The privatisation of equality and justice Bertie on 1916 and citizenship
In a speech at Collins Barracks on Sunday 9 April, when opening a 1916 exhibition, Bertie Ahern professed commitment to ideals which his government has disdained for almost a decade. He went on to present a potted history of Ireland of the past 90 years, which even in the most politically sectarian days of Fianna Fáil, was rarely previously equaled in bias and distortion. And then he spoke about "citizenship", not in the sense of citizens being the sovereign people in a democratic state, participating meaningfully in decision-making, but as a device to sidetrack sovereign people into essentially diversionary projects.
First on that distortion. He said the four great cornerstones of Irish history over the 90 years were the 1916 proclamation, the 1937 Constitution, the ratification of the Treaty of Rome in 1972 (which resulted in Ireland's entry to the EU) and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The 1922 Anglo-Irish Treaty doesn't rate apparently, the device whereby this part of Ireland became independent! In the divisive 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Fianna Fáil's pretence to diminish the Treaty was commonplace – but this in 2006?
He went on to make the following remarks:
"An independent Ireland, once an unlikely dream, is now reaching its stride and beginning to fulfill the hopes of those who fought and died for its foundation…. The Proclamation of the Republic on Easter Monday was a cry of radical idealism that shook the world in 1916 and that still challenges us today..."
Splendid stuff, except in the exercise of power, he and his Government pay little attention to these ideas. Remember the words of the Proclamation: "We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland ... The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally".
The idea of the people "owning" Ireland is now dissipated. A small number of people own hugely valuable tracts of this Ireland and have made dizzy fortunes in trading in these tracts of this Ireland. Only in a formalistic sense are there equal rights and equal opportunities. The scale of underlying inequality is such as to make meaningless the idea of equality of opportunity or equal rights.
As for cherishing the children of the national equally... The ESRI on Monday, 10 April, published a new measurement of poverty in Ireland and conduced that there were consistent poverty rates of 8 per cent and 10 per cent of the population in 2003. It found that those most at risk of consistent poverty are single adults with children, households with a large number of children, those lacking educational qualification, and the unemployed and ill/disabled. Can it be said with any conviction that ensuring all the children of the nation were cherished equally was even on the government agenda, let along being one of its priorities?
We are familiar with the claims to have lived up to the ideals of our forefathers, but the citizenship stuff is a rehash of old conservative values of "community" and "volunteering" propagated by the American sociologist Robert Putnam. As Bertie Ahern has described the citizenship idea, it is objectionable.
He said: "Citizenship cannot be delegated or outsourced." Fine, but our political system pivots around the idea of delegating citizenship, outsourcing it to a professional class of politicians.
He then went on to explain what he meant by citizenship (along the way giving a nod in the direction of the fuller meaning of citizenship). "Ireland has a deep tradition of active engagement by its citizens in every aspect of our national life and culture. During decades when the capacity of the State was limited by a lack of resources, it was the commitment of the Irish people that so often, formally and informally, provided social services, community leadership as well as a sporting and cultural life for our people".
In other words, what he is saying that the demands of justice and equality must be met, not through the agency of the State, which is the only agency that can deliver them, but through informal associations and by voluntary work. Equality and justice to be privatised as well?
vincent browne