Cassandra Voices

Tag: 2019September

  • Reclaiming from Conservatism Perhaps the Greatest Irish Intellectual Edmund Burke

    A past competition, now sadly in abeyance, used to involve arguing over who was the greatest Irish intellect. The English held a similar competition some years ago and, unsurprisingly, chose Churchill ahead of Shakespeare.

    God knows what would happen if we had a referendum or phone-in-vote to decide this in Ireland today. Who might figure in our short-term attention span universe? Miriam O’Callaghan, Eamonn Dunphy or Bono present themselves as awful possibilities; Michael McDowell or even Leo Varadkar might even turn up.

    Yet, if we were to take such matters seriously, I think we should consider Edmund Burke the most influential and important Irish intellectual of all time. In fact, The Great Melody, as Conor Cruise O’Brien’s 1993 book on Burke is called – from William Butler Yeats’s 1933 poem ‘The Seven Sages’ – amplifies over time, and the poem unites Burke with Swift, and Goldsmith, in their hatred of oppression:

    The First American colonies, Ireland, France and India harried and Burke’s great melody against it.
    (from W. B. Yeats’s ‘The Winding Stair’, 1933).

    It is that hatred of oppression and injustice that makes him as relevant now as he ever was to Irish, U.K. and International Affairs. Of course, ‘The Great Melody’ of his life was a hatred of injustice, an overarching commitment to the truth and confrontation of the abuse of power.

    Commitment to the truth is badly needed in our post-truth universe, given the extent to which dissonance and disinformation has been disseminated by the alt-right and neo-cons.

    It seems deeply odd then that the right should venerate Burke and regard him as the founder and progenitor of Conservatism. George Bush had a plinth of him in the White House, as I believe did David Cameron.

    Republican Party ideologues, such as the towering figure of William F. Buckley, venerated Burke, and sought to convert Burkeian conservatism to nascent neo-liberalism. Buckley provided the intellectual foundations for this through such texts as God and Man in Yale (Regnery Publishing, 1953), and his editorship of the republic party intellectual rag The National Review.

    Buckley mis-translates Burke’s ideas into a diabolical, individualism or libertarianism. Indeed, other conservatives of that era despised Buckley for drawing Conservatism away from the spirit of Burke’s ‘community of souls’, and towards naked self-interest. This has led to the undermining of state institutions and now their actual takeover by the corporatocracy.

    Buckley was a brilliant but repellent human being, as is very evident in the documentary made about his media punditry with Gore Vidal during the 1968 American election (‘Best of Enemies’). He has had an enormous, understated influence in moving the Republican party, via Reagan, towards Libertarianism and the disaster capitalism that is with us now.

    Yet the Republican Party and indeed much of the present Conservative party are not conservatives in the Burkean sense. They are neo-liberal extremists.

    Traditional Conservatism

    Burke was a moderate Conservative in the Disraelian sense, dedicated to preserving those traditions that ought to be preserved, and his career is an idiosyncratic mixture of radicalism and conservatism. He believed in the desirability of change, but not for its own sake, and advocated that all transitions should be incremental, with antennae raised to unintended consequences:

    Burke was also a passionately anti-extremist. His oft-criticised text ‘Reflections on The Revolution in France/French Revolution (1790),’ is a harbinger of doom – that might apply to latter day extremism and jihadism.

    It came before the blood-letting of the Terror, and the rise of the authoritarian strongman, which he had predicted. Take a bow Mr. Bonaparte. Take a bow Mr. Varadkar. Take a bow Mr. Trump. Take a bow Mr. Orban. I included those three as I would argue that the neo-liberalism they implement is a form of extremism – a new-fangled corporate fascism. I very much doubt whether Burke would endorse its excesses.

    Unlike neo-liberals, Burke believed in an ideal of a community as a group of associative obligations and reciprocal interactions. A moral and networked community. In contrast, the neo-liberal ideology is based on social atomisation and fragmentation. As Margaret Thatcher put it: ‘There is no such thing as society only individuals.’ This is a view running contrary to a Burkean ethos.

    In contemporary terms Burke might even be described as a Rawlsian or, dare I say it, a Keynesian capitalist which is precisely what Buckley was attacking.

    Burke might also appeal to environmentalists as he saw community as inter-generational: ‘Society becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.’

    He held a defined sense of the public good that was not just where the dice landed in the casino capitalism of the market. Further, though a passionate advocate of rights and liberties, he was also a passionate advocate of restraint and moderation. He believed that rights should not be reduced to untrammelled liberties and licentious anarchy.

    Dislike of Crony Capitalism

    Though a conservative in terms of his invocation of habit, tradition and social order, as well as measures of fiscal rectitude, he was, conversely, an opponent of these in many respects.

    He led a hate campaign, lasting many years, against a man of significant merit, Warren Hastings and the East Indian Company, predicated, at one level, on dislike of the abuse of corporate and private power – what we now describe as ‘crony capitalism.’ This makes me certain he would have no truck with the excesses of neo-liberalism, the cartelisation of wealth and assets by elites, or the enforcement of austerity measures.

    After all, he grew up in an Ireland devastatingly captured by Dean Jonathan Swift’s satire ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729) –  also part of ‘The Great Melody’. The Malthusian liquidation of the poor and disenfranchised inflicted in that period by British absentee capitalists is now being revisited, this time by neo-liberal extremists, whether from Brussels, or Canadian and American vulture funds.

    Burke’s Irish background of course influenced a lot of what he did. It engendered sympathy with the underdog, which threads through his career and was perhaps in no small measure a product of his Quaker education.

    Burke believed in the free market and free trade but not cartels or monopolies. He would surely be horrified by the Ireland we see today: a country controlled by oligarchical capitalism, and ruled by vulture funds and banks, along with a Euro-cracy imposing austerity, after a catastrophe for which it shares responsibility.

    An important point to bear in mind about Burke was that he was effectively in debt for most of his life; the threat of bankruptcy exposing him to the peril of losing his parliamentary seat, and ending up, like Mr. Micawber, in a debtor’s prison.

    Many of these debts were accrued through a resolutely independent cast of mind, and failure to sell out or cash in. Remaining true to one’s principle, then and now, is a luxury few can afford.

    He did not univocally criticise the concept of a revolution, and indeed supported the American Revolution in the face of great criticism. His argument was that they had been the victim of oppression and an injustice, which is the stand he always took. I would go so far as to say he would support such groups as Extinction Rebellion, or in Ireland the Anti-Austerity Alliance.

    Perhaps he would even have supported Brexit for similar reasons to his support of The Boston Tea Party. He held a melange of contrarian views, curiously relevant to this day and age – a qualified support for justified rebellion reveals an intellect neither exclusively right nor left.

    His life is a fascinating study, and his global influence is perhaps only paralleled by a select number of other Irish lives, such as Roger Casement’s. Here is someone who was privy to the inner machinations of two establishments, and though an outsider – and only an intermittent parliamentarian – the greatest statesman of his age, if not by universal acclaim then by consensus.

    Statesmanship

    That of course leads to the question of what statesmanship amounts to.

    First, I believe it involves standing back from the fray and detaching oneself; retaining independence and objectivity. Secondly, it requires that one does not sing exclusively from the party hymn sheet or accept the whip. Thirdly, a statesman does not court popularity.

    All these attributes of Burke’s statesmanship are evident in a critical electoral pamphlet he wrote on his obligations to constituents. In short, he committed to representing their interests fearlessly, but as a representative not a delegate. He would take an independent stance and not simply act as an amanuensis or conduit of popular views.

    His independence of mind – as it always does – alienated many. His opposition to anti-extremism prompted opposition to the French Revolution, but support for the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution against British rule. This was intellectually consistent as the American revolutionaries upheld British values of liberty, and were subject to unjust rule from a distant, unaccountable, power. In deciding to oppose the French Revolution, on the other hand, he was resisting the rule of the mob and the sans culottes, with their appeals to abstract rights.

    This was also a conservative who inveighed against British injustice in Ireland. He was a staunch defender of the rule of law, and of the curtailment of arbitrary power, but he had little time for abstract rights. In this he was of course a product of his times. Indeed, Jeremy Bentham, his near contemporary, describe Natural Law as ‘nonsense on stilts.’

    He thus rejected the notional constitutional guarantees in the French Revolutionary Declaration of ‘The Rights of Man’ (1793). Similarly, the Irish Constitution exists in theory, but in practice the Court has done next to nothing over the past twenty years to protect the human rights contained therein, and curtail the abuses of state or private power.

    Far better for Bentham and Burke were empirically grounded protections, upheld by independent-minded magistrates. Both thus supported a legislatively grounded rule of law, not abstract aspirations, involving a precise relationship of rights to facts, and specific sets of circumstances.

    Through all of this in Burke there is a distinctly non-British quality, that of the wild Fenian intelligence, a passion grounded in reason, where rights are earned and injustices exposed through procedures and venerable processes.

    It is I think wrong to consider him a great theoretician. But he remains a great intellectual inspiration. Most of his central themes he expressed in ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into The Origin of our Ideas of The Sublime and The Beautiful’ (1757). There he displays empathy and imagination, a belief in social order but one related to religious belief. A commitment to human reason but an acceptance of bounded rationality.

    Thus, there are many themes that are not merely of historical interest but deeply relevant for the present day and age.

    Continued Relevance

    In summary, I regard Burke as the greatest Irish intellect of all time, as his ideas have stood the test of time and remain relevant to contemporary concerns. That relevance to our present dark age of late capitalism is for the following reasons:

    1. Burke offered a voice of reason and moderation, increasingly lacking in an age of extremes.
    2. He maintained a commitment to the truth and the rule of law, both of which are sorely lacking today That also entails a commitment to due process – although not airy notions of natural law which at times he is guilty of expressing. But in general his ideas follow the line that no man should be a judge in his own cause – an important point in view of how the corporatocracy now seeks to purchase justice and insulate themselves from prosecution.
    3. The statesmanship he adhered to was independent and uncompromised by support from vested interests; a politician must be able to distinguish between his private interests and the public interest or common good.
    4. Burke’s esteems for a community of interacting responsibilities recalls another of his contemporaries, John Donne, who wrote: ‘No man is an island.’ Burke is scathing of individual vanity and corporate greed that lays waste to communities – witness his often hysterical and sustained campaign against the not altogether nefarious Warren Hastings.

    In making the argument that Burke was the greatest Irish intellect, it is important to bear in mind that such a crown is not the sole preserve of left of right. Indeed, I can excuse his hatred of atheists. Then, and now, Irish Catholicism represents a pathological condition, and it obviously influenced an at times over-veneration of custom and tradition.

    I would argue that Burke also held too great an esteem for the common prejudice of the ordinary man. That is a dangerous approach used by ideologues of a deeply sinister variety, such as Mr. Bannon, who amplify an inherent fear of the other to dupe the masses.

    Burke did not uncritically accept the views of the common man, as is evident in his crisp understanding of the difference between being a representative, as opposed to a delegate on behalf of his constituents.

    He is admittedly only tenuously linked to the Enlightenment tradition of reason. Some, indeed, dismissed him as a mystic seer. Certainly, if he had met Voltaire at a dinner party that acid rationalist might have rudely dismissed him as a Romantic; another contemporary Edward Gibbons described him as ‘a rational madman.’

    Alas there is little intellectual tradition in Ireland of rigorous Philosophy, and what we are left with is Burke, who was not a systematic thinker, but a statesman, a writer, an orator and a commanding intellectual presence. He was a remarkably effective human being. His legacy for humanity is esteems for the rule of law, empiricism, anti-extremism, independence of mind and action, as well as moderation and balance. These are qualities in short supply in our time.

    I fear, however, that if a poll were to be taken in contemporary Ireland that it is more likely that it would be Jedward not Edmund who would come out on top.

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  • Musician of the Month: Stefano Schiavocampo

    The life of any piece of music is unpredictable. From its birth, flowing from the mind and fingers of the composer, the new-born takes delicate steps across rudimentary harmonies, revealing fragments of thoughts and emotions as it goes on. Its heart takes shape first, and then the brain. This can be sufficient.

    Sometimes a piece is sufficiently enticing and inspiring to be granted a degree of permanence through the cumulative enthusiasm of listeners. This has happened to many folk songs, created somewhere, somehow in the mists of time. Hearts and brains found a passage, a vehicle, through the lungs and fingers of others besides the author, raising the majestic creature to adulthood, until that moment when the song exists, in its own right, detached from the man or woman that translated it from the cosmic tongue.

    In this time of continuous noise, any musician releases their new-born with a sense of terror. How can one expose a beloved creature to this homogeneous ocean of grey matter called the Internet? Like nectar dropping into a pool of gasoline, its ripples will surely be swallowed by waves of ill-conceived music.

    That was my feeling anyway, until the editor suggested using this platform to release my latest record.

    Phew.

    Now I feel better. I may even try to tell you guys about it.

    In 2015 I left Dublin to its lunacy of multinationals. Not without regret. As a traveling musician I had found in the city a place to share, learn, and grow within myself alongside others. Under the jig-lit ceilings of pubs, the multiverse of festivals and the intimacy of tiny gigs in tiny places, I discovered a temporary oasis.

    Then, enough was enough, I embarked on a new adventure.

    For a long time after returning to my native Italy I felt torn and lonely. I was missing Ireland to the extent that it felt like a bereavement.

    At that point I got back into the work of a writer who has helped me understand the person I was while living on the island. I began translating into Italian John Moriarty’s mighty work Dreamtime, a project that remains to be completed. It was hard but illuminating work. Delving deeper and deeper, the map of the above-ground Ireland I had walked merged in my vision with a subterranean other world.

    As this happened a map of myself – displaced somehow – began to fit inside the edges of the Ireland I held in my heart, acting on it like sand-paper. Something had been released.

    I began to write furiously.

    The record opens with ‘Krymska’ (1), a song drawing on fragments of T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘Ash Wednesday.’

    Eliot has been among my favourite poets since adolescence. I return to him every year, always finding a little more depth, and even greater sense. The affinity between him and John Moriarty is huge: the same religious impulse arising from a deeply critical view of Western society and its cold, controlled rationality; finding resolution in the spiritual awakening of a man confronting nature alone, freed from the heavy structure of Catholicism and emancipated from a dominant materialism.

    These are feelings which we all have to deal with: what is our connection with the place we inhabit? What imprint am I entitled to leave on the land I walk?

    I believe a new wave of spirituality offers solutions to the injustices and devastations of our times: that is to say the gross inequalities in wealth and the rape of nature. But if we are to progress as humanity, we must first progress as individuals, finding within ourselves the essence of the world we wish to walk upon, and love. If you have read Krisnamurti you will understand.

    That is why I find these writers so inspiring: each traces a path towards a better Western man – someone who does not deny the mighty achievement of our society (democracy or theatre for instance), but passes them through a filter of a kind of spirituality often considered Oriental.

    And what a glorious turn in history it would be to witness a globalisation of spiritual beings!

    That is the main focus of my record, the title Metamorphose!, is both an invitation and an invocation to people around me and far away, and to myself too.

    In ‘Minotaur’ (2), a divisive political leader discovers that the walls he once erected among people are now divisions within his own psyche, and that the monsters he jailed for their individualities are now rising up.

    ‘And now it’s your time to tell me’ (3) is a love song to John Moriarty. It’s a eulogy to a metamorphic soul who has touched many aspects of being in this world.

    I love thinking of him now. Ethereal in a space of no judgment, unequivocally carnal and majestic, his spirit flies towards human consciousness helping us reach a critical departure. He softly bends a wand – like the lightest bird diving into the ocean – towards a raging humanity; a presence ultimately devoid of purpose and freed from desire. Oh what a perfect place for you to be at John.

    In ‘Desert dogs’ (4) I recall a strange incident when I was attacked by starving wild dogs while journeying through the Atlas Mountain in Morocco. In the song, they eat me alive, transforming me into one of them so I can survey humanity from another point of view.

    In ‘Metamorphose’ (5) I trace my family origins to discover the first seedlings of my disposition to change and capacity for adaptation to confront the abyss.

    ‘House by nowhere’ (6) is a parallel look at both the place I live in at the moment, an isolated house among Tuscan fields, and the Dublin life I led.

    ‘In its peace’ (7) is a folk tale for our troubled times. A migrant travels up towards the Mediterranean Sea, knowing it is both a place of departure and arrival, where all love ends and all love may start again.

    It took me then three years to arrange and record the album, and to find the right place to publish it. It is a little present to John Moriarty and to all his loving readers, a eulogy of sorts, which, although it may not exceed its form, carries all the hope that emerges from studying the intricate patterns woven by the author.

    For the full album click here:

    Sincerely, Stefano

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  • George

    Yesterday, I met George. Several times before I’d seen him working on my corner, where Pontchartrain Boulevard crosses Veterans Boulevard. For our part of New Orleans, he was unique. George was black, very black, and very strong. Very strong and yet very confined to a wheelchair. From a hundred feet down the street, I’ll tell you what stood out was how powerfully he propelled his chair.

    A few days before, I’d decided I would try to get to know George. Marginalized to the grassy median, he perches on its curb, and poised there, he hopes to benefit from oncoming traffic in the left lane. So approaching that corner in the far-right turning lane, I was always too far away from George.

    Over the last few years, by observation I’ve analysed the various types of our ‘corner workers’ around town. You’ll yield to the sort that wash your windshield, and find others looking for support, if you put your mind to it. I attempt to aid those in need and avoid financing the next fix for chronic alcoholics, addicts, and freeloaders. I suppose like most people, I lumped them all together, under the label ‘Bums.’

    But I learned a thing or two from my daughter. Leslie developed a kind of understanding with every panhandler on Royal Street. She regularly encountered the same characters on her daily walk home. She knew them and they knew her. Sometimes Leslie doled out the odd tip, but there was always a cordial exchange. That inspired my curiosity, and I began to chat up corner-workers. Pressing a few bucks into a palm, I’d politely inquire if I could “put a name to a face” and sometimes glean a little more about their particular challenges.

    So yesterday it was a little after 5 p.m. when I saw George on the far corner. I drove home, parked my car in our garage and took a $20 bill out of my wallet. That’s a far larger denomination than my typical handout. But by the time I walked back to the corner, George was gone. Like a flywheel, he reeled furiously back up Pontchartrain Boulevard and there was no way I would overtake him. But finally he paused at a spot I later learned to be his bus stop. And that’s where I gave him the cash. I told him my name and spent the next twenty minutes talking to George.

    He’s not tall but his barrel chest and muscular arms are topped by a big bald head. Missing a few teeth, he’s a true entrepreneur who knows his business. George has to be, because he’s got no legs.

    The right one ends just above his knee and the left is shorter. At forty-nine years of age, he’s been married to the same wife his whole life, and they have teenage children who’re doing well in school. Being on dialysis for seventeen years, he gradually lost his limbs. George lives in the 9th Ward of New Orleans where he and his wife bought their modest house years ago. He told me, ‘I wouldn’t continue if it wasn’t for my kids. I’d just be a homeless and live on the street, much easier.’

    George picks his corner work-stations carefully. Our corner sees desirable drivers coming from Lakeview, an affluent neighbourhood. The traffic light is long there. I mean it remains red for an excruciating length of time. Too bad George can only “work” the first car that stops in the left lane, as wheeling in the grass isn’t a viable option. All things considered, he said it’s worth the long trip across town from his home to here, that is, to my corner. George took the bus at 5:30pm, expecting to arrive home, with luck, by 7pm. That’s quite a commute after a day’s worth of gruelling work.  George is an exceptional individual. But I suspect everyone on the street has a story.

    The solution to homelessness and hunger is simple. We can sink these hardships in a single stroke. Let’s provide room and board for the ignored. Raise the minimum wage and those half a million people seeking shelter will be able to afford a home. We could make quite a dent in these sobering statistics for cents on the dollar. Building safe places with public baths where people can shower, and launder their clothes in a pinch, would be a cinch. Some presidential candidates propose to eliminate poverty by instituting a universal stipend for all citizens. Why? Because the expense compares favourably to the price of programmes already on offer; those outdated doles that drain our coffers.

    All we lack now is the political will, written down in black and white, up on Capitol Hill. Clearly, cost can’t be a factor, when the impact of a fairly assessed universal income tax promises a pax humana. But in the land of milk and honey, our politics are controlled by money. Money that slobbers over obstacles, when if wisely spent it will pave the way toward intelligent jobs, and deployment for the indigent. There exists plenty enough to forge a gorgeous future. For all of us. You, me and George.

    Featured Image Jacob Pynas ‘The Good Samaritan.’

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  • Exclusive: Brazilian Indigenous Leader Condemns Failure to Protect the Amazon

    Institutes such as the Amazon Man and Environment (IMAZON) and the National Space Research (INPE) have pointed to increased deforestation throughout the Amazon region. Although the data preliminary, the increase in the range of felling and burning is very significant, raising major concerns over the safety of indigenous peoples.

    Francisco Piyãko, leader of the Ashaninka tribe and president of the Juruá River Indigenous Peoples Organization (OPIRJ), warns Brazilian society about the consequences of these criminal acts, the Amazon being one of the main regulators of the global climate and rainfall.

    Today, in this forest, we are witnessing and seeing the fire, which is burning the Amazon as a whole. this deforestation, this impact which has no borders.

    This is going to be very bad for all of us.

    We saw São Paulo getting dark because of the smoke one afternoon.

    We need to have the ability now to understand the reality that nature has a limit.

    The Amazon doesn’t have the size; it does have a certain capacity to deal with this situation for a while, but it can lose this capacity; and without the Amazon, everyone living here will suffer a lot, but it won’t be just here. We all need to understand this.

    The value of forests cannot only be thought of in our generation; it is our future!

    If we all understand the importance of the forest, it makes it simpler for us all to unite around this cause.

    We cannot have and see the Amazon as something that is not ours, no matter where you are.

    Millions of poor people are starving around of the world.

    They are miserable because we destroy everything.

    And we are still thinking of burning more.

    What thoughts do we have to help the state, the country, the government, and humanity to rethink again the future?

    I think that we are here, to show as one the biggest examples for the history of the world, to protect the forest – with awareness, and with valuing the diversity as well as the culture and species that the jungle gives life to today.

    (translated by Bartholomew Ryan)

    Deforestation is a long-term concern. Smoke from forest fires has already spread to cities, with consequences for human health; it degrades the soil to such an extent that small-scale agriculture becomes impossible. Deforestation directly affects families that are trying to survive in the jungle.

    In the long run, the destruction of the Amazon accelerates climate change, affecting agriculture and drinking water consumption worldwide, as well as destroying biodiversity that is invaluable to the national economy and the region’s residents.

    Among farmers, unfortunately, all the talk of is of a new freedom to destroy the forest. Connected to this is the dismantling of national policies to combat deforestation and promote economic alternatives, such as that administered by the Amazon Fund, along with attacks on NGOs set up to protect the Amazon region, including INPE, IBAMA and ICMBio.

    Article translated by Felipe Lopes.
    Images     © Arison Jardin

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  • Last Days in RTÉ – ‘I came to kill you’

    In 1967, the fidgets struck again. That was the year my mother died, rapidly following my father.

    I confess now that I was not obviously upset by the deaths of my parents. In the culture of my generation and class, love, certainly any public expression of it, was an embarrassment. Such namby-pamby language was confined to the worship of film stars, sentimental songs, Jesus Christ and drink. This lack I often regret, having, in the area of emotional expression a limited palette.

    Affection, attachment, addiction, obsession, sentiment, desire, lust, liking, fondness – I am familiar with them all. But love itself is awkward territory, partly because the language of its expression is so inadequate, so debased that I have come to believe that, ‘whereof man cannot speak, let him be silent.’ Predictably, when I am confronted by the technicolour emotions of a funeral, however tragic, what usually comes to mind is a black and white war etching by Goya whose chilling caption is: ‘Shut up and bury your dead.’

    But this is merely a defence, a carapace adopted because I have a dread of being caught weeping, which weakness I am occasionally prone to, especially on occasions musical. Only an embarrassed few have ever been allowed to witness this, my Achilles heel.

    Besides, there is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, ‘Goldengrove’, in which a young girl, Margaret, grieves over the fall of Autumn leaves. Hopkins gently points out to her that as she ‘grows older she will come to sights colder’ and realise that it is actually her own demise she mourns. This applies to all funerals.

    I have no doubt that my parents – from their astral heights, of course – now understand the convolutions of my career. Including, for instance, why I declined to have my own children baptised in any faith, and why I have sung in both Catholic and Protestant choirs with no residue of belief in either of their dogmas – except as a useful social glue. I also admire the Semitic cultures of both Islam and Judaism and wish they would return to their pre-colonial mutual tolerance. My bets are therefore hedged. Music is my sole spiritual sustainer and default position on religion.

    What else could one expect from a flibbertigibbet?

    Decision Time

    Finally in 1967 I had had enough of the commercial dimension of television corrupting the concept of public broadcasting. Brilliant people in advertising were conspiring with TV managers, using reason to control the irrationalism of the masses and turn them into numbered consumers. But vestiges of common sense told me I needed to learn more about how the real world worked.

    A friendly philosopher, the late Jack Dowling, advised me to study Shakespeare. That was not drastic enough for me. I went to the RTÉ Programme Controller, said I had developed mental indigestion and was leaving television. That aesthetic man with a cigarette holder, the late Michael Garvey, said ‘stay brave’ and told me he would treat it as a sabbatical and pay my salary for three months. In retrospect it felt like compassionate leave. I got character references from people like Professor Ivor Browne and Mother Mary Nicholas and other sane people with whom I had made films. I then persuaded Tomás Roseingrave to get me into the University of Antigonish as an auditor in sociology. That’s when I really woke up.

    The philosopher, poet and ex-Jesuit Philip McShane once wrote to me: ‘Happy the man who preserves his illusions’. In Nova Scotia all of my more naïve illusions were demolished. I met Philip again, at a New Year’s party in Antigonish. Our pleasure at renewing acquaintance, expressed in the normal Irish epithets that hide affection e.g. ‘howiya, you old bollocks’, was overheard by our host, an old-fashioned Belfast Catholic immigrant. This stocky little man exploded, shouted that he would not tolerate ‘such fackin language in my house,’ and summarily evicted us into the snow and sub-zero temperature. We started walking, Philip forgetting his new young wife in the excitement. Loyally she followed in her car and saved us both from hypothermia.

    Through lectures in sociology, especially from Italian-American Vito Signorile,  I learned about the relativity of all cultural concepts, including religion, even knowledge itself. Vito was married to a feisty woman from Northern Ireland and he warned me about women: ‘When she has her period, she’s a monster.’  I learned that lesson too late.

    The last absolute I vainly clung to was a simplistic version of Marxism, even contradicting a young lecturer who derided that ideology as one which had never caught on. I sharply reminded him that Marx had not set a time limit for the self-destruction of Capitalism. That marvellous event did not happen for another forty years, in 2007, not too long after Socialism itself had self-destructed.

    Peace Outbreak

    My innocence of political reality also received a cold douche. To acquaint the Canadian students with their democratic system the youngsters were encouraged to imitate the national parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal – by organising elections and establishing a mock parliament.

    We on the Left won in a coalition with the Liberals. On the first day of ‘Parliament’ we heard shots outside and a bunch of rifle-toting students on the defeated Conservative side burst into the formal Assembly. They were shouting that it was illegally constituted. Prudence suggested we leave  with dignity.

    One of the young gunmen, barring our way out, had his jaw broken by my closest friend there, Deets Kennedy, son of a tough Cape Breton miner. As I nursed a hangover on the following day I ruminated on life imitating art and thought hard about democracy. In case the vote didn’t work in your favour, you carried a blackthorn stick or a gun. What an effective system was democracy! At least in Ireland we merely forced the people to vote again and again until they got a referendum result right. I know what Deets Kennedy’s father would do in such a situation.

    I met Mr. Kennedy for the first and only time at a family wedding up in Sydney, Cape Breton. I felt honoured to be invited. On the way back from the formal nuptials Deets drove the car and entrusted his father to me, saying that no matter what happened I must keep his father beside me in the back seat. The earnestness of his request suggested to me that there were tribal tensions abroad.

    There had, of course, been drink taken. On the way, Mr. Kennedy behaved like a lamb, singing softly in my honour ‘Shall My soul pass through oul Ireland’ to the tune of Kevin Barry. The convoy stopped outside our party destination, Deets got out with a curt ‘You two stay there.’ Some altercation developed in front of the car. I leaned forward to try to identify the cause of the melee. When I turned to inquire of Mr. Kennedy as to the cause, he had vanished from my care. I soon recognised him on the footpath ahead, delivering a haymaker to one of the disputants.

    Deets later told me that the recipient was another son, always a troublemaker. Peace broke out and we had a wonderful party. I could only think: it is a devoted father who can identify and instantly defuse the one psychopath in the family, thus restoring equilibrium to the celebrations.

    I was a slow learner in every respect, trying to work things out rather than learn them by rote as I had once done with the penny catechism.

    Star-Gazer

    In December of that year I came home to assist in burying my mother and stayed for Christmas. At the wake in Hazelbrook Road, Terenure, I revealed to five grieving siblings and in-laws that each of the countless zillions of stars in the cosmos consisted of at least one departed human soul. It was, if not a metaphysical, then certainly a mathematical, possibility. Therefore our mother still existed. Despite my siblings’ reluctance  to accept this consolation, I persisted.

    I told them that no matter how simple and blameless a life such as our mother’s might seem, each human personality was so complex as to be beyond our ken and could not vanish into nothingness. The brain itself was a miracle of billions of electro-chemical processes. As it was largely unused during a person’s life, the reality of death must focus it wonderfully. In the final micro-second into which a life such as our mother’s was frantically compressed, there must be a surge of energy imaginable as no less than nuclear fusion. This process must transform the soul into an eternal incandescence. Simply put, the soul turns into a star.

    They should therefore not grieve for the dear departed but enjoy the astronomy.

    A tidy arrangement, I felt, having just read Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of the Noosphere.

    This Jesuit palaeontologist had daringly suggested that the human capacity for reflex thought must evolve into a girdle of consciousness enveloping the planet. He called it the Pleroma and his religious superiors were not happy about his invention. I now suspect that members of my extended family also took my soul-stirring ideas with a pinch of salt.  They guessed that my peroration was a front for grief.

    Thinking back, my speculation required no more a leap of faith than the incredible religion in which we were reared and which I abandoned long ago. In my ripe old age I still believe my invention to be as reliable an explanation of life’s ultimate mystery as anything Aquinas or Avicenna, Darwin or Hawkins or Dawkins, Ibn Sina or even De Chardin invented. And for a practical reason: human consciousness is a form of energy and as such, if we are to believe Einstein, cannot die or decay; it can only transform itself – exactly as water gaily does from liquid to ice to vapour. There can be no limit to the transformation of us bundles of energy.

    Around that time too, I ceremonially flung an old copy of the same penny catechism into a fire. Jack Dowling reminded me quietly that people who burned books were capable of burning people. That pulled me up short.

    In January 1968 I returned to Nova Scotia to complete my ‘studies’ and at term’s end to have a look around North America. For three months another friendly Dominican monk named Luke Dempsey and I drove around that mighty continent, staying buckshee in his Order’s monasteries.

    We called on Chicago, New Mexico, Death Valley, San Francisco, even visited Las Vegas for an overnight. The highlight of that was a breakfast where we perched at a bar and the waitress shimmied along behind it. Her walkway was so elevated that her magnificent thighs moved directly at our eye level. To notice Luke’s eyes modestly concentrating on his empty plate was a hilarious reminder of how fortunate I was not to have had a call to the religious life.

    When we finally came back to Nova Scotia I had a lovely reunion with a sensitive mother of two, named Zane whom I had met in Montreal months before. Skinny-dipping in the local river was delightfully involved. When I returned to Ireland I wrote a poem about our encounter which fortunately I have mislaid. It could never compete with Solomon’s ‘Song of Songs’, astonishing love poems which I encountered at the back of the Catholic Sunday missal when I was an adolescent. They carried me through many a boring Mass service and subsequently came in useful in the business of wooing maidens.

    ”B e h o l d ,   t h o u   a r t   f a i r ,   m y   l o v e ;   b e h o l d ,   t h o u   a r t   f a i r ;   t h o u   h a s t   d o v e s ‘   e y e s   w i t h i n   t h y   l o c k s.

    T h y   l i p s   a r e   l i k e   a   t h r e a d   o f   s c a r l e t ,   a n d   t h y   s p e e c h   i s   c o m e l y :   t h y   t e m p l e s   a r e   l i k e   a   p i e c e   o f   a   p o m e g r a n a t e   w i t h i n   t h y   l o c k s .

    T h y   t w o   b r e a s t s   a r e   l i k e   t w o   y o u n g   r o e s   t h a t   a r e   t w i n s ,   w h i c h   f e e d   a m o n g   t h e   l i l i e s .”

    They may have been intended as paeans of praise to the Creator but I found them pleasantly erotic. My course was fixed.

    ‘Spitting blood’

    One night in 1968, having returned from Canada to resume my job in RTÉ, I saw darkness in the pale face of a man at the bar of Kiely’s pub near the RTÉ studios. I recognised him as Ed, the ex-husband of Zane. What was he doing in Ireland and especially in my neck of the woods? The old antennae of guilt immediately told me this was no coincidence, that there was something awry. My instinct was to clarify matters. I approached the bar and engaged him in as light a conversation as one can have with a brooding man. He was very pale, spoke in grim monosyllables and said he was staying in a nearby B&B. He told me he had hitched a lift from Montreal on a Canadian Air Force plane. I had never known he was a military man.

    Ignoring his clear hostility, I put on a show of welcome and resolved to keep him in my sights. I warmly insisted he come home for a drink in the house in which I was staying. After the short, wordless drive to mine host Dinno’s place, the latter – normally a sociable figure – excused himself and left the house. He told me later: ‘One look at that man’s face and I decided I wasn’t going to sleep under the same roof’.

    I didn’t sleep much that night, either.

    Next morning I boiled eggs for Ed and, as casually as possible, asked had he any particular schedule. ‘I came to kill you,’ he quietly said. So that was clear. I learned that he held me responsible for the break-up of his marriage. It was post-facto revenge because I had been given to understand by his wife that their marriage was long ended.

    ‘You really want to have a go at me?’ I asked. He nodded grimly. There was no getting away from it.  What could I say except: ‘I know the very place.’

    On the way to the wide open spaces of the Phoenix park he explained in detail that the Canadian Air Force had trained him in unarmed killing. He so worried me that I called in to my production assistant in the TV station, explained the situation and told her that, if I had not returned before lunch, she should send out a search party

    In a secluded spot in the Park we faced each other. By now I was more than nervous about his deadly skills. I had not had a fistfight since I played rugby but strict rules had governed that form of barbarism. Neither had the Marquis of Queensbury legislated for this circumstance. Ed ordered me ‘Take off your glasses.’ I reluctantly removed them, placed them carefully on my jacket and prepared for the worst. As I turned to meet my fate I was barely in time to dodge a sucker punch from Ed.  Fright made me go slightly berserk. I probably had the advantage in weight and after some minutes of my wild pummelling at him he held up his hands in submission.

    I drove him down to the nearest pub in Islandbridge where he vomited up the reviving brandy with which I plied him. As I deposited him at his B&B in Donnybrook I volunteered to meet him again that evening and show him the sights.

    He looked puzzled: this was no way to treat a sworn enemy. I pointed out that he was, after all, the son of Dublin emigrants to Canada but knew nothing of their city. The truth was, I felt sorry for him. When I later met him in the Scotch House on Burgh Quay he confessed to spitting blood since our altercation.

    I whisked him off to St. Vincent’s Hospital, then in Leeson St.,  where they decided to keep him overnight. He knew no-one in Dublin except myself, who dutifully called to the hospital the following day.  A nurse reported that Ed was suffering from kidney damage but had already signed himself out of the hospital, presumably to hitch an airlift back to Canada. I never heard from him again.

    Last year, in an email from his daughter – she found me on Facebook, where else?  – I learned that Ed’s curtains had recently been closed by cancer  and that our ancient encounter was now part of their family history.

    His daughter wanted the truth. I wrote a short hagiography of her father, stressing the honourable way he had tried to exact satisfaction from me. This was true. I had not realised that Ed was actually a mild-mannered dentist in the Air Force; he had probably never engaged in anything more violent than extracting a tooth. Apart from his pre-emptive, sabre-rattling about unarmed combat which had incited my overkill, the only other detail worth remembering is that, in Ed’s report of the encounter with me, he said ‘the old man was fitter than I thought.’ This ‘old man’ was thirty-three years of age at the time.

    Everything is relative.

    Resignation and Return

    ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind’, quoteth the tearful lady herself when she landed on my doorstep some weeks later. She and Ed  had physically fought for possession of their two young children in the mud of their farmyard. She had lost the grim struggle and got the next plane to Ireland. I had not the indelicacy to respond: ‘It never rains but it pours’. We spent a short while seeing the sights that Ed never had. She returned to Canada and married a sculptor.

    Not long afterwards I resigned from my permanent, pensionable post in RTÉ, bought an old Volkswagen and drove to Tehran and back with my first wife-to-be. That is quite another story. Alone on the return journey home at Christmas I developed a mild but uncomfortable form of tuberculosis called epididymitis which related to the testicles.

    It meant a short stay in hospital where, besides telling me I had various similar lesions on my lungs which had cured themselves, a specialist said I could never father a child. Recovering fast, but having spent all my pension contributions on the trip,  poverty forced me to crawl back and ask for contract work with RTE.

    Compassionate as ever, the organisation welcomed me and set me to the unexpected task of making a history series for children. I knew this new job was a prudent test of my boredom threshold but I persevered for four months. Then one day on a filming excursion to Belfast I had a discussion with Pat Kavanagh, the solid cameraman.

    It was 1969, one of the years when there was a questioning of all certainties.

    ‘Never trust anyone over thirty’ was one mantra. Another was ‘selling out to the system’. Yet another was: ‘If you’re going to commit suicide, take one with you.’

    Over a liquid lunch in Newry I stoutly maintained to Pat that there was a single unique point in every life when the decision to ‘sell out’ was made. Or not. He disagreed and perceptively said that capitulation to the system just crept up on a person gradually – usually accompanied by a mortgage. I agreed: we were mere puppets on strings. But it was time we looked up and noticed who was pulling the strings.

    I had no mortgage, nor any other responsibilities. I declared that here and now was one of those points of decision and ordered him and the crew to follow me to the West of Ireland. Reluctantly they followed because in those hierarchical times the crew accepted a producer/director as the unchallengeable boss. I would never get away with it now.

    I led the convoy all the way across Ireland to Roonagh pier in Mayo where we boarded the ferry for Clare Island. Then I wrote a letter for my female assistant to bring back to the station. Its intention was to exonerate the crew from any accusation of being willing accessories to my solo flight of fancy.

    A day later my immediate Head of Department, Maeve Piskorski, arrived on the island to persuade her prodigal protege to return to work. After twenty-four hours of pleasantly lubricated argument she departed without me, shaking her head in bewilderment. And that was the end of my RTE career and, I vowed, the end of my involvement with film and TV. I stayed on Clare Island for a couple of months, the guest and labourer of Michael Joe O’Malley, sheep farmer and philosopher.

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  • An Open Letter to the Irish Supreme Court in Response to the Angela Kerins Decision

    To My Fellow-Citizens in the Supreme Court,

    I write this letter because I think your decision in the Angela Kerins case creates a crisis in the government of this country. It will be critical of that decision and of some decisions of your predecessors, but please do not react to it defensively, or reject it out of hand.  Its aim is to urge you to address and cure a problem, and it invites a positive response, though it does not hide or gloss over the fact that if its arguments are right, you and your predecessors share much of the responsibility for the problem it discusses.

    The ‘Doctrine’ of Enumerated Rights

    Article 15.2.1o of our Constitution vests in the Oireachtas the sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State. The role of judges is to administer justice in courts established by law (Art 34.1) and every judge promises to uphold the Constitution and the laws (Art 34.5.1o). The Constitution you promised to uphold, obviously, is the text the Irish People adopted, enacted and gave to themselves in 1937, with any amendments made by referendum since then.

    The laws you promise to uphold can only be those enacted by the Oireachtas under its sole and exclusive power. The only limit on that power is that if the Oireachtas enacts a law that is ‘repugnant to the Constitution or any provisions thereof’, you are authorised to annul it. (Arts 15.4.1o and 34.3.2o). But since 1965 judges have put a gloss on that concept.

    The following is an attempt to describe how it operates: first, you entertain claims by Plaintiffs that they have a legal right not mentioned in the Constitution; then you label the claimed right an ‘enenumerated right’; next you deem that an ‘unenumerated right’ to be included in the text of our Constitution, though it is not, so that finally, you annul legislation incompatible with that ‘unenumerated right’, as though it had been ‘repugnant to the Constitution’ within the meaning of Article 15.4.1o.

    Undeniably, this process has produced good results. It liberated Mary McGee from a situation where she and her husband had to choose between celibacy and her probable death, because of a foolish law, with sectarian overtones, that forbade the importation or sale of contraceptives. It also contributed to partially dismantling our disgraceful ‘Direct Provision’ system, though only by ignoring the fact that (with one exception) our Constitution guarantees rights only to citizens. But it is open to criticism on the following grounds:

    1. It allows you effectively to amend our Constitution by deeming it to include provisions the Irish people did not vote for;
    2. It thereby circumvents Article 47 of our Constitution, which provides that only we, the Irish People, may amend it;
    3. Good government requires that citizens should be able to find out what the law is. Nobody can tell in advance what new ‘unenumerated right’ you judges are going to discover or what existing Statute you may annul. So, nobody can say for sure what the law is.
    4. Judges introducing new rights into our law involves two things. First, it means you repeal Statute Law enacted by the Oireachtas, as if it were repugnant to the Constitution, though it is not.  (You may label the process annulment, not repeal, but that is a legal fiction.)  Secondly, it means you make law.

    All of these are serious matters, but the fourth is the most worrying to a thoughtful citizen. Our Constitution’s primary aim is to create a democratic State, where all powers of government derive from the People (Arts 5 & 6). In order to achieve that objective, it does a number of things.

    First, it declares that all citizens are equal before the law (Art 40). Next, it requires elections to the Dáil to be by proportional representation, and provides that elections cannot be indefinitely postponed, so that the Dáil must return reasonably often to the People to renew its mandate (Art.16). Then, it ensures that the Dáil will be the dominant House of the Oireachtas (Arts 16, 23 & 24). Finally, it vests in the Oireachtas the sole and exclusive power to make laws for the State (Art 15.2).

    These Articles together constitute the machinery that delivers to the Irish People a State where all citizens are equal, all have equal rights to vote for our representatives, and to remove them if they fail to satisfy us, and those representatives are the only people who may make laws for that State. They are the machinery that delivers the democracy our Constitution promises. Any interference with that machinery undermines our democracy.

    Our Constitution says your function is to administer justice in Courts established by law (Art 34.1). But what does ‘justice’ mean? Or, to put it another way, who decides what justice requires and what it permits? Is it for you judges to define what is just and what is not, and to decide issues that come before you accordingly?

    Or does someone else decide what justice requires, and is your authority limited to administering justice, not defining it? The answer must surely be in Article 15.2, mentioned above, which vests the sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State in the Oireachtas. Clearly, neither the drafters of our Constitution nor the citizens who in 1937 voted to adopt it intended that there should be two systems of right and wrong in the State, one consisting of laws made by our elected legislators and another, identified by judges, called ‘justice,’ and superior to mere law. That would be inconsistent with the basic promise of our Constitution, that ours is to be a democratic State. It would also be absurd.

    Only one view seems tenable. The function of judges is to administer laws made by the Oireachtas in any issue that comes before them that is governed by Statute Law. If an issue comes before a judge and there is no Statute governing the facts of the case, a judge should decide it consistently with what he or she considers justice requires. If the issue is governed by Statute Law, the judge must apply the law, as he or she undertook to do when first appointed to the Bench. A message to the Oireachtas suggesting that its legislation may not be perfect and might advantageously be amended is as far as a judge would be entitled to go – and would probably be welcomed and respected by our legislators.

    Let me expand briefly on the importance of the Oireachtas. In all representative democracies the elected legislature faces the most difficult and responsible task, that of deciding what kind of society it should be, at many different and not always compatible levels, and shaping it to their blueprint by enacting legislation. If there is a hierarchy between the different organs of government, the legislative is the most important and responsible, and the others owe it deference. The primary duty of the other organs is to give effect to the decisions of the elected legislature.

    Our Constitution is the direct expression of the People’s will, so no Statute may be passed that is incompatible with it. Judges decide whether a Statute is incompatible with our Constitution, and if it is, declare that the impugned Statute is not part of our law. But the question you address must surely be: ‘Is this Statute compatible with the People’s Constitution?’ It should not be: ‘Is this Statute consistent with a right that judges think should form part of Irish law?’

    My conclusion is that since 1965, relying on a questionable obiter dictum of one of our most thoughtful judges, John Kenny in Gladys Ryan v. A.G ([1965] 1 IR 294.), judges have been acting in a way that our Constitution does not allow, and have gradually augmented your authority at the expense of the People’s elected representatives. This citizen’s response is to thank you for the benefits you have conferred on us in many cases – and to ask you to stop.

    To any suggestion that this would remove protection for human rights in Ireland, my answer is that the comprehensive European Declaration of Human Rights now forms part of our Statute law, and any future decision to extend legal protection to other rights not currently defined and protected should be made by legislators, not by judges.

    ‘The Abbeylara’ Decision

    If this letter were to discuss this decision in detail it would become intolerably long, so I will only say that neither the High Court nor your Court seems to have considered in depth the needs of the Oireachtas or its powers. To serve us well, it needs to access accurate and reliable information on topics that may call for legislative intervention. And its power to make laws must surely include power to enable itself to gather and assemble such information, and to decide how to do so. Nor, as the text of the judgments shows, did either Court show the Oireachtas much respect.

    The Angela Kerins Decision

    Your decision in Angela Kerins v. McGuinness and others ([2019] IESC 11 & 42.) has to be seen against that background. We do not need to examine Ms. Kerins’ claim except to note that it was made against members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Dáil arising from how they had spoken to her and questioned her when she attended one of their meetings.

    When the Irish people adopted our Constitution in 1937, we adopted a rule going at least as far back as the 17th century that our legislators should be answerable to their constituents and to nobody else, including judges. So we provided in Article 15 that they should be immune from legal claims for how they might do their work.

    This was not some whimsical gift to public representatives but a decision, both principled and hard-headed, that we needed to give them this immunity if they were to serve us as we wanted to be served. That is how the High Court approached Ms. Kerins’s claim, and it is worth quoting from its judgment:

    For upwards of four centuries it has been recognised in common law jurisdictions throughout the world that the courts exercise no function in relation to speech in parliament. This is fundamental to the separation of powers and is a cornerstone of constitutional democracy. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech in parliament, not to protect parliamentarians, but the democratic process itself. The constitutional order requires that speech in parliament remain unfettered by considerations such as jurisdiction. If members of either House were constrained in their speech in the manner contended for by the applicant, the effective functioning of parliament would be impaired in a manner expressly forbidden in absolute terms by the Constitution.

    Your principal decision runs to fifty-six pages in single space typing, and its conclusion is:

    The privileges and immunities of the Oireachtas, while extensive, do not provide an absolute barrier in all circumstances to the bringing of proceedings concerning the actions of a committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

    The rationale for that conclusion appears on p.41, paragraph 9.27 and also on p.53, paragraph 15.2 (iii). The reason for keeping judges out of our National Parliament, obviously, is that the Oireachtas should do its work without interference by the Courts. But you insert an additional word, “undue”, before “interference”.  Obviously only judges can decide what interference would be “undue”. That word accordingly allows the judges to enter Leinster House, and adjudicate on what happens there. It negates the wording, and, more important, the intention of the Constitution.

    The Dáil as substitute defendant 

    Faced with the immunity we have conferred on our representatives, you decided that the Dáil should be held responsible for actions by its members you considered were unlawful. That decision seems to me to lack logic, for four reasons.

    First, you accept that Ms. Kerins has no right of action against T.D.s who upset her, but instead of dismissing her claim you substitute new defendants, so that she suddenly has a right of action, not against those who (she says) injured her, but against other people, who didn’t.

    Secondly, in order for one person to be legally liable for another person’s action (what lawyers call ‘vicarious liability’) that action must have been wrongful. But Article 15.13 of our Constitution forbids you to decide that the members of the PAC acted wrongfully. If there is no primary liability there can be no vicarious liability.

    Thirdly, how can the Dáil be liable in justice if some of its members acted wrongly?  If I choose an employee, offer him a job and tell him how to do it, I have responsibility for how he does his work, and may fairly be told to pay up if he injures someone while doing for me the work I hired him to do. But the Dáil does not select T.D.s and Senators. We do. Nor may it supervise or control how legislators perform their functions. That would be inconsistent with democracy. If a T.D. has done something he or she should not have, how can the Dáil be to blame for the actions of people it did not select and cannot control? Making it legally liable for their actions is inconsistent with justice as most citizens understand that word.

    Fourthly, the Dáil is composed of its members (Art 16.2.1o), so any liability you impose on it must fall on them. So your starting point must be that one-hundred-and-sixty-six T.D.s are personally liable (presumably ‘jointly and severally’) to pay any damages and costs the Courts might decide to award to Ms Kerins. But those one hundred-and-sixty-six T.D.s include the thirteen PAC members she complains of. They may not be sued, because Article 15.13 of our Constitution forbids it. So you have placed the liability on the remaining one-hundred-and-fifty-three T.D.s, who did not authorise the thirteen to do what they did, and could not stop them.

    Consequences for our democracy

    So, as I see it, you judges have entered Leinster House, against the intention of our Constitution. You now claim authority to review not only the law our legislators produce but how they do their work, again contrary to the intention of our Constitution.

    Even if you never again intervene in the legislative process, the possibility that you may do so will inevitably be in the minds of T.D.s and Senators as they go about their duties, and influence how they perform them. How can that be reconciled with ‘Separation of Powers’? To me, your Kerins decision is an attack on the democratic principles on which our Constitution is founded.  It’s as simple as that, and as serious as that.

    Confidence in the Judiciary?

    When I thought you judges exceeded your authority by applying your ‘unenumerated rights’ formula, I disapproved, but felt that many of the laws you set aside were ones we were better off without. Similarly, I disapproved of your decision in Abbeylara to interfere in how the Oireachtas informed itself so that it could legislate wisely, but did not think your restrictions would be too damaging. Where the authority of the Oireachtas was not involved, you seemed to me in general to produce sensible judgments, upholding the law.

    In some other respects I was critical: I think you failed to prevent the litigation process from becoming too slow, too verbose and too expensive, so that most of us no longer had access to justice. But I criticised you hesitantly, and respectfully. Your Kerins judgment has changed that. I see it as a direct attack on our democratic system of government. That it was unanimous frightens me. I no longer feel confidence in the body that heads our judiciary. I also suspect – fear – that as more people get to understand its implications more will be alienated.

    Looking at decisions I have mentioned in this letter, your ‘unenumerated rights’ decisions, your Abbeylara decision and now your Kerins judgment, it seems to me they have a common root: lack of respect for the Oireachtas. Members of that body, particularly the Dáil, may sometimes behave in a way that exposes them to ridicule, but the Oireachtas is – and rightly is – our sole and exclusive lawmaker, and the corner-stone of our democracy. All of us, including you, owe it respect.

    The next step should be to recognise and acknowledge the problem the Kerins decision creates, and consider how best to extricate yourselves – and the Irish people – from it. If you succeed in doing that, as I fervently hope you will, you will also have taken the first step towards restoring confidence in our judiciary.

    In ending this long letter I urge you to remember that no human institution can be perfect. We all blunder from time to time. When we err, as we must, acknowledging the error and striving to correct it is the best – indeed the only – way to earn and keep the confidence of those we serve.

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  • Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders Confront Common Neo-Liberal Frenemies

    The Corbyn phenomenon – and the utter media-class meltdown over it – is weirdly but obviously reminiscent to anyone who witnessed the rise of Bernie Sanders here in the United States. In both cases, the harbingers were clear, both in terms of responding to grim economic data for an indebted younger generation, and arriving in the wake of bona fide progressive movements such as Occupy.

    Clearly, both the U.S. Democratic Party (which has never been a left-wing, working class party) and the British Labour Party (that dumped Clause IV of its constitution calling for common ownership of industry under Tony Blair, before repeating every Clintonian bromide in a posh accent) were not only ill-equipped to address rising inequalities, but ideologically unaligned with the interests of their electoral bases. But more so than Trump, or Boris Johnson, neither Sanders nor Corbyn were supposed to happen as national phenomena.

    Burning Bernie

    In the case of Sanders – who with 51%[i] of his support coming from non-white voters has the most diverse support of any major candidate – the line was that his supporters were a bunch of white male ‘Bernie Bros’, whose ‘leftism’ provided a thin veneer for deep-seated misogyny and wounded racial privilege. A typical litany from The Nation’s Joan Walsh from 2016 read:

    I’m tired of seeing her confronted by entitled men weighing in on her personal honesty and likability, treating the most admired woman in the world like a woman who’s applying to be his secretary. I’m stunned anew by the misogyny behind the attacks on her, and her female supporters, including my daughter. I’m sick of the way so many Sanders supporters, most of them men, feel absolutely no compunction to see things through female Clinton supporters’ eyes, or to worry they might have to court us down the road, take special care not to alienate us lest we sit the race out in November, if our candidate loses.[ii]

    This tack, which conflated scattered outbursts of sexist or racially insensitive statements, generally online, from Sanders supporters, with far more numerous disagreements, sometimes sharp, without discernible sexist or other bigoted undertones, is still a mainstay of coverage in such venues as MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times – whose almost ludicrously biased coverage on Sanders has been ably skewered by Katie Halper.[iii]

    Indeed, when Sanders had the temerity to suggest that Amazon CEO, and all-around Bond villain, Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post has an effect on its coverage of his campaign, the Krakatoa-level eruption of media outrage was something to behold. [iv]

    NPR characterized Sanders’s well-deserved jab as ‘sounding like Trump,’[v] while Aaron Blake in the Post itself sneered at his ‘bogus media beef,’ declaring in what was one step from tone-policing:

    But as Trump has also shown, the gripes can often be badly exaggerated, undermining whatever valid points you might be making. If you’re going to criticize the media for being bad actors — and we’re hardly above criticism — you should choose your words more carefully and make sure you’re not undermining your own credibility in the process.[vi]

    Perhaps the establishment-liberal-objection to Sanders was best (if rather stupidly) summarized by prosecutor-turned-MSNBC commentator Mimi Rocah, who declared, ‘Just as a woman, probably considered a somewhat moderate Democrat … Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl,’[vii] and then predictably, and with no particular evidence, cries ‘Bernie Bro!’ when ratio’ed into oblivion on Twitter for saying something dumb.

    One could go on like this, and many have, and here in the U.S., we have more than a year left of this, at the conclusion of which we will all be worse people than we are now. The point is the attacks on Sanders emanating from the ‘liberal’ media in the U.S., which almost universally loathes him, are cartoonish, poorly reasoned, and often in bad faith. Lurking beneath, however, is that for the first time in a long time, American politics may be reconfiguring on a class axis.

    The End of Socialism

    Which brings us to Corbyn. Back in the latter half of the 1990s, it was a lonely station being a leftist. The standard line, including from supposed left-wing publications, was that, per Francis Fukayama, the big conflicts were over. Socialism, after the fall of the USSR, whether taking its cues from Enver Hoxha, Leon Trotsky, Eduard Bernstein, or Billy Bragg, was as intellectually discredited as phrenology, Lysenkoism, and Ptolemaic astronomy. And that went equally for nationalized industry and tuition-free grad. school.

    Back then the leader of the British Labour Party, Tony Blair, could be heard to boast ‘When businessmen say to me, ‘Tony, I never thought I’d be doing this but here’s a big cheque to help you beat the most dishonest, negative campaign in history,’ I say thank you to them’ – which in retrospect may be the most important line of Blair’s 1996 Blackpool speech.[viii]

    Corbyn was an under-the-radar backbencher who wound up in the running for the Labour leadership in 2015 as a sop to what were widely assumed to be the demoralized remnants of the Labour Left, a footnote to what was expected to be a contest between the competing progeny of New Labour forefathers. Corbyn’s leadership wasn’t supposed to happen.

    As with Sanders, but possibly worse because the British press, improbably, outdoes even its American equivalent in narrow-minded pettiness, blinkered class prejudice, and general unpleasantness, Corbyn has been on the receiving end of every possible calumny.

    When he says he likes the novel Ulysses, the media class reminds us of his modest educational attainments; as if James Joyce wrote that novel to test the erudition of Oxbridge graduates instead of entertain its readers. He has been labelled a Stalinist, a dunce, and a doctrinaire ideologue.

    The Labour Party’s apparatus spent his first year as leader assiduously purging, or attempting to purge, new members for such infractions as publicly stating the desire to vote Green in previous elections, or, in the case of Irish poet Kevin Higgins, writing a satirical poem in support of Corbyn.

    Anti-Semitist Slurs

    The lowest point among the multitude of attacks has been the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn and his allies. Two things are simultaneously true – anti-Semitism is a serious problem in the world, Britain included. Also, the British Labour Party has ninety-nine problems, but systemic anti-Semitism ain’t one. The accusations come from a place of bad faith, and to the extent that they are not merely a case of punching the left, they are mounted in defence of what is a jaw-droppingly racist Israeli state under Benjamin Netanyahu (with an only fractionally less racist internal opposition).

    In terms of political opportunism, the case of Luciana Berger, who exited the Labour Party in 2019 in favour of the entity currently called Change UK (currently polling at 0%) stands out. When members of her local party constituency, where her anti-Corbyn stance had made her deeply unpopular, submitted no-confidence motions, the Blairite wing of the Labour Party went into full smear mode.

    Tom Watson expressed ‘our solidarity, our support, as she battles the bullying and hatred from members of her own local party,’[ix] whose crime was wanting leadership that better represented them. Blair himself got in on the act, and the media soon pivoted from a story of a local Corbynite membership revolting against a Blairite M.P. to one of an anti-Semitic membership against a Jewish M.P., based on isolated incidents, all to bury the rebels’ main point in their main motion, namely: ‘Instead of fighting for a Labour government, our M.P. is continually using the media to criticise the man we all want to be prime minister.’

    That Alex Scott-Samuel, the constituency co-chair at the time, had regularly appeared on an internet show sponsored by conspiracy theorist David Icke was bad optics at the very least,[x] but Scott-Samuel’s membership in the ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ should make one wary of sweeping claims of anti-Semitism.

    If anything, Corbyn has been too accommodating to his critics, with Labour repeatedly suspending his key ally Chris Williamson not for being an anti-Semite, but for questioning the good faith of those who continue to challenge the Labour Party on the issue. Corbyn repeatedly denounces anti-Semitism; the Labour Party has developed an educational program to combat it; and Labour has mounted a series of online videos and pamphlets against anti-Jewish stereotypes and politics. And yet the attacks continue – even as a post-Windrush, Boris Johnson-led Conservative Party takes after Donald Trump and says the formerly quiet, overtly-racist bits increasingly loudly.

    Slow-motion Pub Brawl

    Perhaps as ludicrous, if slightly less fatuous, are those attacks related to the never-ending slow-motion pub brawl that is Brexit. This, too, had its origins in Establishment hubris. It wasn’t supposed to pass. BoJo was supposed to use the opportunity to throw some raw meat into the gaping maws of the slavering rubes while Cameron was supposed to let him have his moment, after which Boris was supposed to shut his goddamn mouth. And yet again, a different wing of the in-crowd underestimated how little the nerds, burnouts, hoods, punks, shitkickers, and other people not seated at the cool kids’ table liked them.

    There are plenty of reasons not to like the E.U.. It is, at its core, a neo-liberal trade pact, and as the Syriza government in Greece discovered, the E.U. would rather see a country pauperized than let it renegotiate a payment schedule with its citizenry in mind. E.U. rules against state aids render the renationalisation of industry that Labour currently advocates not technically, but effectively impossible.

    That is not to say that a no-deal Brexit wouldn’t be catastrophic, or that many of the loudest pro-Brexit arguments aren’t tinged with xenophobia and racism. It is to say, however, that the #FBPE crowd’s almost utopian view on the E.U. is underpinned by a combination of frequent class privilege (‘how will I be able to pop over to the villa in Provence next weekend if Britain leaves the E.U.?’) and disdain for the socialist project.

    Corbyn’s Considerations

    In terms of relations with the E.U., Jeremy Corbyn has consistently attempted to manoeuvre through a deeply complicated series of conflicting demands in a political environment dominated by disinformation and demagogy. As I see it, his main concerns are:

    1. A Labour Party membership deeply divided over Brexit.
    2. Genuine belief that one cannot in good faith override a democratic vote because it did not produce the desired outcome.
    3. Desire to preserve positive aspects of the E.U. (ease of movement within the area, for instance), to blunt the effects of a hard Brexit (e.g. to trade) without glossing over the negative.
    4. Letting the Tory Party, which caused the mess, to bear the political costs.
    5. Keeping the Blairite majority among the party leadership at bay without completely selling out to them.

    The latter two have probably caused Corbyn the most problems. Ex-Labour (and current Lib Dem via Change UK) M.P. Chuka Umunna griped in The Independent: ‘I cannot think of any Labour leader in my lifetime who would not have instinctively said ‘Remain’ but the party has changed irrevocably under the current set up.’[xi]

    Of course Corbyn is not the only one – a number of those from the 2015 intake of MPs who are mooted to succeed him are on record of being even more hostile to the notion of a People’s Vote.’ Umunna was born in 1978, and the Labour Party under Michael Foot (leader 1980-83) favoured leaving the E.E.C., a position reversed by Neil Kinnock, whose main contributions to world history were paving the way for Blair, air-balling what should have been an easy election in 1992, and giving speeches for Joe Biden to plagiarize.

    This may seem an historical quibble, particularly as Corbyn campaigned, albeit unenthusiastically, to remain in an institution unworthy of enthusiasm, but Umunna inadvertently captures the key ideological disconnect.

    Left-no-longer

    For many years socially liberal yuppies like him dominated what, in official circles, constituted the ‘left.’ The socialist project, either isolated in its traditional mass party like Britain or essentially vilified and repressed to the point of near-extinction as in the United States, became a vehicle for free-market and militaristic ideas – but performatively anti-racist, pro-woman, and pro-gay – and a gaping political void emerged.

    With the genuine article re-appearing in the shape of Corby and Sanders, the ‘left’ of the Blair-Clinton era is the left-no-longer. But they like the real estate. Thus come the ludicrous charges.

    As Noam Chomsky noted of Corbyn:

    One must admire the incredible skills the media have in manipulating the population. They’ve managed to convince many that the most passionate anti-racist campaigner of the last 40 years, Jeremy Corbyn, is actually pro-racist and anti-Semitic.[xii]

    Of course Blairites favour, not social equity, but aspirational mobility, treating inequality as isolable matters of exclusion on the basis of race, gender sexuality, and so forth, rather than economic inequality, reflecting exploitation inherent in capitalism.

    There is a block in favour of radical, egalitarian change, and its leaders aren’t named Kamala Harris, Tom Watson, Chuka Umunna, Rachel Maddow, Alyssa Milano, or J.K. Rowling. Or Elizabeth Warren, frankly. Thus the ‘anti-Semitism’ slurs, and the ‘Bernie Bro’ canard.

    Many with leftist sympathies are genuinely bamboozled, given the ubiquity of this garbage. Other claiming these affinities really don’t really like socialism, universal health care, free college, and railroads that aren’t owned by the likes of Richard Branson. And those people should be honest about that, and if they aren’t, it’s okay to own them relentlessly on social media.

    Feature Image by ‘paulnew’ is of Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a leadership election rally to his supporters in August 2016.

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    [i] Untitled, ‘Profiles of supporters of the leading Democratic candidates’, Pew Research Center, August 20th, 2019, https://www.people-press.org/2019/08/16/most-democrats-are-excited-by-several-2020-candidates-not-just-their-top-choice/pp_2019-08-16_2020-democratic-candidates_0-06-2/.

    [ii] Joan Walsh, ‘Why I’m Supporting Hillary Clinton, With Joy and Without Apologies’, January 27th, 2016, The Nation,https://www.thenation.com/article/why-im-supporting-hillary-clinton-with-joy-and-without-apologies/.

    [iii] Katie Harper, ‘MSNBC’s Anti-Sanders Bias Makes It Forget How to Do Math’, July 26th, 2019, FAIR, https://fair.org/home/msnbcs-anti-sanders-bias-makes-it-forget-how-to-do-math/.

    [iv] Chavie Lieber, ‘Bernie Sanders called out Jeff Bezos for poor treatment of Amazon workers. In a rare move, the company fired back.’, August 30th, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/8/30/17797786/amazon-warehouse-conditions-bernie-sanders.

    [v] Domenico Montenaro, ‘Bernie Sanders Again Attacks Amazon — This Time Pulling In ‘The Washington Post’’, NPR, August 13th, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750800062/sanders-again-attacks-amazon-this-time-pulling-in-the-washington-post.

    [vi] Aaron Blake, ‘Bernie Sanders’s bogus media beef’, The Washington Post, August 14th, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/14/bernie-sanderss-bogus-media-beef/.

    [vii] Josh Feldman, ‘MSNBC Panelist: Bernie Sanders ‘Makes My Skin Crawl,’ I Don’t See Him as ‘Pro-Woman Candidate’’, Mediaite, July 21st, 2019, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-panelist-bernie-sanders-makes-my-skin-crawl-i-dont-see-him-as-pro-woman-candidate/.

    [viii] British Political Speeches, Leader’s speech, Blackpool 1996, http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202

    [ix] Untitled, ‘Labour row erupts over no confidence vote in Luciana Berger’, BBC, February 8th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47169929.

    [x] Lee Harpin, ‘University distances itself from academic who promoted Rothschild conspiracies on David Icke show’, THE JC, February 12th, 2019, https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/university-insists-academic-who-promoted-rothschild-conspracies-on-david-icke-1.479941.

    [xi] Chuck Umunna, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is happily helping Britain leave the EU – he is and always was a Brexiteer’, The Independent, March 18th, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-brexit-chuka-umunna-the-independent-group-leave-remain-a8828001.html.

    [xii] Frea Lockley, ‘Here’s how thousands of people are standing up to smears against Jeremy Corbyn’, The Canary, March 26th, 2018, https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/03/26/heres-how-thousands-of-people-are-standing-up-to-smears-against-jeremy-corbyn/.

  • White Woman Brown Heart

    Even the color of my skin belies who I really am.
    Always on the outside looking in . . . even with my own kin.
    Blonde and blue-eyed born into a brown world,
    I came to see myself through their eyes, their skin, their pain.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    I didn’t understand when sister girl said it wasn’t fair
    that beauty and smarts went to someone like me.
    Doors so freely opened were closed to her, I could not see.
    Because sister girl, she looked the same to me.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    Yankee white daddy my mama said is how I came to be.
    They spoke his name first on that fateful sixth year.
    My names were nothing then and they are nothing now.
    Cause I’m a nobody traveling through life on an inner dark sea.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    Tethered by psychic roots running so deep that
    it matters not where I stand on the grid of space and time.
    I’ll never understand the difference between them and me,
    or why we only see what we see in the face of humanity.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    The soul is what bends and shapes what we’re supposed to be . . .
    And that difficult repentance the poet confessed long ago.
    That’s what kept my days from always ending in that dark inner sea.
    And a whispered thank you for all that ever was and ever will be.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

    Nance Harding is a Texan living in New Orleans. As a psychoanalytically oriented consultant, she uses archetypal pattern analysis and creative mentoring to assist adults during critical transitions requiring transformative change.  She writes poetry and flash fiction.

    Feature Image: Marina Azzaro

    If you enjoyed this article you might consider purchasing our new hard copy Cassandra Voices II.

    Become a part of the Cassandra Voices community through a monthly donation on Patreon.

     

  • Joe Rogan and the American Male Zeitgeist

    Anyone unfamiliar with Joe Rogan would do well to watch his stand-up shows on Netflix, or read a recent piece entitled ‘Why is Joe Rogan so Popular?’ from The Atlantic. Perhaps you already know him from a notorious interview with Elon Musk, where the latter liberally drinks whiskey and smokes weed, much to Wall Street’s chagrin.

    Why is Bull Moose talking about Joe Rogan? Well, for starters, he has the second most popular podcast in the country, but, more importantly, he is popular with men across the political spectrum.  Men who are fed up with political correctness, the victimhood so prevalent in American politics, and above all the constantly changing idea of what it means to be a man in America. Listen to Mr. Rogan and you’ll soon learn that he provides a welcome reprieve from conventional thinking, if nothing else.

    Joe Rogan is a showman. He is a professional comedian. But he’s also one who seemingly understands that the ‘average’ American man is frustrated. This average man has political power, yes, but his personal power (and his pocketbook) has been curtailed since the Great Recession. He asks his wife about whether he should change the diapers; seeks her for permission to go out for a beer; can’t pay off his debts, and somewhere along the way, Joe Rogan contends, he stopped acting like a man and started behaving like a pussy.

    The average Joe Rogan fan is unhappy about this state of affairs. They are American men of whatever race and background who realise they should have the power to succeed, and strive to be a better version of themselves, but see obstacles in their way. They realise the empty promise of a bigger TV, or a faster car. As Joe Rogan put it:

    We got sidetracked and diverted into these boxes, these cubicles in offices … So instead of investing your time in a passion, you’ve sold your life to work for an uncaring machine that doesn’t understand you. That’s the problem with our society. And what’s the reward? Go home and get a big TV.

    The media widely assumes that this group of disaffected, frustrated men voted for Trump. Many of them did, but just as many would never vote for him. They are the accountants, the soccer dads, the everyday Americans who believe this country is already great, and that, no, we don’t need to buy Greenland.

    Reaching out to this disaffected part of the population and offering them a voice will be key to winning the White House in 2020. Trump did it in 2016, and will surely count on their support in 2020. Democrats should take heed. Understanding the scale of their frustrations is one of the keys to a successful campaign. The anointed Democratic candidate should voice their concerns, appreciate their contributions, and make them feel part of his or her agenda.

    No, Bull Moose is not calling for an embrace of divisive gender politics as a way to win an election. Quite the opposite, the candidate that taps into this frustration will be the one that gives men the sense that they too can be who they want to be: a citizen who feels good about the opportunity he has for personal and professional success, to the benefit of the country as a whole.

    Past American leaders of different political convictions – from FDR to JFK or even Reagan and Obama – all called for sacrifices for the greater good. They instilled a pride in the average American man that his individual sacrifice was contributing to a great country. Increasingly, however, his sacrifices are accompanied by a diminishing quality of life, and income; nor has he much to feel proud about in the public sphere.

    What Joe Rogan understands – and what makes his so popular – is that lying beneath male frustrations is an enduring conviction that the ‘average Joe’ can become whatever he wants, and that self-actualization is more important than material gain. They are inspired to become the hero in their own movie: to be kind; to pursue excellence; to be relentlessly positive; to think freely; to be unafraid.

    So, you might ask, what’s the point? The point is Democratic Presidential candidates should start talking about opportunity and freedom inclusively, and not only for those disadvantaged historically. Also, please refrain from using the expression ‘the average hard-working American man.’ No one wants to be labelled “average.” Focus instead on the unlimited potential of every human being.

    Feature image is Joe Rogan with Gerald Strebendt, circa 2002.

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  • How to Prevent a Brexit ‘Domino Effect’

    As the United Kingdom inches perilously closer to a ‘no deal’ Brexit, Frank Armstrong recalls the European Union’s origins as an antidote to destructive and ill-conceived nationalism, which tore the continent apart for thirty years between 1914 and 1945. He argues that explanations for British exceptionalism should not be reduced to post-imperialist delusions, instead highlighting a long-standing failure to make adequate provision for post-industrial ‘rust belts’, regions witnessing a recrudescence of nationalism right across the continent. He also interprets Brexit as a product of competing nationalistic forces within the U.K., proposing the E.U. should avoid an acrimonious separation, and leave the door ajar for a return. Finally, he identifies necessary reforms to the E.U. Treaty to avoid the very real possibility of a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’ threatening the wider union.

    Community Origins

    At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’[i] Grey’s foreboding ran contrary to the dominant ‘it’ll be over by Christmas’ view. From that war’s outbreak the continent descended into thirty years of almost continuous violence and instability – with non-combatant civilians often victims of collective punishment.

    At the Paris Peace Conferences in 1919 ascendant ‘Wilsonian’ ideas of democracy and self-determination swept away multicultural empires, (Hapsburg-Austrian, Hohenzollern-German, Romanov-Russian and even Ottoman-Turkish) which for centuries accommodated multiple ethno-linguistic ‘nationalities’, ruled by a transnational aristocratic caste.

    Cobbling together states based on often plastic identities proved problematic almost everywhere, however, as dispersals of nationalities rarely cohered with distinct geographic frontiers. Moreover, many nations possessed insufficient populations to make up viable sovereign entities, engendering dual- (Czechoslovakia[ii]) and multiple- (Yugoslavia) nation-states. Meanwhile, in violation of ‘Wilsonian’ principles of self-determination, the Peacemakers prohibited any unification between Germany and German-speaking Austria.

    Throughout the inter-war years, across Europe, a significant challenge for many governments lay in accommodating German minorities – the volksdeutsche that had settled in Central and Eastern Europe over the course of the Middle Ages – but also others such as Hungarians living beyond their rump state. This poisoned relations between newly emerged countries from the outset, while embedding seemingly implacably hostile minorities within states such as Czechoslovakia, and others.

    Establishing what Benedict Anderson referred to as the ‘imagined community’[iii] of the nation as the basis for a state, also elevated racial notions of a single volk, or people, with ‘blood’ attachments to a particular territory. This further estranged widely scattered, and linguistically heterogeneous, Jewish communities – without a state of their own or any prospect of creating one in Europe – from dominant national groups. Jews became convenient scapegoats, characterised as either bloodsucking-capitalist-Rothschilds, or transnational-Communist-ideologues, depending on political expediency.

    The U.K. was among the few European countries where anti-Semitism was not rife in this period. Indeed, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British Empire committed to ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, to the consternation of its indigenous population. By the 1920s, however, the British were confronting a distinct fraying of imperial bonds (or really bondage), beginning with the concession of Dominion Status to the recalcitrant Irish in 1921, and threatening the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, India, which finally gained independence in 1946.

    A Community to End all Wars

    By 1945 World War II had stained the continent with the blood of almost fifty million. Nazi, and to a lesser extent Soviet and other states’, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide introduced greater ‘national’ homogeneity, with Jews the main victims, but also most of the volksdeutsche were often brutally corralled into the two German states that emerged in the wake of the thirty year conflagration.

    As Europeans drew breath many – including Winston Churchill who coined the term a ‘United States of Europe’[iv] – identified the need for a political entity to safeguard what would have seemed a fragile peace, and confront the encroachment of the Soviet Union – and even the United States. The experience of total war brought by nationalist excesses proved cathartic.

    The European Community, proceeding from the European Coal and Steel Pact of 1951, and culminating in the Treaty of Rome in 1957, might reasonably be held up as the most successful peace process in history, coinciding with, if not incubating, an epoch of unprecedented stability and prosperity for Western Europe at least. Establishing close economic ties could, in the words of French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’[v]

    Seemingly irreconcilable French and Germans, especially, found common cause in rebuilding their countries and raising the standard of living – with the assistance from the United States through the Marshall Plan. A nascent supranational identity eroded the dominant idea of the nation – along with its implicit racial ideas of a distinctive volk – although any pan-European identity relied more on rational construction than emotional identification.

    Vitally, a hybrid ‘social market’ – an accommodation between capitalism and socialism that emerged across post-war Europe – brought, or coincided with, the so-called ‘Miracle on the Rhine’, or Wirtschaftswunder (‘post-war economic miracle’) in Germany, Les Trente Glorieuses (1946-75) in France and Il Miracolo Economico to Italy. Affection for the European project was nourished by the rising living standards of a substantial majority across Western Europe.

    Under conditions where individual states, in general, sheltered citizens from ‘cradle to grave’ from naked market forces, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, a Common Market – the defining feature of European Law – worked to the benefit of the majority; at least until the oil shocks of the mid-1970s brought that sustained period of broad-based development to a close, jeopardising an unspoken European social contract.

    The one notable Western European democracy that declined to sign the Treaty of Rome was the U.K.. This ensured the organisation’s legal system was based on the Civil Law tradition of France rather than British Common Law, or a hybrid of both. Importantly also, Charles de Gaulle’s ‘non’ to British membership in 1967, reinforced British exceptionalism: a sense that they were of Europe but not from Europe – an island apart from the continent belonging to an Anglo- or Atlantic- sphere. Thus, when Britain (and Ireland) finally acceded to membership in 1973 it joined an institution whose still recognisable form had already crystallized, and at a less economically dynamic stage in European history.

    Left and Right Opposition

    It is commonly assumed that, from the outset and beyond, it has been the U.K.’s idea of itself as a global Empire that brought aloofness from the European Community.[vi] In fact, a succession of post-war Tory leaders including Winston Churchill, Harold MacMillan, Edward Health, John Major – if not Anthony Eden and Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Theresa May to the same extent – have been decidedly pro-European, viewing what became the European Union in 1992 as a guarantor of free trade on the continent. Even the current Tory Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, famously vacillated before urging a ‘leave’ vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[vii]

    On the other hand, the Community was initially identified by many on the left in Britain as a Capitalist club, working to the detriment of workers, in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Thus the U.K.’s Post-War Labour government declined an invitation to join the European Coal and Steel Pact in 1951. In response Churchill, then still Tory leader, inveighed against the decision in front of the House of Commons, maintaining that ‘The whole movement of the world is towards an interdependence of nations.’[viii]

    Indeed, from the outset, across Europe, the main opposition to the Community emanated from the radical left, Communist Party and others. But as long as states provided adequately for needy citizens agitation against the Community remained marginal. In the U.K.’s case, the ‘Bennite’[ix] wing of the Labour Party led opposition to membership in 1973, an enduring standpoint in the Party – albeit prominent ‘Bennites’ such as Shadow Chancellor John McDonald now advocate another referendum and a ‘remain’ vote.

    Importantly, the Community’s defining liberalism does not extend to the treatment of the agricultural sector, long protected through trade tariffs and embargos from cheaper exports imports from beyond the continent. To an extent this contradiction was the basis of the Community itself – offering French farmers German prices for their produce brought (or bought) necessary electoral support, as well as guarding against dependence on imports from beyond the continent in the event of another world war.

    The effect has been to preserve millions of small- and medium-sized farms that would otherwise have become commercially unviable. Controversially, however, the Common Agricultural Policy used to suck up to two-thirds of the Community’s budget, and still accounted for almost forty percent in 2018.[x] Moreover, the subsidy regime has proved regressive, rewarding wealthy, including super-wealthy, landowners,[xi] and is insufficiently attentive to the environmental damage of farming systems, including traditional pastoralism that prevents necessary re-afforestation and re-wilding.

    In contrast, the populations of post-industrial regions – ‘rust belts’ – such as the North and Midlands of England, north-east France and elsewhere, have been given little European assistance since much heavy industry has pulled out. Historically these areas offered staunch support for left-wing parties, but loyalties have shifted in recent times, with UKIP and the Brexit Party, as well as the French National Front in particular, gaining traction among working class voters.

    The expansion of the Union into Eastern and Central Europe in the 1990s has also worked to the detriment of these regions, with increased competition for employment in Western Europe, and re-location of multinationals to low-wage Central and Eastern European economies.

    Indeed, the demise of the Soviet Union crippled the ‘hard’ left across the continent, with Communist Parties losing both an important patron, and exemplar. By the 1990s most European socialist parties, including the U.K.’s ‘New’ Labour Party had shifted to a broadly pro-European, and even neo-liberal, outlook.

    An ensuing vacuum has been opportunistically filled by a range of Far Right or nationalist parties, opposed to the supranational Europe project. Populist parties have gained support in economically depressed post-industrial regions, where atavistic appeals are often made to the nation or volk, targeting constituents ill-served by the Common Market.

    Furthermore, since the 1960s most European countries have experienced an influx of overseas migrants, mainly drawn from former colonies. That the Union guarantees the free movement of labour has brought a misleading association with an ensuing multiculturalism. This is despite immigration from beyond Europe being subject to the laws of individuals states, a point affirmed in the Dublin Regulation of 2013 on refugees.[xii] This requires, in most cases, that an asylum seeker’s application is processed in the first EU member state he or she sets foot in.

    Explaining the Referendum Result

    Ironically, it has been elements within the Tory party, the long-standing champion of the free trade the Community brought to the continent, which came to the fore in opposing the Union. The opposition of ‘Shire Tories’ may have come as no surprise, but the referendum also revealed deep antipathy towards the Europe Union in the economically depressed regions of the Midlands and North.[xiii]

    This should have come as no surprise. Since Britain’s entry into the Community heavy industry has continued to depart these regions, helped along by Thatcherite privatisations throughout the 1980s that worked to the benefit of speculators in the City of London. Crucially, the British media focused working class malcontents on the European Union, with constant emphasis on Britain’s heroic role in World War II, and enduring stereotypes of Nazi Germans and cowardly French.

    British working class antipathy towards Europe can also be explained by a lingering – not altogether without foundation – left-wing view that indigenous industry cannot recover under free trade conditions, and without state-aid grants, currently prohibited under European law.

    Moreover, as indicated, the U.K. entered the Community at a stage of economic decline across the continent, and with a sense of unbelonging. Importantly, unlike within the founding states, there is no collective memory to draw on of thirty glorious years of growth and development under European suzerainty.

    Also, the U.K. lay at a remove from the extremes of cathartic bloodletting during World War II. Notwithstanding the experience of the Blitz, and the loss of hundreds-of-thousands of men-under-arms, the country was spared Nazi occupation – the apotheosis of state-sponsored racism.

    Increasingly strident national identities within the U.K. itself now also shape attitudes towards the supra-national institution; on the basis that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend’ Scottish nationalism is identified with a European affiliation, while Northern Ireland Unionism is antipathetic. Thus Brexit signifies, and fuels, a fissuring of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Also, strikingly, a majority of English Brexiteers are more concerned with leaving Europe than preserving the Union.[xiv] A willingness to shrink one’s state hardly equates to residual imperialist ambitions.

    Brexit Effect

    It seems Brexit cannot be avoided, and Europe (including the Irish government) should refrain from counter-productive meddling in U.K. politics. Its electorate cast the dye, and recent election results for the European Parliament indicate there are no regrets.[xv] A face-saving resolution can surely be found to the so-called ‘Backstop,’ especially given the U.K. has undertaken to respect the terms of the Common Travel Area,[xvi] allowing for unhindered movement and reciprocal employment opportunities for Irish and U.K. nationals.

    It now appears that both Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have softened their stances on preserving all aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement[xvii], putting it up to the Irish government to offer alternatives. But the uncompromising, and occasionally nationalistic,[xviii] rhetoric of Taoiseach Varadkar and Foreign Minister Coveney leave the minority Irish government vulnerable to attack from current partners Fianna Fáil, and opponents Sinn Féin.

    The total volume of trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic amounted to just over £5 billion in 2016,[xix] suggesting the challenge of equipping the border to check in-coming container traffic is not insurmountable. The key to preventing further Troubles surely lies in addressing the impoverishment and ghettoization of areas such as the Creggan in Derry.

    Of far greater concern for the Republic should be the extent to which trade flows are dependent on the Holyhead ‘land bridge’, rather than through direct links to the continent. Previously, this led to the boorish comment from the new Home Secretary Priti Patel that the threat of food shortages could be used as a weapon in negotiations over the Backstop.[xx]

    Clearly the current Tory leadership, and membership, is hell-bent on ‘delivering’ on Brexit. But their preferred outcome is presumably a compromise deal, but they are at least courting the possibility of crashing out.

    A period beyond the Union would acquaint dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteers – especially those Prosecco-quaffing ‘Shire Tories’ – with a salutary lesson in the perils of life outside a substantial free-trade block. For starters, the prices of many foodstuffs, and beverages, will rise through the weakness of the pound and potential retaliatory tariffs. The Cabinet Office’s leaked Operation Yellowhammer document even anticipates food shortages.[xxi]

    A period of stagflation is on the horizon with many multinational companies poised to pull out. But if a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government were to come to power, it would surely introduce state aids to assist fledgling industries, which might flourish under protectionist conditions, with a weak pound conducive to exports. Whether such a regime could resist a tendency towards over-bureaucratization, historically evident in command economies, remains to be seen. But the alternative of business-as-usual in many regions under E.U. is just as unpalatable to many living there.

    Politically, Brexit may finally prompt the U.K. to settle on a written constitution, the absence of which has brewed such confusion, including the latest prorogation of Parliament. Much of the uncertainty around the Brexit referendum, and beyond, is linked to the absence of a clear text explaining the powers of the various arms of government. Ultimately, it seems likely that a majority in the U.K. will wish to return, but for this to happen undue punishment should be avoided.

    How to Save Europe

    If a ‘take it or leave it’ ‘in/out’ vote had been placed before other European electorates in all likelihood some would have chosen to push the exit button too. Even in Ireland – the beneficiary of disproportionate financial supports due to a substantial agricultural sector – two recent referendums on extending the European treaty have yielded negative votes, only reversed after clamorous support from the main political parties and mainstream media.

    Likewise, the French and Dutch electorates rejected the European Constitution in 2005,[xxii] but were ignored, while the populations of both Switzerland and Norway have repeatedly chosen to remain outside.

    As the poet Micheal O’Siadhail put it: ‘Starred blue flag so dutifully raised, / Still not fluttering in our chambered hearts’[xxiii]: Lacking symbols such as a football team to support, or other singular cultural representations, the European Union has not invented a lasting idea of itself beyond its liberal freedoms. These are now associated with a permissive Globalisation benefiting rapacious and tax-avoiding multinational corporations, and often working to the detriment of working people. Moreover, an extensive and exceedingly well-remunerated[xxiv] E.U. bureaucracy is associated with unnecessary red tape – and not only in the U.K..

    The Brexit vote should give rise to profound questioning of the laws and institutions of the E.U.. Lest we forget, European leaders displayed palpable disregard for the welfare of the Greek and Irish populations during their economic crises; as Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole put it in response to Ireland’s EU/IMF Bailout in 2010:

    There is no European solidarity. And there is not even a genuine sense of self-interest. The sadistic pleasures of punishment have trumped the sensible calculation that an Ireland enslaved by debt is not much use to anyone.[xxv]

    A worldwide economic crisis impoverished many parts of the continent, and the E.U. became an agent of a doctrinaire austerity, often to the benefit of speculators.

    What it means to be ‘European’

    For the European Union to develop lasting legitimacy among a new generation – increasingly removed from the bloodletting if the first half of the twentieth century – it needs to be seen to do more than maintain the liberty to move goods, services, capital and labour. It should inspire loyalty by guaranteeing basic socio-economic rights, including inter alia basic sustenance, a dwelling, health and education, and defend human rights violations in countries such as Spain – where draconian measures curb freedom of expression, and have led to outrageous prison sentences being handed down to Catalan separatists for having the temerity to hold a referendum.

    This requires a re-negotiation of the Treaty, along with abandonment of grandiose notions of a European super-state, and army. It could involve the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into E.U. law. We also need to see far greater institutional accountability, with all forms of lobbying being completely transparent, and outlandish salary scales re-assessed. The Commission ought to be democratised, with Commissioners perhaps being elected from a Europe-wide list, instead of positions being in the gift of national governments – resulting in political ‘fixers’ such as our own Commissioner Phil Hogan being promoted without democratic oversight.

    Far greater burden- (and benefit-) sharing of refugees is also required – meaning the Dublin Regulation should be scrapped. This would take pressure of states such as Italy and Greece that have had to accommodate a disproportionate share.

    Our ‘European’ identity should be disentangled from blood and a Judeo-Christian heritage; instead being a European should be equated with taking pride in one’s region’s culture and history, while holding a curiosity for others, available to visit via a continental rail network that is a unifying-symbol of progress. To this end, legislation offering all eighteen-year-old-Europeans a free Inter-rail pass is to be lauded.[xxvi]

    A European identity should become modern in the sense of understanding global environmental responsibilities; along with recognising that a certain income threshold is required for human flourishing, beyond which gains are marginal.

    A failure to reform is likely to result in a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’, with states such as Italy, Hungary and Poland succumbing to Populist, anti-EU political parties. A progressive supra-national alternative to inward-looking nationalism must be offered, but if states are unwilling to accede to a greater focus on environmental protection, human rights, income support and inclusivity then these should be permitted to leave, or be shown the door, and face the harsh realities of life outside the Union, just like the U.K..

    There is much worth saving about the European ideal. In particular, as we stare down the barrel of an environmental crisis threatening humanity’s very survival, we require an E.U.-led Green New Deal, including reform to the CAP so as to make it more equitable and focused on environmental protection.

    Europe can be a beacon to the rest of the world, and the development of a symbiotic relationship with nature can inspire a new generation, countering obsolete nationalist ideas of racial belonging.

    Let us leave the light on also, and the door ajar, to allow the U.K. to return, whether United or not.

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    [i] [/efn_note]Viscount Grey of Fallodon: Twenty-Five Years 1892–1916, New York, 1925, p. 20[/efn_note]

    [ii] At least in name. There were also German, Ruthenian (Ukrainian) and Hungarian minorities, as well as Jews drawn from different nationalities, along with a substantial partially nomadic Romany community.

    [iii] Benedict Anderson Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London, Verso, 1983, pp.6-7.

    [iv] Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Made History, Hodder, London, 2015, p.301

    [v] ‘The Schuman Declaration’ May 9th, 1950, https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration_en.

    [vi] Ishaan Tharoor, ‘Britain clings to imperial nostalgia as Brexit looms’, Washington Post, January 4th, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/britain-clings-imperial-nostalgia-brexit-looms/.

    [vii] ‘Jessica Elgtot, Secret Boris Johnson column favoured UK remaining in EU’, The Guardian, October 16th, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/16/secret-boris-johnson-column-favoured-uk-remaining-in-eu

    [viii] Ibid, Johnson, p.300.

    [ix] Followers of the Labour politician Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn 1925-2014.

    [x] ‘Common Agricultural Policy: Key graphs & figures’ https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/cap-post-2013/graphs/graph1_en.pdf, European Commission, July, 2019.

    [xi] George Monbiot, ‘The one good thing about Brexit? Leaving the EU’s disgraceful farming system’, The Guardian, October 10th, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit-leaving-eu-farming-agriculture.

    [xii] Regulation (EU) No 604/2013, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32013R0604

    [xiii] Untitled, ‘EU Referendum Results’, Financial Times, 2016, https://ig.ft.com/sites/elections/2016/uk/eu-referendum/

    [xiv] Frank Armstrong ‘An Irish Poet Attains Greatness’, Cassandra Voices, August 31st, 2018, http://cassandravoices.com/history/an-irish-poet-attains-greatness/.

    [xv] Ashley Kirk and Josh Wilson, ‘EU election UK results and maps: Brexit Party wins nine of 12 regions, Lib Dems triumph in London’, The Telegraph, May 28th, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/28/european-eu-election-results-2019-uk-maps-brexit-party/

    [xvi] Untitled, ‘Johnson tells Varadkar that Common Travel Area will remain after Brexit’, August 20th, 2019, RTÉ, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0819/1069694-varadkar-johnson/.

    [xvii] Katya Adler, ‘Brexit: Is EU softening over Withdrawal Agreement?’, BBC August 27th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49475117.

    [xviii] Juno McEnroe, ‘Varadkar: United Ireland possible in hard Brexit’, Irish Examiner, July 27th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/varadkar-united-ireland-possible-in-hard-brexit-939785.html.

    [xix] Untitled, ‘Trade across the Irish border’, February 26th, 2018, Fullfact, https://fullfact.org/europe/irish-border-trade/

    [xx] Untitled, ‘Patel comments on no-deal Brexit in Ireland criticised’, BBC, December 7th, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-46488479.

    [xxi] Rowena Mason, ‘No-deal Brexit: key points of Operation Yellowhammer report’, The Guardian, August 18th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/18/no-deal-brexit-key-points-of-operation-yellowhammer-report.

    [xxii] Untitled, ‘Dutch say ‘devastating no’ to EU constitution’, The Guardian, June 2nd, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/02/eu.politics

    [xxiii] Frank Armstrong ‘An Irish Poet Attains Greatness’, Cassandra Voices, August 31st, 2018, http://cassandravoices.com/history/an-irish-poet-attains-greatness/

    [xxiv] Bruno Waterfield, ‘10,000 European Union officials better paid than David Cameron’ The Telegraph, 21 May, 2014, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10847979/10000-European-Union-officials-better-paid-than-David-Cameron.html

    [xxv] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Abysmal deal ransoms us and disgraces Europe’, Irish Times, 29th of November, 2010, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/abysmal-deal-ransoms-us-and-disgraces-europe-1.683289

    [xxvi] Alexander Sims, ‘EU plans to give free Interrail pass to every 18-year-old in Europe on their birthday’, The Independent, September 30th, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/interrail-passes-free-eu-parliament-debate-europe-train-tickets-a7339466.html.