The pro-Lisbon media moves into top gear. Oh dear. Best not. August 22, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in European Politics, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Two pieces in two weeks from Patsy McGarry. The first dealt with here indicated his faith in economic orthodoxy. The second delivered yesterday starts as it means to continue with the sub-head…
It must be embarrassing for Sinn Féin to be sharing the No platform with such great lovers of Ireland as UKIP and hardline Tories…
Really? Why? Or at least why any more so than the Labour Party and the Unions sharing the Yes platform with the remnants of the Progressive Democrats and IBEC
AND SO they are off, tails up and promising Armageddon once again, that motley crew of many colours in the Vote No to Lisbon campaign.
There was Mary Lou (McDonald of Sinn Féin) and Joe (Higgins of the Socialist Party) and Bríd (Smith of the People Before Profit Alliance) and Jimmy (Kelly of the Unite trade union). All are members of the Campaign Against the EU Constitution (CAEUC) which launched the No to Lisbon campaign, part II, last Tuesday. Surely some mistake. Is it not Wednesday’s child which is “full woe”?
Right.
Mary Lou, Joe, Bríd and Jimmy were joined at the launch by their friends in affiliated groups such as the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon and socialist republican group Éirigí. Waiting in the wings to lend their support too we have the National Platform, the People’s Movement, Voteno.ie and Cóir.
Now there is a fascinating analysis to be done on the National Platform, and indeed Anthony Coughlan’s trajectory which – as was put to me only this week – at one point appeared fairly left wing and now rather less so – although in fairness to him he hasn’t really changed. But that I think comes with the territory. Europe and matters European are beyond simple ideological categorisations. Some on the left will feel one way about it, others another. I think there’s little surprise that many on the Republican left are profoundly critical, if not indeed suspicious, of it. And it’s only slightly more surprising that the further left are equally disdainful of it. I might think they’re incorrect in their analysis, but there’s little reason to dismiss them out of hand or to try to link them conceptually to much more tricky entities (let me be absolutely clear here, I’m not including Éirígí in that categorisation, but I am including Coir).
Ah yes, Cóir and Éirígí. Isn’t it a sad day for the Irish language that whenever we now see any new political organisation with an Irish name those same two words, “isolationist and backward”, spontaneously come to mind? Cóir, for instance, give the impression that neither the pope, the Vatican nor the Irish (Roman) bishops are Catholic at all when it comes to the EU. Éirígí, for its part, when not hijacking protests by the Shell to Sea campaign or by Thomas Cook workers, would be identified by many as among supporters of “traitors to the island of Ireland”. That was how Martin McGuinness described the murderers of soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar and PSNI constable Stephen Carroll in Northern Ireland earlier this year.
Keep that in mind. For, turning on a penny, while Éirígí are lambasted as ‘traitors’ and that phraseology is legitimised by quoting Sinn Féin, our man McGarry is able to then lambaste Sinn Féin.
But then, all Sinn Féin’s giants appear to be in Northern Ireland. Looking into her heart last Tuesday Mary Lou saw how, in the immediate future, people would even describe her and her CAEUC colleagues as “isolationist and backward”. As if! But is this not the same Sinn Féin which has opposed every single vote on the EU in the Republic since and including our decision to join the then EEC back in 1973? Indeed it is.
Well, wrong or right (and I’m a lot more pro EU than SF) one can at least argue that their line has been consistent and is coherent within the context of their belief system.
Is this not the same Mary Lou who set something of a record for an Irish MEP when it came to her non-attendance at sessions of the last European Parliament (even if, as she has explained, she was on maternity leave)? To be sure, it is.
So the maternity issue is valid, even ‘explainable’, but her absence due to that isn’t. Okay.
Well, well. Of course, it is a little embarrassing that Sinn Féin should find itself sharing this consistently anti-EU stance with members of Éirígí and those other great lovers of Ireland and all things Irish, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and hard-line UK Tories. But hey, politics makes for strange bedfellows.
It’s problematic, but little more so, as was pointed out to me once – entirely rightly – by the equally intriguing bedfellows on the other side.
Last Tuesday, Mary Lou continued: “They will say by voting No we are going to cause an even greater recession and depression . . . This is dishonest and cynical.” Of course it is. We all know, if we are honest and not cynical, that by voting No to Lisbon a second time in successive years it can only benefit this economy of ours. It is the sensible thing to do because, as we know too, our EU colleagues will just love us for it all over again.
Ask them. They’ll soon tell you.
In fact, what Mary Lou should now do is take a flight (economy class) to Iceland and advise our friends there of this. She should tell them that their recent rushed application to join the EU is a major mistake and that it can only damage their economy further, if that is possible. It would be the friendly thing for her to do, don’t you think?
But why shouldn’t she? She believes that is the case. I believe otherwise, but she has every right to do so, and it doesn’t invalidate her argument at all that Iceland might – at state level, or indeed at the level of public opinion – think otherwise. Indeed she would simply be being true to her own beliefs by doing so.
She also said Lisbon threatened our military neutrality. Now we all know that when it comes to matters military Sinn Féin has an enviable record on being actively neutral. It is true for instance that during the Troubles the IRA killed more Catholics than did the UDA. Who could ask for further proof of neutrality on the part of any organisation than that it should kill more of its own?
[Puts head in hands and sighs]. So, let’s get this right, as someone noted in the comments section on the IT article, McGarry is happy to use SF to prop up his argument earlier agin Éirígí, but then is also happy to fashion much the same charge against SF. And even if I disagree with the dynamic of the conflict what particular contradiction is there in eschewing military alliances (again, I don’t think that’s a likelihood here, but the SF position and that of others isn’t inconsistent) but seeking sovereignty through force of arms. The question of Catholics as against UDA members is a dismal and pointless comparison.
Then it was Joe Higgins’s turn on Tuesday. He described the Lisbon Treaty as a “profoundly undemocratic” document. Okay, so it has already been approved by 85 per cent of directly elected representatives across the EU, but what do they know about democracy?
They should talk to Joe. He can tell them about democracy. He has been to Cuba.
Huh? Has he? I’ve read the CWI take on Cuba by Peter Taafe… and you can read it here…granted it’s nine years old, but somehow whatever revolutionary solidarity there is I’ll bet is very very critical indeed, and rightly so.
Sometimes it seems as if Joe and his friends on the outer edges of the left would prefer if Ireland became the Cuba or North Korea of Europe. Yes, we should model ourselves on two of the largest open-air prisons for ordinary people in the world. Then maybe we have been ahead of those countries. Was it not George Bernard Shaw who once described this island as “the largest open-air lunatic asylum in the world”?
Huh squared? He’s saying Joe Higgins or the SWP support North Korea or Cuba as political models? I fear Patsy knows little of that which he writes about in terms of the entirely honourable political stance of the SP in international affairs.
We proved that in last year’s Lisbon vote. The lunacy continues, whether it is with ideologues of the left or right, as regards Ireland and the EU and even in the context of a 20th century which proved that in matters of politics and economics the world would have been a far better place had Karl Marx and Milton Friedman spent more time in the pub than the library.
Well, given his alignment with an explicitly right-wing approach to our economic affairs in the form of the McCarthy Report I think he might profitably reconsider his stance.
Last Tuesday the CAEUC group also said the electorate was being “threatened, cajoled and lied to” in relation to Lisbon. But who “threatened, cajoled and lied” to the electorate last year? Who said Lisbon would bring euthanasia, abortion, and military conscription to little old Ireland? It was the No campaign. Such honesty! Such refreshing lack of cynicism!
Right, again. Thing is if he were even to go back and recount those issues, or preferably deal with the issues he might have a case to make. But… he doesn’t. What he does instead is try to say they’re crap because they are somehow intrinsically crap and then make a rather specious effort to determine contradictions where there actually aren’t any.
More than likely I’m voting Yes. But this complacent and phoned in stuff drives me to distraction. It really does. Most depressing thing, to read of a Friday that…
Patsy McGarry is an Irish Times journalist; John Waters is on leave
… and to wish for the high-priest of the transcendent to be back.
I didn’t realise until I read McGarry’s article that they made laptops which typed in crayon.
In fairness to the crayon-writing one, he didn’t actually say that the SP supports the DPRK. His point seems to be that Juche economics are the inevitable end-point of the SP’s economic agenda, either that or we all grow big bushy beards and take up salsa dancing. Now, that’s still a misreading of the SP (of which party I am not a member, btw), but it’s not quite as daft as it might be.
Meanwhile, a rightwing MP in Sweden is petitioning the European Commission to strike down the new blasphemy law. I’m not in favour of the blasphemy law, but is this guy trying to actually demonstrate in practice what critics of Lisbon say about the democratic deficit?
Some cynical people might see a certain continuity between these cretin’s love of the “economic orthodoxy” and his love of Lisbon.
Still, this article did at least give me a good laugh. We can expect the media to be absolutely full of this kind of malevolent smear politics for the next while as every Irish based paper and as much of its broadcast media as thinks it can get away with it crank up the pro-Lisbon propaganda machine.
That’s an interesting one splintered, it certainly shows up some contradictions although I presume the EC couldn’t do so. BTW, I’m also presuming this might be something to do with Islam if he’s of the right. Funny how the issue of speech and expression hoves into view for those from that part of the spectrum exercised by such matters.
Mark P, none of us are cynical. Surely not?
Dr. X, true, that is a possible interpretation, but even if so he’s still being very unnuanced in his analysis and using examples which make no sense to those who know the history of the organisations he speaks of.
He’s right about the extreme dodginess of giving your political organisation an Irish language name. Coir and Eirigi’s decision to do obviously marks them out as part of the lunatic fringe. Much better to have a respectable English language name, Fianna Fail or Fine Gael or something along those lines. The next thing someone will be suggesting that we give our houses of parliament a name like Dail Eireann. Stuff like this really is moving me in the direction of a no vote and I’m someone who’s always voted yes in these Euro referendums. Marvellous to see so many of the old smears; take the same side on an issue as SF and you’re an IRA fan, voting for a Marxist means you want the country to be a North Korean style dictatorship, getting an airing. Tonight he’s gonna party like it’s 1979.
And they are smears. But beyond that it’s the slothfulness of the analysis. Again, there are good reasons to be either supportive of or antagonistic to the EU project and Lisbon in particular. But that requires serious engagement with the issues.
McGarry’s article is really terrible – a slipshod collection of different lumps of crap inexpertly lobbed at the readership in the hope some of it might stick in their minds when they go to vote. It lacks any vestige of a coherent or logically structured argument, is factually inaccurate on some points and interpretively incorrect on the rest.
His assertion that Eirigi supported the recent shootings in the North – despite their public statement in response that armed struggle at the moment is unwise because it won’t work – is a particular low point, exacerbated by his later hypocritical accusation of No side dishonesty.
His claim that the Treaty is democratic because 85% of parliamentarians in the rest of Europe voted for it is risible. First of all, whether the treaty’s contents are democratic is a separate issue from whether it has been democratically agreed upon. Joe Higgins’ reference was to a “profoundly undemocratic” document, not the method of its approval. Even if the second referendum is passed it wouldn’t make the treaty itself any more democratic. Secondly, allowing for McGarry’s characteristic conceptual confusion for a moment, 85% of European parliamentarians are not democratically empowered to change the Irish constitution, particularly in direct opposition to the result of an Irish referendum. If they were, most people would regard that as undemocratic – apart from smug self-regarding idiots like McGarry whose own incapacity for independent thought and low opinion of Irish intelligence combine in an infantile desire to surrender as much decision-making power as possible to the EU.
It reminds me of the self-hating post-colonial mentality behind the argument that without the EU women still wouldn’t have equal pay and homosexuality would still be illegal – a real cop out that conveniently obviates the need for the kind of mass activism that might really threaten the establishment.
I’ve sort of used that last example myself, and I’m not entirely sure it’s self-hating and post-colonial. Certainly it would be far from self-hating and post-colonial I was reared. There is without question a societal inertia that the EU did help to engage with in some positive ways. And it’s not entirely a cop-out to argue that that is so when the reality of the absence of mass activism for those positive outcomes was a basic element of the societal structure. Indeed in both instances I suspect that equal pay would have been delayed by a decade and gay rights by a further length of time. The resistance to both was real, sustained and of such a broad based nature that their implementation in other circumstances (albeit the gay rights issue was very slightly different in terms of the context of change) at that point in time or anytime soon after was impossible. It’s not that they’d have been delayed perpetually, but that delay was in and of itself hugely problematic both on the societal and the personal levels.
But, the terrible error by some is to substitute the EU for (mass – or other) activism on issues or to defer without any critique to the EU on issues.
Otherwise I very much agree with you.
I’m inherently nervous about any political stategy based on getting more powerful outsiders to impose things on people as a way of overcoming mass opposition – which is the implication of the ‘we wouldn’t have got equal pay or decriminalised homosexuality without the EU because of all the bigots’ argument. It would have been far healthier for Irish society in the long run if those battles had been won at home by winning over mass opinion and/or creating such a strong domestic women’s and gay rights movement that the government was forced to change the law over the opposition of whatever cavemen and religious nuts were left. Admittedly this would probably have taken longer, but we might have a functioning radical women’s and gay rights movement today as a result, rather than the current assortment of quangos and pink pound lifestyle mags.
The same basic principle applies even more strongly to ‘democracy promotion’ in the Middle East, ‘humanitarian intervention’ or astroturf foreign-funded ‘civil society’ groups in Russia or Eastern Europe. It usually doesn’t work in terms of furthering those ideals and often tarnishes them by associating them with imperialism – even if the ideas are laudable in themselves. An example is the current situation in some Islamic countries where fundamentalist elements have been able to use understandable hostility to the West due to militarism, economic exploitation etc. to create a backlash against anything that can be portrayed as a ‘western’ imposition, including human rights. A more moderate example is the widespread cynicism towards civil society in Eastern Europe or Africa.
in IR theory the notion of appealing to the superior ‘morality’ of greater powers as a means of achieving domestic social change is known as the ‘boomerang effect’ and is much beloved of liberal interventionists. it’s typically portrayed as a question of enlightened Westernised elements of civil society in backward countries bypassing their nasty despotic governments/howling barbarian countrymen to get the nice, rich & powerful governments & the international institutions they control to intervene for their own good. even on the rare occasions where the boomerang effect produces progressive outcome as in the Irish case, there is always a major trade-off in terms of autonomy and mass activism.
whatever way it’s put this whole notion just instinctively gives me the willies!
I get the point you’re making, but does it operate in quite the way you suggest? After all a number of nations pooling sovereignty doesn’t per se have to lead to pernicious outcomes, indeed as socialists surely we want to mediate the power of nation (although not do away with it, obviously) in tandem with others to work towards progressive outcomes. Now, there’s something to be said for arriving at progressive outcomes within a society, no doubt about that, but sometimes a nudge along is no harm. This, after all, surely is the basic principle behind international law, human rights, etc… ie. sovereign states sign up to norms and attempt to operate within them.
And I think, to be fair, that it’s a huge stretch to then argue that that process is identical to humanitarian interventionism. Otherwise, why bother for example with UNICEF or UNCHR? Both are ‘interventionist’ but neither are in the sense of liberal interventionism.
And the basic issue of ‘taking longer’ covers a multitude. Not so great if you’re a woman or gay. Nor would I dismiss either of the gains in those areas as simply being lifestyle and not functioning. This was a tough society in the 1980s if you were gay. Very very tough indeed. The current situation is vastly better.
Again, the core point is ‘mass activism’. There is no and was no mass activism on these issues, not on equal pay for women and so on. For ireland to standardise with European norms through the instrumentality of the EU, an entity that it had considerable rights itself in, and derogations doesn’t seem to me to be quite as negative as you present it.
That said there are undeniable problems you point to, and part of that is a sort of technocratic momentum that may from the perspective of those involved in it be a ‘good thing’, but may indeed result in pernicious and/or undemocratic outcomes. I’ve teased away at the democracy/national sovereignty issue on the EU myself for quite a while and can’t entirely see how to square the circle, or indeed that of any supranational organisation of almost any sort. Either national sovereignty is diminished or democracy is diminished. In general, oddly, I tend to supporting national sovereignty which is why I’m very leery of any further shifts from here on in to ‘integration’ (although if individual nations wish to do so that’s up to them).
And of course, Joe Higgins HAS been to Cuba lately, and made a very critical documentary about the Castroite system.
Then again, it was in Irish, and even though there were subtitles at the bottom of the page, Patsy McGarry may have been worried that if he listened to too much Irish words in one setting, he would suddenly morph into a rampaging gunman and run around shooting pizza delivery men until he was gunned down outside his own home.
William, that really says it all. Didn’t know myself about the documentary. Is there a link?
It’s a programme he did on Ché. The link to the show is on the page below.
http://www.tg4.ie/Bearla/clar/che/index.asp
You need to click on “TG4 Live” at the end of the page, and then scroll down when the box pops up.