The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Magill. Generally worth a read. But always a fertile ground for analysis, particularly for its worldview. The latest edition has an interesting article about Ireland and high rises.

But consider the mainstay of the issue, an interview with failed FG candidate Brody Sweeney, entrepreneurial spirit behind O’Brien’s sandwiches.

It’s quite an interview, and not merely because of an uncharacteristic reticence which appears when asked about the status of unions in O’Briens…“O’Brien’s…they aren’t unionised, no, but I don’t have strong views on it to be honest with you…we’re a franchise so essentially each shop is individually owned and operated…[what if staff came and asked for Brody's opinion] I’d probably, on balance, against it. I’m a capitalist businessman and, while I know that unions served a brilliant and correct purpose at the turn of the century…a lot of those anomalies were fixed. Personally I’d be much more in favour of our workers talking directly to management instead of doing it through a union..”. Well, I’m not the greatest class warrior, but even so, having had to organise a union in an anti-union group of companies there’s a lot of those anomalies haven’t been fixed and sometimes management simply doesn’t want to talk.

But meanwhile to the broader issues. “Fine Gael and Labour? We’re all pretty centralist really. Labour isn’t going to re-nationalise the railways and Fine Gael aren’t going to set up Nazi youth camps, so I don’t see our agendas as being that different.”

Well, when you put it that way, of course. The gulf between the two is fairly minor…except…aren’t the railways still sort of kind of nationalised and when was it Fine Gael policy to set up Nazi youth camps? As an insight into a certain approach to Irish politics its fairly telling, is it not?

For an – ahem – perhaps equally idiosyncratic analysis, but this time in relation to the North, and in particular the events of the recent months John Coulter of the Daily Star serves us the following analysis which in part demonstrates the hitherto somewhat unrecognised mutability of the term ‘radical’…

“In this quest of uniting modern-day Protestant, Catholic and dissenter, Paisley has almost assumed the mantle of the late 18th century radical Protestant leader, Wolfe Tone, who mobilised Irish Presbyterianism under the banner of the United Irishmen”

This of course would be Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, would it not? But this also being the other good Dr… that is Dr. John Coulter he cannot quite restrain himself when it comes to his favourite prognostication, that of the potential rise of a hard right party in the North and in the following disturbing conclusion calls upon that well known oracle of events yet to come, Star Trek:

“An edition of the popular science fiction series, Star Trek, predicted there could be a united Ireland by 2024. But maybe then, too, the Northern power-sharing government will consist of a single Unionist Party and Fianna Fáil, and the opposition will come from an anti-immigrant, Northern version of the far-right, racist British National Party”.

Maybe…maybe…

Meanwhile Magill appears to have identified the anti-John Waters. An individual who uses much the same language of victimhood, postcolonialism and such like, but uses it to arrive at directly opposite (but similarly apocalyptic and hyperbolic) conclusions…

“But we go on living the lie, with the craic, the drinking, the talk about the Ireland of the welcomes and our great conviviality, while despicable outsiders like Boorman see nothing but paradoxes like “the welcoming smile to the stranger and the rabid xenophobia…what lies in the gap between these crude paradoxes is that one essential ingredient that defines Irishness best – our hypocrisy. A festering creation that has grown from a peasant, postcolonial mindset with its manifestation in the nudge, nod and a wink culture which tolerates dishonesty and a ’sure it’ll do attitude’ in all walks of life, allowing us to reinforce the myth of Imaginary Ireland. A place where the engine of hypocrisy drives both the political expediency of a Peace Process that allows murderers free, and a political system riddled with cute hoorism and a dependence on the parochial and local that hamstrings any attempts to make us look like a nation of sophisticates. It’s that postcolonial, peasant mentality best exemplified by the image of the Hello! Taoiseach handing over his bowl of greenery every Saint Patrick’s day to our modern-day approximation of our former landlord…”

Padraig Kenny, for it is you, step forward. Ah, there’s nothing like the firm lash of disdain, be it class based, socially and/or religiously inspired to whip up a bit of fervour. No shades of grey in there. No complexity or acknowledgement that, say in the case of the Peace Process, it might be a bit more than ‘allowing murderers free’…at least when contextualised in the glum history of these islands. Better to allow the modish reference to the ‘landlord’ carry us along on a wave of self hatred for our doffing our caps to the imperial overlords in Washington,  or is it Brussels, or is it Dublin…or perhaps best not.

And finally, why it is none other than Simon Rowe who writing about Enda Kenny and Bertie Ahern both jumping the Gospel Train with their “Celtic Christian” and “aggressive secularism” comments opines that “the Taoiseach lit the touch paper on a question that has smouldered for years under the ashes of secular indifference: can we have a healthy civic culture without religion”. Actually, for Simon there is no need for a debate as he later notes that “the Taoiseach’s intervention chimes with an EU-wide desire to place “social values” at the heart of public policy…across Europe, political leaders on left and right have woken up to the fact that if governments want to build social capital, inspire voluntarism, give meaning to people’s lives, create caring communities, and promote values-based societies, then providing a space for religion in the public square is vital”.

Except clearly not entirely vital since he can only give us by way of examples of this new centrality of religion to state a rather short paragraph that name checks an initiative by Tony Blair, some rhetoric by David Cameron and some more rhetoric by Nicolas Sarkozy.

And the cover? A close up photograph of a saturnine Bertie Ahern with the headline “Better the Devil You Know: Berties third term?” which would be great if there was somewhere within the pages an accompanying article, but, weirdly there isn’t.