{"id":6023,"date":"2019-12-06T13:28:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T13:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=6023"},"modified":"2019-12-06T13:28:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T13:28:35","slug":"jeremy-corbyn-percy-shelley-and-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2019\/12\/06\/jeremy-corbyn-percy-shelley-and-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Corbyn, Percy Shelley and Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s \u2018radical socialist manifesto.\u2019<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[i]<\/a> An historically warm relationship with Sinn F\u00e9in, Brexit neutrality, and lifelong commitment to the redistribution of wealth receive a cool reception in reports and commentary, while grossly inflated charges of Antisemitism within the Labour Party are threaded through articles.<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yet the Labour leader belongs to a tradition of English radicals with an abiding sympathy for Ireland. His anti-colonial, republican and Chartist outlook has also brought commitment to the downtrodden Palestinian people, and opposition to the machinations of the arms industry in Britain \u2013 which is the second largest exporter in the world, including to dictatorships such as that ruling Saudi Arabia.<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[iii]<\/a> Corbyn\u2019s enduring idealism is reminiscent of the poet and radical Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).<\/p>\n<p>In fact Corbyn drew the slogan \u2018we the many, they the few\u2019 that resonated so powerfully during the 2017 General Election, from the Romantic poet, who drowned tragically off Lerici in Italy at the age of just twenty-nine.<\/p>\n<p>These lines from Shelley\u2019s poem \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/knarf.english.upenn.edu\/PShelley\/anarchy.html\">The Masque of Anarchy<\/a>\u2019, were written in the wake of the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of over sixty thousand unarmed civilians, killing eighteen, who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The atrocity actually led to the foundation of <em>The Guardian <\/em>newspaper, and was the subject of a Mike Leigh film in 2018.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Peterloo - Official Trailer | Amazon Studios\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Dj5h1kKjVYc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Shelley calls on the downtrodden people:<\/p>\n<p><em>Rise like Lions after slumber<br \/>\nIn unvanquishable number,<br \/>\nShake your chains to earth like dew<br \/>\nWhich in sleep had fallen on you &#8212;<br \/>\nYe are many &#8212; they are few.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The poet\u2019s links to Ireland extend beyond his second wife Mary Shelley\u2019s maternal grandmother\u2019s Ballyshannon origins; or the Irish painter Emilia Curran\u2019s 1819 iconic portrait. Having been expelled from Oxford in 1811, after authorities discovered him to be the author of a pamphlet entitled \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/knarf.english.upenn.edu\/PShelley\/atheism.html\">The Necessity of Atheism<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 the first such argument printed in England \u2013 he went on to display an abiding interest in \u2018John Bull\u2019s Other island\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the Napoleonic War Ireland\u2019s plight remained a vital cause for English radicals, at a time when the Irish population \u2013 in the midst of a Malthusian demographic crisis after colonisation and the introduction of the potato at the start of the seventeenth century \u2013 was almost half that of England\u2019s. Soon after expulsion from Oxford, Shelley travelled to Dublin in 1812, along with his first wife Harriet, with whom he had just eloped.<\/p>\n<p>The young poet was greatly perturbed by the poverty and inequality greeting him in a city whose wealth and status had been greatly diminished by the Act of Union of 1801, which meant Irish M.P.s took their seats in Westminster not Dublin. He wrote: \u2018I had no conception of the depth of human misery until now. The poor of Dublin are assuredly the meanest and most miserable of all.\u2019<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\">[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>His experience of Ireland appears to figure in what he described as his \u2018poetic education,\u2019 in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/The_Revolt_of_Islam\/Author%27s_Preface\">preface<\/a> to the long poem \u2018Laon and Cythna\u2019 (1818): \u2018I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war \u2026 the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds.\u2019<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\">[v]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Shelley&#039;s preface to Laon and Cythia.amr by Frank Armstrong\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F283506068&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The precocious nineteen-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/collection-items\/p-b-shelleys-address-to-the-irish-people\">addressed<\/a> the Catholic Committee, containing the dying embers of the United Irishman movement, in what is now Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Asserting a pacifism that is also prominent throughout the current Labour leader\u2019s career, he urged: \u2018In no case employ violence, the way to liberty and happiness is never to transgress the rules of virtue and justice. Liberty and happiness are founded upon virtue and justice. If you destroy the one you destroy the other.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The future leader of Catholic Emancipation, Daniel O\u2019Connell, is believed to have been at the meeting, although he may not have been present for Shelley\u2019s speech itself. O\u2019Connell shared a distaste for armed conflict, a view which prevailed as the mainstream approach in Irish nationalism until World War I.<\/p>\n<p>Shelley\u2019s sympathies lay with the historically oppressed Catholic community in Ireland, just as Corbyn\u2019s lay with Northern Irish Catholics during the Troubles. There is little doubt that Shelley would share Corbyn\u2019s principled opposition to Trident, Britain\u2019s thirty-billion-pound nuclear weapons programme.<\/p>\n<p>Another link between Shelley and Ireland is that he completed what is considered his most revolutionary poem \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/shelley\/1813\/queen-mab.htm\">Queen Mab<\/a>\u2019 while holidaying on Ross Island on Killarney Lake. This strident work, which he later partly disavowed, became a standard text for English socialists, including an approving Karl Marx. In this we discover a condemnation of commerce: \u2018beneath whose poison-breathing shade \/ No solitary virtue dares to spring.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Corbyn\u2019s antipathy to big business has long antecedents, therefore, in British culture, albeit the trenchant views on the subject of Shelley\u2019s near contemporary \u2018the Father of Economics\u2019 Adam Smith (d. 1790) are generally overlooked: \u2018People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.\u2019 A suspicion of commercial self-interest in politics is well founded.<\/p>\n<p>Shelley has been an inspiration to a host of Irish writers including W.B. Yeats who claimed Shelley shaped his life,<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref6\">[vi]<\/a> as well as Sean O\u2019Casey who described himself as a Shelleyan Communist. Another devotee George Bernard Shaw described Shelley approvingly as: \u2018a republican, a leveller, a radical of the most extreme sort.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Shelley was an inspiration for another of Shaw\u2019s lifelong causes: vegetarianism,<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref7\">[vii]<\/a> which the former laid out in an 1813 book: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.animal-rights-library.com\/texts-c\/shelley01.htm\"><em>A Vindication of Natural Diet<\/em><\/a>, although the term itself only came into being in the 1840s. Until that point anyone renouncing flesh was referred to as being a \u2018Pythagorean\u2019, after the Greek philosopher and mathematician of Antiquity, Pythagoras.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, Jeremy Corbyn has been a vegetarian for almost fifty years. Considering <a href=\"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/environment\/how-irish-propaganda-operates-iii-the-inversion-of-the-food-pyramid\/\">the influence of the Irish livestock lobby on mainstream Irish media<\/a>, this may have aroused further suspicion. Corbyn has, however, tended to play down that feature of his politics, perhaps forewarned by George Orwell\u2019s condemnation of sandal-wearing vegetarians \u2018burbling about dialectical materialism\u2019 in <em>The Road to Wigan Pier.<\/em><a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref8\">[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, socialists such as Corbyn are stigmatised as forming part of a \u2018north London, metropolitan, liberal elite\u2019 by right-wing Populists such as the Home Secretary Priti Patel,<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref9\">[ix]<\/a> who herself previously suggested using the possibility of food shortages in Ireland to force the E.U.\u2019s hand over Brexit.<a href=\"#_edn10\" name=\"_ednref10\">[x]<\/a> Corybn\u2019s lifetime commitment to the redistribution of wealth, including resistance to austerity, may be the fruition of Shelleyian idealism: \u2018a consciousness of good, which neither gold \/ Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss \/ Can purchase.\u2019<a href=\"#_edn11\" name=\"_ednref11\">[xi]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Corbyn, like Shelley before him, might have appeared na\u00efve at times, including in his approach to Ireland. But he could yet emerge as the first British Prime Minister to feel genuine remorse for the damage wrought by British colonialism on Ireland. Moreover, notwithstanding the ongoing instability of the European project in the wake of Brexit, the genuine warmth he feels towards Ireland may harmonise relations between the peoples of these islands \u2013 the vast majority of whom have suffered under the yoke of tyrannical government over the course of a shared history.<\/p>\n<p>I for one dearly hope the British people \u201c<em>Rise like Lions after slumber \/ In unvanquishable number.\u201d <\/em>and vote Labour in the General Election on December 12th.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a> Simon Carswell, \u2018It\u2019s a means to an end \u2013 I want Brexit\u2019, <em>Irish Times<\/em>, December 6<sup>th<\/sup>, 2019. https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/news\/world\/uk\/uk-election-it-s-a-means-to-an-end-i-want-brexit-done-1.4105840<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[ii]<\/a> See, Finn McRedmond, \u2018 The Labour leader seems temperamentally incapable of apologising for the anti-Semitism that has wracked his party,\u2019 \u2013 \u2018Political rot has spread from US to UK,\u2019 <em>Irish Times, <\/em>December 6<sup>th<\/sup>, 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/political-rot-has-spread-from-us-to-uk-1.4105894\">https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/political-rot-has-spread-from-us-to-uk-1.4105894<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a> Dan Sabbagh, \u2018UK reclaims place as world&#8217;s second largest arms exporter\u2019, <em>The Guardian<\/em>, July 30<sup>th<\/sup>, 2019,\u00a0 https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jul\/30\/uk-reclaims-place-as-worlds-second-largest-arms-exporter<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\">[iv]<\/a> Percy Bysshe Shelley, \u2018An Address to the Irish People\u2019, 1812, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/collection-items\/p-b-shelleys-address-to-the-irish-people\">https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/collection-items\/p-b-shelleys-address-to-the-irish-people<\/a>,<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\">[v]<\/a> Author\u2019s own recording: https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/frank-armstrong-649911741\/shelleys-preface-to-laon-and<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref6\" name=\"_edn6\">[vi]<\/a> W.B. Yeats \u2018The Philosophy of Shelley\u2019s Poetry\u2019, 1900, http:\/\/www.yeatsvision.com\/Shelley.html.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref7\" name=\"_edn7\">[vii]<\/a> Percy Bysshe Shelley, \u2018A Vindication of Natural Diet\u2019, 1813, http:\/\/www.animal-rights-library.com\/texts-c\/shelley01.htm<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref8\" name=\"_edn8\">[viii]<\/a> George Orwell, <em>The Road to Wigan Pier<\/em>, Part 2, 13, http:\/\/www.telelib.com\/authors\/O\/OrwellGeorge\/prose\/RoadToWiganPier\/wiganpierpart_13.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref9\" name=\"_edn9\">[ix]<\/a> Daniel Sugarman, \u2018Why I don\u2019t think Priti Patel\u2019s reference to \u201cnorth London\u201d was an anti-Semitic dog whistle\u2019, October 3<sup>rd<\/sup>, 2019, <em>New Statesman<\/em>, https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/politics\/uk\/2019\/10\/why-i-don-t-think-priti-patel-s-reference-north-london-was-anti-semitic-dog<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref10\" name=\"_edn10\">[x]<\/a> Gr\u00e1inne N\u00ed Aodha, \u2018Tory MP suggests using possible &#8216;no-deal&#8217; food shortages to force Ireland to drop the backstop\u2019, December 7<sup>th<\/sup>, 2018, https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/brexit-threat-food-shortages-ireland-4381228-Dec2018\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref11\" name=\"_edn11\">[xi]<\/a> \u2018P. B. Shelley, \u2018Queen Mab,\u2019 Book V<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s \u2018radical socialist manifesto.\u2019[i] An historically warm relationship with Sinn F\u00e9in, Brexit neutrality, and lifelong commitment to the redistribution of wealth receive a cool reception in reports and commentary, while grossly inflated charges of Antisemitism within the Labour Party are threaded through articles.[ii] Yet the Labour leader [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[202],"class_list":["post-6023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-2","category-uncategorized","tag-2019december"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}