The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Events are moving relatively swiftly in the North. Blair is considering attending the restoration of devolution at Stormont early next month.

Ian Paisley actually demonstrated his not inconsiderable chutzpah by inviting Blair a couple of days ago to go to Parliament Buildings to see the “new regime’. Now unless Paisley is preparing to perform a very public and very bizarre (even by his undeniably unusual standards) volte face in front of the worlds press on May 8th it really does look as if this bird, heavy, ungainly and nowhere near fit for purpose is limbering up to take a leap into the dark from a first floor window and might actually fly. Perhaps this is Blair’s finest moment, his vindication. Sad to see how it remains overshadowed by his greatest defeat.

As to the shape of that new powersharing administration The Irish Times relates how:

“Dr Paisley and Mr McGuinness have jointly sent a letter to President Bush expressing their sympathy over the loss of life in the Virginia Tech massacre. They also jointly sent a letter of congratulations to the Irish cricket team on their performance in the one-day cricket world cup. They also invited the team to attend an official reception at Stormont.”

Well, if they’re ordering in the finger food and tea (presumably this will be a dry occasion given the good Doctors principles on such matters) the deal must be all but signed sealed and delivered. All good, all straws in the wind. All remarkable for their essential normality and even - and I use the word very very advisedly in relation to the first letter - banality.

Meanwhile in the same report it’s noted that Adams expressed some concern over the introduction of Paddy Ashdown, former Liberal Democrat leader, to the North. Ashdown, it appears, served as a soldier in the North in the early years of the trouble. Now released from his most recent post as effective commissar of Bosnia perhaps he decided that he relished the challenge of a more difficult job, overseeing the review of parades in the North.

And as if that weren’t enough the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Demot Ahern has added a little under €1 million to promote cross border ‘outreach and reconciliation work’. In comparison to Brian Cowen’s €400 million this seems positively restrained, but the mantra in Dublin, and London too, is no doubt the same as it ever was.

Yes, everyone shall have prizes. None shall go home empty-handed. What a strange time we live in.

For those of us in thrall the early 1980s - probably because we were young at that point in time, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that John Cooper Clarke, occasionally termed the Bard of Salford, is visiting Ireland next month. He is appearing in Whelans in Dublin in May….

Cooper Clarke is best known for his rapid fire, monotonic poetry, and a full head of hair that hid a face already partly concealed by dark sunglasses. Half-man, half-thicket was one of the more humorous and accurate terms applied to his image.

He’s also known for what was delicately termed a ‘domestic relationship’ with Nico of the Velvet Underground during the 1980s and unfortunate medical problems that may or may not have been related.

Anyhow, one of his many finest hours was the alliance with Martin Hannett (producer of Joy Division, New Order, Buzzcocks, almost all the early Factory roster and indeed even U2 back in that short but shining moment when they were actually very very good indeed rather than being just alright at best) and a backing band “The Invisible Girls” who provided a musical accompaniment to his poems. On a series of albums some of that Hannett/Factory chill (which I admit I’ve been an enormous fan of over the years, yeah, verily right down to Crispy Ambulance and the fabulous Stockholm Monsters). Opinions differ on the best album during that period. Snap Crackle and Bop? Zip Style Method? Disguise in Love? But all had a crisp, clean almost poppy sheen.

I loved Cooper Clarkes material, image and suchlike. I spent most of the 1980s, poured into second hand black suits carefully tailored by myself on an old Singer sowing machine to have that drainpipe look (truly no favour to my diminishing circle of friends or family) and with long backcombed hair teased into a floppy mop that swayed alarmingly in any passing breeze and Chelsea boots to complete the assemblage. It’s hard now to describe the frustration of the rise of Goth, and perhaps more importantly the Cure who had a similar (but not the same, not the same!) imagery, and having to explain in pubs when asked by bemused but generally affable onlookers, that no I didn’t worship at the altar of all things Robert Smith, but instead was emulating an earlier less fluffy generation of musical imagery. In a way it’s a bit like what John Sullivan wrote in “As Soon as this Pub Closes…” about the Revolutionary Communist Party:

What then gives the RCP’s eclectic mishmash the appeal which made it the fastest growing group of the 1980s, with a dynamism notably absent from both the RCG and the Discussion Group? The answer is style. The group is part of the harder aggressive, post-punk move away from peace and love and the average RCPer looks very different from the grotty SWPers. They have been described as “the SWP with hair gel”, and many a parent, pleased at the improvement in their child’s appearance, has welcomed the move from one to another. Alas! their mind remains just as untidy.

Somehow Cooper Clarkes post punk imagery was just the ticket for those of us who saw wearing sharp, almost mod-like, suits with long hair as subtly undermining not one…but count them… two sets of conformity in society - yeah - upset the suits and the hippies!

Anyhow this being an overtly political blog it’s worth noting that Cooper Clarke was fairly political himself. Take Beasley Street, perhaps one of his finest pieces of work. This anti-celebration of working class Manchester was inherently powerful because it was essentially true and could be applied to any urban context in the late 1970s and 1980s. The couplet “KEITH JOSEPH SMILES AND A BABY DIES, IN A BOX ON BEASLEY STREET” made a direct connection between the new Thatcherite right and life for the British working class. But this wasn’t a sentimental journey caught in fading photographs of cheery Northern folk, but a hard-headed analysis of lives wasted, ambitions rotted and the pernicious effects of low level but endemic violence, boredom and despair.

Put to a throbbing, almost motorik, beat and shimmering keyboards and the words took on a witty, sinister and - I’ll admit it - depressing life of their own (check it out here).

“BEASLEY STREET”

FAR FROM CRAZY PAVEMENTS

…THE TASTE OF SILVER SPOONS

A CLINICAL ARRANGEMENT

…ON A DIRTY AFTERNOON

WHERE THE FECAL GERMS OF MR. FREUD

…ARE RENDERED OBSOLETE

THE LEGAL TERM IS NULL AND VOID

IN THE CASE OF… BEASLEY STREET

IN THE CHEAP SEATS WHERE MURDER BREEDS

SOMEBODY IS OUT OF BREATH

SLEEP IS A LUXURY THEY DON’T NEED

…A SNEAK PREVIEW OF DEATH

BELLADONNA IS YOUR FLOWER

MANSLAUGHTER YOUR MEAT

SPEND A YEAR IN A COUPLE OF HOURS

ON THE EDGE OF BEASLEY STREET

WHERE THE ACTION ISN’T

THAT’S WHERE IT IS

STATE YOUR POSITION

VACANCIES EXIST

IN AN X-CERTIFICATE EXERCISE

EX-SERVICEMEN EXCRETE

KEITH JOSEPH SMILES AND A BABY DIES

IN A BOX ON BEASLEY STREET

FROM THE BOARDING HOUSES AND THE BEDSITS FULL OF

…ACCIDENTS AND FLEAS

SOMEBODY GETS IT

WHERE THE MISSING PERSONS FREEZE

WEARING DEAD MEN’S OVERCOATS

YOU CAN’T SEE THEIR FEET

A RIFF JOINT SHUTS - OPENS UP

RIGHT DOWN ON BEASLEY STREET

CARS COLLIDE, COLOURS CLASH

DISASTER MOVIE STUFF

FOR A MAN WITH THE FU MANCHU MOUSTACHE

REVENGE IS NOT ENOUGH

THERE’S A DEAD CANARY ON A SWIVEL SEAT

THERE’S A RAINBOW IN THE ROAD

MEANWHILE ON BEASLEY STREET

SILENCE IS THE CODE

HOT BENEATH THE COLLAR

…AN INSPECTOR CALLS

WHERE THE PERISHING STINK OF SQUALOR

…IMPREGNATES THE WALLS

THE RATS HAVE ALL GOT RICKETS

THEY SPIT THROUGH BROKEN TEETH

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS NOT CRICKET

CAUGHT OUT ON …BEASLEY STREET

THE HIPSTER AND HIS HIRED HAT

DRIVE A BORROWED CAR

YELLOW SOCKS AND A PINK CREVAT

NOTHING LA-DI-DAH

O-A-P

MOTHER-TO-BE

WATCH THE THREE-PIECE SUITE

WHEN SHITSTOPPER DRAINS

AND CROCODILE SKIS

ARE SEEN ON …BEASLEY STREET

THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

…A ONE-EYED MAN IS KING

BEAUTY PROBLEMS ARE REDEFINED

…THE DOORBELLS DO NOT RING

A LIGHT BULB BURST LIKE A BLISTER

THE ONLY FORM OF HEAT

WHERE A FELLOW SELLS HIS SISTER

…DOWN THE RIVER ON BEASLEY STREET

THE BOYS ARE ON THE WAGON

THE GIRLS ARE ON THE SHELF

THEIR COMMON PROBLEM IS

…THAT THEY’RE NOT SOMEONE ELSE

THE DIRT BLOWS OUT

THE DUST BLOWS IN

YOU CAN’T KEEP IT NEAT

IT’S A FULLY FURNISHED DUSTBIN

…SIXTEEN BEASLEY STREET

VINCE THE AGEING SAVAGE

BETRAYS NO KIND OF LIFE

…BUT THE SMELL OF YESTERDAY’S CABBAGE

AND THE GHOST OF LAST YEAR’S WIFE

THROUGH A CONSTANT HAZE

OF DEODORANT SPRAYS

HE SAYS …RETREAT

ALSATIANS DOG THE DIRTY DAYS

DOWN THE MIDDLE OF BEASLEY STREET

PEOPLE TURN TO POISON

QUICK AS LAGER TURNS TO PISS

SWEETHEARTS ARE PHYSICALLY SICK

EVERY TIME THEY KISS

IT’S A SOCIOLOGIST’S PARADISE

EACH DAY REPEATS

UNEASY, CHEASY, GREASY, QUEASY

…BEASTLY, BEASLEY STREET

EYES DEAD AS VICIOUS FISH

LOOK AROUND FOR LAUGHS

IF I COULD HAVE JUST ONE WISH

I WOULD BE A PHOTOGRAPH

ON A PERMANENT MONDAY MORNING

GET LOST OR FALL ASLEEP

WHEN THE YELLOW CATS ARE YAWNING

AROUND THE BACK OF BEASLEY STREET

It didn’t end there. Cooper Clarke encountered a series of personal issues in the 1980s and 1990s which diverted the course of his career, and to be honest his work was always going to have a limited appeal one way or another. Where now are Attilla the Stockbroker and the other punk-poets who appeared in or around the same time. Where indeed are the Blue Aeroplanes - arguably the closest in musical terms to them?

But he’s been plugging away with a good website of his own, and maintaining a sharp and critical view of the world. And worth leaving on another political note which is also very 1980s (and also subverting some of what I mentioned above) in it’s own way:

euro communist/gucci socialist

for a modern home and cheap electricity
streamlined functional neat simplicity
put yourself on the slum clearance list
dial a dialectical materialist
find out what your net potential is
get married to an existentialist
don’t doubt your own identity
dress down to a cool anonymity
the pierre cardin line to infinity
clothes to climb the meritocracy
the new age of benevolent bureaucracy

i like to visit all the big cities
museums and municipal facilities
i strive for critical ability
i thrive on political activity
i’m alive in a new society
i arrive quickly quietly
the car that i drive is the family variety
roman catholic marxist leninist
happily married to an eloquent feminist
a lapsed atheist all my memories
measure the multitude’s deafening density
psycho citizens are my enemies
crypto nazis and their remedies
keep the city silent as the cemetery’s
architechtural gothic immensity
a new name on the less-than-kosher list
the euro-communist / a gucci socialist

Those I know who have seen him live say he’s remarkable.

I’m looking forward to it.

Also good is this

Some time ago, I posted about the announcement from the German Presidency of the EU that they were proposing to:

“make it an offence to publicaly incite ‘discrimination, violence or hatred against a group of persons or members of a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin’. It would also allow for the punishment of ‘public condoning, denial or trivialisation of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes’.”

At the time, as Smiffy (Of this parish) pointed out, it seemed unlikely the Germans would be able to get unanimity on a measure so blatantly designed to infringe on free speech and to restrict historical debate. Regrettably, according to the EU Observer, the EU has agreed a ‘breakthrough hate-crime law’. Jamie Smyth of the Irish Times also has a piece on it here but subscription is required.

After six years of debate, a compromise has been hammered out that will means offenders will face up to three years in prison for ”public incitement to violence or hatred, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.”

The same punishment will apply to those people “publicly condoning, denying, or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes,”. The definition of what is genocide or a war crime will be left up to the International Criminal Court. Statewatch has some more background in it’s briefing ahead of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting here.

Part of the ‘compromise’, is that member states can allow debate on controversial matters in a controlled environment. Marvellous. Or as Smyth puts it in the Irish Times: ” Irish historians can debate the existence or scope of the Holocaust if they are not provoking public disorder.” Perhaps, they will need to be licensed historians. If Smiffy and I for example, were to debate the existence or scope of the Holocaust on a website, such as this one for example, are we ‘historians’, and if our debate prompts, without any intention to do so, public disorder, are we likely to face the possibility of three years in prison. Frankly, I’m too pretty to go to prison.

Also interesting that efforts by Poland and a number of other eastern European states to give up their demands to include the crimes of Stalinism within the Bill. Instead, the EU is to organise high-profile debates on totalitarian regimes and their crimes in Europe, though how this is to be done is not made clear. The EU Commission as a college debate soc.

It is now necessary for me to state the following. I accept the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews and countless more homosexuals, gypsies, communists, trade unionists and Slavs were murdered by the Nazi state in an act of genocide. Furthermore, I am opposed to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, creed, colour, nationality and so on. But I also defend the right of people to challenge historical facts, such as the Holocaust, nor do I trust governments to legislate appropriately in terms of what is ‘incitement’.

Graham Watson, Liberal Democrat MEP and leader of the Liberal Group in the EU Parliament, has already been out attacking the initiative:  “The proposed list risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies - like the crimes of the Stalinist regime or the alleged Armenian genocide - whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech. The EU has no business legislating on history.” Some good points, with the exception of his reference to the Armenian genocide as ‘alleged’. He’s entitled to his opinion (For now) but the arguments that a genocide took place are very convincing.

As well-meaning as this Directive, to be transposed into national law within the next two years, might be, it is a restriction on the right of a person to say what he or she wants or believes, and to convince others of the merits of that position. It is a licence to government to crack down on beliefs, or the articulation of beliefs, that it finds morally, socially, culturally or politically unacceptable.

And that’s dangerous, regardless of how acceptable your current beliefs might be to the people who will be deciding what is, and is not, acceptable in the future.

Funny to read quite a good interview in the current issue of Magill (by Fiachra Ó Cionnaith) with Tomás MacGiolla, formerly President of the Workers’ Party, and realise that he is only 83. I say only because he always seemed much older in the 1980s than his early mid-60s. Perhaps it was the affable - yet clearly serious - image he had, something that only David Ervine has come close to matching in more recent times.

Anyhow, that apart, the interview was a fascinating insight into an individual who was once a major figure on the Irish left. In three or four pages it summed up the contradictory strengths and weaknesses of the man and the party he once led.

The interview covers a fair bit of ground. He considers the Peace Process to be flawed, entrenching sectarianism in an argument not a million miles away from Eamon McCann. Most important issue? “…the acknowledgement of a civil rights-based constitution in Northern Ireland. The lack of genuine democracy, as opposed to 50-50 arranged marriages between Nationalism and Unionism”. Then in a curious contradiction he argues that “In my view, when the Provos were formed in 1970, the civil rights campaign had already won”, and by won he means that the Stormont regime had lost, and implicitly that it was possible to create, underpinned by a Bill of Rights, a political scenario where a government either Unionist or Nationalist would operate along clearly defined paths. That’s seems unlikely to me and hardly much of an improvement of the new set-up.

The old anger at the Provisionals remains. They are apparently, “militant nationalism” and “people give them the credit with the peace process and I’m not okay with that at all”… and in words that might chill Éirigí he proposes that “they’re calling themselves socialists now and people have totally accepted their sudden departure into socialism. They have no socialist perspective whatsoever, no understanding of the working class”.

But naturally his real ire, as with any leftist, is reserved for a greater enemy - his former comrades - those who decamped to New Agenda/Democratic Left and are now in the Labour party.

“With the 1970s split, I knew precisely where Ruarí Ó Bradaigh stood, he was carry a torch - he’s still carrying a torch - from a previous generation. This other event in 1992…I still can’t understand it. I have no explanation other than personal greed and personal advancement”.

There are harsh words for De Rossa, harsher words for Rabitte (”I suspected him from the very start”). But he makes some fair points, as with the fairly well acknowledged idea that the WP was on line for at least three more seats at the next election. Indeed unlike almost everywhere in Europe the WP was astute enough to see what way the wind was blowing in the Glasnost period, and when De Rossa took over as Party President he made great play of the Party recognising the free market. Moreover, it actually gained seats during the period where the Eastern bloc was disintegrating. This isn’t for one moment to dispute the stresses and fractures that were already evident within the party, and that as has been argued here and elsewhere would probably have led to some form of rupture or another, but all told it remained a remarkably solid and powerful political vehicle well into the new decade.

Certainly if one wants a sense of the depth of bitterness that the WP retains towards the DL group it’s telling that he says “I’d say hello to Ruairí Ó Brádaigh but I haven’t spoken to De Rossa since, it was treachery on their part”.

There’s more regarding his thoughts on Rabbitte, but I’ll let you purchase it for yourself, should you want to.

On international affairs he’s clearly enormously enthused by the resurgence of Central and South American leftism. But his heart is with Fidel. “I’m not sure of Chavez. He’s doing a good job but he talks too much, he should keep his mouth shut and stay quiet about it, but it really is extraordinary”. Indeed, no doubt were Chavez in Ireland he would have experienced the smack of firm party discipline. He also expresses an understandable support for the Serbian people, and a perhaps slightly less understandable support for Milosevic “…he [Milosevic] was elected to do a job, to look after Serbia and its people, and he did that”. Hmmm, not so sure he’d extend the same generosity to say…for example…Sinn Féin (who hardly are in the same league as a Milosevic who shamelessly manipulated the genuinely held - if exaggerated fears - of the Serbian people both within Serbia and the other former Yugoslav Republics).

MacGiolla is a figure abandoned by history. The WP is the also ran of Irish politics that made good in some of the electoral races and promised more then collapsed on the eve of the big race and was dragged away to a premature retirement.

Of course Ó Brádaigh is less of an enemy to MacGiolla than De Rossa or Adams (although in purely ideological terms he should represent the antithesis of all that MacGiolla fought for) because he too is rendered impotent and marginal in the way that the WP is, he too is someone who saw ‘his’ party wrestled from him by others. And by contrast, the ‘militant nationalists’ are on the point of state power in Northern Ireland, while ‘the traitors’ are, maybe, perhaps, perhaps not, close to power in the Republic of Ireland. Underlying it one wonders does MacGiolla feel that he like Ó Brádaigh is carrying a torch from a previous generation.

The principles, or rather the means to achieve those principles, that MacGiolla and the WP stood for have mutated subtly but distinctly. The contemporary political map has moved on from the sort of dominance of the further left by the Workers’ Party and although Sinn Féin may well exceed it in terms of support, there is a much more fractured and fractious spectrum of organisations and groups (with possibly two - count them - two! Socialist Party TDs following the election). As the society has commercialised and splintered into niches both market and political, the energy is found in campaigns, or in different activities entirely such as the blogosphere (although I was entertained and a little surprised to read on Politics.ie that one member of a major political party was only just now starting to canvass - a little late in the day).

The tide came in for the WP in the mid to late 1980s, but then it went straight back out again. And the bitterness is born of the belief that somehow that tide wasn’t the result of political trends (which is true - it wasn’t) but instead was part civil war within the party, part retreat from the North, part transfer of power from the centralised internal structure to an elected cohort.

Funny too that ten years ago I’d have had relatively little sympathy for MacGiolla. I have a lot more sympathy today. He’s still wrong on many of the issues. Badly, badly wrong. But he’s not as wrong as he used to be.

According to a piece in the business section of the Sunday Tribune emailed around Shell to Sea campaign activists and forwarded on to me, Statoil is to commence searching for gas, with the intent of putting in a well next year, in an area off the coast of Mayo four times the size of the Corrib gas field in an area where oil and gas deposits were found in 2003.

As it stands, this means another generous cash windfall to pay for new schools, hospitals, public services and anti-poverty measures in Norway who, as with the Corrib field, will benefit immeasurably more than Irish citizens from the exploitation of our natural resources.

With the release of the Rossport Five and what seems to be low-key and somewhat confused blockades down in Bellanaboy, where the proposed Corrib refinery is to be located, the campaign has slipped off the media and political radar. There was a time when the road to Rossport was choked with Green, Labour, Independent and Sinn Féin politicians running down to express solidarity.

But with an election coming, does this mean a re-examination of Ireland’s almost unheard of generosity in the licensing terms available for off-shore oil and gas drilling? Well in January, Minister Noel Dempsey said that he is expecting a review he has had carried out of the existing licensing terms to be received shortly from the consultants. Over three months later and one can only conclude our definition of ’shortly’ and the Minister’s are far apart.

The analysis of the existing terms, and their political background, were outlined clearly in a report published by the Centre for Public Inquiry in November of 2005. It was, some will remember, the last such report as the Minister for Justice launched a smear campaign on the Centre’s chief Frank Connolly, leaking unsubstantiated Garda intelligence to a pet journalist in what would have been a resigning offence in any other country, but in Ireland, and because McDowell was sticking it to the Provos, it’s a wonder he didn’t win some sort of award.

With the election coming, the parties who huffed and puffed on Rossport and the Corrib field, have the opportunity to outline what they would do differently, the alternative licensing terms they would present to the likes of Shell and Statoil, and what they would do specifically with the Corrib contract. Should such proposals appear, they should make for interesting reading.

No slow news day as evidenced by our posts here.

Just caught on Channel 4 News the news that David Trimble is departing for sunnier climes in the Conservative Party.

Two thoughts strike me. Reg Empey, so much the nearly man, must be wondering just what he did over the years to deserve this. Well, perhaps that’s partly down to some degree of friction between the two men post 2001 over the direction of the party, or perhaps it’s a lesson not to trust anyone who has been in more than one political party in their lives - which would of course count for either of them!

Hard too, to envisage a greater vote of non-confidence in the UUP. A shattered and demoralised party slumps further. The logic of all this? Well, perhaps the more liberal sections of the UUP are making eyes at Alliance while keeping their fingers crossed that Jeffrey Donaldson may change the DUP before it changes him.

And it’s not difficult to suggest that the Conservative Party was perhaps a more instinctive home for David Trimble over the years, long, long before today. The impact of that on the course of the Peace Process is intriguing. For example, the now largely discredited Stormontgate affair of 2002 saw the plug pulled on the Assembly. Would a more confident leader have acted more assertively and attempted to keep the show on the road?

Still, all hypothetical now, as Baron Trimble of Lisnagarvey (formerly of Vanguard) slides along the benches to his spiritual home.

Isn’t this one of those events that when you first hear about it is surprising but then the more you think about it it seems almost predictable?

The headline of a piece by Carl O’Brien, in today’s Irish Times  (sub required) tells us that the “FF-Labour coalition (is) favoured in North-West, Luntz finds”. These ‘findings’ are, we’re told, based on “research carried out by US polling expert Frank Luntz for RTE’s ‘The Week in Politics’ programme”. One might add that Luntz has, rather obviously, found exactly what it was he set out searching for.

The DUP has announced the identities and portfolios of it’s four Ministers in the Northern Executive. There are no real surprises, but with the selection of Arlene Foster as the Environment Minister, it means that four out of the ten strong Executive will be women.

Foster joins Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew (Agriculture), Caitríona Ruane (Education) and the SDLP’s Margaret Ritchie (Social Development). Four out of the Assembly’s 19 women members (Eight of which are Sinn Féin interestingly), an increase of only one I think on the ‘03 election, are now full Ministers, working out at 40%. In the Dáil, three of Bertie’s 15 Ministers are women, working out at 20%. Also in the Dáil, 22 out of 166 TDs are women, working out at just over 13%, compared to just under 18% in the Northern Assembly.

This is despite the well deserved reputation Northern politics has for a macho, anti-woman culture. And yet, on the issue of representation of women in politics, there are proportionately more women in their ‘parliament’ in the North, and more women in Ministerial positions, than in the South. No doubt, an issue that will be discussed at the next society luncheon in the Four Seasons organised by the National Women’s Council of Ireland (Middle-class wing).

Last May saw the sudden and entirely unexpected death of Grant McLennan (on the right and int the background of the image), singer and guitarist with the Go-Betweens. The Cedar Lounge Revolution wasn’t extant when that happened but the shock of his death still remains and it’s strange and poignant to think it’s been almost a full year.

The Go-Betweens were quite a band, who I first saw in 1987 (yikes - actually I’m now told it was 1986) playing outside the Pavillion in TCD at lunchtime during the TCD Ball week, and then quite a number of times since. Most recently was in 2002 in the Ambassador. The sound was muddy, the acoustics dire, but their enthusiasm was unflagging. Their style was in some respects pop, but with an element of grit that undercut the melodic approach.

I’m very leery of meeting people in bands, but for once, fuelled by a similarly reflective enthusiasm and a fair quantity of pints I went over and said a few words with McLennan in Conways pub after the gig. I had a particular interest because another band I’d rate very highly are fellow Australians, The Church (perhaps best known for being on the soundtrack of Donnie Darko during the party scene where their one and only hit “Under the Milky Way” is playing in the background), whose lead singer Steve Kilbey had worked with McLennan on the “Jack Frost” project which produced two excellent albums in the 1990s.

He was very charming, but I didn’t linger, there was a queue of supplicants there to interrupt what no doubt he hoped would be a quiet pint with the bands latest drummer.

In a way an added tragedy of his death was the way in which they as a band had undergone something of a critical and commercial revival. Both McLennan and his songwriting partner Robert Forster had disbanded the Go-Betweens in 1989, pursued interesting if slightly disappointing solo careers throughout the 1990s and then reformed in 2000 assisted by former riot grrrls Sleater-Kinney. Usually such reformations fail, either due to them being cynical exercises with eyes purely on the money, or threadbare pseudo-nostalgic projects (of which an example of same was the Psychedelic Furs a couple of years back. Those of us who ‘caught’ them in Vicar Street will not soon forget the experience). The Go-Betweens were, thankfully, neither and in the subsequent six years they released three albums of varying but generally very good quality.

There was always a certain something to the band, a combination of intelligence, sensitivity and a sort of arch knowing quality (generally supplied by Forster whose solo gigs are - well - remarkable). And this was reflected in both the music and lyrics, that pop sensibility previously mentioned leavened by a certain degree of grit, a world very slightly askew, either on an emotional level or otherwise. It’s perhaps reaching to suggest that they were a political or even an explicitly feminist band, although the Sleater-Kinney connection would indicate at least something of a shared sensibility. Yet lyrically there was a darkness and, again, this knowing quality as the lyrics of the summer sweet “Streets of Your Town” (a minor hit in the UK) demonstrate,

Round and round, up and down
Everyday I make my way
Through the streets of your town

Don’t the sun look good today?
But the rain is on it’s way
Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives.

And with a lyrical concern that centred on relationships and being male without being macho it’s unsurprising, to me at least, that their appeal tended to centre on a very specific, generally male audience. Their gigs were, in latter years, a forest of greying or balding pates.

Forster announced, quite naturally, that the Go-Betweens were finished as soon McLennan died. Since then things have been quiet. Last year he won the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing for columns he writes in the Australian magazine The Monthly. For a flavour of the band, and both McLennan and Forster it’s worth reading his column on their friendship.

A fine band, a lovely man, an enduring loss.

Okay, continuing the inspection of the new media websites of Irish political parties just prior to Election 20o7, a task I approached with a spring in my step and a cheery smile only to discover that it was a dispiriting and thankless task and that there really wasn’t that much there after all. New media? If only.

So who is left?

Well first up (and this is in order of Dáil representation for total fairness) we have the Green Party, a different kettle of fish from those we saw last week. Their banner is Ireland. And not just any bit of Ireland, but one with hills and sea. Nice.

Sometimes I think the GP are fortunate in that many aspects of their politics are in extremely easy to grasp almost intuitively, and largely difficult to disagree with, and I’d hazard that the sort of significations of the ‘unspoiled’ landscape play to that intuition in a way that even the catch-all parties find more difficult to carry off convincingly. And they’re not behind the door in utilising other signifiers. The playground for education, the mother and child for the Manifesto for Women (is it me or does that seem a tad…ah I don’t know). Incidentally, got to love the photo of the Nuclear power stations and the strap line “Previous Generation”.

Also nice is the understated layout and clear colour scheme. It too, like the Labour Party, follows a rather blog like layout. A large photograph of the last Green Party Convention fills the front page. Latest news is on the left, links, policies and campaigns on the right. And tabs for each of these and others along the top. The issues on the front page are fairly cleverly chosen to push the right buttons.

But slightly worryingly this page has not changed substantially since I took a screenshot of it two weeks ago. So it’s sort of quiet…too quiet for my liking. And while there is a tab for Election 07 it is discreetly positioned along with the other tabs concerning the party.

So then, as regards the electoral front, clearly not such a big deal yet, nothing to see here, move along please.

And so to Sinn Féin.

What to make of it? Well, it’s busy busy busy. Sure, everything is in the right place and clearly laid out, but the colour scheme is arguable a little dark. And curious too, one wonders what the choice of the predominantly blue background was for?

There are plenty of photographs, with a strip of leading SF politicians and candidates along the top - and an equal balance between those from the 6 and the 26 including the now all but ubiquitous Mary Lou McDonald. All in a line…perhaps reinforcing the idea of an “Ireland of Equals” an all in photographs that suggest they’re doing something. This is an imagery calculated to give the impression of people on the move or one that links right into the electoralism of the party.

As can be seen there is a good photograph of some of their Stormont representation on the steps of…Stormont. The tic of photographing the ‘team’ concept is manifest here.

Worth noting that it’s the only party other than FF to refer to the Peace Process (in the line of buttons across the top), which is reasonable, but also gives us some insight into the lack of ‘ownership’ of it by other parties who oversaw it while in government.

Note also the way in which each of the buttons on the right hand side have tiny accompanying images, from a rather more youthful Gerry Adams to some of the paraphernalia from the on-line store. Incidentally can it possibly be true that An Phoblacht is Ireland’s most popular weekly political newspaper? Or could it be that it’s Ireland only weekly political newspaper.

The use of fonts is perhaps a little over done. Do we really need so many different ones on a single page from the blocky Impact advertising the Book Shop to the slender sans serif on the various fields and buttons.

Does it work? Up to a point. It’s utilitarian and enthusiastic, but it’s also way too busy for my liking and visually inconsistent (maybe I’m wrong, but it looks like it’s been two or three revisions and retained elements from each of them) and I can’t get my head around the blue field in the background which to my mind compresses all the text and imagery on the page. In some way’s it’s a visual antithesis of the Fine Gael site. Where one is sparse the other is overly complex.

And finally, well not quite finally… The Socialist Party. Sure, I could look at other parties contesting the election, but that’s enough for one day, and these are the ones represented in the Dáil.

Say what you like about the SP, but their site is straight to the point. The image across the top of the page manages to drag Connolly, Marx and Engels together, with a photoshopped image of an SP banner at a march.

And somehow, due to the images along the top, it seems to evoke a period of revolutionary struggle that seems almost alien. There is the business of the 19th century political pamphlet combined with the interactivity of the 21st century. So many links to select? What will it be? The Committee for a Workers’ International, or perhaps Frequently Asked Questions, or then again how about the CWI in Poland? Choices, choices.

Lest that sound too flippant, or unduly pejorative I actually think the site works well. It’s busy, way too busy like SF, but it’s also very coherent. There’s a lot here, from the links to articles on Nepal to complaints about Ahern meeting Bush in Washington on St. Patrick’s Day. And Election 2007? Well, a link is rather discreetly positioned behind a banner strip entitled “The Socialist Challenge to the political establishment” and photographs of the candidates (although once more a curiously youthful Joe Higgins and Clare Daly look sternly out at us). Not sure that if I had a say I wouldn’t put a bit more emphasis on this.

Incidentally only the Greens, Sinn Féin and Labour allow you to donate on-line (according to a fairly good article in the Sunday Business Post earlier in the month). Which perhaps tells us just what we want to know about the general approach of those parties to the new technology.

Meanwhile, what of the Independents? Well there’s so may that I’ll just give you a smattering. First up Catherine Murphy T.D. The choice of colour, a shade of purple or lavender, is drawn from the colours used by the suffragettes which is clever, but perhaps could be indicated somewhere for the viewer (or is it reader?). The actual links lead to information of interest, foremost amongst them her somewhat quixotic campaign with Finian McGrath at the High Court regarding the boundaries of constituencies.

It’s well designed, particularly the header which to judge from the photographs beneath links directly into her campaign material, does the job and is clearly presented. I like the map of Ireland with Kildare emphasised by extruding the county from the map.

More utilitarian again is the site used by Paddy McHugh T.D. of Galway East, although the Latest News feature on the right hand side has the virtue of doing exactly what it says on the tin. The colour scheme is perhaps a nod to the county colours, but seems curiously Labour like in this instance.

And a final example, that of Dr. Jerry Cowley T.D…

Something to make us perhaps think about Baudrillard and the concept of events that “do not take place”

…or better still consider Shelley…

” Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”