Cassandra Voices

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  • Carnsore Point: Ireland Goes Nuclear

    In 1977 Fianna Fáil Minister for Industry and Commerce, Desmond O’Malley, announced the government’s intention to build a nuclear power reactor at Carnsore Point, where the Irish Sea meets the southern Atlantic. Members of Cork Friends of the Earth, along with other groups and individuals, decided to oppose the idea.

    Four rallies by opponents of nuclear power took place each August at Carnsore Point in Co. Wexford from 1978 until 1981. I attended each rally and helped to write reports and observations in a fringe peace magazine that I helped to produce, called DAWN – an Irish Journal of Nonviolence.  I won’t attempt to write a comprehensive account of the anti-nuclear campaign. I recommend Simon Dalby’s pamphlet as a good starting point for anybody researching the matter.

    I want to mention about half a dozen names: Mary Phelan, Eoin Dinan, Adi and Sean Roche,  Christy Moore, American scientist Keith Haight and his South African born wife Maureen Kip Sing (Chinese ethnicity), Petra Kelly (German Green Party MEP), some of whom I encountered.

    Simon Dalby studied at Trinity College Dublin for his first degree and subsequently did a Masters at what is now the University of Limerick. He wrote an account of the Carnsore anti-nuclear rallies and the national campaigning of various anti-nuclear groups. This was published in A4 pamphlet form by DAWN magazine. A comprehensive history of the antinuclear movement remains to be written, outlining the pro- and anti- arguments put forward in public meetings and radio-tv discussions during those years.

    Simon Dalby’s article, ‘The Nuclear Syndrome. Victory for the Irish Anti-Nuclear Movement’  was first published in Dawn Train No. 3 Winter 1984-85 and is now lodged in the University of Limerick archives. The U.L. description begins: The collection comprises published and unpublished material collected by Simon Dalby for the preparation of his MA thesis, Political Ecology: A Study of the Irish Anti-Nuclear Movement, for the University of Victoria (Canada) in 1982. Published material includes articles; books, booklets and pamphlets; conference proceedings, speeches and public lectures; EEC communiqués; newsletters; periodicals; press cuttings; reports; and treaties and acts.

    German MEP Petra Kelly 1947-1992.

    First Rally

    The first Carnsore rally was held in August 1978. Attractive posters listing ballad and rock groups that had agreed to perform were circulated around Dublin, Cork and other towns. Get to the Point was the slogan. Right from the start free music was on offer to protesters. I am not sure if a chartered diesel train termed The Anti-Nuclear Express was arranged by Mary Phelan that year, but I took the train from Westland Row station down to Rosslare with Mary Condren. Passengers brought drinks and sandwiches for the trip and were ferried by buses to the rally site. There they were greeted by volunteers directing them to a huge marquee on which they could place sleeping bags and groundsheets. Information about toilets, a concert and public discussion venue, and food. Another area was available for people who had brought their own tents.

    Mary Phelan was originally from Waterford City and had lived in West Germany for a few years, where she befriended German Green Party MEP Petra Kelly (whose Irish-sounding name came from her stepfather, a U.S. army officer stationed in Germany). Mary Condren was a Dubliner who had studied in Hull University and became interested in feminist theology and journalism. She obtained seed money from feminist contacts in the USA, notably New York, and asked Mary Phelan to co-run a Resources Centre in Rathgar Road.

    The resources centre was supposed to earn rent from groups using the facilities and gradually become self-financing. That aim was not fulfilled alas. Many anti-nuclear activists visited the Resources Centre, even though it was not intended as a central contact point. The downstairs office was used to cut stencils and roll off on a Gestetner inky duplicator copies of their magazine called Contaminated Crow.

    I worked in a basement office with Mary Condren honing my journalistic skills by producing a student magazine called Movement. Every other month with half a dozen people I also used the basement and the resources centre to produce a cut-and-paste periodical called DAWN.

    We had a Smith-Corona electric typewriter with disposable carbon ribbon cartridges – a laborious process that took 2 or 3 days to complete. On alternate months we met at Rob Fairmichael’s home in Ormeau Road Belfast. From early morning we could hear the rumbling of machinery in the Ormeau Bakery behind the house as daily bread was being baked for delivery around the city. A small backstreet business in the Lower Ormeau called The Print Workshop printed issues of DAWN at reasonable rates. Some of our pamphlets were prepared with typeset, after special fundraising, and laid out mainly by Rob. He was a good self-taught layout artist.

    The first rally drew everal thousand, including Sunday afternoon visitors from Wexford and other counties. There had been light rain on Saturday, but Sunday was glorious sunshine. On Monday morning an aerial photograph appeared on the front page of the Irish Times, making a great impression. The next day an eminent Professor of Jurisprudence at UCD, John Kelly, also a top politician in Fine Gael, issued a statement warning the government of the day, Fianna Fail, not to treat the protesters like children. He mentioned huge sit-down protests by antinuclear activists in Tokyo. The professor’s warning may have been somewhat exaggerated, but the publicity was gleefully welcomed by rallyists.

    On Sunday many individuals spoke from an open-air stage about their nuclear concerns. Visitors from France, Germany and Italy spoke of their vehement opposition. A continental European contribution to an Irish protest movement undoubtedly worried mainstream Irish politicians – they envisaged co-operation in the EEC with governments, bureaucrats and captains of industry. Instead they encountered opposition from unmoneyed, ad-hoc, uncontrollable protest groups.

    Free music concerts, headlined by Christy Moore and others, entertained crowds in the evenings. People sitting near the stage enjoyed free music. Others listened in other locations to amplifiers.

    Christy Moore

    Post-Rally Clean-Up

    After the crowds went home a lot of detritus had to be collected and carefully tidied away by voluntary workers. The latrines were maintained with copious shovels of sand and sprinklings of Jeyes Fluid during each rally. Then they were filled in. Recyclable bottles and drinks cans were brought to wherever money could be received. Paper was buried in pits for eventual decomposition. My colleague Eoin Dinan worked the latrines and supervised other maintenance activity. Ordinarily, he drove a taxi in Dublin. During the years of the Carnsore protests he made friends with people and went on to help  found the Dublin Food Co-Op.

    Eoin Dinan was a quiet individual who didn’t give platform speeches, but he contributed constructive suggestions at committee meetings. His taxi experience came into play when the Children of Chernobyl project was set up by Adi Roche and her husband Sean Dunne after the 1986 accident which released huge doses of radiation, connected to a host of diseases.

    Eoin helped with transport convoys carrying medical supplies, food and bottled water from Rosslare through France, Germany and elsewhere to hospitals in Belarus. It would be interesting to see maps of the routes taken. People in the UK, Germany and North America soon began to emulate the Cork project. Adi Roche published her book The Children of Chernobyl about the work, badly interrupted by the Covid lockdown of 2019-20.

    Adi Roche in 2024.

    Friendly Internal Criticism

    Some friendly criticism of Carnsore appeared in issues of DAWN. For instance, in number 51, probably from September 1980, Auveen Byrne of Cork Friends of the Earth remarked in a personal capacity: ‘…it involves en masse camping and thus mainly attracts ‘young trendies’ and passes up the opportunity to influence the greater portion of public opinion.’

    Also, in 1980 an unsigned article by a trade unionist said: ‘The third Carnsore anti-nuclear rally simply marked time for the movement to stop nuclear power and uranium mining. He added that ‘the six-pack brigade were bored’ by the dragging on of the event and the resort to recorded muzak on amplifiers when live concerts were finished.

    In DAWN 73 in the autumn of 1981 I signed a personal article with the headline ‘Labouring the Point – Which Way from Carnsore?’ in which I noted the declining numbers attending. I finished up with a suggestion that instead of being anti-whatever, interested activists might positively organise an Ecology Festival at a different venue and stress positive living.

    I met Maureen Kim Sing, an ethnic Chinese in exile from apartheid South Africa, and her academic freelance journalist husband Keith Haight from the U.S.. They spoke with detailed knowledge of nuclear power and radiation releases at Carnsore and meetings of groups at various venues throughout the year. Keith sold a couple of articles to the Irish Times and contributed many others to U.S. publications. They also spent time campaigning against apartheid.

    At Carnsore and elsewhere they conducted nonviolence workshops. Later they went to France and had a baby girl called Kim. She had automatic French citizenship, was brought to America when Keith resumed academic life, and has lived in continental Europe since Keith died in March 2005 and Maureen died in January 2006.

    Mary Phelan’s friendship with German Green Party MEP Petra Kelly, and Mary’s fluency in German, were important for forging links with anti-nuclear activists on the Continent.

    Although Petra Kelly visited Dublin for antinuclear conferences, I don’t think she visited Carnsore, but she did develop a strong rapport with the head of the ITGWU (today known as Siptu) John F. Carroll. They produced a pamphlet called ‘A Nuclear Ireland?’ in 1978, which was highly influential and came as a shock to government decision-makers.

    Mary Phelan presented on RTE radio programme on ecological and environmental matters. Later she worked on a Dublin FM channel called Radio Liffey, I think. After that she went west of the Shannon and lived in Galway from where she drove a campervan turned into a mobile studio. As a freelance radio documentary producer she interviewed the travel writer Dervla Murphy at her home in Lismore Co. Waterford. A 4-part series was broadcast by the national radio.

    In the early 1970s Mary helped produce a 12-page feminist magazine called Wicca in Dublin. She had a daughter who as a young adult went to India and was profoundly affected by chemical damage done by multinational companies. She remained in India promoting non-polluting energy systems and lifestyles. Mary Phelan died suddenly in March 2015. Her passing and key role in the anti-nuclear campaign was not noted in the national newspapers.

    Adi Roche was nominated by the Labour Party to contest the Presidential election of 1997. Eoin Dinan became her driver during the campaign and was described thus in an Irish Independent report: ‘Eoin Dinan, a Project director, former taxi-driver and quiet, supportive presence, is acting as her driver and personal support. Joe Noonan, a poker-faced Cork solicitor, veteran of the [Raymond] Crotty legal challenge to the SEA and friend of 15 years, is on hand for legal expertise.’

    It was a bruising campaign with five candidates, Mary McAleese eventually received 45.2 percent of the votes after the first count. Roche limped in with a mere 6.9 percent. She was later awarded the Tipperary Prize and other honours for her Chernobyl work.

    Dervla Murphy.

    Reminiscences

    Full Tilt: from Ireland to India with a bicycle, was the travel book that launched Dervla Murphy as a major travel writer. In 1981 she published a book in London called Race to the Finish? – the nuclear stakes.

    She was unimpressed by the Carnsore protests, which apparently she attended but did not speak at. On page 55 she caustically noted: ‘In 1979, at the Carnsore Point demonstration in county Wexford, I was aghast to find myself surrounded by Women’s Libbers, IRA representatives, Abortion for All, Hari Krishna and Co., the Communist Party of Ireland and sundry other enthusiasts for whom I feel little or no sympathy. In a rigidly conservative society like Ireland’s such hangers-on make it more difficult for the embryonic anti-nuke movement to gain support.’

    So what did the Carnsore anti-nuclear movement achieve? Firstly, it was an independently run, decentralised movement of Irish citizens and supporters from other countries. That cosmopolitan protest initiative caught mainstream politicians off guard.

    Moreover, Carnsore brought many individuals together who, after 1981, promoted environmental and non-consumerist lifestyles. Organic vegetable growing was promoted in Dublin and other areas. It is likely to have brought support to the Green Party/Comhaontas Glas. Some of the protesters eventually left the city for the countryside and contributed to wholesome rural alternatives. Major political figures today visit, in muddy wellingtons and raincoats, youth-oriented musical events like the Electric Picnic to pay tribute to The Youth, also called the yoof.

    Now that the ‘six-pack brigade’ are a lot older I wonder do they ponder the moon and the stars, and wonder about the meaning of it all? Do they reminisce about Carnsore and tell children and grandchildren about the good old days of free music?

  • Theocracy – the Emigrant’s Artist

    Sé Merry Doyle’s latest documentary, Theocracy – the Emigrant’s Artist, serves as an excellent introduction to the stirring painting of Bernard Canavan. It offers an intimate portrait of a man whose distressing backstory has yielded extraordinary works of art that amplify our understanding of an appalling system that held sway for so long in Ireland. The film is to be screened at the Cork Film Festival on November 10.

    Bernard, like Shane MacGowan, is an artist who speaks, through his lived experience, for what Joe Cleary has described as the ‘spailpín [lit. ‘journeyman’] culture’ of ‘hard labour and hard living, of wandering and exile, resentment and loss … nurtured by two languages.’

    “Disembarkation”

    There is an added ingredient here. Bernard Canavan was born in Ireland in 1944, but that wasn’t his birth name. As a newborn, he was cruelly removed from the care of his young parents and placed in an orphanage. That his mother and her then-boyfriend had decided to marry didn’t matter. An infant born out of wedlock was viewed as the personification of sin.

    This was an all-too-familiar experience under what can accurately be described as a theocracy governing Ireland after independence. This was a fusion of devout Catholicism with a set of post-colonial Victorian values that emerged in the wake of the Great Famine. This made Ireland a dark place for many decades. Indeed, Ronan Sheehan refers to a ‘theology of incarceration’ governing most aspects of life at that time, realising W. B. Yeats’s concern about an emerging Ireland where ‘men were born to pray and save.’

    ‘Gods love for mothers and their infants’

    In the orphanage, punishment of sin formed only a part of what was also a business enterprise. Children were commodified, offered for adoption or experimented on by pharmaceutical companies.

    Fortunately, as a young child Bernard was rescued by a woman called Margaret Canavan, who was born into an Irish family living in Argentina. After her father’s death, she retuned to Ireland and settled in Edgworthstown, County Longford. This midlands town is the scene of some of Bernard’s most captivating work.

    There, he grew up under a nurturing mother who protected him from the brutality of the education system, and instilled a lifelong love of reading. This autodidact earned a scholarship to Ruskin College in Oxford, later studying politics, philosophy and economics at Worcester College.

    The film includes a memorable visit to the midlands town, where Bernard confronts memories of the pain of women and men, girls and boys, leaving a broken Ireland to face the indignity of the cattle boat and a new life in England. The men would face the harshness of the building sites and lodging houses, the world of subbies, piece work, being ‘on the lump’.

    Whatever you say, say Nothing’

    Bernard’s has long campaigned against the injustices that thousands of children suffered in Irish orphanages. In an emotive scene, Bernard visits Hampstead Heath where a man called Peter Tyrell set himself alight in 1967. As a young lad Peter endured rape and abuse in Letterfrack Industrial School and eventually succumbed to the trauma. The only clue as to his identity was a torn postcard addressed to the Irish civil rights activist and Senator, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, with whom he had corresponded – and who had made efforts to bring his case to light.

    A highlight of the film is where Bernard makes an emotional return to the place of his incarceration, Saint Patrick’s Guild, ‘The House of Shame.’ There, he bears witness to what happened to him, speaking for other unfortunates who suffered a similar fate, most of whom have not had an opportunity to tell their tales.

    ‘In the Free State’

    Eventually, Bernard emigrated to England, returning briefly to Ireland in the 1960s to work as a marketing executive in Dublin. After two years, however, he returned to England, taking up residence in London, where he still lives. There, he worked on a freelance basis for a variety of underground papers and magazines, producing illustrations, cartoon strips and political satire for the likes of OZ, Peace News and International Times.

    Great credit is due to Sé Merry Doyle for making this film on a shoestring budget. It makes one wonder why so much of Ireland’s interesting cultural output is still occurring on the margins or abroad, unaided and underfunded. Our theocratic model appears to have been replaced by a neoliberal logic of profit and loss, where the work of an artist such as Bernard Canavan becomes a slightly awkward memory.

    Feature Image: “The Innocent”

  • Distortions Of Language

     

    What tangled web we weave when our intention is to deceive?
    Sir Walter Scott

    The distortion of language lies at the heart of the greatest of threats to human civilisation. It now effects all aspects of the public and civic sphere, from court rooms to journalism to the expression of corporate-political elites. It is what allows atrocities to be sanctioned or airbrushed.

    The distortion of language fundamentally undermines the idea of shared and purposeful communication, whether interpersonal or societal. This is what Jurgen Habermas, in a different context, referred to as Communicative Action – a term borrowed from John Austin’s idea of ideal speech language – effectively purging it of ideology and taint. Distortion undermines the use of language in terms of truth-saying or truth-telling propositions.

    Theodor Adorno famously argued that after Auschwitz to write a poem was barbaric, implying that nothing could conjure up or express in human terms such atrocities. Nevertheless, various accounts by Primo Levi as a survivor in books such as If This Is A Man (1947)  and The Truce (1963) did poetically express the horror and show how human resilience endured. Language survived in a humanistic age to express the terms of the horror, but we are now in a more obviously trans-humanist age, and remnants of civilisation are not as obviously influential or vocal.

    The propaganda and euphemisms leading up to the Holocaust involved the use of language as a masking device to conceal different meanings and agendas.

    Although I am wary of structuralism, I do believe it is often necessary to deconstruct meaning. That occurs when an expression is being used to conceal an ulterior purpose, or to make a horror more palatable. The object of euphemisms, buzz words and jargons is often to distract, deflect and misdirect.

    Kenneth Branagh’s film Conspiracy (2011) effectively depicts the use by the Nazi High command at the Wannsee Conference chaired by Heydrich of the term evacuation, which of course really meant extermination.

    The phrase more typical of our age since Srebrenica has been ethnic cleansing, which is an opaque word for genocide, which at least has been used expressly in response to the actions of the Israelis, but even the utilisation of the appropriate word in a world of distorted coverage invokes fake well-financed indignation.

    In war or military matters historically, other euphemisms are collateral damage, friendly fire, or my favourite crew transfer question – meaning coffins for the dead bodies from the space shuttle.

    George Orwell.

    Orwell

    Any discussion of language in the context of war and politics leads inevitably to George Orwell.

    The term Doublespeak has been culled from Orwell’s 1984 (1949), although it was not used in the text where expressions like Doublethink and Newspeak perfectly express the nature of propaganda.

    In our time, political speech and writing are the defence of the indefensible… Thus, political language must consist of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…

    Orwell elaborated on these themes earlier in his magisterial essay The Politics of the English Language (1946). He piquantly observed of political language that it ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ The essay chastises vagueness and prioritises clarity and simplicity over euphemisms.

    Thus, when defenceless villages are destroyed it is called pacification, and the plunder of property is called rectification of frontiers. One might think of other euphemisms in use today, such as affordable housing or even debt relief.

    Orwell’s essay is not confined to political language but includes all forms of distortion of language:

    The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

    Though he saw a terminal decline in the England of his time. He did suggest certain remedies well worth citing:

    1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speechwhich you are used to seeing in print. (Examples that Orwell gave included swan song, and hotbed. Such phrases are dying metaphors which a present speaker does not understand the context of, and the original meaning rendered meaningless because those who use them did not know their original meaning. The historical interpretation of the US Constitution by such as Scalia is like this.
    2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
    3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
    4. Never use the passivewhere you can use the active.
    5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargonword if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

    And the last canonical rule:

    1. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

    Linguistic Distortion

    Albert Camus is the great prose master both in terms of precision and sensuality. He can be quoted endlessly, but with respect to doublespeak there is this quotation from The Plague (1949) elaborating on Animal Farm (1950):

    There will come a time in human history when the man who says two plus two equals four will be sentenced to death.

    The criminally underrated Ernest Hemingway wrote a little known, but invaluable text called On Writing (1984), containing his observations about his craft, which curiously mirror that of Orwell.

    He advised writers to cut out the scrollwork of ornament. Stick to what is true and cut out the superfluous. Write about what you know. Like Orwell, he emphasises the active verb and the shortest word possible.

    With respect to the issue of immigration the word removal is now used without elaboration or explanation, notably at the recent Tory conference. The word disposal invokes similar considerations. Again, this involves a form of distortion and side-tracking of reality.

    A real problem occurs when bureaucratic language or legalese conceal infamy. People often buy into it for ease of mind, or owing to a blinkered or cognitively dissociated sense that nothing is happening – or that it suits their interests. This theme is beautifully expressed in the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest (2023).

    In terms of the precise use of language to explain horror we have the Martin Niemoller parable during the rise of Nazism:

    First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    Contrast the clarity and sincerity of that with this from Donald Rumsfeld:

    Reports that say that something has not happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we do not know we do not know.

    Rumsfeld comments are wrought with care and are lying to serve a purpose or engaging in deception to so do. That is the point St. Augustine condemned in his categorisations of lying as the truly venal lie.

    Other awful phrases now creeping into our world of sound bites and doublespeak include the new normal. This is effectively a plea to accept degradation and Chinese corporate capitalism, as well as to be controlled and shrivelled in an Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Compliance is another dangerous euphemism.

    We have, conversely, also become obsessed with hygiene and health and are preyed on in that respect. Stay safe. Oh, and take our drugs. The slightest cold sets people off into hysteria, leading to limited physical contact and an increasingly asexuality.

    This new form of social hygiene divides the world into the pure and the impure. Corporate and advertising interests are adept at this. Virtually any episode of the Madmen series set in the 1950s demonstrates that. In legal terms there is always a degree of tolerance of puff and blow to use the contract law term until the disparity between claim and exaggeration meets the reality of what is being done. Simply the best. Largest in the industry.

    Advertising and politics are now so co-mingled, and have been for some time in the interests of big business, that there is now little difference between winning an election and selling tinned beans. Make the product be the change.

    Sadly, such approaches have also crept into the criminal justice system. Thus we find slogans such as no excuse for abuse, while in sex abuses cases the phrase there is no smoke without fire is migrating into closing speeches.

    Political correctness is the ultimate destruction of language, providing an excuse for no platforming people and undermining freedom of expression.

    Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange.

    Simplicity has its Drawbacks

    But with all respect to Orwell and Hemingway simplicity has its drawbacks. Camus was never simple.

    Thus, in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange reveals a universe of gobbledygook, much in evidence in social media, reducing language to that of Alex the Droog. The compression of meaning into shorthand symbols or abbreviations is a return to the planet of the apes, creating simplistic misleading forms of communication such as the flawed Me Too movement.

    In my view we should reformulate the legendary text by Flaubert, The Dictionary of Received Ideas (1911-13) and Ambrose Bierce’s The Devils Dictionary (1911), filtered through the legendary dictionary of Dr Johnson in terms of providing more amplified definitions of some of the distortions of language in our age. The expression used to be followed by the real meaning.

    As in the definition of ‘Pension’ in Dr Johnsons’ dictionary: 

    In England it is understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

    Or ‘Faith’ from The Devils Dictionary:

    Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

    Or Flaubert’s definition of sex as ‘Intimacy occurred.’

    I thus suggest a new dictionary of the real meanings of the doublespeak of our time, and indeed a reversion to old patterns of behaviour. This requires us to read books leading to an enhanced form of comprehension relying on clarity and simplicity.

    In this respect, self-reportage or sincerity can also be bullshit and ought to be treated with scepticism. Sincerely adopting your own euphemism can lead you to condone atrocities. It is precision and adherence to the facts that is crucial, certainly in political and civic discourse, which is not always easy.

    As Samuel Beckett, the master of succinctness once put it:

    Ever Tried. Ever Failed. Never Mind, Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

     

    Feature Image: Tamás Mészáros

  • Poem: Vitruvian Woman

     

    Vitruvian Woman
    For Laura
    A Poem for Halloween

    Svelte limbs, aquiline and flow, her enjambment;
    The whole pelvic girdle hypnotically balances,
    Famously compared to a serpent which dances,
    And which has all full-blooded heterosexual males entranced…!

    And, there you have it! The Feminists declare,
    “No more male gazing here!”
    Where are we? How did we get here?
    Whatever happened to coup de foudre, colpo di fulmine ?

    It was a Friday night, I had been sitting, drinking with colleagues,
    When you entered the public bar dressed in your finery;
    The cream- coloured micro-skirt, the flesh coloured tights,

    The pliant leather of your black knee high boots!…
    Colpo di fulmine!… my ass jumped off the bench, reflexively!
    We have known each other now for 25 Halloweens.

    Feature Image: Norbert Szomszéd

  • Musician of the Month: Cory Seznec

    It’s always been a challenge to compress my life into tidy, coherent narratives full of hidden meanings and uniting threads with distinguishable identity signposts that give audiences an obvious sense of who this person is. My artistic identity has, in many ways, been an attempt to seek some form of ‘personal style,’ by tossing together what, at face value, might seem like incongruous interests into a gumbo of my own making. In all this digging in the dark, the ‘ego’s’ quest was to forge some form of authentic artistic voice out of a chaos of unknowing. With no mentors to guide me, and no institutions to mould me, it was all very freeing, very scary and a complete mess.

    I’ll begin with the early days of ‘professional’ gigging. London 2004-2005. A young man completing a Masters in history is wondering how to break away from academia, play gigs and earn money from music. Early on in his studies he posts an ad on Craig’s List: ‘American folk musician in London looking to collaborate with any musicians who play guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, percussion, piano, and/or accordion.’

    The only response received is from an accordionist. They call each other. All the young man recalls of the conversation is wondering if the person on the other end is on a Witness Protection Program. A strong Long Island accent. They arrange to meet at the Witness’ place in south Wimbledon. They jam and are surprisingly ambitious about developing a professional project around accordion and banjo, as well as a strange percussion stick called the ‘Freedom Boot.’

    Looking back, it was at this moment that the Witness, a.k.a. Michael Ward-Bergeman, appeared to me as a clown-roshi-seeker-mentor figure, undergoing the beginning of his own transformation to another life. We started a duo and began touring, sending out millions of emails, knocking on doors and taking every paying gig that came our way. No smartphones, no GPS.

    We then recorded our first album with my brother as sound engineer over a span of four nights in the gymnasium of Harefield Hospital outside London, sleeping on chairs, with hospital guards waking us up (one was very surprised to see us when he opened the door at 6am). We printed up a thousand CDs and sold them at all our shows during our insane jaunts around the UK. It was all starting to get exciting, yet also very real. I was starting to wonder: is this my profession?

    With the Masters finished I was out of a dorm and started crashing on couches around town, before finally moving in with my future wife to a small apartment in Brooklyn, New York. There I tapped into the folk scene, worked carpentry to pay rent, and taught fingerstyle guitar and banjo at the Jalopy Theatre in Red Hook, regularly hopping over to London for tours with Michael.

    After that blip we moved to Paris, France where I soon became an intermittent du spectacle (state-sponsored artist support scheme) playing in all sorts of venues with all sorts of other musicians to get my cachets (declared gigs). During that time, I made my first trip to Africa – an unforgettable three week trip around Mali.

    But back to the U.K.. The ‘long strange trip’ continued, touring around England, Scotland, Wales, the U.S. and mainland Europe (although I never made it to Ireland!) with Michael, and the eventual addition of another brilliant, lunatic, Canadian percussionist, performance artist, sound engineer and anarchist called Paul Clifford. We went by the name of The Groanbox Boys, then Groanbox Boys, then just Groanbox. Did we grow up or shrink down? This whole trip lasted about ten years; with peaks and valleys; ebbs and flows; collaborating with classical composers and ensembles, packed out village halls, and played to two people in a pub in the Lake District; big festival crowds; hospital patients, and a wall of chavs in Yeovil not listening to a note we were playing. We made warts-and-all guerrilla records on the fly that contained both unlistenable discordance and mellifluous magic that we could sell DIY by the carloads at all these venues we navigated to with frayed roadmaps in beat up rentals from a used car dealer named Mel in Kent. Sea legs were obtained.

    The absurdity of all this is that the music and the whole ‘business’ of it might have been just some cosmic pretext to get the gods – or someone – laughing. In the van (where all the actual stuff happened) we surmised that we were living in a simulation created by a ten-year-old named Benny, who had created us on a lark. Case in point – we had asked Paul to find a tree log to play on stage, since our second album featured percussion that included the sound of logs being struck by axes and other objects. He did so with gusto, locating not just any old piece of wood, but a very strong and gnarly piece of yew. Surely Benny was behind this.

    Sacred to the Celts, venerated in Christian traditions, called the world tree Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, we became obsessed with taxus baccata, visiting yew groves and churchyards across Britain, engaging with (manifested as a worship ritual involving deep meditation, musical farting, and general obscenities) ancient yew-god avatars in some strange restorative communion during our gruelling tours (we would block book tours of 30-60 shows, performing once, sometimes twice a day, with occasional days of respite). We were totally burned-out and these yew baths were magical balms for our weary souls.

    And you thought this was about music.

    Let me jump forward 10 years to Touki, my project with Senegalese artist Amadou Diagne and London producer Oscar Cainer. We had put the project together in 2019, securing Arts Council funding to record an album as a duo at Real World Studios. All our tour dates and album release were planned for March 2020, which imploded with the Covid-19 pandemic. We picked up steam again the following year and got some more funding to record, this time with American cellist and violinist Duncan Wickel, who joined us on the road for a couple of U.K. tours. We then joined forces with Marius Pibarot for a couple of years, who was an excellent addition to the group. Earlier this year, however, Marius wasn’t available to tour with us so we called someone we all knew well. Michael Ward-Bergeman.

    Did we even call him, or did Benny make him appear out of thin air? All I know is the laughing gods were back. We were no longer just playing music but visiting ancient standing stones and cairns in remote Scotland at sunrise. Early in the tour we were joined by Little John, a clown puppet sidekick who’s accent and intonation sounds eerily like Michael’s Long Island accent in falsetto. And, always, the pairing of the numinous and the flatulent, an Ancient Monolith – High Street Curry Shop negotiation, with awe being expressed by mouths and sphincters alike.

    And you thought this was about music.

    But I digress. ‘Normal’ gigs did occur and are projected to continue to happen in my career. I’ve been teaching in music camps around the US and in France, and recorded video lessons for Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop. I released a bunch of solo records, and performed with numerous artists over the years, playing festival stages, theatres, music camps, clubs, pubs, cafés-concerts, village halls, churches, hospitals, prisons, schools, museums…in Europe, North America, Ethiopia.

    Ah Ethiopia. Another inflection point. I spent three years there (2013-16) with my wife holding down a ‘real’ job. Learned many of the Ethiopian modes, assisted on rugged and totally manic field recording trips through the highlands, held a weekly gig at Mulatu Astatke’s jazz club, hopped down to Kenya to study with omutibo guitarists, and generally had my mind slowly blown to bits. I miss it all terribly, and getting into it more than this almost seems pointless, at least until I write my memoirs.

    These experiences brought me to some realization that going back to school to study ethnomusicology might be promising for my quest. As I write this, I’m sitting in Takoma Park, Maryland and commuting everyday to the University of Maryland – College Park to sit in graduate seminars and teach undergraduates a course on World Music & Identity (this time mainly sans instrument). A new chapter, in my ‘home’ country, which now feels oddly like an alien planet.

    As for where I’m headed … who knows? If the music vibrating from within me can help people in various ways, then that’s probably good enough for me. If I can be a good dad to my kids and a decent husband, that’s probably good enough too. A recent conversation with Michael in which he stated he still ‘has no idea what is going on,’ made me think that this is what drew us together in the first place. Alongside him, Oscar, Paul, Amadou and all my other compagnons de route the hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) quest somehow seems to be an exaltation in this very unknowing. Perhaps it feels like the only real, honest thing anyone can say about anything.

    https://www.coryseznec.com/

  • Pathfinder: Manchán Magan

     

    I will follow these gallant heroes beneath the clay
    The warriors my ancestors served ever since Christ’s day.
    From Cabhair ni Ghoirfead / I Will Not Cry for Help by Aogán Ó Rathaille.

    Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of the earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them.
    From Irish Fairy and Folk Tales by W. B. Yeats.

    I remain haunted by the death of the writer and broadcaster Manchán Magan. Ongoing outpourings on my social media feeds, and across mainstream media, reveal I am not the only one so affected. Over his lifetime, it’s fair to say, he became a national icon – ‘regarded as a representative symbol,’ and now even ‘worthy of veneration.’

    Above all perhaps, Manchán – properly pronounced Man-a-chán as I was recently informed by a Gaeilgeoir from west Kerry – tapped into, and indeed engendered, renewed appreciation for the Irish language, stripping it of associations that led many of my generation to recoil from it in our early years.

    Instructively, Hugh Ó Caoláin, reachtaire/chair of Trinity College’s Cumann Gaelach recently argued that the language now occupies a new cultural space in the national consciousness:

    I think there has been a huge mentality change. It doesn’t represent conservatism any more. It’s progressive. It’s about non-colonialism and reclaiming our indigenous culture. A lot of young people look at the culture that was and realise such richness is being lost.

    Indeed, according to Pól Ó hÍomhair (20) another member of the Cumann:

    As a gay man, I would always view Irish as a symbol of a modern progressive, non-colonial, inclusive Ireland.

    It is hard to imagine that progressive shift occurring in the absence of Manchán’s almost messianic zeal. As a journalist, he embraced media old and new – from video blogs to best-selling literary-historical works – all presented in the inimical style of shaman-scholar-wanderer.

    His output was prolific and multi-dimensional. Whereas Gaelic-Irishness once seemed restricted to asserting a singular national identity, Manchán brought appreciation to a more inclusive and elevated plain, which might occasionally lapse into an arrogance he was aware of being prone to.

    A light-hearted description of English as ‘a relatively recent West Germanic language’ developed by ‘gangs of land-hungry Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians,’ hordes of whom displaced an apparently more noble Irish language, unfairly denigrates a tongue he revelled in, and which has been the preferred medium for many Irish writers who have left an unmistakable imprint.

    Moreover, the early English were also subjected to colonisation, after the Norman invasion of 1066, which accounts for why over half of its vocabulary derives from French. Indeed, English wasn’t an official language in England until 1362, when the Statute of Pleading first made English an official language of the law courts.

    Furthermore, after colonising England the Normans crossed into Ireland in 1169 at the behest of an Irish chieftain, Diarmait Mac Murchada. He had sought military assistance from the Norman lord Strongbow, giving his daughter Aoife’s hand in marriage in return.

    Thereafter, the Normans under Henry II conquered most of Ireland, bequeathing distinctively ‘Irish’ names such as FitzGerald, Burke and Lynch. Most of them living beyond ‘the Pale’ of settlement around Dublin, however, eventually adopted the Irish language and customs. They later declined to convert to Protestantism, thereby forming part of the Irish nation, ‘more Irish than Irish themselves,’ which emerged in the wake of the seventeenth century Plantations.

    The heady brew of language and identity may create divisions, which often dissolve when subjected to historical scrutiny and poetic meddling. Manchán was mostly engaged in scrutiny and meddling, but faint traces of his forebearers’ chauvinism occasionally appeared.

    Proselytizing ‘the first, official language’ is only one aspect of Manchán’s legacy. He also awakened reverence for the land and people through documentary work in particular, for television and radio, and unashamedly drew attention to numinous presence ‘immanent in the landscape.’

    After long travels, and encounters with peoples on the edge, he fostered awareness of our connections to aboriginal cultures, as well as drawing attention to exploitative practices etched into our landscape. He was unafraid to float metaphysical concepts and point to the uncanny; or allow the truth to get in the way of a good yearn.

    What follows is a personal reflection on a public figure I knew a little, and whose educational formation I shared to a surprising degree. I also use this as an opportunity to explore ideas around language and identity, which foreground Manchán’s own work and upbringing, as well as my own.

    Encounters

    I distinctly recall three encounters with him. Each left a mark. The first was at Another Love Story music festival, in 2017 or thereabouts. Our conversation ranged over environmental issues. Initially, I was wary of someone who worked within mainstream media, providing cover with slim doses of virtue, as I saw it. Yet I found we shared many of the same ideals.

    The diaphanous sprite on film seemed remote from this formidable presence in the flesh. After all, this was a man who had crossed continents, daring to go to places that made me cower. I wasn’t won over entirely, however. I wanted more from him, more unsettling resistance.

    We next met at Dublin’s first Extinction Rebellion demonstration in 2019, a movement which at that time exhibited a child-like innocence, at least for many Irish participants. He had the same friendly presence, despite my reticence, but I found something else there now, a commitment to resistance.

    That first demo occurred at precisely the same location, in front of the GPO on O’Connell Street, as another rather more pivotal gathering in 1916. Nearby, on Moore Street, one of its leaders – who showed up despite believing it to be a doomed enterprise – Manchán’s granduncle Michael Joseph O’Rahilly – known as ‘The O’Rahilly’ – was shot by British machine gun fire. He made it as far as a nearby laneway, now called O’Rahilly Parade, where he succumbed to his wounds.

    There was a glow to Manchán that day. Later, I recall him forming part of a vanguard that staged a sit-down protest, blocking car traffic along the quays. I watched on, unwilling to face what seemed, with Gardaí in attendance, another doomed enterprise, inviting arrest. Now who was the real resistance fighter? It would not have been his first time behind bars. But the authorities were all too canny that day. There were to be no high-profile martyrs.

    The last encounter I had with Manchán was in late 2020 at the Fumbaly Café, the remarkable enterprise and creative space owned by his partner Aisling. Those were the dark days of Covid lockdowns, when faces were hidden from view as in a bad dream. Everything seemed impossible.

    I vividly recall him insisting that a big change had come over the world. He asserted, prophetically, that the kind of musical and food events that I had been putting on were in the past, and so it has proved. In truth, he left a bleak impression. I wonder about the ill-effects of isolation on his gregarious soul.

    Manchán in second year, c. 1985.

    Educational Background

    Recently, I learned that Manchán and I attended, five years apart, the same Jesuit school in Ranelagh, Gonzaga College, where his funeral took place.

    If ever we were to meet again in some celestial sphere, or after reincarnation, I would be intrigued to find out a bit more about his experience there. He has revealed that he wasn’t entirely comfortable in a setting which, at least in my time, seemed calibrated to produce upstanding members of the professional classes.

    There were creative outlets, in school plays and operas, and academic endeavour was encouraged, but it hardly nourished alternative ideas. Religious instruction was prescriptive rather than expansive. Mysticism, or anything autre for that matter, was hardly in vogue in Gonzaga in the late 1980s, while the Irish language only seemed relevant as a Leaving Cert subject. School Irish certainly provided me with no insights into the extraordinary literature that emerged in the oldest written European vernacular language north of the Alps.

    I have looked back over a few photos of Manchán among classmates in school annuals. Like myself, he did not participate in any of the rugby teams given such prominence. He looks like a slightly forlorn dreamer, albeit a tougher school might have knocked the day-dreaming out of such an ethereal character.

    The Gonzaga Record contains two references to Manchán from his fifth year in 1988 – aged between sixteen or seventeen. An account of the school opera recalls: ‘Backstage was handled admirably by Manchan [spelt without the fada presumably to his annoyance] Magan, and things never got far out of hand.’

    It is surprising to find that Manchán is not treading the boards, centre stage, mesmerizing audiences. I half-expected to find an account of him wearing a cloak of crimson bird feathers, like his great-great-great-granduncle Aogán Ó Rathaille, the last great poet of the Bardic school. Manchán had noble pedigree, and in later life at least, he didn’t hide any light, or ancestry, under a bushel.

    Theatrical design, nonetheless, relies on a capacity for improvisation, which presumably he also harnessed when building the first strawbale house in Ireland, an ‘ecological, mortgage-free home’ home in Westmeath for less than €6,000 in 1997, after he was left a small sum of money by his late grandmother.

    The 1988 Record also contains, fittingly, a picture of him next to a large litter bin, which he and twenty-five other students pushed around Dublin’s city centre, collecting rubbish and raising money for charity.

    The unusual symmetry in our educational background runs deeper. We also both attended the co-ed Mount Anville Montessori school, attached to the girls’ secondary school of the same name in Goatstown, from around aged four to eight, before entering the all-boys Gonzaga ‘Prep’ School.

    Furthermore, after completing his Leaving Cert, Manchán enrolled, as I did, in nearby UCD to study History, although he studied Irish along with it, while I did pure history. Nonetheless, that’s perhaps seventeen years of almost the exact same educational formation, five years apart.

    Manchán in his fifth year, c. 1988.

    Mother Tongue

    As alluded to there was a significant fork in the road insofar as Manchán studied History and Irish, a language which took on huge significance throughout his life. Indeed, it was his first language and mother tongue. This vital connection deepened over childhood summers spent in west Kerry, where Gaelic remained the lingua franca. He was also raised alongside his maternal grandmother Sighle Humphreys (1899-1994), a firebrand Republican and Irish language activist.

    Fluency in Irish gave Manchán an opportunity to present travel documentaries, at the behest of his brother Ruan, for TG4 from 1996. It was then that he really took to the stage, and never really left it.

    In contrast, I trace a troubled relationship with Irish to my mother’s preference for European sophistication – she spoke French, Italian and German. Born in leafy Donnybrook, close to where Manchán grew up, she had little sympathy for Republicanism either, writing a letter to the Irish Times in 1966 expressing disapproval with the 1916 Rising on its fiftieth anniversary. She argued there was another, non-violent, path to independence.

    The other side of my family was a different story however. My namesake paternal grandfather from Sligo acted as auditor of UCD’s Irish language society, as ‘Proinsias  Tréanlámagh,’ in the late 1920s. His father, my great-grandfather Luke Armstrong, acted as ‘Head Centre’ for the IRB in Sligo during the Land War of the 1880s. He was accused of treason, and only narrowly escaped the hangman’s noose. Moreover, my father gained a partial university scholarship through a somewhat utilitarian attention to the language.

    Nonetheless, for me, especially in my formative years, Irish represented a conservative authority in school, and even a violent nationalism I repudiated in the midst of the Troubles. It didn’t help that I had an Irish teacher in secondary school who I felt bullied by, which only repelled me further.

    Moreover, like Manchán I spent my summers in the west of Ireland living in an alternative reality to my Dublin suburb existence. As a garrison town, however, the hinterland of Sligo has a very different relationship with the Irish language to west Kerry. An historic crossing point between Connacht and Ulster, there are enduring ties to Northern Ireland. A rail line connected Sligo with Enniskillen until the 1950s. The prevalence of English since even prior to the Famine did not, however, prevent the poet W.B. Yeats and his painter brother Jack from drawing on its lore and folk tales to furnish their art.

    I also went to an Irish College in the Gaeltacht of Connemara for a few weeks one summer and got along fine with the language. But the accommodation offered by the host family was cramped and shabby, and the food appalling – under-cooked frozen pizza leaves a nasty aftertaste.

    Then at college, studying history, I made a good friend whose father participated in the so-called Language Freedom Movement, which campaigned during the 1960s against Irish as a compulsory language. He kept a photograph of this father speaking at a rally with placard in hand – and a fist seemingly attached to his chin. That fist belongs to the arm of a priest, the future primate of all-Ireland, Cardinal Tomás Séamus Ó Fiaich. For me at the time, that image epitomised exactly what the Irish language stood for.

    In contrast, I took pride in the achievements of Irish writers in English. I recall empathising with James Joyce’s Stephen Hero, when Stephen Daedulus decides to take a course in the Irish language. His teacher Madden takes exception to Stephen ‘running down your own people at every hand’s turn.’ In my copy of the novel I marked Stephen’s response: ‘I would like to learn it – as a language, said Stephen lyingly.’ Thus, Joyce chose ‘silence, exile, and cunning.’

    Joyce’s rejection of national chauvinism comes to the fore in the ‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses where we meet the ugly prejudices of ‘the Citizen’ (apparently modelled on the Gaelic Athletic Association’s founder Michael Cusack) who opposes miscegenation, ‘A fellow that’s neither fish nor fowl,’ and blames a woman for Ireland’s subjugation: ‘The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here.’

    The Citizen offers a one-eyed account of Irish history in which the country only prospers in isolation from England: ‘We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped.’

    In contrast, Leopold Bloom rejects entirely the gathering forces of hatred that culminated in World War I:

    it’s no use … Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that what is really life.

    The Citizen asks what that really is, to which Bloom replies: ‘Love … I mean the opposite of hatred’. The Citizen guffaws witheringly: ‘A new apostle to the gentiles … Universal love.’

    Manchán’s views were, assuredly, more in line with those of Leopold Bloom than the Citizen, but a tension between universal lover and little islander is evident in his background.

    Michael O’Rahilly. Illustration by David Rooney from ‘1916 portraits and lives’, Royal Irish Academy, 2015.

    Irish Nationalist

    In many interviews – which I have belatedly binged on – Manchán alludes with pride, but also some wariness, to his forebearers, especially the aforementioned The O’Rahilly. That wariness was justified.

    R. F. Foster certainly arrives with his own biases. Nonetheless his Vivid Faces – The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923 provides insights into The O’Rahilly’s brand of ethnic nationalism. Foster claimed the Volunteering movement gave ‘full rein to O’Rahilly’s obsession with heraldry, titles and coats of arms; his papers include much semi-mystical correspondence about the spiritual symbols of the Volunteer flag and the need to evoke occult Celtic harmonies.’ Manchán would have approved of this, but other aspects would have been far less appealing.

    Foster points to The O’Rahilly’s ‘Anglophobia’ that had been ‘nurtured by a sojourn in America,’ which he concludes ‘represented an extreme and violent tendency within the movement (p.190).’ Foster also references an account of his ‘violently racist beliefs about American blacks (p.14),’ entirely at odds with Manchán’s politics.

    Manchán understood Irishness and the Irish language in an expansive way. For him it was always about sharing insights. He has helped stripped it of association with severe Catholicism and chauvinistic patriotism, connecting Irish identity with indigenous traditions around the world.

    He also expressed romantic love through it. I recall a touching article he wrote for the Irish Times describing how he had found himself drawing on the Irish language to express his love for his partner, Aisling, whose name means ‘dream’ or ‘vision,’ and was a Gaelic poetic form used by W.B. Yeats in ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus.’

    Manchán decision to build a small house in rural Westmeath also recalls Yeats’ arising to ‘The Lake Isle of Inissfree’ – ‘a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,’ to ‘live alone in the bee-loud glade.’

    Yeats County

    Last year, I embarked along a similar path, purchasing a house in Sligo, where I discovered a wild beehive lodged into my house, just two kilometres away from where my father was born to my grandmother, also called Sheila!

    Sheila Armstrong was a very different character to Sighle Humphreys, however. Born in Liverpool to an Irish immigrant publican and his Sligo-born wife I suspect she didn’t have a word of Irish, and was a tremendous snob, besides being the kindest soul imaginable.

    Her Catholic devotion did not extend to Republican sympathies. I recall the horror on her face when witnessing TV images of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987. This was a place she went to on occasional shopping trips, including to Gordon Wilson’s drapery, whose daughter Marie was killed in the outrage.

    The phrase ‘mother tongue’ implies we are handed down an affinity with a language through the maternal line. My mother and surviving grandmother displayed no interest, and even a little resistance, to the Irish language, which probably left an indelible mark.

    I have also wondered, with a name like Armstrong and given my mother’s maiden name was FitzGerald, whether I truly belong to the Irish nation, conceived by some early revolutionaries as an Irish-language speaking entity based on bloodlines. Born into an Irish Catholic family, I do have ancestry with more Irish-sounding names, but I suspect many of my forebearers spoke Old English or Old Norse for long periods after settling in the country.

    Nonetheless, as I engage more closely with Manchán’s work and legacy, I recognise compelling reasons to develop a greater understanding of the language. The psychological barrier, and trauma even, is slowly ebbing away.

    I doubt I’ll ever become fluent in the language, but I can at least get over feelings of inadequacy and irritation when I hear it spoken. At the very least, it provides a key for understanding the origin of our place names, and vital insights into flora, fauna and human history.

    That is not to say I don’t take issue with some of Manchán’s imaginative flights. There may be thirty-two words for a field in Irish, but given the language’s distinctive periods and pronounced regional varieties, I doubt anyone apart from him has ever known them all! Nonetheless, in a period of extreme homogenisation let us celebrate Manchán’s magical vision for Ireland. The king of the faeries has returned to his realm.

    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  • My Mary & Me

    Many good people will ‘do the right thing’ and spoil their vote this coming Friday. Many will ‘do the right thing’ and vote for one or other of the two candidates that have been shepherded onto the ballot sheet by the powers that be. Many will undoubtedly take the easiest option: blame the weather and not show up at all.

    Of the usual fifty-odd percent of eligible voters, who arrive at polling stations as expected, more than likely the majority will vote for Catherine Connolly. In the unlikely event that more Fine Gael stalwarts from South Dublin, Cork and the more affluent suburbs show up, then Heather might rule the day – but that seems very unlikely.

    Given the near inevitability of the outcome and the futility of participation in a game that has been rigged from the start, it’s hard to know which of the options is the most ‘right thing to do.’ Personally, if I manage to get the grass cut on polling day I will have done my civic duty.

    As far as I can see, there’s about as much difference between the three options as there is any difference between the candidates themselves. In practical or political terms, both Heather and Catherine are on the ballot because neither will use the office of the Presidency to hold the main political parties to account in any practical or substantive way. Of course there will be lip-service to neutrality, wars, digital identities and so on, and perhaps we should be content with a bit of lip service. Either way, neither candidate poses any practical threat to the status quo. Neither candidate will use the office to effectively challenge those who have graciously paved the path to the Áras.

    The major issues that face the nation: housing, health, immigration, public services and our neutrality will of course serve as talking points, but the Presidency will function in the usual perfunctory manner, as a kind of mood-music for the political establishment.

    Aside from the machinations of ‘far-right extremists’, there appears to be no real appetite for practical change in Ireland. Nothing at least beyond a more trendy set of clothes for the Emperor. Crucially, neither candidate has any intention of raising any questions in respect of the behaviour of the three main parties throughout the Covid years. On that front the government, the opposition and both candidates are united. As Henry Ford said of his Model-T in 1919: “the customer can have any colour he wants, as long as it’s black.”

    Seán Gallagher former Irish Presidential candidate.

    No Big-Mouth Independents

    The whips have ensured that no big-mouthed independents will appear on the ballot paper, independents who might have asked uncomfortable, unscripted questions. An independents who might have given those on the right of the political spectrum a place at the table perhaps?

    Yet, it is not only right-wing extremists who are quick to recall the Covid years; the elderly who died, the money trails, the passports, the genetic vaccinations and so on. If not questions, then at least eyebrows are here and there being raised more generally in respect of issues like ‘excess deaths,’ and the increasing incidence of cancers in Ireland.

    Even RTÉ is unafraid to admit that cancer was on the decline between 2011 and 2021 but that since 2021 the incidence in Ireland has soared, becoming the second highest in the EU in 2022. Today it is likely to be even higher. Excess deaths are another matter, but they too might step out from behind the shadows one day too.

    It is perhaps unsurprising that most Irish voters do see differences between the candidates. To peruse the mainstream media in recent weeks, one would think we had a choice between chalk and cheese. In fairness, Irish voters apparently notice a distinction between Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael, and because Sinn Féin are in opposition and appear to often disagree with FFFG, voters see some differences there too.

    I suspect that a growing number of Irish people (young people in particular) are coming to regard the apparent differences between the main political parties as purely superficial. During the Covid years the veil slipped for a time, as the three main parties showed their true colours, behaving in precisely the same manner: pandering to the same fears; promoting the same policies; advocating for the same pharmaceutical products; and pushing the same uncompromising agenda.

    In truth, the difference between the main parties, like the difference between Catherine and Heather, is mostly ‘smoke and mirrors,’ entertainment created by the media for the purposes of buttering bread, earning a crust and paying the bills. Unfortunately, figuring out the truth requires intellectual investment, which usually pays poor dividends.

    Perhaps we buy into notions of ‘difference’ between parties and between candidates because increasingly we lack that capacity to think deeply; to read a book instead of a tweet.

    Mary McAleese. ©Patrick Bolger Photography

    Soundbites

    Despite the ascendancy of the soundbite, Irish voters are undoubtedly wearying of the same old packaging. The presidential Mary-model – featuring the heels, pearl necklace, Louise Kennedy suit and precision haircut – are the unmistakable hallmarks of the two Marys who have gone before. The familiar trappings at the very least have become dull and boring, if for no other reason that we grow tired of repetition.

    The only evolution that Heather brings to the ‘Mary-model’ for Presidential success, is the fact that she is not a Mary. Those who will actually make a choice this Friday could not, and will not (in any significant numbers) vote for another Mary. If they do one can surely conclude that all hope is lost, both for Ireland and for the Oysters.

    An evolution in our thinking, an intellectual escape from the paradigm of our post-colonial mindset, might be an impossibility, but that does not mean that we are not experiencing an evolution in how we see the world. We evolve cautiously, in small and slow increments. We may be insecure and await precedents to be established elsewhere in the U.K. or the U.S. but it does evolve.

    The Mary-boat has sailed. It has had its presidential cruise and is scheduled to be up-cycled into something different, something ‘trending’ and a little bit more environmentally friendly.

    Even my dachshund rolls his eyes and looks disappointed when I present him with a bowl of the dried dog-nuts we keep in the pantry. He has come to expect a few leftovers to be mixed in with the mundane.

    Catherine Connolly.

    ‘An Element of Newness’

    In respect of how the Presidential ‘rubber-stamp’ will be applied to legislation, Catherine might be no different to Heather, but she will bring a sufficient element of ‘newness’ and ‘difference’ to apply a veneer of ‘change’ lacquered on the planks of the same-old.

    Catherine has a certain ruggedness about her, an edge that is ‘earthy’ and ‘progressive’.  Her posters are less formal and contain a frequent, if veiled, nod to ‘pride’. Catherine hasn’t been wooed to the mainland to purchase a perfect smile. Unlike her competitor, there is nary a pearl necklace anywhere to be seen, and she is not afraid to wear an anorak, even when it’s not raining. There is something natural and home-grown about Catherine, and that  certain-something will be sufficient to carry her all the way to the Áras.

    When advanced capitalism sets the agenda for the general production of ‘news’ – costs increase the greater the scrutiny is applied to the issues. It would take a bit of depth and thought to arrive at the truth that there is little if any difference beneath the surface. It’s all about what’s trending, nothing more than that.

    Authenticity (whatever that is when it’s at home) took a major hit from that oxymoron of ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Deeper issues escape the mainstream media because they require some thought. The more of that commodity required of legacy media the less marketable and consumer-friendly it becomes.

    In respect of the ‘vote-spoilers’, few if any media outlets reap a harvest from that small herd of ‘right wing extremists,’ a cohort who are insisting they smell a rat somewhere. That motley crew of racist, flag-wielding loopers, have been smelling plague rats for more than five years now. The left in Dáil Eireann on the other hand are preoccupied with more pressing issues: Ukraine, gender, Palestine and pay gaps for example.

    The election naysayers will be ignored by legacy media. The spoilers will scarcely get a mention, and the inevitable low turn-out will most likely be described as ‘only marginally worse than usual’.

    Why should we expect anything different? Irish tenants elected their landlords to the English parliament for far longer than we have been freely voting for more of the same. It’s only a pity Jim Gavin bowed out after failing to return money owed to his tenant, as the analogy would require no further reference. We have a long and established tradition of voting for who we’ve been told to vote for. It’s a cultural trait which is quite possibly an integral component of a post-colonial make-up.

    Our respect for the authorities who preserve and protect us from each other is predicated on the belief that they care for us – much in the same way as a farmer cares for his herd of milch cows. They have our best interests at heart, and thanks to democracy they remain answerable to ‘we the people.’ All that is necessary to buy into the myth is to show up and vote.

    Heather Humphreys.

    Our Proud History

    Yes, we did have a Revolution and a War of Independence. We have built a mythology around that brief period in our history. We like to forget that only a handful of right and left-wing loopers showed up on Easter Sunday, and those in charge were spat on before being executed. Subsequently, much of our nationalism was self-sabotaged and consumed in the crucible of the Civil War. What little remained expired in the protracted bloodshed of the Northern Troubles.

    Ireland is a subservient nation. To suggest otherwise would be to deny the unprecedented scale of our wilful compliance during the Covid years. Lockdowns might have been insane, but we had the longest ones in Europe. In general, we love rules, we love imposing them upon each other, and we respect our masters, just as long as we get to eat some of the long grass in the summer.

    That the Presidential election has effectively been rigged; that the party whip was employed openly and unashamedly by Harris and Martin; speaks volumes and roars into some cavernous region of our national psyche.

    We elect politicians who act out of a desire to rise through the ranks, and allow themselves to be directed by a whip, rather than being guided by their consciences. Our system of politics has become indistinguishable from the one that it replaced in 1922. Our politics exists primarily as a means for promotion of ambitious individuals within political parties. Harris and Martin are obvious examples.

    The system ensures that only ‘yes-men’ or ‘yes-Marys’ rise to the top. One need only look at the mediocrities that reach the top of the pile to confirm that hypothesis. But what if those at the top of the party-political system are presently saying ‘yes’ to other shadowy institutions and individuals?

    Today we may be living under a regime that is little more than an elaborate form of puppetry. We call it a ‘liberal democracy’ because we have the right to select the puppets.

    Neither Humphreys nor Connolly can see the ‘wizard behind the curtain’. That’s what makes them viable candidates and good politicians. Or perhaps they do see the wizard, but view him as most of the puppets do: as a kind of benign or benevolent entity, who brings ’employment’ and ‘economic growth’ in his big sack.

    Either way, the globalist tyrant behind the sheet of ballot paper, the fat man pulling the levers and speaking into the megaphone, remains hidden from view at best. Worse still is when we are entirely grateful to have him pulling the strings.

    Hopefully it won’t rain on Friday.

    Feature Image from Judging the Lovely Girls Competition, Father Ted, Hat Trick Comedy.

  • 360-Degree Leadership in Times of Crisis

    ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’ – it takes a lot more than these kind of words today to get listened to, followed, and to exert influence and effectiveness over time. Effective change leaders remove barriers to employee success. Leaders of unsuccessful change tend to focus on results, and more often than not employees don’t get the supports they need for change. ‘Process’ and ‘people’ components of leadership are both equally critical, and therefore hard to prioritise since in reality they run parallel.

    A 360-Degree Leader

    The qualities that a 360-degree leader possesses, as per John Maxwell’s work, include adaptability, discernment, perspective, communication, security, resourcefulness, maturity, endurance, and the ability always to be counted on. This list is certainly not exhaustive but does capture the essentials.

    The difficulty in generalising this skillset is that they can differ across markets, crises, industry, and perspectives in specific contexts. For such individuals, who are or aim to become 360-degree leaders, there is also a form of assessment that provides feedback in which their skills, effectiveness and influence as an executive, leader or manager are evaluated. This is an effective process in organisations to give leaders clear feedback from their peers, employees and managers. At the same time, this is mostly done in context, e.g. how any process is conducted for a Human Resources director would differ from Sales Leader or Communications Head. Both the process and feedback are tailored to roles and contexts.

    (a) Influence

    The role of influence is critical to leadership. It is not only about ensuring compliance, but also the commitment essential to drive change, and therefore includes the ‘people’ part of the change most. At the same time, looking at wider stakeholder expectations today, developing a ‘reward culture’ also goes a long way.

    In particular, when the immediate fire of a crisis is over the leaders must reflect on who rose to the occasion, who struggled and why. Several organisational roles will change post-crisis and therefore leaders can strategise who they want to be at the table both during and after the crisis to head to the new normal.

    During periods of business-as-usual, influence can shape and affect long-term strategy making, talent acquisition and retention mechanism as well as seek knowledge and business partners as fitting.

    In some cases, where exercising command is difficult, since leaders are working in peer groups and therefore the dynamic is different, i.e. not the typical leader-follower setting, influence comes out to be the strongest and the most effective trait that an individual can demonstrate. This is because it involves leading across levels, including peers involved in the same stage.

    (b) Operations and Strategic Management

    The effectiveness of good leaders can be demonstrated firstly by mobilising realistic and time-bound goals; secondly, laying out clear objectives and setting up the deliverables; thirdly, by building high-performance teams; fourthly by creating a risk-resilient company culture; fifthly by creating organisational knowledge building; and finally by creating a culture of value.

    For sure, however, these are not magic bullets, nor meant to address the challenges or promote business growth overnight. The strategies and planned action that leaders take within firms, whether a large corporation or Small or Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME), would be largely determined by the stage of growth where a company find itself at a given point in time. In addition, building a reward and trust culture would make employees more confident in making decisions and not being risk-averse.

    Besides effectively managing operations, business development, consolidation or a strategic integration of mergers and acquisitions, new research by McKinsey shows that leaders have the following six broad functions: Aspiration; Inspiration; Imagination, Creativity, Authenticity; and Integrity. When it comes to either managing culture at the workplace or leading others through crisis, leaders also need to develop the right mindset based on introspection and self-awareness, which are equally critical skills. Several studies by Sloan and HBR show that it is the mindset, adaptiveness and change that leads to growth and, at times, survival.

    (c) Leading through Crises

    A crisis is very often systemic in nature and call therefore for solutions that are not quick fixes. In the business world, depending on the nature and scale of a crisis which can make or break a business in the medium-to-long-term needs careful identification and scrutiny after early detection signs become evident. Over the years, studies have evidenced that there is a strong correlation between organisational culture, learning, market orientation, the degree of risk and resilience embedded within the firms. The role of leadership is undeniably paramount.

    Most often, it requires that rare ability to dive and drive through the unknown against the known patterns from the past. Leaders should gain new insights, work through new patterns, and determine timely and effective responses to any crisis. For example, during the pandemic, the primary function of leaders of large or high-growth firms was driving innovation, exploring new markets, and enhancing market share.

    When the pandemic struck, the immediate focus shifted to reducing costs while maintaining the essential liquidity! Most firms, big and small, faced supply chain and logistical impediments, downsizing the firms and other operational challenges on a daily basis. All of this while working through health and safety issues, managing remote working and also offering empathy to employees and their families.

    d) Talent Recognition and Retention

    During team meetings it is a good practice to delegate to the right people and establish ‘who’s who’ and ‘who’s doing what’ to avoid confusion and overlap of roles. Leaders need to break through the inertia for business continuity today, while increasing the odds of mid-to-long-term success by focusing on the few things that matter most. Above all they need to listen to advisors and smart people to seek insight and information from diverse sources, and not only from in-group sources. Effective leaders always extend their antennae across the diverse ecosystems in which they operate, while also creating a culture of accountability and transparency during tough times.

    e) Leading Change

    Most research on organisational change, cognitive flexibility of both leaders and followers, and also managing fast change illustrates a necessary connection between the ‘process’ and the ‘people’ part of the change. These 3Cs that unite effective change leadership are a) Communicate – leaders and followers need a continual discussion on the larger purpose of the change and how it would connect to the organisational values, and more importantly establish the purpose of change by focusing on ‘what’ and the ‘why’. B) Collaborate – aligning organisational values with personal values is something that effective leaders constantly strive for; we can nonetheless admit that doesn’t always happen. It is a level above when cross-cultural leaders bring people together to plan and execute change going beyond barriers of borders and boundaries. They should also include employees in decision making and thereby in a way solidifying their commitment to change while promoting inclusivity. C) Commit – research shows that leaders who negotiated a change successfully are resilient and persistent, and willing to step outside their comfort zone. On the contrary, unsuccessful leaders failed to adapt to challenges, started a blame culture while creating a toxic workplace environment, and were impatient with a lack of results.

    f) Leading Remote and Hybrid Work

    With hybrid working becoming increasingly formalised, leading a remote workplace becomes a key priority. This sudden change in the working environment comes with pros and cons and is new to all employees. So they need leadership to guide them through the transition.

    If your business has employees with more remote working experience than you, let them take charge. Feed off their expertise and appoint them to your business’ remote leadership team. This is the time for them to step up.

    Have communication plans ready. Many employees will have an area where they can relax and have a quick chat with colleagues, and a separate area where they can discuss pressing work issues.

    Businesses can recognise their ‘at-risk clients,’ who can cope with this eventuality to a certain extent. Similarly, losing staff can have the ripple effect on a small business of losing a clients, leading to a loss of revenue. A lack of profitability, in turn, leads you to have to make hard decisions as to which members of staff are worth retaining. Maintaining a ‘punishment’ or ‘fear’ culture makes people afraid of taking decisions and being accountable for their actions.

    Leading Dynamic Capabilities in SMEs

    Research into leadership shows how significantly they can affect the morale and confidence of staff (or followers). This will depend on the extent to which leaders perceive mistakes either to be opportunities for learning or leads to them brutally nudging their followers, thereby damaging the self-worth of the latter.

    As Sir Richard Branson once said, ‘clients do not come first, employees come first. Take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.’ Leadership, by its nature, can cultivate the foundation of a culture that empowers employees to achieve the company goals and allows you to recognise how vital each of their contributions are to furthering those goals. At the same time, the pandemic showed how important it is for a leader to diversify efforts and strive to innovate for future success.

    The core of any leadership’s role is to develop dynamic capabilities that allow organisations to respond and adapt effectively to rapid changes to the external environment. This includes sensing opportunities and threats, seizing opportunities, and transforming the organisation accordingly. This is particularly important for SMEs who may not have the scale or resources of larger firms but can excel through agility and innovation.

    By embedding a culture of learning, continuous improvement, and resilience, leaders can position their SMEs not only to survive crises but emerge stronger. This involves empowering employees at all levels to take initiative, encouraging experimentation and calculated risk-taking, and maintaining open communication channels to gather feedback and insights.

    Inherent Volatility

    Markets today are defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Thus, leadership can no longer be confined to positional authority or tactical decision-making. It requires a 360-degree orientation, one that integrates strategic foresight, operational discipline, emotional intelligence, and which exerts influences across hierarchies and functions. Effective leaders today must navigate crises not just by reacting to disruption but by proactively reimagining systems, realigning cultures at every level of the organisation.

    For SMEs in particular, the imperative is clear. Developing dynamic capabilities is no longer a luxury, but a strategic necessity. These capabilities, whether it’s cultivating a learning mindset or institutionalising innovation, allow small firms not only to survive shocks, but to emerge stronger and more competitive to shifting market demands.

    Crucially, leadership in this context is not merely about managing transitions; it is more about stewarding transformation, mobilising collective purpose, creating meaning in moments of ambiguity, and holding the long view while delivering in the present.

    As Peter Drucker rightly opined: ‘The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.’

     

    Feature Image: A highway sign discouraging travel in Toronto, March 2020

  • Banksy and Protest Rights: The View from The Robing Room

    As I sauntered from the Old Bailey past the RCJ the Banksy painting caricaturing a judge attacking a protester was no longer even a ghostly shadow, but it very much remains in the public domain, after reports emerged that it had been reported as criminal damage.

    On September 25, on Old Brompton Road, a comprehensive exhibition of Banksy’s work opened, which brazenly included the mural stencilled onto a different surface. This raised all sorts of issues about the commercialization of art and the edge of protest, not to mention whether or not he should be prosecuted.

    Based on Fiat Justicia, Mr Bansky faces prosecution for the recent RCJ Mural as criminal damage. I also hear he may be charged with being in contempt of court, leading to his long anonymity being exposed. Being named and shamed is another feature of our hysterical times.

    Recently, a bit like the opening to a P.J. Wodehouse novel, an erudite discussion was held among learned friends in the robing room of Hove Crown Court, steered by the most venerable member, as to whether the t-shirts, now selling fast, of this auspicious work should be deemed the proceeds of crime. The consensus was that in the U.K., post-conviction, the seller is responsible. Perhaps that is fanciful, but you never know.

    Policy considerations were also broached, such as whether in prosecuting him would you create a martyr that would lead to more t-shirts being sold? Would the state then be complicit in facilitating crime not least by increasing his revenues.

    Charles Dickens, his work the subject of many copyright violations and thieving particularly by Americans in his lifetime, expressed the view in Bleak House that it was far, far better to have nothing to do with the law. Well, it is certainly far better for the law to have nothing to do with Banksy, or is it?

    The consensus in the robing room was that given he is profiting from the mural, there was a strong argument for a significant fine, with the trial perhaps being conducted through in camera proceedings, preserving his anonymity, with any receipts being diverted back into the criminal justice system.

    Further, the venerable member concluded that he was inciting protest. The discussion took place over an entire lunch, and if any of us were briefed it would have occupied many days of court time, but should it occupy any court time at all is the real question?

    Mr Banksy, I am reliably informed, arrived at around 4-5am masquerading as a delivery truck driver. There was just enough light to use his meticulously prepared stencil. It is not now simply guerilla art, but increasingly reflective on worrying times. Many people are in on the act.

    The recreated version of the mural by Diiego Rivera, known as Man, Controller of the Universe.

    Diego Rivera

    Among the greatest painters of murals was Diego Rivera. His famous mural in the Rockefeller Center in New York was taken down because of his cheeky insertion of Lenin contrary to the edicts of one of the citadels of world capitalism. They destroyed it in violation of copyright law. An integrity right protects a work from being destroyed, mutilated or defaced or put it in an inappropriate setting.

    Examples of violations include colorizing a black and white film such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), or including ad breaks during the Monty Python parrot sketch, or inserting cover ups of nudity, such as even in the Sistine Chapel, but outright destruction is rare. Indeed, there was uproar in Berlin when some of the murals on the Berlin wall were destroyed.

    The Banksy mural was an insertion of overtly political content in a work of art, and the destruction or censorship of protest art has always been a feature of oppressive regimes. So, was the reaction disproportionate or ill-thought out?

    Mr Banksy is a national treasure, and frankly as great an artists as any in England since Lucien Freud. I suspect any prosecution will backfire or has, revealing institutional incompetence and hubris.

    The Banksy mural has significant political implications and presents authoritarian judges and the state cracking down on protest, not least in response to legitimate public outrage over Gaza, but what’s good for the goose is also for the gander. It is legitimate political art, but the regulation of protest as opposed to protest art is more complex now.

    Jasper Johns’s ‘Flag’, Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood,1954-55.

    Protest Rights.

    The flag of St George is also copyright protected, and very similar to the flag of Switzerland and indeed the Red Cross, but it has been traduced by maniacs spreading hatred and division. The visibility of the flag has increased significantly across England.

    It is now the case that English, Irish and indeed American national identity is as fragile as the American flag fractured and loose as in the Jasper Johns painting. The Irish tricolour is also a symbol of unity of green and orange, but is now potentially divisive. Extreme nationalism, along with racism, is one of the scourges of our time. It is a reversion in my view to the 1930’s – symptomatic of a new dark age.

    There is, of course, a marked distinction between genuine patriotism and the revival of tribalistic, exclusionary and racist nationalism. Not all patriotism to reference Jeremy Bentham is the refuge of the scoundrel.

    But racism and chauvinistic nationalism go hand in hand and generally morph into fascism. The target is the excluded other, now the immigrant. Nigel Farage is now proposing to remove those without a settled status.

    Timothy Snyder recently came off the fence in On Freedom (2024) labelling the alt-right fascists, after considering the etymology of the term. But is he also an enabler given some of the neoconservative views he has expressed?

    Let us cease bandying about anodyne terms like crypto-fascism and use language with precision and exactitude. There are now fascists and a gathering mob, but this has been engineered by, and is under the control of, others. Who then are the enablers is the crucial question?

    Is Banksy an enabler? I am not so sure

    Source: BBC.

    London Protests

    On the streets of central London recently I was reminded of three things: John Reed and Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), his blow-by-blow account of the Russian Revolution; the scene in Cabaret (1972) where, semi-fictitiously, Christopher Isherwood decides to leave Berlin after hearing a version of Horst Wessel being sung. Finally, surveying the hate-filled eyes I was also reminded of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935).

    I would argue that a similar species of Irish hatred is more vicious but far less powerful in electoral terms, bu there is now a real danger of the extreme right winning power in the U.K..

    Dozens of police officers were injured at the protests, yet only twenty-five arrests were made.  The counter demonstrators, understandably smaller in number, were non-violent, and let us be clear that a right to protest is intrinsic to democracy. Peaceful protest that is, an idea as old as Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Yet there were 500 arrests made at the peaceful Gaza protests in early October.

    This casts the right to protest into doubt, or at the very least demonstrates a need for greater regulation and proportionality. The insurrectionist riots and arson attacks on accommodation related to asylum seekers in Ireland in recent times is also a case in point, demonstrating the necessity of regulating (violent) protest.

    The Just Oil protesters, with others to come, were convicted under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCA) of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, in response to the M25 motorway disruption in November 2022. Judge Hehir dismissed the defence of mere political opinion and belief as excluded from the present English legislation.

    That decision undoubtedly opens a dangerous vista, but the crucial question is that of whether a demonstration potentially causes harm, and that one clearly could have caused harm, and it certainly caused a significant furore and inconvenience.

    “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

    Orange lily

    In the famous common law prosecution orange lily case Humphries v O’ Connor (1864) plucking an orange order lily from a woman in the nationalist area of Belfast was deemed a justifiable police act and regulation of protest, as the offending lily had the potential to cause a breach of the peace. This occurs when an individual causes harm, or if it is likely that they will cause harm to another individual or property, or if it puts another person in fear of being harmed.

    As Shakespeare put it in Sonnet 94:

    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
    Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

    But what harm or public nuisance has Banksy caused? He has frankly adorned RCJ with better artwork outside than there is inside. Is it really an incitement to protest in contravention of the law or a protest to survive?

    Ronald Dworkin, towards the end of his career, wrote an article on the Right to Ridicule peculiarly appropriate to Banksy. There are, for sure, limits, such as Enoch Burke silently or not so silently protesting outside his school. He is not an artist and most decidedly frankly a nuisance, disturbing children being educated. So perhaps certain forms of protest should be consigned to Mountjoy. But there are also demonstrators from Stop Oil, Gaza Extinction Rebellion residing, perhaps excessively, in custody in the U.K.. Now, perhaps a great artist in will be in there next. But that mural was created before 150,000 people turned up in central London.

    The great political artist of our time, a private and ostensibly decent man, should not be publicly prosecuted for making legitimate points of criticism, with a drawing that Goya Picasso, Schiele or indeed Hergé would have been proud of. Hergé’s TIN TIN books were about the Manichean divide between good and evil. So who is the demon today, the contemporary Captain Haddock?

    Banksy deserves an anonymous knighthood not public humiliation. He should be known by his self-designation and not outed by a magistrate’s court.

    Whether he should pay a fine for profiting commercially from the mural is a different question. After all, would he not approve of charges being pressed against the fascist mob that attacked the police?  Perhaps any proceeds should go to police wellness programmes?

    In the film Cabaret the Isherwood character says: “do you really think you can control them?” Well, Banksy do you? And are you encouraging them or inciting the mob, the robbing room sagely discussed.

    It is crucial to realize that the Populist alt-right and indeed at times the extreme left have served to reduce speech and protest rights in an increasingly vigilante age, and now use protest to destroy democracy. So be careful about admonitions of judicial crackdowns even through art. For many are using democracy to destroy the social democratic consensus. And fringe leftist protests such as Just Oil are not much better.

    So, the legal arguments about disproportionately cracking down on violent or even peaceful protests certainly are no longer as clear-cut as the mural might suggest.

    In the robing room the venerable member concluded that perhaps an arbitral solution might involve a private settlement, i.e. a charitable gift. But none of that settles the regulation of the right to protest, which is now increasingly fragile.


    Feature Image: Banksy mural, 8 September 2025.

  • Grandmothers’ Fight for Stolen Generation

    Review: A Flower Travelled in my Blood: The Incredible Story of the Grandmothers who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland.

    Between 1975 and the first half of 1978, it has been estimated that the Argentinian dictatorship under Jorge Rafael Videla killed and ‘disappeared’ 22,000 people. As far back as 1984, the National Commission of the Disappeared People (CONADEP) estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 people were disappeared by the dictatorship from 1975 to 1983.

    The rationale that “If they were taken, there must be a reason,” employed by Argentinians during the dictatorship in a bid for personal safety is immediately imparted in Haley Cohen Gilliland’s book, A Flower Travelled in my Blood: The Incredible Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children (Avid Reader Press, 2025). The book tells the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo – a group of grandmothers whose sons and daughters were disappeared by the dictatorship, and whose grandchildren were kidnapped and illegally adopted by members of the dictatorship’s state institutions.

    The book opens with the kidnappings of Jose Manuel Perez Rojo and his wife Patricia Roisinblit, who were both involved in left-wing activism and resistance with the Montoneros against the right-wing turbulence in Argentina that culminated in General Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship. Jose and Patricia’s toddler Mariana was taken to her grandparents by the parents’ kidnappers. In her late stages of pregnancy, Patricia gave birth to a boy while detained at the School of Naval Mechanics, known as ESMA.

    The book focuses on the Roisinblit family as it traces both Argentina’s dictatorship history and that of the Abuelas. Rosa Roisinblit, who passed away in September this year at the age of 106, was one of the Abuelas’ founding members. For Rosa, the disappearance of her daughter and abduction of her grandson altered her existence from a person who completely avoided mention of politics to a driving force behind the organisation that openly challenged the dictatorship. At first through persistent presence and silent protest at Plaza de Mayo, the Abuelas would find themselves at the helm of exposing the systematic disappearances of dictatorship opponents and their stolen children.

    Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla swearing the Oath as President of Argentina, 29 March 1976.

    Videla’s dictatorship attempted to avoid the scrutiny which the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ignited. Argentina obscured its description of opponents, and by doing so widened its net to encompass not only those involved in resistance but also anyone remotely linked to the disappeared detainees. The author notes, “For the junta, these covert abductions were the perfect tool: brazen enough to incite fear, but subtle enough that Argentines could pretend they weren’t happening.” As the “disappeared” started making its way into conversations and rhetoric, Videla himself utilised the word in a press conference to bolster dictatorship impunity: “The desaparecido is an unknown … they are an unknown entity, neither dead nor alive, they are disappeared.”

    Of Jewish descent but born in Argentina, Rosa at first turned to Jewish organisations and even the Israeli embassy for help, but none was forthcoming, despite the fact that many Jewish people had been detained and disappeared by the military dictatorship. Videla’s manipulation of Christian values to justify atrocities was also either tolerated or supported by the Catholic clergy in Argentina, leaving the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared with little recourse. It was during one such futile meeting that Azucena Villalfor, the mother of a disappeared detainee, determined to stage a protest at Plaza de Mayo – a gathering for relatives of the disappeared to recognise and know each other.

    Fourteen women gathered for the first meeting and the group later called themselves the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. It was from this group – the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – that the Abuelas formed their own distinct group, as they were looking for both their disappeared children and grandchildren.

    The Plaza De Mayo in Buenos Aires, where the grandmothers have consistently protested since 1977.

    When Rosa joined the group of women, she realised that some stories of the disappeared children held some commonality – some women were also looking for their grandchildren. As support for their mission grew, some people came forward to report that their neighbours suddenly were raising babies, despite no earlier signs of pregnancy. The first inklings that the junta in Argentina had systematically abducted their grandchildren came when two Uruguayan children were located in Valparaiso after being abducted from Buenos Aires in 1976. The transnational operation was linked to Operation Condor – a US-backed plan that sought to eliminate all Communist and socialist influence in South America, and in which Argentina also participated.

    Alfredo Astiz, a naval officer who worked as ESMA, was tasked with infiltrating the group, posing as the brother of a disappeared detainee. The bodies of two mothers and a nun, supportive of their cause, were discovered decades later in a mass grave as a result of this operation.

    The Abuelas followed up on clues to piece together the broken narratives that could shed light on the disappearances and illegal abductions, since it was clear that no help from the state would be forthcoming. The military would not divulge information about the disappeared and it was through contacting other human rights organisations and a breakthrough in genetic testing that the Abuelas were able to prove the identity of the stolen children they eventually tracked down, and those of the children who came forward after the fall of the dictatorship in 1981.

    Cohen Gilliland gives a detailed account of the forensic anthropology that was employed to identify the remains of the disappeared buried in mass graves, as well as the setting up of Argentina’s National Genetic Data Bank in 1987. American geneticist Mary King devised a grandpaternity test that would allow the analysis of DNA samples from the grandparents and grandchildren to prove their family lineage. Cohen Gilliland writes: “In many cases, such as Rosa’s, the Abuelas were looking for grandchildren who had disappeared while still in their mothers’ wombs.” Following the return to democracy, the grandpaternity test became accepted as evidence in court cases relating to the abducted and illegally adopted children of the disappeared.

    Argentina’s truth commission report noted the abduction of the disappeared’s children, stating: “When a child is torn from their legitimate family to be placed in another family environment chosen according to an ideological notion of ‘what is best for their salvation,’ a vile usurpation of roles is being committed.” The report also lauded the Abuelas’ work and determination to establish not only the identities of the stolen children, but also the contribution of their efforts towards seeking justice for crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship.

    “When a child is torn from their legitimate family to be placed in another family environment chosen according to an ideological notion of ‘what is best for their salvation,’ a vile usurpation of roles is being committed.”

    Despite the scientific success of genetic testing, several of the abducted grandchildren who came forth, as well as the Abuelas, did not anticipate the ramifications that disappearances and abductions would have on the affected families. Amid campaigns to discredit the Abuelas, and lawsuits contesting custody, the book illustrates how the dictatorships tore families apart and created new ones founded on torture, disappearances, abductions and lies. Reconciliation with biological family at times came at a cost, where justice was achieved at the expense of psychological trauma. Justice did not necessarily ease the endured past.

    This trauma is highlighted in the book through Rosa’s story and her search for her abducted grandson, Rodolfo, who was given the name Guillermo by the couple who raised him. While Guillermo – as he is referred to in the book – swiftly seeks out the truth about his identity, he is also faced with the repercussions of the decision. The psychological and emotional toll is evident as he navigates through two distinct realities: one in which the dysfunctional and abusive family he grew up with disintegrated, and the other in which he sought to reconcile himself with the history of his biological family, which should have belonged to him.

    One memory Guillermo narrates is his adoptive mother asking him, at the age of eight, what would happen if another woman claimed to be his mother. As memories of his past contend with the present, and the contradictions arise, particularly the discrepancies in his upbringing, Guillermo faces a major identity crisis. “You kidnapped the grandson of the vice president of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo,” he told Francisco Gomez, his adoptive father who worked for the military.

    Yet Gomez’s eventual arrest and its effects upon his adoptive mother brought a new round of implications for Guillermo, who found it difficult to distinguish emotionally between healthy and traumatic bonds. Even within his biological family, Guillermo and his sister became estranged over the rupture caused by the dictatorship’s abduction, despite the fact that Guillermo went on to become a lawyer and participate in bringing the dictatorship perpetrators to justice alongside the Abuelas.

    Milei shaking hands with Donald Trump in February 2025.

    Cohen Gilliand’s book is particularly important at a time when Argentina’s right-wing government is resolutely waging war against memory institutions in the country. Argentina’s quest for justice already faced hurdles during Mauricio Macri’s presidency, but current President Javier Milei has exceeded Macri’s measures since the start of his tenure, attacking not only sites of memory but also directly targeting the Abuelas. In a decree that was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies in August this year, Milei sought to remove the autonomy of the National Genetic Data Bank. This book treats the delicate subject of disappearances and abductions with dignity, yet with the clarity and sense of justice that must be employed against dictatorship oblivion.

    Feature Image: The mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo enter the former Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics detention center.