The Cedar Lounge Revolution

The reason for posts appearing and disappearing appears to be with the broader platform.

No doubt normal service will be resumed soon enough…

Taking a quick break from Coolacrease here, as a contrast to last weeks Official Sinn Féin “United Irishman”, we have a leaflet from Provisional Sinn Féin, the “Inner City Republican” issued on behalf of Christy Burke in the Dublin Central constituency. The leaflet was donated anonymously - for which we’re very grateful - and is from a photocopy, so apologies for the poor reproduction quality. icr.pdf

It’s an interesting document. Some obvious points. The ‘Provisional’ is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the name change of Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party to the Workers’ Party the previous year had rendered it superfluous. The masthead has a photograph of Connolly and Bobby Sands. There is a heavy emphasis on ’socialism’ throughout. We are told in the editorial that “there can never be social justice and independence under a capitalist system”. Christy Burke is quoted We are treated to an interview with the IRA which is notable for the way in which it localises its involvement to specific areas in Dublin Central. And linked to that is a strong anti-drugs message. Interesting to see how in 1983 there was the claim that there was no heroin addiction in the North. The intervening years were to bring about a different story. And that too is interesting because the concentration remains very strongly focussed on the Inner City and the ‘war’ and the North is mentioned only glancingly. Perhaps an indication fo future complexities that we would see reiterated as recently as the election this year.

One notable omission is any reference to Tony Gregory who had been elected the previous year. This indicated interesting problems for PSF in the constituency because Gregory had already, to some degree, soaked up the left Republican vote by clothing it in community activist garb. And that linked into my previous point. For PSF this was a constituency, like many in Dublin that would be hard to ‘break’ into because there were many, Gregory, Labour and indeed FF who had first mover advantage. One can only marvel at the way in which Nicky Kehoe almost made it back in the last but one election. On the other hand there was no significant WP or DL presence here throughout the 20 odd years since unlike other constituencies, which counterintuitively might have been a problem in the 1980s and early 1990s but as time went on become yet another source of votes in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Finally, interesting to see that the fada’s are hand rendered. Them were the days…

Some technical problems today. Not sure why…

I posted two posts this morning, one inadvertently, but they seem - somewhat like an internet Brigadoon to come in and out of existence as they see fit.

Anyone see the same phenomenon?

Nice to see the CLR mentioned in the most recent issue of An Phoblacht. Here is the relevant column (I’ve excised the bits that don’t refer to the CLR so that you can go buy your own copy)…

Frankly it’s a glowing tribute, and much appreciated, although whether we’re anywhere near that good (or even adequate) is a different matter.

Personally I don’t think blogs can achieve the sort of critical mass that they do in the US. The US has - to my mind - a very mature and engaged political system at certain levels. There is remarkable interaction and engagement by those who are politicised. And this, I think, is perhaps partially because elections are much more a part of US general life, in terms of electoral contests for municipal and other organisations than they are in this society, or indeed the one next door. That can lead to oddities, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions, and the system does become slanted towards those with money, as distinct from those without. But, the principle is a good one, and one that could be adopted more widely.

Anyhow, I’m continually reminded of this when I listen to the various NPR shows on the internet (incidentally, talking as Conor was about dumbing down the media… people can keep (most) of the BBC, although not all). We complain here about a tilt towards the right in our society but listen to ‘Left, Right and Centre’ or ‘To the point’ and the range of ideological positions is quite remarkable and makes our own media seem very tame.
Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that what is true of NPR is true of the entirety of U.S. society, but it is reflective of a serious strain of political thinking that crosses partisan lines and I like that - a lot. And to return to my central point, this leads to a politically engaged spectrum which consumes a range of information from various sources, some of remarkable quality. And that means that bloggers have a much greater penetration into that system (it’s very noticeable to me how many people on the NPR shows have their own blogs - mind you they probably have their own myspace pages as well…natch!).

At the Irish Election Bloggers Conference last Autumn Guido Fawkes was the main speaker (incidentally, good to see the IE redesign which is clean, crisp and logical. Fair dues to Simon and Cian and designer/coder John Blackbourne). He seemed to be pushing a very proactive line, a sort of Private Eye on internet steroids. That’s fine as far as it goes, but in a smaller, more personal polity like the one(s) on this island it is more difficult. To ‘break’ news, or even to cross a certain line and ‘create’ news is near impossible, and almost certainly impossible to do on a daily or weekly basis.
But reflecting on a discourse, now that’s a different matter. And I think that’s pretty good in itself.

Still, that leads me to another thought. We’ve already sent out a call for further material to the Left Archive. More would be appreciated, particularly material from the smaller groups that haven’t been represented yet (yes! I want that SWM leaflet I handed good money over in ‘88 and promptly lost). But it would also be interesting to hear if you have any ideas for the Cedar Lounge Revolution. What do you like or dislike? Any thoughts on improvements? Stuff you want to see?

Comment here or drop us a line at cedarlounge@yahoo.ie

I had thought from time to time of putting something together about the wearing of poppies and Remembrance Day this year and had put it from my mind until I came across this little gem by a Sunday Independent ‘journalist’ Andrea Byrne in last week’s edition. Regular blog reads might remember Andrea as the ‘journalist’ exposed by Twenty Major last year of plagarising articles from the internet for her Sunday Independent pieces.

Byrne’s thesis is simple. The decision by Louis Walsh to wear a poppy while on the X-Factor is a symbol of our growing ‘maturity’ among the Irish people. We have dumped our unreasoning ‘deep seated bitterness’ towards the English, moved beyond our anglophobia and have finally opted to let ‘bygones be bygones’. She uses a number of examples from sport and Paisley in the North to back up her thesis.

Before I get onto this, because it really infuriates me, the point I had been thinking of making was the difference in images on British television during the poppy wearing season. Studio guests, people being interviewed, panellists, interviewers and so on all wore poppies with as close to hundred percent unanimity as possible. Yet whenever crowd shots were shown of people during a news report for whatever reason, perhaps a crowd of people in a queue or on their way into a football match, it was very rare to notice a poppy among ordinary members of the public. Interesting that the symbol needs to be pushed officially on people rather than being popularly owned. I suspect as a result of younger people not seeing the point of it.

Anyway, my own position on the poppy has always been fairly straight-forward. Wear it if you like, as one of my colleagues in work does, but don’t lecture me on how open-minded and mature it makes you. Or how close-minded those of us who choose not to wear one are.

My opposition to the poppy is not simply a product of unthinking anglophobia, it is based in on two basic points. Firstly, the poppy does not simply commemorate the men who died during WW1, but glories in it. An article by Vincent Browne in the Sunday Business Post neatly summed it up on Remembrance Day. World War One was an imperialist war, an epic murderous waste of human life in a battle between various imperial powers. This is no slight on the courage of the people who fought in it, or the genuineness of their beliefs, but a simple statement that the fact that tens of thousands of Irish men were butchered in Flanders and the Somme for no reason beyond that of capital and monarchs is not something to be celebrated. It is not something to be retrospectively endorsed. Frankly, for encouraging and pressuring young Irishmen to go fight in another man’s war, John Redmond ended up with a lot more blood on his hands than the ‘men of violence’ he was opposing.

Secondly, the poppy does not remember just those British servicemen and women who died in WW1 or WW2 but those who died in their various conflicts against democracy and liberation movements around the world. It is a telling statement of the strength of the colonial mindset in Ireland that people who would wear a poppy would balk at remembering the men and women who fought for Irish independence, or acknowledging their sacrifice. The people who argued against the Government recommencing state commemorations of 1916 are the same people who are annoyed by the decision of our political class not to wear poppies. As Steven Biko rightly observed, “The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

The problem with the poppy is that it does not simply remember the dead, but do so with an implied approval for the causes they fought. Interestingly my colleague who wears a poppy does so to remember a family member who fought in World War One and, thankfully, came home, but does accept that it implies justification for that most pointless of conflicts. That is not a position she supports but accepts that this is how the symbol is perceived. To her, it is remembering a family member and nothing more.

Wearing a poppy is not a sign of Ireland maturing as a people. It is something I disagree with profoundly for what are valid and widely held political and moral principles and do so with many more Irish people. Those of our citizens who want to wear a poppy are entitled to do so. But those of us who do not accept that it is ‘mature’ to celebrate and applaud the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, largely working class and often conscripted, men on the altar of imperialism and capitalism are equally entitled to do so.

It’s about time some people stopped tugging their forelocks.

A strange conference that. Odd to see familiar faces pop into view every once in a while. Look, look, De Rossa wandered by, there was Michael D. Higgins… and so on and so forth. The fact that it wasn’t televised was interesting. Somehow it had less presence and perhaps unsurprisingly that lack of presence was evident on the internet.

Which is a pity, because some fascinating events took place over the weekend.

First up was the adoption of the “Red Flag” as their anthem. Mark Hennessy reported that:

On Saturday, Labour delegates in Wexford, to much acclaim, adopted the anthem of the working class, The Red Flag, written by Irishman Jim Connell in London in 1889, as the party’s song.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair hated it and managed until 2003 to keep it off his conference agenda, fearing it did not chime with the New Labour creed.

From now on, the Irish Labour Party will sing the first verse and chorus of the anthem, which has been sung from Red Square to Havana, at the end of conferences:

It’s only a small thing really. Gestural in fact. But after months of reading in the media about how the Labour Party must ‘change’ in some unspecified fashion this was oddly heartening.But, ironically, Hennessy’s crack about ‘Red Square to Havana’ is actually far too limiting and the point that the British Labour Party used it should indicate that it has a wider appeal than some might like to think.

Still, not quite sure of the addendum to Motion 90 which dealt with The Red Flag and stated:

Addendum :

Conference further notes that next year will be the 10th Anniversary of the unveiling of the Jim Connell Memorial with a festival of music; at which Bill Bragg has been invited to sing.

Perhaps Bill(y) Bragg(?) will lead them in a stirring rendition.

I’ve already noted how the conflict between democratic socialism and social democrat is largely - although not entirely - cosmetic and that parties of the left should easily be able to encompass those poles. So it was with a certain degree of relief that I read that:

….delegates rejected a call led by former leader Ruairí Quinn for Labour to redefine itself as a “social democratic party”, rather than “democratic socialist”, as it currently does.

Saying that he had “no trouble in describing myself as a socialist”, Dublin South East TD Mr Quinn said “democratic socialism” offered “an outmoded image” to younger voters.

Opposing him, party president Michael D Higgins said social democracy is “interpreted differently” in different countries, and is often used by right-wing parties.

“Democratic socialism avoids abuses of socialism. We are not stuck in any mode. But we believe that there is a new world to be made,” the Galway West TD told the conference.

Indeed. I can add no more to that.

But Stephen Collins in the Irish Times can.

Adopting The Red Flag as the party anthem and retaining the phrase “democratic socialist” in the party’s constitution rather than “social democrat” were a bit self-indulgent.

I wonder about that term ’self-indulgent’. I suspect that those small gestures might actually shore up a bit of left support that the party has been leaking for a while now (then again, I often wonder about Stephen Collins and his ‘advice’). The media love a good narrative, whether true or not, and the narrative this year is that Labour is in some unlikely sense a standard bearer of the very worst aspects of traditional style socialism… Oh yes. Or, for those of us who know Labour a little better, oh no. The thesis is so absurd, so telling in terms of the lack of any serious political knowledge, understanding and analysis on the part of those who make it that I find it unsurprising that we’ve all largely fled to blogs to get our info. As for the electorate at large, I doubt they care one bit about the Red Flag, or democratic socialism as long as they see unified, disciplined and coherent political groups representing the plurality of their opinions.

On to Willie Penrose and the Unions. I worry about this. I truly do. Collins reports about:

…the reaction to the fiery speech by the general president of Siptu, Jack O’Connor, who had advocated going into government with Fianna Fáil after the election. O’Connor spoke on Saturday of the danger to the future of social partnership posed by the increasing use of agency workers.

Fine, responded Westmeath TD Willie Penrose, the Labour Party would be putting forward a motion on the issue in the Dáil but, in return, it wanted to see a bit of loyalty from trade union leaders.

He pointedly said that some of those leaders should stop being so “palsy-walsy” with Bertie Ahern, doing deals with him when it suited them. Penrose brought the house down, receiving sustained applause from the floor. Eamon Gilmore reinforced the point yesterday by referring to the closeness between some union leaders and the Government.

Well. Again I’m not so sure. I really really hope this wasn’t an ersatz Clause 4 moment (now that the social democrat/democratic socialist issue has been put to bed). The relationships between unions and party are complex, and rendered more so by the fact that the larger portion of the unionised don’t actually vote for Labour primarily. That latter point makes the position of union leaders much more difficult and predicates against them being simple cheerleaders for the party.

To my mind, for what it’s worth, the party should think long and hard about that before complaining about the stance the unions take one way or another. As for criticising the unions for dealing with the Government, that’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s also important to consider that Labour had at least some small potential to also enter government both prior to and directly after the election and chose to shirk it. The strategy that Labour adopted of fighting the election with Fine Gael was, quite frankly, disastrous and many many voices, including the unions spoke out against it well before the election. So perhaps a softer cough from Labour on this and other matters might be more appropriate, whatever about ‘bringing the house down’ inside a conference when it’s beyond those four walls that really matter.

Some of the motions were of particular interest, to me at least.

Motion 79 was passed unanimously which…

directs the NEC to appoint a special commission, representative of the NILF, the PLP and the NEC, together with Party members with specialist knowledge and expertise:

1. to invite and receive submissions on and to consider the future role and organisation of the Party in connection with Northern Ireland and its internal affairs, and for that purpose to meet with relevant parties, trade unions and other interest groups;
2. to explore the potential to participate in elections there, and
3. to report its conclusions in sufficient time to enable the recommendations of the NEC, including any proposals to amend the Party Constitution, to be debated at the next following Party Conference.

Good stuff. It’s all the rage this casting of the eyes northwards…

All manner of interesting questions are contained in Motion 89 (passed unanimously)…

Conference resolves that the Labour Party must transform Irish society by implementing socialist policies, and asks the Party to develop an economic framework that would support these. The aim of these policies would be to eliminate poverty, to give our citizens equal access to health, education and housing, to develop our economy, to achieve prosperity for all and in doing this bring forward a society that is genuinely inclusive for all citizens through a Labour led government.

Proposing Branch : Rathmines - (Dublin South East)

Not quite the nationalisation of the top 100 companies. Still. Getting there. Maybe.

So, cutting to the chase, what treats are we offered by Gilmore in his big (TM) speech? First up, important to acknowledge that he had suffered the loss of his mother only a short number of days previously.

What we got was the ‘New Purpose’. I’m not in love with that phrase, I can tell you now. It’s not Miriam Lord’s not entirely funny idea that it was a ‘porpoise’ although that’s bad enough. It just doesn’t resonate.

Still, beyond the Purpose we got personal vision…

Me? I believe that every person is equal. It is as simple as that.

That’s what makes me a democrat.

That’s why I am a socialist.

And why I belong to a social democratic party.

This basic idea that people are equal, and should be free to pursue their potential, in a society where we look out for each other, is what distinguishes the politics of the Labour Party.

That’s why we insist on equal treatment for the sick, fairness at work, respect and tolerance between people of whatever gender, religion, sexuality or race. Labour always puts people first.

broader vision…

Sometimes I hear people say that it is hard to understand what Labour stands for. Or even ask if Labour is relevant at all to modern Ireland.

Relevant to modern Ireland? Labour made Ireland modern. Rights and freedoms, which we all now take for granted, were won by the Labour Party and its allies, often in the face of bitter conservative opposition. Many of those who pontificate now about Ireland’s modernity were those who bitterly opposed each modernising step.

It was Labour who gave women the right to the same pay for doing the same jobs as men; Labour which brought in the laws which protect our rights at work; Labour which introduced the legislation on equality, on standards in public life and freedom of information; Labour that freed separated people from the dogmas of the past and allowed them remarry if they so wish.

It was Labour that made it legal to buy a packet of condoms. And we are still modernising Ireland. Our Civil Unions Bill is a simple measure of equality that can and should be supported by all parties in the Dáil. Shame on those who didn’t.

A lash at Fianna Fáil (from one Eamon to another…)…

I see the Minister for Education is getting more interested in history. At taxpayers’ expense she has sent books about Eamon de Valera to every school in the country.

I grew up in a house and family that respected de Valera, and I can tell the Minister a few things about history.

Eamon de Valera would never have taken fistfuls of cash in a suitcase.

Seán Lemass, if he had the money they now have, would never have tolerated the inefficiency and waste in the health service.

And Jack Lynch would never have turned his back on Shannon.

A bit more on vision…

Ireland needs a New Purpose - we need to get a sense of national direction and aspiration. A common cause, to inspire the allegiance and the imagination of the New Ireland.

We need a vision for our country, and its place in the new expanded Europe and increasingly globalised world, over the next two or even three decades. Building on the New Republic. Moving Ireland onto the next stage of our progress, the next phase of our country’s history. A New Purpose for the new Ireland.

A Kinnock-like drift back to the personal

Thirty-five years ago, I was the first ever in my family to go to university.

Back then going to college was a unique privilege. Now it is a necessity, because it is education that drives a knowledge economy. And it is education that makes us free to live full lives in the new society.

Some curious sentence construction…

Nearly 60 years ago, in the bad times of the 1940s, If Noel Browne could build big hospitals and cure TB, nearly 60 years ago, in the bad old days of the 1940s, then surely in rich modern Ireland, it is not too much to expect that a woman can get a cancer test on time, be able to rely on the result, and then get whatever treatment she needs without having to join a queue which threatens her life.

Some sensible pro-enterprise rhetoric that didn’t sell the pass…

Future prosperity,for all, will be built on an enterprising, creative economy, but it cannot be built on a narrow free market ideology. There will be no New Economy without individual flair, but neither will we prosper without collective effort. We must reward innovation, but we will not, indeed can not build the New Economy on poverty or gross inequality.

Our new purpose is to make Ireland a leader in the New Economy. The Celtic Tiger doesn’t have to end in tears. It can be better even than it is, if we plan for the future. That future lies in Irish firms being able to appropriate ideas, commercialise them, and turn them into world leading products.

But the young researcher tonight, with a new idea needs more than just encouragement to turn innovation to commerce. She needs start up capital. So we need a shift in policy and in culture, away from providing
tax-incentives for low-risk speculation in property towards the higher-risk investment in start ups that will create jobs in the decades to come.

Our purpose is to build the new economy, and to be a voice for enterprise, business and aspiration.

That means investing more in education, research and innovation. We need to take Irish education to new heights.

the future…

Our purpose is to end poverty.

Healthcare is at the heart of our new purpose.

Our purpose over the next two decades is to create a better future for this planet.

Community-building is our purpose.

And to finish a selection of curiously truncated sentences…

This then is Labour’s New Purpose.

To build the New Economy.

Universal third-level education.

Ending poverty at home and abroad.

Halting climate change.

A health service that cures.

Stronger, fairer neighbourly communities.

This is our vision of Ireland, and of our place in the world.

It’s far from awful. It’s okay. It sounds better than it scans. And yet, for the life of me, I see little here - bar the call to end poverty - that wouldn’t slot as well into a Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael Ard Fhéis. Or as Cian says on Irish Election… “Gilmore used his speech to outline that Labour’s new position politics is not all that radically different from its old one”.

Is this truly what democratic socialists or social democrats on this island can call the essence of their project? Is this the strong reaffirmation of their values? On a broad level, yes. More or less. But on the micro, I’m not entirely convinced. And perhaps that is because while visions are great, although visions with clarity are better, it would be nice to have a bit of detail thrown into the mix. There is little here about the economy. Nothing at all about what happens is the economy sinks. No sense that Labour - as a Labour party - is ready to work with like-minded others across the political spectrum. No words about the fact that one element of the progressive political camp upped sticks and left for government. Little enough about that government.

Perhaps that is a tad unfair. Perhaps the big vision is the important thing. Perhaps even beginning to push Labour out from under the shadow of Fine Gael is in and of itself enough. But perhaps it’s not. Perhaps in this day and age we demand more, more detail, more clarity, more of the ramifications of a Labour government. We are four and a half years away from an election. Probably. But to be convinced, as distinct from somewhat swayed, is what is necessary.

Gilmore is actually pretty good. Indeed one section of the speech that was better than pretty good was the following:

This party that has led so much change in Ireland, must now have the courage to change itself. At every level of our organization, we need to do better.

I will lead this party to the best of my abilities. But, I don’t rule the Labour Party, I serve it. When I said earlier that I believe every person is equal,
I apply that principle to the Labour Party as well. This party belongs to all of us, and we must, all of us, take responsibility for where the party
is going.

My job is to steer, and sometimes to point, from the vantage point
I have as leader. And here’s what we need to do.

When you came into the hall this evening, there was a membership application form on your seat. Everyone of us knows somebody whom we think could be, should be, or once said they wished to be, a member of the Labour Party. But we have never got around to asking them to join. Let’s do it now. Tomorrow. And when that person comes to a party meeting, welcome them, so they don’t go away feeling excluded and not part of the circle. If your branch is not meeting, then it needs to be
re-organised, or maybe we need to put in place new units of organisation which meet the needs of the way we live our busy lives today.

And when, over the coming months, we meet with fellow members to discuss the selection of candidates for the local elections,
let’s pick the best candidates. In particular, we need more women and more young people to be selected. And if the best candidate is not among our present membership, then lets look to like-minded people who share our values and are not yet members of the party.

And when we have picked the candidate, lets get out there to ensure that he or she is elected at the next local elections, which are now just 19 months away. So lets be on the doors and in the communities and organizing the meetings and the campaigns. Lets be a Party, not which polls and preaches, but which listens and responds.

It’s organisational stuff, but it’s important. It’s refreshingly ego-free. And while another idea he raised of taking a journey across the country to ‘relearn’ Ireland is somewhat chilling, well, why not?

If anyone can do it for Labour and in Labour I think he can. But there’s much more to do.

And it’s odd to find myself actually agreeing with the IT editorial - bar the bit about ‘rebranding’…

The task of rebuilding and re-branding the Labour Party will not be easy, even though opinion polls have indicated an increase in public support. A change of leadership, along with a commitment to a go-it-alone strategy, encouraged the conference to look forward, rather than back, and recriminations were kept to a minimum. Lively debate helped to dispel a miasma arising from a poor general election. And there was a reaffirmation of core values. In spite of that, the impression lingered of a party uncertain of success that is seeking a clear political direction and distinctive policies that will reconnect with voters.

The centre is crowded in this country. But Labour remains a potent force on the centre left. If it can accentuate that ‘left’ even in a language that resonates with both its past and the contemporary then it might well find itself doing better.

But, old questions will continue to be raised. Even today there was a piece in the Irish Times about how Gilmore was leaving the question of an election pact open. He is quoted as saying that…

“I don’t know when the next general election is going to be. I don’t know the circumstances it will be called in. I am not going to get into the business of how that election is going to be fought at the time.”

Ruling out any renewal of the “Mullingar accord” with Fine Gael, the Labour leader said there would be no alliances with other parties “for the foreseeable future”.

Pressed on the issue, Mr Gilmore said: “For the foreseeable future. You are trying to ask me a question about the next general election. I don’t know when it is going to be. I am not going to write the script now for what I might say on the eve of the election.”

He added that he did not want his remarks to be interpreted that there would be an eve-of-poll alliance.

Which is interesting, particularly placed in context with another statement that there

…would be “no repeat” of the pre-election deal between his predecessor, Pat Rabbitte, and Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny.

Labour is in an unenviable position. Plus ca change… At least they have a leader who seems aware of that.

In this week’s Heat magazine Ziggy is featured on the frontpage making his position clear in no uncertain terms with a frontpage story headlined: ZIGGY: WHY I DUMPED CHANELLE.

Not much room for doubt there and for many of us a sigh of relief as at last the record is set straight.

But what is this? The frontpage story in this week’s Star magazine says: CHANELLE: WHY I DUMPED ZIGGY. (Yes, word for word.) Well, well, well. The plot thickens.

And yet another new twist. In a statement out tonight Heat magazine revealed that next week’s edition, hitting the newsagents tomorrow, ‘tells Chanelle’s side of the story.’

For the blissfully unaware, Ziggy and Chanelle (pictured looking depressed), were contestants on Big Brother 2007 who fell ’in love’ during the programme and continued to go out after it ended until their relationship ended earlier this month with allegations by Ziggy that Chanelle was violent towards him. Things have reached such a point that their web domain http://www.ziggyandchanelle.co.uk/  is for sale, which bodes poorly for chances of reconciliation. 

A quick googlenews search finds the story covered on RTE, Sky News, The Scotsman, Daily Star, the Sun, Now Magazine, the Daily Mail and the Athlone Advertiser with Kerry Katona claiming in Now Magazine that the whole relationship was a sham staged to get media attention.

Every indication is that this fight is going to run and run. You better believe, boys and girls, that it’s on. Oh yes.

In a completely unrelated development, Project Censored has released its annual list of the most important stories you didn’t see or hear anything about. Hundreds of stories are submitted to Project Censored every year by journalists and academics, or tracked by the organisation’s media research group to identify stories that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored in the US but that are important and valuable.

Happily, we don’t need such an organisation here. After all, I already know that Ziggy claims Chanelle used to ask to be hit in the face during sex. What more could I need to know?

There are certain principles drummed into the Little family from an early age. Included among them, and devoutly and passionately held is, that regardless of whether you agree with the issue or not, or support the decision or not, there is never, ever any excuse for crossing a picket-line. Those who do so to work are scabs and those who do so to avail of the services of scabs are not much better. I’m not sure Pa Little was familiar with Jack London’s The Scab, but he would surely have agreed with the conclusion that “a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.” Not much room for a middle ground with Mr London either.

Yet from next January I face the possibility of not merely crossing the picket-line, but applauding those others who do so if the dispute between the Gaelic Players Association (GPA), the GAA and the Government is not resolved. Members of the GPA voted earlier this month to take industrial action setting itself on a collision course with the GAA and sparking what has the potential to be an internal row within the Association that would be so divisive and bitter that we would look back with nostalgic affection for the days when we were lectured by the ‘great and the good’ about Rules 42 and 21.

The vote in favour of strike action was overwhelming. 1,881 members of the GPA were sent ballots and 1,348, or 71.6%, returned them with a Saddam like majority of over 95% in favour. Under the strike action GPA members are allowed to continue playing with their clubs and can continue to train with the county squad, but cannot play inter-country from January 1. At first glance the dispute centres over funding for inter-country players to defray the expenses incurred by playing at that level. Time away from work and family, medical and health expenses, gym memberships, extra training and so on. The Government promised a sum of 5 million Euros that would be split between the 64 inter-country senior panels with a limit of 2,800 Euros per player per annum. The deal was hammered out between the Government and the GPA directly.

The Government then decided that the GAA should pay the money out of the structural funds earmarked for the development of pitches and stadiums. The GAA, not wanting to lose money set aside for the support of the game to back a deal they were not involved in negotiating, refused and so to an impasse. Ironically, the first competitions to be affected by any strike action will be those in which the proceeds go into the GAA fund used to support injured players. GPA members have deliberately, and provocatively, adopted the language of the industrial dispute, referring to people who ‘might cross the picket line’ and players who would take up their space on the team as ’scabs’.

Broadly speaking, few people would argue with the need to provide some sort of compensation to amateur players who are required to play and train to a professional standard. But many GAA members, including myself, are more than a little wary of this. The GAA, whether those on the left who percieve the organisation to be a bulwark of reactionary Catholic nationalism appreciate it, is the closest to a working and successful socialist organisation in Ireland that exists. Thousands of people play its games every week without compensation. Thousands more work in administrative and support roles. From the time I was under ten up to minor level I played hurling for my club. The men who trained us never got a penny out of it. Nor did the women who washed the kit, nor the lads who lined the pitch and put up the net. Nor the people who mowed the pitch, reseeded it and took care of it. Nor the people who turned up to the dull, dull, club committee meetings or who sold the raffle tickets round the town or did whatever else was necessary to keep one of the few aspects of Irish culture that is unique in this increasingly globalised world, ticking over, and thriving.

Inter-county players have accomplished something that hundreds of thousands of men and women around the country can only dream of, to put on the jersey and go out to play for your county. All of us wanted it; the overwhelming majority of us weren’t good enough or lacked the commitment. And it is a hard job playing at inter-county level, but it also has its rewards. No-one is asking the captain of the Junior team in Vincents in Dublin to pose on television with a well known sports drink. No-one offers a new car or a holiday to the captain of the U-21 camogie county champions. County players are admired in their local communities in a way that it is hard for people outside strong GAA areas to appreciate. They bring respect not only to themselves, but to their local club because there is an understanding that the athlete that is the finished article is the product of two decades of work and more by the club in training and encouraging him. The fear though is that the introduction of these grants, which as I said I would broadly support, is another part of the process of paying for play at the elite level. Of professionalising the sport, delivering a body blow to the basic ethos of the GAA and Irish cultural sporting life. So when we hear of ’strike action’ and threats to ‘withdraw labour’ (Labour? If they see it as labour now, stand aside for the couple of dozen of young men who’d fall over themselves for every senior inter-county jersey)  we wonder is the GPA fighting for these grants, or is it part of a wider agenda. And I write as someone who was one of the few GAA members who welcomed the establishment of the GPA.

The core of this is that inter-county players are not employed. They do not receive a wage. They are voluntarily playing a sport that they love and enjoy. They do not have a job; they have an opportunity to live out the dreams of others and of themselves. The GPA is not a union, and the people who will play for their county teams if and when the strike goes ahead are not scabs. And, once hurling had been properly explained to him, I think Jack London would have agreed.

Another weekend, another column by the indefatigable Eoghan Harris. And consequently another post by the frankly fairly fatiguable me…
This Sunday he is writing once more about Coolacrease and the Paul Quinn murder. He suggests that:

Last week I argued that the link between the killing of Paul Quinn of Cullyhanna in October 2007, and the killing of the two Pearson brothers at Coolacrease, Co Offaly in June 1921, was that both were carried out by people using the cloak of the IRA to cover what, in any normal society, would be seen as a cruel and criminal act.

I think that’s a telling admission. The term ‘normal society’ is replete with significations. Ireland in 1921 was not a ‘normal society’. The North in 2007 is moving towards ‘normality’, but still has a way to go. And it is this essentially - and I use the term advisedly - bourgeois sensibility that to me explains much much more of his political meanderings than any other factor. Because it is as one with the effectively vicarious and voyeuristic finger wagging of someone looking into a situation unable to contextualise that situation either in a socio-political or cultural milieu. I’ve spoken before of the condescending and patronising words about Protestants, thankfully missing in this piece.

Yet there are other patronising and condescending words for finally we are told what the response should be…

Likewise, decent local people were not wise in accepting the dubious assistance of the Aubane Historical Society in casting a cloud over the Pearsons. Instead of an ecumenical service of atonement — there was no clergyman at the Pearsons’s burial — we get increasingly incoherent attempts to explain away the murders. The latest lunacy on Indymedia is that the Pearsons were shot in the groin because IRA executioners were “inexperienced”!

‘An ecumenical service of atonement’. Well, there’s something to conjure with. A disputed historical event. Insufficient evidence to come to a clear determination as to guilt or otherwise and Ireland in 2007 is told that ‘atonement’ must be made. I disagree fundamentally. Incidentally it seems to me quite possible that an IRA unit might well be ‘inexperienced’ in such matters, it wasn’t quite a Maoist peasant uprising, but nor was it a well drilled standing army, and his point sits oddly with a later paragraph where he says:

Let me predict that the more decent locals let Aubane dictate how they handle this atrocity, the more the story will refuse to die. Because many Irish people simply do not believe that a pacifist Cooneyite family like the Pearsons would shoot and wound a member of the North Offaly IRA — who, by all accounts, were a maladroit bunch that most likely shot one of their own members in the dark.

Well come on now, we’re told they’re bloody executioners in one passage and that they’re a maladroit bunch in another. I can live with ambiguity and gray areas, but on all other issues the good Senator can’t.

But returning to atonement. This proposition seems to me to misunderstand the point of atonement and to enter into a process by which guilt is ascribed collectively. To my mind those who were guilty of murdering the Pearsons, those who know what happened definitively on that and the preceding days, were the ones who had to make atonement or come to terms with their acts. Not a community or polity, either local or general, some 90 odd years later. To do so would be to ascribe a certainty to the situation which we cannot determine. It would be an utter falsehood. A lie.

A lie shaped politically to cast a shadow across what was by any reckoning an already sufficiently bloody history which needs no further exaggeration or hyperbole.

And it would also be as gestural in its own way as the pointless and revanchist attacks on the PSNI policemen these last two weeks.

You’ll have gathered I loathe gestural politics from whatever direction.

Meanwhile, talking about Tom McGurk’s article in the Sunday Business Post last week he suggests:

Finally, I can see why naff Irish nationalists need to believe the fiction that no sectarian act was ever committed by the Old IRA in the Irish Republic. But I can’t see why Northern nationalists would want to deny that our Southern grandfathers could be as gruesomely sectarian as any of the gangs that roam South Armagh — a point brilliantly made in a polemic by Danny Morrison a few years ago.

So I was bit baffled when Tom McGurk, a Northerner who makes no secret of his nationalism, came out so strongly in last week’s Sunday Business Post against RTE’s Coolacrease programme. In doing so, he leaned far too heavily on a long article by Pat Muldowney published in Indymedia, home of hardline nationalists.

He then sallies forth with his boilerplate accusation about Muldowney.

More seriously, McGurk misleads us in the following two sentences. “University of Ulster academic Pat Muldowney — whose new book on the period will be published soon — is also said to be angry. As a historian, Muldowney is astonished that the programme ignored the only surviving documentary evidence of the incident — the officially recorded inquest into the killings.”

The close conjunction of these two sentences might lead the casual reader to form the impression that Muldowney is a University of Ulster academic historian. In fact Muldowney is a lecturer in mathematics at the university, and thus an amateur historian when it comes to weighing evidence. This causes him — and thus McGurk — to make elementary errors when evaluating evidence.

I’ve said it before. What historical track record does Harris have that he considers himself in a position to throw brick bats at Muldowney? No more or no less than Muldowney, I would suggest. McGurk rather wryly noted that:

[the documentary makers were] Assisted by Senator Eoghan Harris, who apparently is an expert on the matter…

But it’s also worth pointing out that far from the pollyanish view of the WoI that Harris suggests Nationalists have McGurk also wrote:

Only the naive or those with a dinner party view of history could imagine that there were no sectarian incidents or acts of land grabbing as an empire was taken on.

The War of Independence was a vicious and largely localised war, with local IRA units - dominated by local families - enjoying little centralised organisation or direction. At the end, the winners wrote the story.

Local scores were settled - as the Republican courts, after they were set up, were to discover. But were militant Republican roots not embedded in the land war and its secret societies?

Equally, in the rural campaigns, wasn’t the land always going to be the perpetual subtext to everything else? After all, was this not a dispute engendered by an historic act of dispossession?

Note the phrase ‘dinner party view’…

Harris, though, continues to argue that all the evidence that Muldowney presents is suspect.

But Muldowney’s (and McGurk’s) interpretation is merely a terse summary by the Court of a one-page RIC Inspector’s report which simply summarises all the rumours rife in a local community which is clearly shocked by the Pearson shootings and anxious to find some acceptable motives for the atrocity. The RIC Inspector’s report on the rumours runs as follows

“Possible motives: 1. The acquisition of Pearsons land (para on this). 2. Revenge by Sinn Fein. It is said by the County Inspector Queen’s County that the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died. It is further rumoured when the farm house was burning, two guns fell out of the roof.”

Firstly, Muldowney is as entitled to ‘interpret’ this as Harris is. The historical record remains contested (note too that Harris entirely ignores the IRA’s own investigation).

And to anchor this in the present political context consider what Harris writes about a more contemporary resonance…

On reflection I realise that there is a further link. In both cases a shocked society took refuge in denials which protect associates or descendants of the perpetrators. Official Ireland sacrificed Paul Quinn to the peace process in order to protect Adams & Co. The Pearsons were sacrificed to national and local pieties — the claim that they were subjected to a “proper” IRA execution.

Again, a complete overestimation of what happened in Coolacrease. But worse an overestimation of what happened in South Armagh.

The Government and the Opposition were wrong to accept Sinn Fein assurances that the South Armagh IRA were not the perpetrators — a fiction that Lord Laird blew apart in his detailed description of how eight of the attackers wore surgical gowns and gloves, the grim garb of the IRA butchers of South Armagh.

Have the Goverment and the Opposition done any such thing? The IMC is fairly clear on the matter suggesting that associates or former or current members of the IRA may have been involved. I’m no apologist for the South Armagh IRA, quite the opposite, but I’m fairly certain that the murder of Paul Quinn reflected no larger political agenda (and having seen other paramilitaries fade away in inglorious circumstances why are we expected to believe that such events could not take place). And oddly enough so is Lord Laird who says that the IRA Army Council did not authorise any such happening. Which makes one wonder why there is this wish to play fast and loose with the facts, such as they are…

Harris argues that…

Denials do more damage than the original atrocity. When those in authority avoid naming names, decent people despair and fall dumb, the community closes in around the dirty secret, and civil society is clouded until the original offence against the moral order is brought out in the open and atoned for.

Actually, again I disagree. The original murders of the Pearsons, dispute or not, were the appalling acts, not a rather paltry dispute in the Irish media in 2007. That they happened in the context of a conflict provides scant exculpation. But that is the very point Harris time and again refuses to face up to. There was no clear ‘moral order’ in 1921. The British had seen to it that the democratic rights of the Irish were time and again stymied as they delayed any measure of Home Rule let alone independence. The response from this society to that delay, a delay set within an history that stretched centuries back and which included periods of ferocious repression, means that talk of ‘moral order’ seems willfully self-serving. Conflict is the absence, or near absence, of moral order and always will be. There are few enough ‘clean’ transitions from one national structure to another (perhaps the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc came close, but even there innocents were caught up in those events, and even today, as we have seen in Poland a long shadow has been cast). And to pretend that the shift from conflict to peace does not engender the most egregious and sometimes murderous contradictions, and that that is as true of 2007 as it was in 1921, is to be more than self-serving… that is also to be in denial.