The Cedar Lounge Revolution

40 years on, and the legacy of 1968 remains contested.  This is probably inevitable.  While it’s one of those few years like 1789, 1848 or 1989 that are synonymous with uprising and revolution, 1968 is unique in that there’s little or no consensus on what it meant then or what it means now.

Sean O’Hagen, in a recent feature for The Observer, gives a good overview of the events of that year.  Over on the Prospect website, you can find a variety of views on ‘68 under the title ‘1968: liberty or its illusion?’ from a slew of writers ranging from Tsvetan Todorov to PJ O’Rourke.  Don’t miss this characteristically bitter little piece from Alan Johnson.  Not to be outdone in the bitterness stakes, of course, our own John Waters (sub req’d) describes 1968 as ‘The tragic conflict between freedom and tradition’.  A little more coherent than most of Waters’ pieces, he does descend into his typically nonsensically quasi-mysticalism towards the end, stating that:

(F)reedom is a deceptive word which, in its modern meaning, conveys a pursuit of desire without limit.  Because of the structural limitations of the human mechanism, there is a point at which the pursuit of desire, in any direction, becomes destructive.  One of the consequences of the disrespecting of tradition since the 1960s is that this consciousness of limits has been mislaid.

Hours of fun could be had speculating about where John Waters thinks the ’structural limitations of the human mechanism’ lie, but we’ll simply gesture towards the area between the navel and the knees and move on.

Over on Comment is Free, the fight is being played out between Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who argues that the actual consequences of 1968 are four decades of near uninterrupted right-wing political control and 17-year olds being offered positions as strippers at the Job Centre, and Peter Lennon, who instead argues that the events of May 1968 in Paris had substantial positive effects lasting even to the present day (although he does include a rather gratuitous ‘My demonstration is bigger than your demonstration’ dig at the British soixante-huitards).

As disparate as Wheatcroft and Lennon’s positions are, they both, I think, fall into the same error: that of seeing 1968 solely in terms of events in Western Europe and the United States (Lennon, in fact, implies that only the Parisian ‘68 is the authentic one).  This is a perception shared by many of the Prospect writers and writers elsewhere, as well as in the popular consciousness.  When one thinks of 1968 one immediately thinks of either French students digging up cobblestones to throw at policemen or the mixture of rioting and assassination that characterised the US Presidential campaign that year. 

This is, without a doubt, the sexier side of ‘68, the side which appeals to those who prefer the ‘Street-Fighting Man’ of the Rolling Stones to the ‘Revolution’ of the Beatles.  However, it’s also extremely limited and the more we look back on the legacy of 1968, the more limited such a view appears.

While, for example, the anti-war movement in the United States, and globally, was hugely significant at the time, and was a crucible from which major figures in contemporary US politics emerged, it’s important not to see it as a spontaneous mass phenomenon which emerged sui generis on the Washington Mall and on campuses across the continent.  It evolved slowly, and gradually, over the course of half a decade.  As Chomsky writes in the current edition of New Statesman, contrasting the anti-war movement of the 1960s with the opposition to the invasion of Iraq five years ago:

You have to remember that, during Vietnam, there was no opposition at the beginning of the war. It did develop, but only six years after John F Kennedy attacked South Vietnam and troop casualties were mounting. However, with the Iraq War, opposition was there from the very beginning, before an attack was even initiated. The Iraq War was the first conflict in western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested against before it had even been launched.

It’s also worth recalling the extent to which the anti-Vietnam war movement, the student movement, was dependent on the civil rights movement for its very existence.  Even though the formal civil rights movement had, to a large extent, played itself out by ‘68, when one looks at leaders like Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, even Abbie Hoffman, what’s particularly notable is how many of them either had their political baptism or were heavily involvement in the Freedom Riders or the voter registration projects from earlier in the decade.  Indeed, many of the tactics employed by the anti-war protestors were perfected on the streets of Selma, Birmingham, Albany and other towns across the deep South.  It’s fair to say that without the initial work of the NAACP, the SCLC and the SNCC, there wouldn’t have been an anti-war movement, certainly of the scale that came to exist.  However, this doesn’t tend to be part of the dominant narrative of 1968, or to feature prominently in the Sunday newspaper nostalgia pieces, where the massive significance of the civil rights movement at the time, and its legacy to the present day, tends to be reduced to the assassinations of that year.

Similarly, when one considers whether 1968 represented a turning point in the United States’ engagement with Vietnam, one should overplay the significance of the anti-war movement.  Important though the domestic and international demonstrations were, they paled in comparison to the actions of the Tet Offensive of the same year, which demonstrated that the United States military machine could be defeated on its own terms, and acted as a call to arms for anti-imperialist movements across the world.

Turning East, or West (depending on your perspective) there’s also a tendency to diminish the significance of the uprisings and protests across Eastern Europe (not to mention in Southern Europe, where the term ‘fascist government’ carried much more weight than just a rather self-indulgent hippy cliché) as an off-shoot of the demonstrations in Paris or Chicago, where the main event was happening.  However, in hindsight we can see that what occurred in Czechoslovakia, as well as in Poland and elsewhere during that year, proved to have a far greater impact than the equivalent Western activities.  Far from being a failure, as they may have appeared at the time, they proved  - as Timothy Garton Ash notes - in time to have laid the ground for the revolutions of 1989, arguably the most important mass social movements since the Second World War.

None of this is intended to in any way denigrate the achievements and the commitment of the students, workers and revolutionaries who took to the streets in Paris, Berlin, London, Chicago and elsewhere in 1968.  Many argue that the lasting legacy of 1968 is the dominance of right-wing politics over the last forty years, that the backlash which thrust Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher and, latterly, Sarkozy into power can be laid at the feet of those who fought for a better world at the time.  This strikes me as a rather myopic, not to mention begrudging view, of those events.  The achievements of feminism, of the gay rights and anti-racist movements and the rise of Green politics are, at the very least, just as much the outcome of 1968 as the emergence of the Red Army Faction of the ex-Trotskyists of neo-conservatism, and those of the left should be unashamed to claim this legacy as their own.  It’s far more plausible to state that the civil rights movement - by breaking the stranglehold of the Democratic Party on the Southern states of the US - inadvertantly caused the near permanent dominance of the Republicans in US politics, but no one would suggest that, because of this, perhaps it would have been best if Rosa Parks had taken a different bus after all.

It is probably a mistake to speak of 1968 as a single phenomenon.  Rather, it might best be remembered as a confluence of different events, movements and individuals which together formed something greater than the sum of their parts.  However, on one point they were as one.  Like the proverbial stopped clock, John Waters is actually correct on one point.  What the various strands we understand as ‘1968′ have in common was the determination to challenge authority, particularly traditional authority, in the name of human freedom.  Of course, for Waters, this is a bad thing, being synonymous with the uppity women he despises (particularly those who play house).  However, if one imagines the kind of Ireland that Waters seems to advocate in his criticism of those who challenge authority - one where the Roman Catholic Church retains a tight grip on social policy, women are still treated as second-class citizens, where Northern Catholics never demanded their rights from a state which structurally discriminated against them and where gay people remain in fear of criminal prosecution, one can see that the spirit of ‘68 is something which should still be held dear.

No sign, as the Daily Show noted, that Hillary Clinton is seriously conceding the Presidential nomination. Which on one reading is fair enough. It ain’t over til it’s over.

But, just when one thinks her campaign is unable to surprise, what of this?

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Is she saying that hard-working Americans are white? Or are the comma’s between each term meant to indicate distinctions? In either case how very very interesting. Or depressing. And how very telling that the spouse of ‘first black’ President of the United States should come to this. Does she not get how this sort of language is comprehensively deconstructing her reputation amongst many people?

Meanwhile as also reported on the Huffington Post, John Edwards has suggested that for Clinton:

“it’s very difficult to make the math work”

Well that’s the kind way to put it. But with noises off like this, how long can the Clinton campaign continue in its current mode?

Socialist Unity has carried an interview from the Morning Star last week with Eric Hobsbawm. For those of us interested in one of the more serious thinkers on the further left across decades it makes for provocative reading. Hobsbawm is far from without flaws, membership of the CPGB across those same decades would indicate at least some question marks, but, at the same time he is a genuinely humane and thoughtful individual who has dedicated his life to political activity that many of us, whatever our positions will recognise as of some utility.

I won’t go into this in any great detail but just draw attention to a couple of aspects I thought worthy of brief consideration. This follows on from a comment that Graham from the Irish Liberty Forum posted the other day. He asked…

What would political success look like to you? In other words, what are you trying to achieve? At what point is your work complete? I mean this for you personally and/or for the movement with which you are associated.

Well, before getting to that - which should be dealt with in greater detail anyhow later, let’s consider what Hobsbawm has to say about it…

He argues that:

21st-century socialism will be based on the survival of the planet and reconstruction of a society disintegrating under capitalist development.

Well, we all go down that road sooner or later. Gorz, Bahro, and now Hobsbawm, at least to an extent. But he adds:

…the idea of socialism as a 100 per cent publicly planned collective economy has not survived the end of ‘really existing socialism’ and will not return.

Twenty-first-century socialism will be an economy combining the public and private, non-market and market elements, but one whose object is not maximising economic growth and profit but the survival of the planet and the reconstruction of a human society battered and increasingly disintegrating under the impact of the past half-century of capitalist development. How this is to be achieved is the big question for this century’s socialists.

I broadly speaking don’t disagree, but it’s not exactly meaty stuff is it? Social democracy by another name and all that.

And this brings me back to a thought Nick Cohen raised in one of his more interesting moments in “What’s Left?” where he wondered “if anyone can tell you what a society significantly more left-wing than ours would look like and how its economy and government would work. (Let alone whether a majority of their fellow citizens would want to live there.)”. His implicit answer - that the status quo was just about okey dokey - was on a superficial analysis similar in some respects to that posited by Hobsbawm, a strong social welfare/public infrastructure, etc, etc. Yet, within his analysis was contained a remarkable defeatism for a man who had spent years excoriating New Labour and its works. Because unlike Hobsbawm he was unable to frame a left approach within a broader socio-political and cultural vision, one that sought to reshape not so much the ‘how’, as the ‘why’. Survival and reconstruction. It’s possibly the biggest project socialists - or anyone - could engage in. Now, there are those who will argue that all this is reformism of the most insipid kind, and perhaps they’re correct. But, the path from here to there, wherever there is, will have to be built on the Irish (and other) people as they are now, not as we would wish them to be. And that has obvious implications, unless we shift towards an unconsidered, and essentially futile, utopianism.

Hobsbawm is far from uncritical about the contemporary situation.

“I don’t see much prospect of a revival of the classical socialist and communist movements of the 20th century.

In the West, their basic constituency, the industrial working class, which they saw as the main agent of social change, could no longer play this role even if labour movements wanted to.

“Their basic form of political action and mobilisation, the mass-membership party of the social-democratic type and the vanguard party of the Leninist type, have not survived the old century.

And the newer forms of activity?

“What survives of such movements in the West must work as part of new, wider political and social movements and find new forms of action, notably transnational ones.

“Some such movements are coming into being, generally as a succession of ad hoc campaigns, but, as yet, they show no signs of being capable of changing society.

To be honest I’m dubious about transnational political structures. But that’s for another day.

And yet I can’t help feeling that simply reworking the objectives as Hobsbawm proposes from maximisation of growth and profit to the well being of a planetary society would be an enormous shift in and of itself. That it also chimes with left Green thinking is both unsurprising and important. Here on the CLR the issue of just where the Green Party (and the broader global Green movement) is positioned has exercised people. Naturally so. The capacity for left and ‘right’ Green political approaches is both opportunity and danger. But some serious work by the left might keep the Green Party within the broader left umbrella. Ironically, so might coalition with Fianna Fáil since that party too has populist instincts that can sometimes, but often not, be indistinguishable from our supposed left parties responses.

Consider again Hobsbawm’s point about societies ‘disintegrating under the impact of the past half-century of capitalist development’. Actually, I’d argue it predates that, but the point is that our societies have undergone massive shifts in their socio-political and cultural positionings. Some of these are easily assimilated, others not so much. But a political dynamic, that of capitalism, or whatever, is in many ways destructive and dissonant. This sense that we must ‘reconstruct’ is important.

And that to address Graham’s question, even obliquely, underscores the point that this is a process. There is no end point, at least none I can think of, outside the confines of a techno-utopian future. Just slow and steady progress to extend and maximise the autonomy of individuals and groups within the context of the society, both within the nation-state and beyond it. Do we wind up at a point where the state evaporates as individual and communal autonomy come to the fore? It’s possible, but not yet. Definitely not yet.

Indeed for these processes to arrive at a point of completion is perhaps to argue for human perfectibility, which seems unlikely.

Note that Hobsbawm, like many on the - and I use the term advisedly - ‘traditional’ left has moved from the position that the state is in and of itself the solution. There are huge dangers here as evidenced by the facile approaches New Labour project where the concept of state as enabler rapidly seems to have shifted to one of state as patsy to the wiles of the private sector, and private interests (and once upon a time a certain N. Cohen had much the most convincing analysis of such matters that I read). But, there’s scope there for new spaces and approaches to be opened up. If that sounds like an experiment, well, why not? The dangers of the current situation with an effective planetary crisis, allied with the opportunities of reworking our societies into more humane and sustainable structures (and for all the techno-utopians out there, being smart about using technology) surely justify this…

Still, all that said, what do other people think? Should it be simply short, medium and long term goals, and if so what are they?

An interesting reshuffle which quite honestly was nothing like the characterisation by Miriam Lord in the Irish Times as being: Captain Cowen shuffl[ing] around the deckchairs of radically unchanged crew. This was far from ‘radically unchanged’, it was instead a clear shift in generational and political terms, and simply because the faces remained the same did not indicate that relative positions, power balances and suchlike were constant.

Okay, we’re not talking Kremlinology (hey, what a pastime that used to be), but, there is something fascinating about the way in which it is as if the ice floes in Fianna Fáil are beginning to break up after the Ahern years. Those who have shuffled at or around the middle reaches of power are now - finally - getting a sniff of the highest offices of state. So we see Michael Martin given Foreign Affairs. Not a bad spot from which to mount a campaign for the top job. Except, I wonder if for him it is a case of shining too bright too soon. Certainly his star was in the descendant for the past three or four years. And while Foreign Affairs is a good brief, nonetheless it is also the potentially poisoned chalice of Lisbon. On the other hand Cowen was pretty clear that he saw Lisbon as his primary objective in the near future.

Meanwhile Dermot Ahern has shifted, well sideways, if not exactly down…

Apparently keen to depart foreign affairs, Dermot Ahern, who is a political heavyweight, takes over from Lenihan in justice, where his tough approach is likely to be appreciated.

Perhaps. And Seamus Brennan (class of ‘77) is finally gone, while Martin Cullen inexplicably hangs on by his fingernails. Really, what is it about him that every Taoiseach feels the urge to retain him? It can only be geography, surely?

Got to say that the enthusiasm we saw yesterday, if replicated within Fianna Fáil and their impressive electoral and campaign machine could certainly swing a vote. So, let’s hope everyone loves Brian as much as we are told…

Talking about Brian’s, what of Brian Lenihan, our new Minister of Finance. The IT argues that:

Cowen, clearly, has gambled that Lenihan will be able to make the tough decisions required, and “sell” unpalatable messages to the public better than either Dermot Ahern or Michael Martin could have done.

Well, with the times that are in it that too may be a poisoned chalice. No one likes a party pooper, and while things may not be quite at the inevitable final crisis of capitalism it’s not unreasonable to suggest that they’re not great either. Brian’s cheery demeanour will be put to the test sharpish, as will ours by extension.

And then there is Mary Coughlan. Genuinely one of the most liked people (and likable) Coughlan is a lucky politician in many ways having risen with relative ease. Still an interesting point is raised in the Irish Times:

The choice of the highly popular and able Coughlan is novel, and offers a welcome gender balance to Cowen, who has work to do to appeal to women voters, though it does leave open the possibility that Dublin voters might be less favourable to the party in the post-Ahern era.

Is a high-command of an Fianna Fáil government without Dublin representation a political Achilles heel he must deal with sooner or later? And consider that, in Cabinet, it is the non-FF representation, Ryan, Gormley and Harney who make up the Dublin numbers with only Hanafin (how her star has fallen) and Lenihan from the capital. These aren’t small things. One of the strengths of FF was the ability to retain seats in Dublin across the last decade. Barry Andrews as Minister of State for Children redresses that to some degree (as does Pat Carey as Government Chief Whip), but, he represents Dún Laoghaire and perhaps a specific demographic of FF voters. John Curran and others may well wonder when their day will come.

The Green Party Ministers and their Junior Minister were safe from the get go, as was - perhaps unfortunately - Mary Harney. Broader political considerations have cemented them into power. Tom Kitt, who has a surprisingly good reputation amongst the Green party, lost out. Presumably not cause and effect. Certainly the language was good between the two parties yesterday, and it was notable that Trevor Sargents position was reaffirmed on the same day, something that was not absolutely necessary, but perhaps gave comfort to the GP (some of whom were a bit leery about the ascension of Cowen to the top job).

The reality is that nothing significant will change. The Green project in its constrained form wil continue. Harney retains Health. The ideological positioning of the government, whatever Cowen’s obeisance to society and family over individuals will not deviate a whit from its current course. And consider the following:

Outlining his demand for public sector reform, Cowen told TDs, after he had named his ministerial team: “We all want better outcomes but the last decade has shown that money on its own will not achieve them.”

Plenty of room there for ‘outcomes’ not to our liking. Particularly in economically turbulent times.

And finally anyone watching the footage from the Dáil Chamber yesterday of Batt O’Keefe being given the position of Minister of Education will have noted his obvious delight at his elevation and the the remarkable swarms of TDs from all parties around him congratulating him. The Irish Times reported:

Mr O’Keeffe is one of Mr Cowen’s closest political confidantes but said his elevation came as a surprise to him. “I did not know until 4.45pm when the Taoiseach telephoned me. At that stage I had no clue what was going on. To be honest, I had half given up because I had not received a call the previous night,” he said.

I think, judging from his expression on the day, that that is about right. Still, no harm having a Taoiseach who can keep a (political) secret. Oh, hold on, we’ve had those before…

Who is it who:

has made an extraordinary contribution to the advance of this State in many spheres during his eleven years in high office.

Who…

played a phenomenal role in bringing about peace in Northern Ireland;

and…

presided over the best of the Celtic Tiger years which define Ireland’s position, strategically and economically, in the world today;

But not stopping there, who:

unified his party in the wake of the disastrous and damaging divisions of the 1980s; espoused consensus, not just in successive national wage agreements but on the greater European stage; and, excelled at the art of politics by embracing coalition and…

and?

…making Fianna Fáil indispensible to the formation of government for the forseeable future.

Whose…

achievements, to coin the phrase of the celebrity culture in which he lives, are awesome.

Wait a second. That’s Bertie Ahern they’re talking about… and it’s the Irish Times these words appear in. And not merely the Irish Times, but the Irish Times editorial. And this on foot of a multi-page overview, retrospective and biography of the man in the paper itself.

Such honeyed words, such praise… for consider the following…

Cumulatively, historians will judge whether they exceed those of any other Fianna Fáil leader or Taoiseach in their day. His place in Irish history is guaranteed. His electoral success, the real test of any party leader, comes closest to that of Eamon de Valera.

Of course this being the Irish Times editorial there has to be a bit of grit in the honey, the sort of grit that is impossible to remove without smashing the jar, discarding what is left and forgetting about the toast… for…

It could be argued that his performance exceeds de Valera’s in one important respect because he held office for three terms without ever winning an overall majority for Fianna Fáil.

Ouch!

But after this slight case of leaves on the tracks it’s everyone back on the praise train…

His lasting legacy is the achievement of the Belfast Agreement which led him to claim in his address to the Joint Houses of Congress in the United States last week: “I am so proud, Madam Speaker, to be the first Irish leader to inform the United States Congress: Ireland is at peace”.

His human qualities?

Unlike the eleven Taoisigh to preceed him, Bertie Ahern earned the respect of the people in the manner in which he grasped the opportunities presented to him. His support from the people was hard won by achievement in many different spheres. And, over-riding it all, there was an affection for his affability, his ordinariness, his common touch. He was always a man of the people. He struck a chord with voters: businessmen and Belfast men, trade union activists and members, women and separated families, culchies and North Dublin Dubs.

Then come these…

* * *

Praise over, down to the hard stuff? Well yes and no.

There is no doubt that his historic achievement was the successful negotiation of the Belfast Agreement and the bedding down of the peace process which, on his resignation, has a devolved, multi-party coalition government in operation in Northern Ireland controlled by the extremes of Dr Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein.

See? They’re still not happy about the ‘extremes’ (although go read Jonathan Powells excellent point in this months Prospect which notes that it was John Hume who opened the door to Adams and Sinn Féin in the 1980s, and who refused to countenance any agreement without them - a very different proposition from that implicitly made by the Irish Times and others about the ‘moderates’ being shouldered aside) And then a masterfully ambiguous line…

This development may not have happened without the presence of Mr Ahern.

Indeed.

While other party leaders had the grand vision to dare imagine a possible solution - ….Mr Ahern was the man to deliver on the day. He was the right man in the right place at the right time.

Well, that’s history for you. Them’s the breaks. Still, the text becomes - shall we say - more double-edged in its assessment… consider the following…

He may not have had the vision of his predecessors to construct the framework for peace, but his particular skills came into play in the intense negotiations to follow.

The first part of that sentence is extraordinary. How on earth can we tell? Since he wasn’t Taoiseach in earlier times it’s unknowable.

He achieved the consensus to bring the peace process forward, not just in constitutional, administrative and political terms, but he built up a relationship with the unionists, a trust between Dr Paisely and himself, the likes of which has never been seen before. He has transformed the North/South and the Anglo/Irish relationship.

Some more of these…

* * *

And this time we have praise and criticism…

On the home front, Mr Ahern had hugely significant achivements also. He presided over the best of the Celtic Tiger years when this State witnessed wealth beyond our wildest dreams…But, there are two areas, in retrospect now, where he did not make progress: on the health service and on infrastructual development…

A bit of party politics…

In his years as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil, Bertie Ahern brought politicis to a fine art. He inherited a deeply divided party after the Haughey years and made it whole again. He crafted coalition governments to suit the electoral mood of the day. He introduced the concept of the five-year term of office. He did the unthinkable by bringing the Green Party into the current coalition arrrangement even when their numbers were not strictly needed. In the process, he has made Fianna Fáil almost indispensible to government-formation.

No dispute there… but a shadow passes in front of the sun…

Yet, any honest attempt to assess the legacy of Bertie Ahern must record that there was another side to the man. He espoused a set of political standards for others that he did not live by himself. He had to resign, in the end, because of his handling of matters before the Mahon Tribunal relating to the controversial payments he received when he was Minister for Finance. He was caught by the culture of a former time. He breached a trust with the people today.

Interesting. Not the issues themselves, but the ‘handling’… very interesting. Still, every cloud has a silver lining…

His departure marks the end of the Haughey era.

And even that is better than bad…

Unlike his mentor, … , Mr Ahern did this State considerable service over many, many years. He lived for politics. And when history comes to be written, Bertie Ahern will be remembered for the political achievments of a lifetime far more than the squalid stories about his monies.

Hmmmm… squalid stories you say? What an interesting, and almost detached phrase. No mention of the small matter that the Irish Times, and in particular its editorial pages has been at the forefront of discussing these issues. Still, perhaps even the IT worries a bit about the heavy and un-nuanced hand of history and after all, why spoil a beautiful early Summers day?

I can’t decide is this completely craven or of a piece with the statements in the Dáil a week or so back, where the great and the good turned their noses up at Caoimhín O’Caoláin for actually having the temerity in a fairly straightforward, and not ungracious, piece to point out some of the garments that the emperor appeared to be lacking (most entertaining was Stephen Collins inevitably sniffy remarks about C O’C in the Irish Times the following weekend, considering Collins approach to this matter over the years). There is something distasteful about the way in which bonhomie asserts itself in these instances. Either the situation is serious enough to require a serious response, or it isn’t. And I’m not talking about the scattergun approach of insulting Ahern personally that appears almost like a therapeutic process for some which has absolutely no purchase on the political realities, but a considered and collected engagement with these issues, warts and all.

Still, the biscuit is well and truly taken in a further piece by Harry McGee which seriously discusses his future prospects as either President of Ireland, or President of the council of Ministers of the EU. Sure…

The major stumbling block is how his ongoing dealings with the Mahon tribunal play to other EU political leaders.

But that these, a potential political life post Tribunal - are potential outcomes tells us a lot about both the process we have seen and the reality of political life. Because the nearly but not quite approach of the Irish Times is both reflection and exemplar of a dynamic whereby we mean it but we don’t really approach to politics and political life in this country. Afraid to strike, afraid to hold back. ‘Sure you’re an awful man…’ but what precisely do they mean? Or is it fingers crossed and let’s leave it to history to judge?

Well, now this I didn’t expect. Obama having an easy victory in North Carolina (remember how the Clinton camp, and the polls were predicting otherwise?) and doing remarkably well in Indiana by pulling more or less even with Clinton although she snatched the prize at the last moment. As the Irish Times put it:

In North Carolina, Mr Obama beat Mrs Clinton by 14 percentage points, moving him closer to the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination at the party’s August convention. The result was a heavy blow to Mrs Clinton’s efforts to overtake her rival in either delegates or popular votes won during the state-by-state nominating contests that began in January.

Indiana, where she was supposedly meant to do better again, saw (as reported in the Guardian):

She won Indiana by a slim margin, 51% to 49%. But that was outweighed by his 56% to 42% landslide victory in North Carolina.

To give a meta view of what is ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in this context consider Slate’s yardsticks…

Clinton won Indiana but as she pointed out repeatedly to Petraeus, individual victories—even a surge of them in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania—don’t change the whole story. The larger reality still holds. Barack Obama has the lead in elected delegates and the popular vote. Those leads increased Tuesday as he picked up five more delegates and roughly 200,000 more votes. For Clinton to move ahead in those numbers now, she must bring more states into the union.

Indeed. Since the latter event is somewhat unlikely it seems that Obama will be the standard bearer for the Democrats.

It’s strange though. As a spectator to these processes it’s difficult. Hillary Clinton has changed, and not for the better. I’ve defended her healthcare plan here as against that of Obama. I suspect her political inclinations were once, if not necessarily now, from the sort of progressive standpoint that many of us here would recognise, even identify with. And yet, this campaign has been a revelation. The way her accent has changed as she tours the US. The good ‘ol boy act. The sticking the boot in. To some degree it’s fair enough, this is a tough campaign, it was inevitably going to get tougher as it progressed. And yet, it’s also very much politics as usual, a zero sum game of winner take all, and in all that I just can’t help but feel that the goal has been lost sight of in the process.

The best so far?

Why what about this for shameless pandering… her latest thoughts (from the Huffington Post) about a holiday (for the Summer) from the gas tax. Now even if one supported such an idea, which one shouldn’t if one has any sense at all as regards trying to curb fuel consumption, what about this?

When asked this morning by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, HRC said “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”

What does that mean? Clinton is, as Jon Stewart noted on the Daily Show yesterday, one of the most highly educated and intelligent people to run for President of the United States, and yet she won’t ‘put her lot in with economists’.

It’s great, but it gets better…

She continued the line of attack, criticizing more generally “this mindset where elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.”

One has to love the entirely artificial introduction of ‘elite opinion’ (I mean, c’mon, former First Lady, husband now George Bush Snr’s bestest bestest friend - that’s not part of the elite?). But more pernicious is the idea that ‘disadvantaging’ the ‘majority’ of Americans is counterposed in this fashion. I can’t help but think that this is an echo of the Boris Johnson, shift to the right in the UK. Don’t, whatever you do, tell some hard truths to people about the way they live their lives. Don’t tell them that the future is uncertain and may well demand sacrifices, significant sacrifices, in order to safeguard the broad brushstrokes of their way of life. And here is the gap between reality and rhetoric in contemporary political debate, particularly in the US, but also here and in the UK, whereby the easy, obvious option is always taken rather than the more difficult alternative. Where it is somehow (and this is purely for political gain) ‘better’ to talk about ‘elites’ when suggesting pandering political ideas that are aired simply to solidify support. Where all the Churchillian rhetoric that is rolled out with tedious inevitability on the war on Terror, or whatever, is always used when and where it won’t impact on voting populations to any significant degree, for perish the thought that we might actually ask of people not what we can do for them, but what they can do for their own societies. The point about Churchill, for his faults, was that he actually had some grasp of the sacrifices that had to be made during a very specific historical period and was unafraid to articulate it. These people? Nah.

This pseudo class war rhetoric sits uneasily, doesn’t it? But note a further quote from the HF piece:

Clinton aide Howard Wolfson put it as clearly as the campaign has on a conference call just now. Obama, he said, is “somebody who just doesn’t seem to understand that middle-class families are hurting, working-class families are hurting, that they need relief. He would rather side with the oil companies over the interest of middle-class families.”

Now, I’m sorry, but this idea of the Clinton campaign as an advanced guard of a class alliance between hurting middle-classes and hurting working-classes is risible stuff, and the further modish dig at the ‘oil companies’ is simply nonsense. She says she will raise taxes on incomes over $250,000. Very good. But this a program of a serious redistribution does not make.

And here’s the thing. It’s not as if Obama is a flawless candidate. Quite the opposite. His program is anaemic and built on rhetoric, but that’s not what Clinton is going after. Instead she is pretending that there are easy answers, that tomorrow will necessarily be brighter than today. That’s not just pandering, that’s patronising. And it’s wrong.

Is this going any much further? All the way to the Convention? Perhaps, but the point was aired on the Slate Gabfest podcast at the weekend, that the real problem is that a Clinton imposition (now more unlikely, but still not impossible) over Obama will do greater damage to the support base(s) of the Democrats than the other way around.

Clinton doesn’t ‘put her lot in with economists’? I don’t believe her. I don’t believe she believes that for one moment. And I don’t think anyone else should either. Indiana and North Carolina certainly don’t appear to have.

On a side point, apparently, and again according to Slate, Catholics tend to view Obama with some suspicion due to the Wright issue. I find this puzzling, having not merely attended Catholic Church, but at one point for some years as a teenager sung in a folk group there. This despite a constant cognitive dissonance (or what we used to call ‘disagreement’) at the time as regards aspects of the RCC line on sexuality, social policy etc. Now granted, I had another string to my bow in the shape of the Church of Ireland, but the situation was hardly better there. Some of the views expressed were fairly scary, to put it mildly - not quite the reasonableness expected by the liberal imagination as regards the nice CofI. But my point is that in subsequent years - although no longer involved - I have been at christenings, weddings, funerals and such like, and sat again through sermons of varying worthiness, and in some cases none. I’ve never had, and never did have, the impulse to walk away, not least because however much I might disagree with the rhetoric in both churches I’ve rather liked the people who have produced it. They’ve been central to familial, domestic and other events and crises. This is how the world of actual relationships between people works, where even with those we have profound political and other differences there is still space to get along, even to have strong affection or look for solace. Their humanity at times of great upset was a genuine comfort even if I don’t and couldn’t share their beliefs on many matters. That this sort of engagement is somehow given as evidence of unworthiness on the part of Obama surely paints us all as hypocrites. And perhaps we are, but I think that’s just human as well…

Fascinating comments by Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minster of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly. In a response to Unionist demands for the IRA to be dismantled in order to speed the way towards transfer of policing and justice powers he is reported in today’s Irish Times as follows:

McGuinness has stated that he does not know whether the IRA army council remains in existence.

That’s entertaining and to the inevitable follow-on he responded that: his focus was on Government in Northern Ireland. Excellent. He continued:

“The IRA have left the stage, they are totally and utterly out of the equation.

“Any attempt to drag them back on to the stage is a big mistake.”

And he added:

Referring to Dr Paisley’s recent visit to Cork, he noted how he was picketed by members of Republican Sinn Féin. “Specifically talking of what Ian Paisley has done over the course of the last year, who is doing more to end division on this island, Ian Paisley or the so-called Republican Sinn Féin protesters? I say give me Ian Paisley any time.”

Of course, the thought strikes that the good Dr. will have left the stage soon. Perhaps the words he meant to say were… given the choice between Peter Robinson and Ian Paisley… Well, on the other hand it is RSF, so maybe not.

militant-79

This issue of Militant from October 1979 provides an interesting contrast with the previous one posted in the Archive. The concentration on economic issues is more marked. Granted the previous issue which appeared in 1972 was specifically a special Irish edition, but the tone is significantly different. The conflict had, of course, become entrenched. Many players had left the field, and perhaps the sense that there might be rapid (or revolutionary) change had finally dissipated.

That said it is a little jarring to read an editorial about the British Labour Party conference. That this was close to the heart of the ‘Marxists’ (aka Militant) is undeniable. But, it indicates a certain focus unlike, arguably, any other formation on the Irish left during this period. That it is followed by a further editorial about Sile De Valera is only odd if one doesn’t recognise it for the full frontal attack on Fianna Fáil. That said, there is a certain quaintness about the language which talks of ‘cynical attempt to pretend to young people who desire to change society, that Fianna Fáil represents their interests). The ‘young’ people. Always something of a disappointment…

Joe Higgins writes about the traditions of Labour in Cork. We read about the Pope, and how ‘the money spent on [his visit to Ireland] is a pittance in relation to the overall wealth of the Vatican’. We learn that polling in the North indicated a reservoir of support for an ‘intervention’ by the Labour movement and hostility towards the traditional parties - who almost inconceivably some thirty years later remain dominant. Who would have guessed? A crisis in the USA, ‘Mass Politics, Not Individual Terror’ on the North, a letter about the unionisation of McDonalds, and bevy of Letters on union matters… It’s strange how nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. And, of course, no mention of another rival on the left, Official Sinn Féin,. Indeed no mention of any other left forces beyond Labour and the Trade Unions.

As ever with Militant it is worth noting the strong visual presentation of the paper. There is a professionalism here (although in fairness to OSF, they were pretty good at that too) and the paper is used to push a coherent and consistent message. One may question some of those messages, although not their sincerity. Impressive.

Last night, just prior to Lost as it happens, I happened to catch Livin’ with Lucy. Lucy Kennedy, for it is she, is a presenter whose chosen task is to go and live with a celeb of one sort or another for a couple of days. We are not told really whether she moves in lock stock and barrel, despite the fact that she is seen in the closing moments lugging a suitcase (somewhat overly large) away from her new domicile. The blurb on RTÉ claims:

In a six part series, Lucy will travel to her guests’ houses and literally live in their spare room, eat their breakfast and follow them around during their daily routine - all with a camera crew in tow. Over the course of 48 hours, Lucy will leave no stone unturned as her quick wit, natural charm and complete lack of tact means her questions will go where Pat Kenny fears to tread.

If only. If only. Although one has to love the ‘literally’. What if she didn’t literally live with them? The list of future interviewees inspires… well nothing close to confidence. Behold ye mighty and despair at the following list:

Samantha Mumba, Brian McFadden, Jade Goody and Senator David Norris.

Anyhow, this week it was Senator David Norris, next week it is Brian McFadden of… of… remind me again… Nah, on second thoughts don’t.

Lucy is typical of a certain sort of meeja person, visible not merely in Ireland, but also the UK. Larger than life, hearty laugh (mostly at her own ‘jokes’) and an occasionally sensitive side carefully calibrated so that it shines intermittently between the jokes. Pensive looks once in while. A serious tone in the voice. It’s not just laughs you know.

But wait. It is, y’know. For “her quick wit, natural charm and complete lack of tact” means that she asks the difficult questions. The hard questions. The questions about sex. Oh yes.

Which means that the further question as to whether we learn anything from her sojourn with Senator Norris is moot. Well we discover that he has in his bedroom whips and from a reasonably careful study of the footage what appears from a distance to be a fine collection of icons (Russian, Byzantine - who cares? They’re not commented on, that wouldn’t constitute ‘questions [that] will go where Pat Kenny fears to tread‘. Nor is his rather lovely house and contents, a place that appears to have a fine collection of items that transcend materialism. It’s not that kind of a show… the provenance whip is the source of great fun and frivolity. A souvenir from Texas should you be curious). She enquires as to whether the Senator has had a threesome… I didn’t catch the answer. Prurient interest or crucial information? You decide.

He is on his own admission a Senator who happens to be gay, and apparently the first openly gay politician in the world. That I kept watching was a tribute to his own good humour and nature rather than any intrinsic quality to the documentary. So much left unsaid. What of his seemingly long-suffering partner? We are not told, other than that he (the partner) doesn’t like younger men. Good stuff. But personality is a bit more than that, isn’t it? Does the partner find the spotlight difficult? Or a blast? Again, we are not told. He too appears good-humoured, and from the array of camera people (or men, since it was all men), he’d certainly want to be.

Indeed as an insight into what makes Norris tick it was shallow to the point of evaporation. There was some talk of the Hirschfield Centre, but not enough. We learn about his plans for his funeral, or at least what he told her. I’m not buying it, but then I’m a cynical soul. Little enough of activism over the years, or causes close to his heart. We see him at an awards ceremony, I didn’t catch what it was for. And that was sort of the style of it. Dip in, dip out. Giggle about gayness.

Oddly there is something to be said for that, in so far as it provides a normative example. There will be many who will give three cheers for his cheery optimism, his uncalculated openess. Or is the openess calculated? Is it a facade which allowed him to smoothly place himself within the general affection of the nation. Despite or because of? I cannot tell. We do not know. That he is a good thing is unquestionable, both personally and in societal terms, but we’re not getting any real insight as to why he is, or how that came about.

And Norris in person is a genuinely lovely man with an enthusiasm and appetite for life that would put people half his age to shame (64, should you be interested). He’s actually considerably more political than you’d guess from this with a strong and continuing interest in various issues, not least of which is a nuanced support for the cause of Palestinian independence. Being gay in Ireland. Being a representative for Trinity College Dublin in the Senate. Being David Norris. These are big issues in a society like Ireland that has transitioned to a very open social environment relatively rapidly across his lifetime.

But none of this was addressed seriously, or even unseriously. What of his cultural life? We see him tapping away rather well on a piano. More than that? Uh-uh. His accent, a most fascinating creature, which somehow comprises an underlying Dublin tinge despite the Church of Ireland on poppers overlay would be worthy of investigation in itself. Are we told? We are not.

So, not so much living with David, as dropping by for a cuppa. Not enough. Not half enough.

Thinking about Boris Johnson as Mayor it struck me that my feelings were not dissimilar to those I had when John Major swept into power in 1992. Not so much that I loved Livingstone as that I loathed his successor. It’s not identical, beyond politics some good stuff is happening which ameliorates it hugely, but, on the political level there is now, as then, a certain sick feeling that history had gone awry. There are many, no doubt, for whom Kinnock represented all that was wrong with Labour, but, having lived on and off in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s my only sense then (and now) was that Labour in power was vastly superior to the Tories in power. That election night was probably the worst I have ever sat through. The subsequent hangover exacerbated by the reality of, at least, five more years of Conservative rule.

A few years later when John Smith died there was a further sense of loss, a sense that once more a response, emotional, societal, left, progressive that had been shaped was pulled away. In retrospect I cannot but feel that Smith, again far from unproblematic politically, might well have been able to maintain a slightly more leftward tilt to the Labour party than that we subsequently experienced under Blair and Brown. Whether we would be where we are today is a fascinating, but essentially unknowable question. Would the responses to a myriad of domestic and international issues have been the same, or would we have seen a transition to a Blair-led government around 2002? With not dissimilar results?

And Brown? What next? What does he do to counter the events of this week? Because his task is monumental. A resurgent Cameron able to tour the country, a sort of pseudo-Blairism of the right somehow connecting with the British people (or more likely a weariness with New Labour) despite the reality of the genuine article over the past eight years. And here’s a thought, seems to me the British people liked Blair considerably more than they admitted, and considerably more than his party. There is relatively little time for Brown to staunch these troubles, many of his own making. For him time, the crucial element of political activity, is running out. He is unpopular, his party is unpopular, their lack of ideological clarity now hostage to precisely the same attacks that New Labour made upon Conservative territory in the early and mid-1990s. The ‘moderation’ of Cameron is the front end of a formidable party which has survived through many different periods by tacking one way or another. But its project is grounded in reaction. It is that simple.

And what of London, and more broadly the British people? I’m intrigued as to how this might impact on Scotland, indeed on the devolutionary project more widely. Yesterday it seemed possible that this might have negative effects upon Ireland, but counterintuitively it might also serve to further emphasise the distance between Scotland and London. And nationalism is a funny old thing. The political winds shifting might underscore the necessity for greater autonomy, if not quite independence. That could be quite a headache for a future Cameron administration. Good.

Repent at leisure. It’s a terrible phrase, at least in terms of its inherent meaning. The sense that events occur which require us to deal with them, that we have to endure them and that somewhere further on there is no guarantee of better. Odd really that some of those of us on the left in an Irish context should feel this way, since we’ve been perpetually denied a seat at the table, our projects permanently left on hold as our ‘betters’ shape the society to their own ends. But, perhaps that is a function of seeing some virtues, some improvements, whatever about neo-liberalism, the failings of Blair and so on and so forth in the left project(s) on the island to the East.

People live political lives vicariously, particularly on the left. A hint of the progressive and we’re in there, rooting for one candidate or another. I’ve sat on aircraft scanning columns of election returns in the Guardian about Italian general elections (this is back when such coverage was a fair bit more detailed in print than it is today), in cafes weighing up the respective worth of candidates for the Mayor of New York, fretted watching Channel4 News (and isn’t that getting just a tad tabloid these days - consider their coverage of the Austrian case) over the situation on the left in Chile. Who to give allegiance to? Even at three thousand miles? The larger left party or the smaller Marxist one? Or both? Or, rarely, neither? And the big paradox, as ever, is that while the heart may be with those smaller battalions, the splinter parties, the further left, the disciples of Lenin and Trotsky, the post-Marxists, the Green movement, and each seat gained is a triumph wrung in the face of adversity, that is not to deny that the victories of the larger left parties still mean something, still indicate some hope in a gloomy political world.

John Sullivan had it right when he suggested that:

In sum, political sects provide a refuge which many people need, either permanently or temporarily. They are the heart of a heartless world, and will disappear only when that world begins to change.

These days it’s not just the sects, is it? My biggest fear is that we will wind up in a world where the left isn’t crushed or annihilated, but is merely an irrelevance in the face of a centre and right wing hegemony. As significant politically as those who would argue for the restoration of the Scottish monarchy. A sort of US situation where the very terms of the debate are structured in such a way as to shut out the left. And the events of the last week assist that process incrementally, and the left space contracts just a little. Sometimes it’s good there’s more to life than politics.