front line, Bedawi, north Tripoli

    Azar left Lebanon after the war, physically and emotionally drained. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked for the local newspaper. But the pull of the Middle East proved irresistible. The First Intifada drew him back, beginning a new chapter in his career, this time focused on the struggle for freedom in Palestine.

    Checkpoint with skull, near the corniche of Beirut, circa 1984

    In the 1990s, he also documented the life of Arab-British boxing sensation Prince Naseem Hamed, merging his passions for storytelling, boxing and the complexities of Arab identity.

    In conversation, Azar shared astonishing stories: the Irish junkies linked to the IRA who lived

    George Azar and friend by the Royale Hotel, near the Green Line, Beirut

    above him; Issa Abdullah Ali, a renegade African-American soldier who converted to Islam, defected and joined Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and fought the Israelis in the 1982 battle for Beirut; and his encounters with legends of journalism Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and photojournalist Don McCullin.

    Boys in Tripoli, during the battle of the camps, circa 1983

    Our conversation unfolded against a backdrop of Israeli drone sounds, power outages, and rising tensions—all grim reminders that Lebanon is once again in the grip of war.

    The country faces yet another reshaping, one that will demand extraordinary resilience from its people and, perhaps, a reimagined political future.

    Yasser Arafat and bodyguards under fire, North Lebanon, circa 1983
    Workers at Erez gate checkpoint, Gaza, circa 2006
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  • “We Bury the Funsters” – Lethal Weapon Revisited

    With Christmas fast approaching, a familiar debate will resume in homes, offices and their Zoom equivalents as to what constitutes a legitimate Christmas movie. Much of the banter will centre on Die Hard as the preeminent example of an action movie which has legitimately crossed into the holiday season category. Some may even cite it as the film which kick-started the whole sub-genre.

    Nobody could deny Die Hard’s success in this department or its undoubted brilliance as an action film but the honour of first Christmas action movie belongs to another.

    A full year before Lieutenant John McClane dragged himself resignedly into that ventilator shaft in Nakatomi Plaza, Lethal Weapon exploded onto our screens in a hail of automatic gunfire, launching the concept of the Christmas action movie, while also providing the template for the modern video game (waves of anonymous baddies dispatched prior to a showdown with the end-level boss).

    This is the film which cemented the use of the 9mm as the weapon du jour for all self-respecting action heroes. In one audacious set-piece, the character Riggs pours bullets from his 9mm Beretta into a disappearing helicopter containing an enemy sniper; a scene which no anachronistically-red-blooded male can fail to mentally re-enact while awaiting his photo call in the white-pillared, lavishly-terraced hotel garden of a friend’s Spanish wedding reception.

    As it approaches its 38th anniversary, the original Lethal Weapon is a film worth re-visiting as a snapshot of 1980s American chutzpah (or, perhaps, hubris) and a keystone in the development of the modern action movie; particularly what would become that genre’s relentless dedication to bullet-fuelled narration and the many bizarre justifications the makers of these films contrive to sustain the destructive pace.

    The ostensive plot of the film revolves around an investigation into the death of a young woman called Amanda Hunsaker, a “troubled teen” (to borrow that oft-used tabloid phrase), who, over the opening credits, snorts cocaine, disrobes and leaps from a penthouse balcony in downtown LA, smashing into a parked car below; all to the jaunty accompaniment of “Jingle Bell Rock”.

    The investigating detective is Sergeant Roger Murtagh, played by the wonderful Danny Glover, a veteran LAPD detective approaching retirement and already planning the many fishing trips he will partake of when he finally hangs up his trusty six shooter.

    It quickly emerges that Miss Hunsaker was poisoned, therefore, even had she not taken her ill-advised naturist leap, she would have died anyway. This seems a curious waste of bacchanalian ammo but 80s action movies were nothing if not bracingly steadfast in their observance of the twin pillars of liberal excess of that era: toplessness and cocaine. The new evidence means the case has suddenly become a murder investigation. At this point, old-school action movie fans may worry that this early plot twist portends cerebral challenges to come but, rest assured, The Mousetrap this ain’t. No mystery will be conceived between the credits which cannot be solved by copious rounds of automatic gunfire or by ploughing a hastily commandeered vehicle into it.

    Murtagh’s professional woes are amplified by the introduction of his new partner, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, eyes still swiveling from his tenure as Mad Max and sporting a mullet which, even in 1987, seemed extravagant). Riggs is a recently-widowed burn-out case who the police psychiatrist—in what, these days, would amount to a serious breach of data protection regulation and client confidentiality—has warned may be a suicide risk. The scenes depicting Rigg’s breakdown are actually rather moving but, this being the 1980s, are wholly in service to the plot. Accordingly, an encounter with “a jumper” in a later scene is barely empathetic, serving only to highlight Riggs’ cold-eyed efficiency. This brutal sense of purpose will come to the fore as the story introduces Amanda Hunsacker’s father, who served in Vietnam with Murtagh and took a bayonet in the lungs en route to saving Murtagh’s life (“That was nice of him,” deadpans a suitably unimpressed Riggs).

    “Have you ever met anybody you didn’t kill?”: Danny Glover as Murtaugh and Mel Gibson as Riggs.

    The Vietnam war casts a hefty shadow over proceedings. 1980s viewers would have been more than a little familiar with that particular conflict, having— by that point—been subjected to a veritable barrage of ‘Nam movies and would, therefore, possess the requisite shorthand to follow Hunsacker’s various references as he informs Riggs and Murtagh of his involvement with a group of ex-military operatives called “Shadow Company” (the US military really ought to give more consideration to the naming of their units; one can’t imagine “Rainbow Unicorn Company” getting mixed up in this sort of illicit activity). Shadow Company have organised a shipment (drugs of course since this is distinctly pre-Amazon, when it seemed the only thing anyone shipped anywhere was kilos or “keys” of cocaine) only to find that the police may have already been informed of the planned exchange.

    You see the problem (or, more accurately, a problem) with Shadow company, as highlighted by their main (possibly, only) customer, is that they are using mercs (mercenaries, not German cars). Clearly Shadow Company’s pre-sales brochure could have been clearer on these matters but this appears to be something of a red line for the customer in question, having, it seems, gotten used to dealing with regular street criminals who are, presumably, a more reliable breed and less given to prostituting their skills for the sake of a quick buck.

    The customer’s distress produces a wonderfully wacky scene in which the head of Shadow Company, General Peter McAllister (played with relish by Mitchell Ryan’s eyebrows) demonstrates the trustworthiness of his merc employees by having one of them, Mr. Joshua (a perpetually snarling Gary Busey), suspend his forearm stoically above the customer’s flaming cigarette lighter.

    “Mr. Joshua, your left arm, please…”: Shadow Company take their accreditation very seriously.

    Some clients might baulk at employee torture during a business meeting but this was the 1980s, before HR and concepts of workplace safety had gotten completely out of hand. Suitably reassured, though a little PTSD-ed, the customer departs to presumably close out the paperwork.

    The client’s concern about mercs, however, is rather borne out by Shadow Company’s response to the knowledge that the police may be onto their shipment. It seems Shadow Company are not the sort of agency to treat delivery dates with flippancy. If only more suppliers were so committed; imagine how many LUAS lines, Rainbow Gardens or National Children’s Hospitals we might be sitting on now (though contract negotiations of the Shadow Company kind may be a little too intense for your average junior minister). It also quickly becomes apparent that these mercs take a similarly blunt approach to InfoSec. By way of keeping everything mum, Shadow Company proceed to blow up a prostitute’s house using mercury switches (“Gaflooey! That’s heavy shit!”), embark on a drive-by assassination of Hunsacker from a passing helicopter (Mr. Joshua inexplicably dressed in cricket gear for his shift on sniper duty) and kick off a war on the LAPD by shooting Riggs and abducting Murtagh’s teenage daughter. This provocation merely galvanizes Murtagh and Riggs who embark upon the cerebrally direct plan to “bury the funsters”, to borrow the wonderful substitute phrase used in the censored version of the film when it was aired on terrestrial television in the 1990s (the golden era of television censorship; the art form reaching a pinnacle with the fabulous reinterpretation of Midnight Run, containing the excellent “I’m going to stab you through the heart with this broken pencil”). It seems the solution to the endless paperwork and unreliability of the American justice system is to shoot all the bad guys before they can lawyer up. There is, of course, a long tradition in American action movies (and increasingly, in real life) of police officers conveniently “forgetting” their badges; a legal loophole which allows them to more efficiently eradicate unwanted sections of the criminal underworld. The Lethal Weapon films take this to a spectacular new level. At the end of the film, LA’s finest cordon off a crime scene so that they can stage an embryonic version of the Ultimate Fighting Championship between Riggs and Mr. Joshua. In the second installment of the series, shrewd application of this technique allows Riggs and Murtagh to bypass the tiresome diplomatic immunity privileges of their South African antagonists.

    “Gaflooey!”: Riggs and Murtagh deal with the aftermath of Shadow Company’s somewhat robust approach to InfoSec.

    It’s worth mentioning that Shadow Company represented an “America First” approach to villainy at a time when home-grown talent more than held its own in the “bad guy” market—a situation soon to be undermined by an abundance of cheap foreign imports (see “Gruber v. McClane, 1988)”). It will be interesting to see if the new direction for American politics ushers in a return to home-produced miscreants.

    What really makes Lethal Weapon tick is the chemistry between the leads. Gibson (before he adopted a more method approach, which somewhat seeped into his personal life) is all frothing angst and distemper while Glover is brilliant as everyone’s dad trapped in a cop movie, muttering lugubriously to himself (quite possibly about the immersion being left on), attempting to rap and beat-box at the dinner table (to the mortification of his kids), making crude Dad jokes and showing off so much for his new alpha male partner that he forgets to take the bins out, earning a chiding from his eldest daughter. Yet, there is an obvious warmth between the mismatched pair which carries the film along and is a big reason for the success of the movie franchise. The lack of a similar rapport between the leads is probably a good reason why the more recent television reboot didn’t work. That, and that the world had moved on and what worked in the 1980s doesn’t necessarily work anymore.

    Indeed, much has changed since 1987 and this makes the original Lethal Weapon a fascinating re-watch. It’s not surprising that there are many areas where it strays beyond what would be acceptable today but this was a film and a franchise which always seemed displaced from reality even when reality was the 1980s and that tonal weirdness is even stranger looking back from a modern world in which, it seems, more-and-more so-called leaders would prefer we all travel backwards in time.

    It’s particularly interesting to see Lethal Weapon’s foreshadowing of the faux-disassembling of macho male culture. In it we glimpse the beginnings (and, given what’s happening now, possibly the endings) of men’s reckoning with their emotions, including a detective who confides his belief that he’s an “80’s man” because he cried in bed, adding that he was not with a woman (“Why do you think I was crying?”); the faltering baby steps towards some sort of male introspection (“Do you want to hear that sometimes I think about eating a bullet?”); the commodification of male culture hinted at by Riggs when he suggests their putative reward for dispatching the bad guys will be “shaving head” commercials. Side note: Why men’s apparel never embraced the bare-torso-with-denim-jacket look (sported by Riggs in the final act) is beyond me (though it remains a summer wear staple in some parts of Dublin).

    In subsequent sequels the Lethal Weapon franchise will, in its inimitable way, wrestle with Apartheid (“Free South Africa, you dumb son of a bitch!”), wildlife preservation (“Mom, Dad killed flipper!”) and — laughably — gun control (being careful to ensure that said control doesn’t extend to its gun-toting heroes). The writer Shane Black confessed he fretted daily about what the director, Richard Donner, would see or hear on his drive to the set which he might suddenly decide to include in the plot.

    For anyone questioning why sexism isn’t on that list of inclusions, I would propose that the whole Lethal Weapon franchise is collectively a powerful argument against men being allowed to run anything remotely mission-critical for the human race.

    Yet, for all its apparent moral probity, Lethal Weapon conserves its wagging to a single finger lest anything disturb the main task of depressing the Beretta’s trigger while spent cartridges spew from its belly with the metallic effervescence of a jackpotting slot machine. The screenwriter, Shane Black, is far too savvy for all of this to be taken completely serious and Lethal Weapon is a film which becomes more enjoyable the less seriously it is taken.

    So, as we count in another Christmas, there is no better time to revisit the OG in what has become a burgeoning movie subgenre. Modern audiences have embraced the concept of non-traditional Christmas subjects so what better way to shatter the hegemony of saccharine Santa Claus films than by watching a scowling Gary Busey unload his clip into a television set showing a reforming Ebenezer Scrooge.

    This holiday season, I invite you to a 1980s genre-crossover feast where we shall follow the spicy starter that is Gremlins with the palate-cleansing Lethal Weapon before closing out the seasonal fare with the hearty Die Hard. But, as you marvel at John McClane’s heroics in Nakatomi Plaza, remember that none of this would have been possible if Riggs and Murtagh had not “buried the funsters” in that first high-octane offering.

  • Poem: Teacher

    TEACHER

    I know I’ve made a christ of you
    the way I gather up the crumbs
    beneath your table, the way I bathe
    your feet with my hair.

    But this blind worship
    won’t do, and I must take and eat
    new prayer. Teacher! It was not given me
    to sit at your right hand or your left.

    Thought you saw me under the fig tree,
    but it was just a trick of the light
    cleft between branches.

    Feature Image: Pasquale de’ Rossi:School Teaching, a Teacher with Four Pupils c. 1700.