Lenin in Ireland redux. August 23, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
It is genuinely amazing to me that in the days since Enda Kenny gave his speech only one newspaper columnist has referenced it though kudos to Broadsheet who picked up on this post on this site (btw, thanks to D_D for the very nice comment on Broadsheet).
Entertaining too as Tomboktu pointed out to read that the offending lines have been changed to:
The brilliant Minister for Finance.
The outstanding organiser who brought Lenin’s attention to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked.
Yeah. Right. That’s a fairly clumsy sentence construction at the best of times (and by the way, the google search had the original phrasing as can be seen in the screen shot below).
But what does this tell us?
Quite a lot I think.
Firstly the speech writers were completely inept. This isn’t a minor historical detail – whatever about Enda Kenny, Lenin is a major figure. Nor is the potential involvement of him in Irish affairs mere esoterica. Particularly if the point was one about the economy and given the direction of the speech as a whole Kenny’s intention was to knit this into a broader ‘lesson’ about our role in getting out of the economic mess and how reforms here could be influential in Europe more widely.
It would be a matter of moments to check it out online, one would think it even easier for a party with a lineal connection with Collins. Surely there’d be a biography or two knocking around the place.
Secondly what about the serried ranks of political correspondents and other journalists who relayed this information. Did not one think to question such an absurd statement? Or was it a case of registering it but not wanting to make too much of it.
Thirdly, and this is troubling, not one of the opposition parties or representatives picked up on it. Now one can argue it a number of ways but at the least on an informal level opposition parties should keep an eye on the government parties and what they say – not least because so much of future policy direction is freighted into speeches just like this.
It also raises the question as to who reads this stuff in any detail? Clearly next to no-one. Well, me. But I only did so because I’d barely registered the speech in the news media at the time, then I ran across the Irish Times editorial on the topic early yesterday morning and thought the issue the media did pick upon – that being the none too subtle attacks on FF (Kenny used the term ‘assassination’ in relation to Collins death rather than it being part of a military engagement) – was worth checking up on.
So it’s not as if the speech wasn’t looked at. But it wasn’t read, or if it was certain individuals chose not to publicise what is a fairly absurd gaffe by the Taoiseach of this state.
Of course in the broader scheme of things it doesn’t matter a damn, but as an indicator of what’s going on, or rather what isn’t… it’s sort of instructive.
John Cunningham has this to say on Facebook
“In the mirth surrounding Enda Kenny’s erroneous claim at Bealnablath that Michael Collins ‘brought LENIN himself to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked,’ it is noteworthy that Collin’s two successors refused LEON TROTSKY entry to Ireland. In August 1930, the ITGWU leader William O’Brien lobbied William Cosgrave, head of the Irish govt, 1922-32, to grant Trotsky asylum in Ireland. Cosgrave refused. Four years later, a French parliamentarian wrote to Eamon de Valera, with a similar request. The outcome was no different. These two documents relate to the 1934 request.”
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1632492026890035.32346.100003877605527&type=1
Regarding Trotsky’s applications for asylum in Ireland, just came across a letter to the Irish Times (24/08/1995) from a Maurice N. Hennessy, which confidently asserts that the reason that Trotsky wanted to come to Ireland was because ‘Trotsky was in love with Winston Churchill’s cousin Clare Sheridan, the Galway sculptress.’ It’s true that Sheridan and Trotsky knew each other well for a brief time – she even made a bust of him – but the problem with the theory was that Clare wasn’t yet ‘a Galway sculptress’, as she didn’t come to live here until after Trotsky’s death.
Another Galway-Trotsky legend, told by Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, turns out to equally unlikely because Trotsky was still in Russia at the time of Padraic Ó Conaire’s death. By C MacA’s account, Ó Conaire’s last words in Galway in 1928 were as follows:
“Tá mé ag dul go Baile Átha Cliath, agus as sin go Meixico. Feicfidh mé Trotsky ansin. Tiocfaimid, an beirt again, ar ais do Eorap, cuirfimid an réabhlóid idirnáisiúnta ar siúil, agus nuair a bheas an bua again, ní bheidh imní ná uireasa orainn lenár mbeo.”
Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn!
RTE and the ‘Irish Times’ both got around to the story this morning. RTE (in the bulletin I heard) gave no attribution to the story. The ‘Irish Times’ did: the ‘Irish Times’. The report mentions that “‘Irish Times’ columnist Vincent Browne noted it in his column in yesterday’s newspaper..”
There is a reference to the original source, one that says plenty about the attitude of parts of the mainstream media to the web. “Some users of social media sites highlighted the inaccuracy at the beginning of the week”. Eh, hello?! The Cedar Lounge is not Facebook or Twitter. Referring to a major and serious news and comments site, which actually produced this hilarious little bit of investigative journalism, as “some users of social media sites” is like referring to the ‘Irish Times’ as ‘some users of printed publications’.
On the question of ‘noticing it but not wanting to make too much of it,’ don’t forget you’re talking about the same political journos who made little of the fact that Bertie claimed to have attended the LSE when he clearly hadn’t go as if it was just some minor discrepancy.
The only thing – and I meant the only thing – that Stephen Collins knows about world history is that stupid quote from Zhou Enlai that he wheels out every few months (even then he gets it wrong, as do most journos: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74916db6-938d-11e0-922e-00144feab49a.html). If he was asked why he didn’t pick up on this, no doubt he would reply cryptically ‘but did Lenin ever visit Ireland? Surely, to paraphrase the late Zhou Enlai, it is still too early to say’.
There isn’t even a good reason to believe that Zhou Enlai ever said it.
Apparently he did, but he was referring to May 68 in Paris, they got their wires crossed in translation and that was what he thought Nixon and Kissinger had asked him about. It was 1972 so he thought he was making a blindingly obvious statement but it was transformed into a cliché of oriental wisdom because Kissinger loved that sort of nonsense:
http://www.thenation.com/article/163669/after-deng-chinas-transformation?page=0,2
Sorry meant to paste this para from that article:
“In fact, like many less knowledgeable China watchers, Kissinger seems wedded to an old stereotype, viewing China’s leaders as naturally skilled diplomats possessed of a wisdom unattainable by Westerners. In the most laughable instance of this stereotype, some China watchers have claimed for years that Zhou Enlai once said it was “too early to say” whether the French Revolution was a success, a story often cited as proof of Chinese diplomats’ sage farsightedness. But as longtime China hand Chas Freeman revealed during a recent symposium to mark the publication of Kissinger’s book, Zhou had simply confused the French Revolution of 1789 with the Paris demonstrations in 1968.”
I’d come across that account before, but without the full supporting detail. Thanks.
Interesting. I first read the “too early to stay” story in relation to a bourgeois Chinese philosopher (name forgotten), printed in the Readers’ Digest and read by me when I was still reading my parents’ choice of reading matter. That story was about 1789. Possibly Kissinger had heard it and it influenced his telling of a remark by Zhou.
Aw Ed. Get off this board with your facts! It was a brilliant answer – I demand that it be true that it was given by Zhou to a question about the success of the French Revolution. I demand it!
The whole part of the speech about ‘glorious futures’ and ‘second hand straightjackets’ is frankly both bizzare (verging on insane) and badly written
With fine research and speech writing like this, it’s no wonder special advisers get paid megabucks, especially when the last story about an Enda speech was him plagiarising Obama when speechifying directly to him!
On the other hand, maybe his advisers are playing an insider joke where they test to see if he is dumb enough to parrot absolutely any old crap they give him. If so, the comic potential is infinite.
Facts always tend to take a back seat at these commemorations dont they. A cleansing exercise, wrapping the tricolour round them before another year of grasping. Scoundrelry etc
Mark Kennelly’s micromanagement of Enda is supposed to go right down to checking every speech though we do seem to get a howler every month or so. True that it’s no minor detail but you could argue it was written for a Fine Gael audience whose grasp of left history is limited to a few stock gulag references at the best of times.
Fitting this speech came in a week where we were at pains to insure people you can still get on regardless of your leaving cert.
“But like all his speeches, Mr Kenny laid down the outline of what he wanted to say on Monday evening, the mood he wished to set and the message he wanted to send out.According to sources, while Ms O’Callaghan usually polishes up the final draft, others contribute to the areas where they have expertise.
After the general election, Andrew McDowell, who wrote most of the Fine Gael manifesto and who has a broad knowledge of economics, moved into the Department of the Taoiseach.Mr McDowell and another young policy adviser, Paul O’Brien, who also worked for Fine Gael in opposition, contribute to any of Mr Kenny’s speeches that touch on their areas of expertise.Other government departments are also asked to submit material from their specialists if a specific speech requires technical details.
Chief of staff Mark Kennelly vets most of the speeches before they are delivered, but Mr Kenny has the final word on every speech.”
http://penhire.blogspot.ie/2011/05/taoiseach-speech-writers.html
Insttructive stuff. So presumably they all gathered together and Enda said, ‘the message I want to send out is that I’m an eejit. The mood I wish to set is one of hilarity.’ Result.
Translation,
‘As Lenin was going over the Cork and Kerry mountains,
He met with Michael Collins and his money he was counting.’
Whack-oh for my comrade, oh!
Whack-oh for my comrade, oh!
There’s Trotsky, at the bar
I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier,
For I love the Alliance and its leader Oliver Napier.
But my aim it was deflected by his sidekick Eamon Gilmore,
Saying `put away that pistol, for I am a Sticky no more’
Enda sighed and he swore “I never will deceive you”
The electors turned round and they said “We don’t believe you”
Some men they like fishing,
And some men they like shooting,
And some men like to hear,
Dialectical materialists disputing.
Just heard the interview on Playback. It was Morning Ireland with Paul O Brien of the Irish Examiner. He claimed that his mouth dropped when he heard it but that he just assumed it was something that he never knew of.
Yeah, no embarrassment that he, and the other pol corr flunkies failed to report it. WBS stumbled on it. The rest is history – or complete ignorance (“he just assumed it was something that he never knew of”) of even local history.
Even more scary is that he immediately assumed that it was correct. Hardly a shining example of a critical mind.
“…..but here I am in Mexico with an ice pick in my head o”
That’s fucking hilarious