PEACE THROUGH INSECURITY

Officials hovering around the President of the USA have said they feel afraid to go off for a weekend in case their President  may  change his  mind on important matters  before Monday. 

In old times emperors, especially bad ones, ruled not just by powerful armies but by making sure people did not know what the emperors  were going to do next.

The Emperor  Nero was like that - the plan for today was to forget the plan for yesterday, this week's court favourite could be next  week's head on the block.  This to make  sure that public policy is nearly impossible, all depending on the will of the emperor.  The courtiers around him who want to sit on his throne and the courtesans who want to lie in his bed make sure to find out what the emperor is thinking today before doing anything, and to change tack themselves as quickly and as ruthlessly as necessary.

So the policies and principles  of government fade away in importance as the emperor  makes one decision today and another possibly quite different one  next week.

This ancient imperial idea of The Importance of Not being  Earnest seems to be appearing in  the present regime in Washington DC.   It is consistent with the desire and activity of a person intent on creating not a strong America, not a strong presidency but a strong president who wishes to direct and control both.  A present day emperor  tweeting  while Homs burns.

This seems a reasonable  interpretation of what Donald Trump does and stops doing and then starts doing again.  We read the day's disasters in his morning face,  like the pupils reading their headmaster's in Goldsmith's Deserted Village,  tomorrow's  with fear,  next week's perhaps with relief.  Foreign governments become  unsure, home government  is unsure,and while  everyone else's  insecurity increases the person creating the insecurity becomes more personally assured, personally more powerful.  The policy of Peace Through Security becomes that of Peace Through Insecurity - for this week anyway.

But in the history of the old emperors  fate catches up with them in the end,  or rather frustration does as enemies form outside and enemies form inside while  courtiers and courtesans  see one official promoted  then discarded,  one idea tried, discarded,  then another  and a lot of officials sent packing if the conflicting promises, threats,  assertions and contradictions  don't work.  And so on and so forth.  The history of emperors may be unpleasant to read and infuriating to think about but when similar  swagger is,  as it were, resurrecting out of the history books and leering at you from The Washington Post  it requires not just fearful notice but courageous analysis.

Modern potential emperors who try to create personal kingdoms by way of the  imperial nod rather than rational politics tend to make important people impatient.  Nowadays there are in the world many  impatient courtiers and courtesans, many  business corporations and corporate moguls who have more financial clout - and therefore more real clout - than many  governments  or leaders of governments  have.  

So we will watch the present presidential  gyrations in Washington DC with considerable interest today  and  probably with increasing alarm tomorrow. As well we may.

Shakespeare wrote, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" but in  our day the people with the real worries are the billions of decent people who don't.

Not like Gibraltar- or Germany!

Spain , they say, will have a veto on trade agreements involving  Europe, Britain and Gibraltar after Brexit.

Because Gibraltar is the subject of an ownership dispute between two sovereign nations, Spain and Britain and therefore Spain has a vital interest in what will be done concerning Gibraltar. And a veto.   

Why does the government in Dublin not have a similar veto on trade agreements between Britain , N.Ireland  and the rest of Ireland after Brexit?

Once upon a time the Irish (1937)Constitution declared that Ireland was a territory of one nation to be governed by one government , north, south, east and west. But  London claimed jurisdiction over the northeast. So there was an international  dispute between Britain and Ireland over possession of the territory of the northeast.

This was very important to  people struggling for their democratic rights. London said whatever happened in the North Eastern  part of Ireland was an internal British domestic matter and therefore no business of Italy, France, the USA, the United Nations etc. Those who were pleading for international support to avoid war and bring peace in Ireland argued that it was of international concern  because of , among other things,  this dispute between two sovereign governments.  It was  a strong argument that convinced many international people of goodwill that they really could intervene  after all.

Some Dublin political parties, however, allied to the press,  commercial interests and some academics mounted a severe and eventually successful  campaign to abolish the claim in Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution which made the Irish situation one of international concern with which  other nations should be involved. This campaign, successfully completed in 1999, chiefly by Fine Gael,  cut  the feet from under a  powerful  democratic argument for international intervention . We were left alone. Fortunately, due to the good work of democratic politicians in Ireland and many friends abroad and the increasing importance being  given to the defence of human rights in European and other international law  the damage was not as bad as it might have been.

Spain was not so foolish as to give up its claim to their disputed territory, Gibraltar. 

One important reason why Germany was  comparatively easily re-united after the Second World War was that  the Germans  never gave up their claim to be one nation to be governed  as one.  influential  Irish politicians persuaded a majority of Irish people to give up theirs.

So, contrary to what may  be said about it during the next few months, the Good Friday Agreement is not the reason why Spain is in a better position now regarding Gibraltar than Ireland is regarding the Northeast when Brexit deals are done. The mischief was done - not by mistake but by careful and determined planning in the South - long before that. Democratic politicians in the northeast had little alternative to working with the Good Friday Agreement after such a devastating and successful attack on basic articles of the Irish Constitution . It is  worthwhile to read back into the history of that campaign to abolish the import of Articles Two and Three.  The campaign was long and hard, for and against.  

All of which  is a warning that we should watch every move, or every failure to move, every letter and iota of suggestion and agreement that involves us in the Brexit affair.  Today we are not limited as we were in the past to negotiators who claim to speak for us, we have negotiators whom we ourselves have appointed to do it.

Or do we have to learn the same lesson over and over ?

 

Acht na Gaeilge

Six hundred and fifty years ago this year - in 1367 - an English government was trying to get English people  to use  an "English" language in place of their mixture of languages from the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Latin, Greek etc. It was  difficult.

So in 1362 they made a law that from now on  lawcourts in England must conduct their affairs in English. Really important people in  Europe used  Latin for these purposes and French for others . And - quite sensibly one feels - the English king also  made a law that  from now on the opening of their parliament in England  should also be conducted in English. That would help in the promotion of the emerging English language. Their parliament eventually did get opened in  English  although  the law that  ordered it was still written in French.

English was slowly developing as a literary language and writers would emerge who  would make it so. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1385) would become  a writer  of the emerging language  and he proved an entertaining story teller who helped by his often quite vulgar  tales.  This  helped perhaps even more than getting English into the courts and parliament. The work of getting the English in England to use their slowly developing language was extended also to the English who at  this time had militarily occupied part of Ireland.  In 1367 the  English  King's representative in Ireland brought into force a new law  in a parliament they had set up in Kilkenny,  centre of an  occupied zone. In this occupied  area  there was a mixture of English arrivals, military or otherwise, and Irish workers, officials etc. ( it  happens with   military invasions and occupations). The English king, Edward the Third, was  trying hard  to make  English people  take on the newly developing English wherever they might be at home or abroad. 

This  law in Ireland  is known as  The Statutes of Kilkenny and contains the following:

 IT IS ORDAINED AND ESTABLISHED that every Englishman use the English language and be named by an English name leaving off entirely the manner of naming (used )by the Irish; and that every Englishman use the English custom, fashion and mode of riding and apparel according to his estate; and if any living among the English use the Irish language amongst themselves contrary to the ordinance and therefor be attainted (convicted), his lands and tenements, if he have any, shall be seized into the hands of his immediate lord until he shall find sufficient surety to adopt and use the English language and then he shall have restitution of his said lands  or tenements, his body shall be taken by any of the officers of our lord the king and committed to the next  gaol there to remain until he or some other in his name shall find sufficient surety in the manner aforesaid.  And that no Englishman who shall have the value of one hundred pounds of land or of rent by the year shall ride otherwise than  in the English fashion on a saddle and he that shall do to the contrary and shall be therefor attainted his horse shall be forfeited to our lord the king and his body shall be committed to prison until he pay a fine according to the king's pleasure, and  beneficed persons of Holy Church ( clergy) living amongst the English shall have the issues of their benefices  until they use the English language in the manner aforesaid and they shall have respite in order to learn the English language and to provide saddles between this and the feast of St Michael next coming. ......and no difference of allegiance shall henceforth be made between the English born in Ireland and the English born in England by referring to  them as hobbe (Horsey English Squireens)  or Irish dogs.........

Footnote: The word Hobbe  in the royal decree is  like our "hobbyhorse" - there was  also a word  "hobereau" in use meaning a squireen ,  so " hobbe" probably was a mix of two insults.   Unlike most  of the laws imposed in Ireland the Irish quite liked the one about saddles - still winning prizes on them to this day at international Horseshows !                                                                                      

 We remember  this ancient English law  now in 2017 a.d. when at Stormont they  are discussing Acht na Gaeilge  (The Irish Language Act) which is being demanded for N.Ireland and is designed to protect and enhance the Irish language - which along with Greek is the oldest European language still spoken and written as a living language today. Making  Acht na Gaeilge into active law will mark both the symbolic  and the real end of historic governmental campaigns  to destroy the language. Once that is done the Irish language will continue even more effectively to enrich the world's treasury of thought and speech.