BELFAST TALKS

Talks between political parties have started again in Belfast.

About how local devolution of political powers can be made to work.
From a British point of view devolution seems a good idea. That is what they have in Britain, supreme power rests in the Monarchy and power is devolved down from Monarchy through the Houses of Lords and  Commons. To , as they say, the common people - eventually.

People find it  hard to believe this is the British system of power sharing in Britain itself but that is the way it is. Devolution from the source of power in the Monarchy down through the Lords and the Commons , the latter  representing, of course, the common folk.  Devolution  is a normal part of the  British  system under which we are ruled. In Britain this  devolution works, even though it is  not a voluntary system but  was imposed by force through hundreds of years and many think there is nothing particularly wrong in it. One disadvantage of the system is that if Monarch, army and what is called "the upper class" ( nowadays the state Church is not as influential  as it used to be)combined they could  take over power without breaking the basic  laws which are the British government system, or  constitution.  A  British commentator on the realities of this devolution  wrote that  this devolution of power from monarchy down to the representatives of the people  seems to open the possibility of power being  taken over from the top.  However, he adds reassuringly, there is a kind of gentleman's agreement that this will not happen!

Like the safeguard   mentioned by a character  in the BBC series  Yes (Prime) Minister ,  against any abuse  in the bank of England :  Really one chap doesn't let down other chaps in the City…..a  safeguard which we in Ireland who are democrats rather than monarchists  consider insufficient for anything.

So devolution  of powers from an already devolved government in London  down to  the even more devolved  one in Northern Ireland seems normal within the system but there are  problems there too. The Irish area of devolved government was carefully carved out in the nineteen twenties in order to be ruled and able to be ruled by, and only by, one  unchangeable party favourable to union with Britain.  This was done not only when imperial powers were doing much the same in the Middle East but when Irish nationalists and churches and many other  people in Ireland thought that belonging to an empire, to The Empire, the most prosperous  of European ones,  was a good thing. Even Nationalists had   fought  and  died for empire.

But empires dissolve and new ideas  about government arise from  the dust where they have been lying  not at all  forgotten by those who believe less  in being governed than in governing themselves.

One group of  people who are influential in the present  political talks in Belfast still hold on to the idea that empire brings strength and  government  dominated forever by one party in a small area specially carved out  for it is still possible ; another set of people believe that there cannot ever be good government - and good government is what the talks should be about - while the shape of that selfishly constructed political unit  remains as it is, part of a Province which was  given the name of the whole province , to be ruled over for ever  by  one unchangeable party , its unchangeableness assured by various devices which have in modern times become very  - but not completely - unpopular as undemocratic and offensive.  

 
Whom do we expect to be talking to each other in present  political talks in Belfast then ? People who say  good government is possible by some powers of the already internally devolved British government being devolved into an artificially devised Irish situation on the one hand , and  on the other hand people who say that if good government is to be had , the political shape of the area  to be governed has to be changed.

 Devolved government  in  Ireland was enforced, adjusted, re-adjusted  and  mended - at one period it seems there was  a new arrangement of it in N.Ireland once every two years or so - one might say all those failed experiments prove that  democrats  took devolution by successive downward steps and even diminishing powers as a serious  possibility to lessen the worst enormities of the system but from which we could progress towards a democratic solution.   

If another  interim repair to the system  is made this  time it will  need to be fair, reasonable, practical and constructively temporary. Negotiators  are intelligent enough to look at this reality if we insist that they do . They need not be  split by false promises and other government-generated nonsense including financial inducements.  

The  arrangements we make if  this present one fails will have to be definitive  and radical.   

We cannot keep trying yet another one, and another one and another one for much longer.  

You don't, as many of our fellow citizens might say, keep hoping, however long you keep trying, to gather figs from thistles.

Or grapes from thorns ( or thrones?).

  

LORD DELIVER US - YES, BUT WHY?

This time every year ( January 17th - January 25th) Christians pray publicly and privately for Christian Unity.

Christians have fought wars with Christians  and with others described by their Founder as "neighbours",  Christians or not. A minority of Christians have been pacifists, talking, working, suffering, dying to persuade all fellow  Christians to  abandon all  war against everyone. They have kept alive an ideal but failed miserably in fact.

Christians still ask God's help for their governments who wage war for profit and  sell arms to others to do it too, at the same time  asking God to unite us all in peace, starting with fellow Christians, as if God could do it against our will.

 

In 1988 in Belfast a citizens' writers  collective , most of whose  members  were of  Christian background,   produced this :

Little Pieces  :  An Incantation 

So we took the people all                                        

Sliced them into sections

Sacred bricks in holy wall

Severed all connections

Singled out the willing few

Safe for our elections

Stifled all the rest with new

Scripts for free injections....

So they promised people all

(Speaking each to sections )

Safe behind a holy wall

Separate resurrections....

 Nothing more  nothing less

Nothing change nothing bless

'Don't tear his cloak ' the soldiers said

So we divided Christ instead.

                                           (Published by Springhill Community House Belfast 1988)

A curious thought : Will unity among Christians come about only when Christians become  pacifist,  against war, totally dedicated to recognition of every person's dignity and right to live in peace ?

And an even more curious thought  perhaps : If Christians don't do this, do they deserve to have their prayers for peace heard ?

This question  is one of the great dividers in Christian life. Some few may favour complete pacifism - like Father Dan Berrigan who came to West Belfast in the midst of the recent war waged in Northeast Ireland in the seventies to  nineties. At the invitation of Fr Joe Mc Veigh and  local people Dan  publicly discussed this with a fellow priest , Herman Verbeek  a member of the European  Parliament. Dan said we should always take literally the Jesus saying of turning the other cheek. Herman Verbeek  argued that that was all very well but if attacked we had not only the privilege but the duty to defend our own lives and those for whom, as parents, neighbours or whatever, we had responsibility. There need be little doubt which the audience in those sad circumstance favoured.  The  important thing  was that in the midst of their trouble they had the conscience to ask people to come and talk realistically with them about it.

During the German occupation in France in the nineteen forties resistance fighters used to come down from the hills to ask advice from Church about the morality of their  armed resistance to the invasion!  That's how concerned they were about such matters, although they got little credit for it.

During the years when we were even more afraid of nuclear weapons than we are now, a prominent Catholic cleric in  London fell out with his archbishop. The Archbishop insisted that nuclear weapons were necessary  " as a deterrent". The cleric disagreed and so the Archbishop lost the services of one of the most active workers for peace in England.

So if Washington exploded two nuclear weapons  when they did not need them to win a war, what would happen when any powerful government would do even worse, having persuaded their people  they were in danger of attack ? The persuasion is on already.

Christians could have a powerful voice pushing us towards peace. There is an  honourable  place for us in this modern world even though we failed dismally in the old one. Whatever  internal arguments we have that  drive people away from us , we could unite on one issue that would enable people to believe that our prayers,  processions  and hymns are serious.

As a united  human and humane body  powerful for peace there will be no doubt about our place in this modern political world where death is used to solve problems, where war is for profit and human beings  are made to fight plenty but not to matter much.  

POSH TOSH ?

A few days ago  the BBC broadcast a programme about George Bernard Shaw and Channel 4 broadcast a play "Derry Girls".

In the BBC programme there was a segment on Shaw's play Pygmalion. In this play Shaw showed how people who are described as "upper class" show their upper class by the way they speak and create class divisions by pointing to other people as inferior by the way they speak. He despised the whole process of course.

"Derry Girls" presented viewers with a story of children whose language - and social customs - mark them out as quite special. Words that RTE, BBC, ITV , the Irish Times,  consider so unmentionable in good "Society" that they primly refer to them as the F word, the C word, peppered the script, or perhaps may have been  inserted during production to liven things up a bit.

Or to make clear to viewers that children from  a certain area, with a certain financial standard of living, of a certain religion really talk like this and can be defined and recognised by it. In Shaw's play a flower girl has a way of talking that may have been real or not but defined her as a person of lower standing in what was called "society".  In the Channel Four programme  a limited  stock of words to talk with, considering  wildness a great thing, relieving oneself into a trash can,  by these characteristics  you may  recognise the Derry girls'  world. Nothing easier than that.

Shaw is more clever about  all this than " Derry Girls". He shows why speech and accent are used to define what class you belong to and whether you are acceptable to people considered more elevated. Within the viewing area of  Channel Four's  programme there may now be people who really believe Derry speech and manners  would exclude Derry children  from "polite society" as it used to be called.  Are they being encouraged  to think that way?

After the first episode of "Derry Girls" one could wonder if perhaps that young man isolated in a male-loo-less  convent school who seemed to have a somewhat across the water accent might fall in love with one of the girls and apply the rules of Channel Four civilisation to her with disastrous results because of  alienation and possible exile for the poor girl through not being able to talk to  (or shout at) her own people any more.  Shaw's character, through learning  "correct" speech, could have lost out that way and we are never sure whether she did or not but the danger was there.  Perhaps the writer of "Derry Girls" has more strings to  her artistic bow than Shaw and   may  invent  a reasonably normal happy ending out of the play's cultural chaos.  

Years ago I spoke to an audience that  included a titled lady and a West- Minister.  I talked to them about their  floor arrangements for the Opening of their Parliament. The monarch sat in grace away up there, the lords, ladies and high clergy  seated in front of the monarch,  and away at the back, standing, were the elected representatives of the people, the Commons, the common folk.  A striking symbol of the shape of the British power system,  monarch at the top whose power and comfort are devolved  "downwards" eventually reaching the common folk, diluted. Drinking tea afterwards the titled lady was heard to say loudly : " Doesn't he know that things have changed, enormously changed  - the House of Lords has changed enormously, why,  you can tell by their accents .........."

As Shaw with typical Irish wisdom pointed out, speech is used to classify people as belonging to "Society" or not. And that is a nonsense.

 There was a time - which we old folk well remember - when the BBC and the Theatres allowed a Belfast, Ballymena or Derry accent to be used only for laughs or whimsy. Those times changed, eventually the BBC had to allow local accents to be not only used but respected.

When Radio Éireann and RTÉ came along there was discussion about them in Dáil Éireann. A  T.D. complained  : "These broadcasters", he said, "have accents that are not redolent of the soil........".   A brave effort to turn old snobbery on its head  even at the cost of creating a new one, but recognising the importance of speech and accent in letting other people decide whether you are "respectable" or not.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the Derry Girls.  One of them perhaps, poor Derry girl converted to gentility but sadly trudging off into the sunset where  her every  word must be  acceptable to polite society but her community and friends cannot talk with  her any more. Like in Pygmalion.

Incidentally, do Derry children  really keep talking like that ?

And do  they really  have nuns with starched faces ?

And do they really shout at each other even when only a couple of feet away ? 

If not should we let  Channel Four know ?

 

 

COUNTING COST

Three ideas  2018 could well do without :

1  No use reviving Irish it's a dead language .

   The truth is that  for the past more than two thousand years there has never been a time when Irish was a dead language, it has continued to be the living language of multitudes of people from   long before the English language was put together  and up to the present ;

2   If we could teach people to live together we could solve our problems

     The truth is that people in the northeast of Ireland are well able to integrate. Indeed they are so successful at it - intermarrying, working together, living in the same districts - that government and its supporters had to create pogroms on average one every twelve years or so for a hundred years to split them apart again, so as not to upset the voting pattern necessary for control.

3    Ireland cannot afford the 9 billion a year to be united.

       Economists must  work out our financial situation efficiently.  People said the same about Malta and always say the same about any body of people who  want to govern themselves  - you can't afford it. Britain has profited extremely well from our Irish border, much better than people on either side of it  - it got a huge tract of land that it could freely roam - until the armed conflict restricted  this  - as a military and naval base from which it could dominate the Atlantic and allow NATO to do the same, it controlled our trade, commerce, import , export , surrounding seas , controlling enterprise so that it would not interfere with enterprise in Britain.  And much else besides.

 Logic suggests that if 2018 is to proceed with honesty  what we need is not just nice people to govern us in the northeast of the island  but freedom to govern ourselves efficiently in the whole of the island.  Others who  had the same problem  were  told the same tale, you cannot afford it. In the old days it was enough to say, You cannot do it, but now, having to admit we can do it, the argument adjusts, Yes, perhaps you could but you could not pay for it.   

Will  our political logicians and economists help our discussions in 2018 ?

STILL, HAPPY 2018 TO US ALL

It is hard to believe  President Trump did not know how destructive  his decision about  the  American Embassy  being sited in Jerusalem would be.

Did he do it  because :

It brought the destabilisation of the Middle East  a step further?

It created  an opportunity for a trial of strength between Washington and the United Nations?

It continued the policy of getting what Washington wants without war on its own territory , fought by other peoples and leaving  Washington's financial supporters  in the happy position of  offering to clear up the mess with considerable profit ?  

Washington is not good at winning wars,  so incitement to wars on other people's ground, fought by other people, is considered good policy. Trump did not  promise to give up foreign wars, he indicated his dislike of fighting foreign wars Washington does not win. And there is a fair number of wars it didn't win.

Washington entered the First World War when the already fighting nations  had exhausted each other. It  was then able to take part in the drawing of political borders in the Middles East that had little regard for local tribes and peoples but much regard for sharing out the spoils to imperial interests of outsiders. In Ireland we understand such things , both historically and presently and we don't like it.  The border drawn in Ireland  running  ridiculously through farms and even houses without regard for history or need or potential of the people living there was what powerful governments did in those days.

Washington entered the Second World War when Germany exhausted itself in a disastrous war with Russia and the main task then became to re-arm the Germans and prevent the  Russians from getting too far west in Europe.

Washington has a remarkable record of not winning wars, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq ..........the successful war with Mexico seems so far away now......ended about 1848  did it ?  

Of course on the other  hand  what do you mean by winning? If the result of your military action is military retreat , what odds if retreat  means destabilising whole nations with the likelihood of your profitably re-building them to your own image and likeness, which after all was the reason for your war in the first place?  

One fear Mr Trump must have is that North Korea or any other nation could get within striking distance of American-friendly territory. Whether heavy USA threats or light United Nations resolutions  will  prevent that happening remains  to be seen.

One can suppose that Mr Trump is not as ' through other' as he seems  and it is all part of a grand plan.  A  big political word now is Hegemony - a Greek word for  domination, control by one nation over another  and commentators are saying fairly freely now that that is what Washington is getting for itself,  a new hegemony, a world one at that.

Still, may 2018 be indeed  Happy , Peaceful and Prosperous.

And may none of our Hearts be Trump's.

THE OLD REMEMBER TOO MUCH ?

This Blog suggested - (Blog April  11th. 2017) that the reason behind President Trump's  sayings and doings - unsayings and undoings  too  -  is to do what ancient emperors did, keep everyone on tenterhooks afraid to move for fear of losing the imperial favour, being hired today , fired next week all to create not a strong Presidency but a strong president , not one  strong America but one strong American.   Creating tensions with both enemies and friends is a strategy to show who is boss in any case. We Oldies in Europe grew up in a world of Dictators and know how it happens, Spain, Portugal,Italy, Germany, Russia, and fascist movements in Ireland, Britain, France....These days we seem to forget that Europe is a very recent convert to the concept of democracy not the cradle of it. But Old Fellows  sitting  at the city gates remember.

Now  this  Old Man at the City Gates is back after an episode of a broken leg and some broken hopes and he thinks he sees the situation not just  worryingly similar but worryingly worse.

Internal  disruption  in the USA , street riots, threats hurled from America to N Korea and back , international  loss of  the  dignity not only of  a government making a mess of things but of  government in general. If Donald Trump had been defeated in the election , or if he had been confronted soon after it with a real threat of impeachment  some of the tensions in American life could have been damped down . Now however, any attempt to remove  the president ranging from  physical attack to  leisurely impeachment could easily be a  spark to inflame  passions even more. In a  country where so many people  can possess not just arms but arsenals by constitutional right , where there are   tensions between the States' and the United States' administrations, racial problems, widespread poverty, something more rational has to be done than  distract the passions of citizens by  tweets or verbal rockets  from the golf course.

A  favourite tactic by politicians and military under threat or seeking status is to have a war. Winston Churchill - who said he could not understand why his country's government would not a open up a front in the Dardanelles because, " ....after all", he said," it would only cost a few hundred lives, French generals  defeated in battle who said, "Another 20,000  troops and we could have succeeded...."  found war useful  not only to acquire foreign  power, land and resources  but to strengthen home government.  Thatcher had a war, Blair had a war, the leaders of N Korea and of the USA threaten war  because their leadership as they see it demands it.  For Donald Trump the creation of   uncertainty and dependence on the imperial pleasure is as real now as in Nero's day. Some American newspapers have compared  Trump's  methods to those of Julius Caesar, but Nero's come closer . The image of Trump tweeting while Homs burns  still stands.

It may be said that talk of civil war in the USA  and  dissolution of the states is just alarmist. But no union of states or people is forever. Hitler's Reich was to last for a thousand years, it lasted only a few. The European  empires dissolved, so did the Soviet Union. The European Union may disunite or not, nobody really knows. The USA suffers  rancour about wasting money on foreign wars that cannot be won as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Making war far away from home does not help any more - people invent their own responses to that  with everyday means like motor vans and gas cylinders causing terror even to those  whose governments have more technolgy for war  than they could ever need.

If the United nations were willing and able it could perhaps do something to discipline those whose wars have caused millions of deaths, starvations and miseries. But it has proved a disappointment just as the League of Nations  did to previous generations.  The best we can do - Old Folk at the City Gates or  nowhere in particular who have seen it all before  - is  understand and say what we believe is happening and hope we can all do that together.  We can still hope that  our American friends may  have a President truly worthy of them.

Then America could indeed hope to become great. So could we all.

==============================================================================

Casual thought :    So "fighting civil war politics"  in Ireland was a shame and something we Irish do......?    Spare a thought for civil war politics in America which has emerged strong again after so many years........it's what people do........

 

 

HUMAN RIGHTS ALERT - N.IRELAND

 

Recent public discussion about  'Brexit' and  Britain leaving the European union has been about the financial implications of  this departure. All aspects of this change and its possible consequences have to be discussed privately and publicly but one  aspect of  it needs much more attention than has been given to it so far. That is, the question of Human Rights  and Human Rights legislation and practice in N.Ireland after Brexit.

In N Ireland there has been a long and extremely difficult struggle for the recognition  of human rights for everyone.  Almost every aspect of our lives such as  employment, gender, reputation, justice, adequate democratic representation and much else had to be examined, laws and  practices adjusted, and even the laws had to be carefully scrutinised , followed by more scrutiny of how the laws were fulfilled or not by those whose duty it was to fulfil them.

The  recognition of, legislation for and practice of Human Rights are uncertain in this newly developing political situation. Have we  guarantees  that no lessening of adequate law and practice  will happen if N. Ireland is depending on what the British government will do in the future?  If there is government failure to protect Human Rights, what international redress have we in N.Ireland?  Have we adequate  information about what will happen, or even about what the British government intends to do to recognise Human Rights either in Britain or Ireland ?

Outside the European Union it was very difficult to direct international attention to our  Human Rights problems here in Ireland.  Much of what was achieved was achieved in the light of European and other international standards and decisions. We cannot afford to allow these human rights achievements  even to be in danger, let alone given away.

This may well mean that the same persistence and determination to achieve Human Rights for All in our own place will be as important in the future as in the past.

A public meeting about the impact of 'Brexit' on Human Rights here in Ireland will be held on Monday, June 12th. at 7 p.m.in the Conway Education Centre , Conway Mill, Conway Street, Belfast.

The international human rights advocate Niall Murphy will make a presentation on

                                   HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRELAND in the event of 'BREXIT'

This  will be followed by Questions and Answers, ending in a discussion on What is to be done?

THE MEETING IS OPEN TO EVERYONE . A PARTICULAR INVITATION IS EXTENDED TO ALL CAMPAIGN GROUPS.

For further information contact Springhill Community House,  phone 028 90 326722, or Ciaran,    phone 07988321844.

MOAB into BOAM

How long may it be until Washington's  Mother of All Bombs becomes Washington's Bomber of all Mothers ?

Not all that long if we go on allowing governments to make international military threats rather than international civil treaties, internationally promoting Death for Profit and Life Only at Gunpoint.

Just before the first government murders by atomic weapons at the end of WW2  scientists  who had helped make the bombs were talking about the possible results of their handiwork. There is an account of their thinking  in Rebels Against War, The American Peace Movement 1941-1960  by Laurence S. Wittner (1968):

A scientist, Szilard, said, " some of us walked the streets of Chicago imagining the sky suddenly  lit by a giant fireball, the  steel skeletons of skyscrapers bending into grotesque shapes ...". Szilard was one of the people who helped persuade Roosevelt to build the bombs.  Then, too late of course, some scientists - only some scientists -  began to repent, lamenting not a Japanese city or an Irish city, or a Russian city but an American city possibly being destroyed by their enthusiastic work . The scientists knew what their proud and lucrative work could lead to and went on doing it. Repentance came too little, too late and too mean.

Before the first atomic murder  bomb was flung down on Japanese men, women and children -- at that time this was the "Mother of All Bombs"  -- 150 scientists in Chicago  were asked their opinion of its future:

2 % said, Don't use it ;

11%  said, Have an experimental demonstration of it that the world can understand, but don't use it as a weapon;

26 % said, Have an experimental demonstration and then use it  --  " if necessary";

46 % said, Have a "military demonstration of it in Japan" ( that is, effective military use in Japan) followed by full military use as required;

15% said, Use it in the most effective way to force surrender.

That is, only 13% said, Don't use it at all.  39% would have a limited  show beforehand, 85 % would have full military use with only a demonstration beforehand, 15% said use the bomb as the military wanted it.

So if you are hoping the scientists may join together ,  revert to their role as benefactors of humanity and save us all from MOAB and BOAM,forget it. What has happened can happen again. In history  no usable weapon was ever  invented that was not used to maximum effect. Read Bible or History book to study the mentality that made this so.

Will politicians and economists  be persuaded to ask,  "Where's the profit if you sell  your soul to get it ?".

North Korea recently tested missiles over the sea and many respected people condemned it. It was a demonstration.

Washington recently  tested 59 missiles against Syria - that  was a demonstration too - but many respected people  seemed remarkably calm about it.

We can imagine on both occasions a cry, though, an awed  wondering cry rising from a small room in the White House :

WOW !!!!!!!!!

At one and a half million dollars a  blast, that sounds like mighty good business.  

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.  

Thank you, Martin

Our friend Martin McGuinness  has gone from us, mission accomplished.

 We bless him as he goes. He brought to our political life qualities we needed so much, patience, courtesy and friendship.

While other leaders in the world were practising their craft of turning peace into war he was perfecting the art of turning war into peace. 

We are grateful to him and to his colleagues for that.

He did not discover the way to peace in the midst of war, he had the vision of peace all his life. His sadness was that often the vision was hidden by obstacles to peace set up by those who should have been friends.

If we have sadness now it is because he did not stay with us long enough to see the best result of his genius.

Go raibh sé i  suaimhneas  sioraí Dé go deo.

We thank his Family , Colleagues and Neighbours  too, for they so faithfully loved and supported him.

 

TWO OF MANY EAMONS

Eamon Casey who died recently was one of Ireland's most famous bishops. Irish bishops have been famous for lots of  things but Eamon became famous for one thing in particular, he fell  in love with a friend who was married  and they had a son .

When he was a student in Maynooth  seminary some of his fellow students prophesied  that he would not  live  long - they thought he would die in a mighty crash  driving his car  furiously fast.  Driving in  those  days if you " went  over forty" either you boasted about it or someone else  complained about it. Someone  suggested  there should be a law requiring a red flag to be carried in front of his car. He did have some crashes but nobody got hurt.  Our  concern about his loving or driving  may make us  forget how  caring, thoughtful, compassionate were so many other things he did. Like  cooperating with Des Wilson (no relation of mine I'm afraid ) to build houses for people in England who didn't have any or heading  Trócaire in Ireland to help get food and a living for people in this world who had neither.

Eamon Casey was ordained in 1951 and so, as Maurice Chevalier might have sung, I remember him well. He went to England as  a lot of Catholic priests did in the fifties and sixties , saw the plight of workers  there  who were  paid for the job but not  provided with decent living  during the job or after it.

There was another Eamon who followed much the same track, Eamon Gaynor who was ordained the same day I was - he joined up with people like the Mc Alpine's fusiliers  Christy Moore sings about and  went along with them as they  shifted camp from one section of English motorway to the next, living like nomads  because that's the way it was. One Eamon was bringing companionship to the labourers , another Eamon providing homes for them  if they could get  a bit of prosperity and peace to live in  them. Brave young men  who thought comfort was for other people.  Falling in love "inappropriately" and driving too fast seem  not to matter all that much when you look back on it.

Institutions are strange. They see what you are good at and get you to do something else instead. Casey was taken from the houses and Gaynor from the motorways back to Ireland to savour the -- what's the word, decitement perhaps --  of  the Irish church struggling to ignore the Second Vatican Council. They made Casey a bishop and Gaynor a curate and there you were. Casey eventually became head of Trócaire which was good, although  one always remembers it was founded when  anti-birthcontrol hysteria  made many religious people wary of organisations like Oxfam. Fortunately Trócaire and similar organisations did magnificently and carried themselves with dignity until the hysteria faded. One of the people responsible for that was Brian Mc Keown , a  Belfastman, one is proud to say.

As for the Eamons of this world and the people they generously befriended, some of them built motorways for our English neighbours, some fought their wars for them, some preached their sermons for them, some built their schools and managed their hospitals for them. One prominent member  of the Catholic church in England and generous admirer of the Irish said to me : One of the best things you Irish people  could do for England is go home and force us to do all this for  ourselves.

One is not always grateful for large mercies though. I don't know exactly  where  the  idealism of Eamon of the Motorways led him eventually but I do know  the other Eamon's  love life made us forget how many houses he and that other Des Wilson got built.

How would it have been if the church administration had brought  one of the Eamons back not to administer church affairs but to help the homeless in Ireland , and told the other Eamon to stay where he was and go on taking care of  the uninsured and lonely Irish who were  left, as it were,  by the side of the road? 

Annoying - the president ?

One answer to President Trump's recent executive  order to tighten control of immigration has come from what may seem unlikely sources. The presidential order called  halt to financial subsidies for town and city  councils who refuse to carry out the President's  severe directions about  removing immigrants. 

So some municipal councils are refusing to obey.

 In the state of Connecticut a city council not only refused to obey but got a standing ovation for refusing. One of its  Republican councillors said , "It's sad that we're voting on this tonight, it's great to see the community come together but it's unfortunate that this is why". The "why" was the need for  this, like other councils, "to make the state's (Connecticut's) largest city a safe haven for undocumented immigrants" .  A small but growing number of USA cities, towns and college campuses  have declared themselves safe sanctuaries for immigrants under this threat from the administration.

This sanctuary movement  is reminiscent of what happened in Europe centuries  ago - immigrants take their folk memories with them wherever they go  - when monasteries -  some of these were as big as small towns in population and wealth - were declared sanctuaries, sanctuaries even for wrongdoers. It is reminiscent also of places of refuge for citizens of the USA who went north for sanctuary in Canada because they refused to fight in Vietnam and other wars whose morality they could not believe in. And there  are towns in America still proudly remembered  as sanctuaries for fleeing slaves.

Like any humane and dignified  initiative the ancient right of sanctuary was abused. They say for instance that when rich European nobility  went to fight in the Christians' eastern  crusades some of them did some foul deeds and on returning home founded  monasteries, partly to become reconciled to the Almighty and partly to ensure  they could live the rest of their  short lives there and die in peace, safe from competitors and enemies.

In  Middletown , Connecticut, a short while ago the Mayor said : "It's been our practice for years not to enforce federal immigration law....". 

The University of Connecticut declared its commitment to protecting undocumented students.

A Hartford Connecticut newspaper   recently reported  their  Mayor saying,   "This is a welcoming , caring, and inclusive town" - he too was reacting against  the Presidential order.

Meanwhile about eight thousand people recently assembled at a site in North Dakota to protest at an oil pipeline being made to run more than a thousand miles  through sacred tribal land of native Americans. They protested the President's order that  the pipeline  must proceed, under the care of the Army's engineers. What happens if the people keep resisting to the point of standing in physical opposition, Army or no Army ?

The Franciscan Action Network  said, "Building a pipeline through indigenous people's sacred land is a violation of their religious freedom just the same as if President Trump gave permission to tear down St Patrick's Cathedral in New York to build an oil refinery there ".

In North Dakota it would likely poison the people's water supply into the bargain.

 The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas  called the latest executive order on immigrants  "morally unacceptable" 

So the President testing his political and financial muscle in the present struggle for internal power is not just a matter of annoying the press and the fleeing industrialists. Consciences and city councils are annoyed  as well.