Villagers: Letters to the Editor 2006-05-04
Left wing coalition - 'Don't be practical in politics'
I am writing on behalf of People before Profit in reply to Scott Millar's article last week: "Prospect of left-wing coalition draws closer". We are a group who came together last October with the aim of deepening relationships between individual grass-roots movements through collaboration and in the hope of creating increased political space for the views of community activists.
Some of our group are or have been members of political parties: the Socialist Workers Party, Labour, the Greens, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáíl. Others have emerged from various issue-based campaigns while still more have been inspired by ongoing developments in Irish society.
Since October, we have been organising discussion meetings on matters of public policy including social and affordable housing, waste, women's issues and health.
We have actively supported the Ballybrack Three, the Stardust campaign and anti-incinerator campaigns amongst others. Some (though not all) People before Profit groups have decided to contest the forthcoming general election and two well-known community activists, Richard Boyd Barrett (Dun Laoghaire) and Carmel McKenna (Wicklow), have recently been elected to stand as candidates on their behalf.
We would like to warmly welcome and endorse Joe Higgins' recent call for "the need to construct a major party of the Left" and we have invited him to speak at our next meeting in Dublin on 12 May (7.30 pm, Cassidy's Hotel, O'Connell St).
Like the Campaign for an Independent Left (CIL), we too "have been plodding along" trying to create an atmosphere in which any divisions which may have existed in the past can be minimised to the benefit of the Left in general.
Like CIL, one of our guiding principles is that we would not be willing to enter coalition with right-wing parties. Another principle would be that each and every Irish citizen who wishes to take part should be welcomed and no one party or individual can set barriers to their involvement.
Finally, People before Profit emphasise the need for a party or alliance of workers and community groups rather than simply a party of the working-class in that we feel that most Irish citizens are now workers, and all too frequently insecure and exploited workers at that.
We take inspiration from Connolly's rallying call: "Don't be practical in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines and in the grooves of those who rob you."
Cathy Swift, People Before Profit. www.people-before-profit.org
Arts funding - What is going on?
The Western Writers' Centre in Galway has consistently been refused funding from the Arts Council, save for €800 (in four-plus years of applications) for a computer. Eight refusals, plus appeals, in that length of time, in spite of calls for a rethink from politicians and writers, and a 500-signature petition is no accident.
The Arts Council has conveyed to us recently that they will no longer furnish documents relating to grant applications on request under the Freedom of Information Act, as they are obliged to by the act, and that nothing was put down in writing at meetings at which grant decisions were taken. What is going on?
The Western Writers' Centre is endangered by the Council's position. We have established a "Friends of the Centre" scheme and are calling for fund-based support from writers, arts groups and individuals interested in the literary arts. We have had swift support from interested parties in the USA, France, writers in Dublin and from Poetry Ireland.
We would like that writers who wish to support us in other ways should write directly to The Arts Council, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, and ask them what is going on.
Fred Johnston, The Western Writers' Centre, Galway www.twwc.ie
New Oxfam website - Who cares about Kenya?
On Friday 21 April, Oxfam Ireland is launching an innovative and original initiative –
www.whocaresaboutkenya.org – to highlight the current food crisis in Kenya, putting 3.5 million people at risk, and the underlying causes as to why in this world of plenty this is happening again and again. In Kenya and surrounding countries, two years of consecutive failed rainy seasons are exposing around 11 million people to a severe water, food, health and livelihoods crisis. If the current rainy season fails once more, the region might witness a mass famine, unless the necessary relief and funding is secured.
However, even if this rainy season is good, millions of people will remain dependent on food aid, water aid and other support for the next few months, even years. While affecting all the Horn of Africa, Oxfam Ireland is currently intervening in Kenya and Tanzania to assist people hit by the drought. These interventions happen mostly through local partner organizations on the ground.
Oxfam Ireland has a wider message to get across with its dedicated website www.whocaresaboutkenya.org
We want the public to understand why these emergency situations keep occurring and that while we are there on the ground saving lives, our mission is much broader. We want to stop this happening. The website is designed to generate awareness in a comprehensive, reasoned way of why these crises occur and what can be done to stop them. It also contains information on positive actions that people can take to stop the countdown.
Oxfam Ireland's humanitarian coordinator, Michael Riordan, who has recently returned from Kenya said: "People were only just recovering from the drought of 2000/2001. Now their few resources are depleted much faster. They have no reserves to rebuild once this is over if they can even survive that long."
Water in the area has become so scarce that families are surviving on around 40 litres of water a week, or less, when international minimum standards call for 15 litres per person per day. On average this translates in three glasses of water per person per day for drinking, washing and cooking! In many places women have to walk 40km up each way in order to get hold of the little water they can.
Here is the countdown to disaster:
10 years since the world's governments promised to halve hunger
9 centuries of pastoralist way of life under threat
8 procrastinating economic superpowers
7 out of 10 cows in the region dead
6 food crises in 15 years
5 decades of declining living standards
4 months since the world was warned
3 and a half million lives on the line
2 years of failed rains
1 last chance to prevent this disaster
0 excuses
What do we want people to do?
• Give a donation to help Oxfam Ireland meet urgent needs and address longer-term problems so as to reduce the vulnerability of these people to such disasters.
• We want to inspire people to find out more about Oxfam's work by visiting our dedicated website www.whocaresaboutkenya.org.
Paul Dunphy, Oxfam Ireland
More: To donate or for info: 1890 606065 (ROI) and 0845 3030337 (NI) online at www.oxfamireland.org or call into any of Oxfam's 45 shops
'Hard times' ahead for babies
As the lead investigator in the Irish-based study on pregnant women's alcohol consumption referred to in your "The Best of Times/The Worst of Times" section (Village, 20-26 April), I must take issue with your trite conclusion that increasing maternal alcohol consumption in pregnancy constitutes good news for Irish foetuses, and the children into which they grow.
Recent international research has begun to distinguish specific behavioural effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on the infant. This evidence indicates that these effects are widespread and can result from relatively low levels of exposure to alcohol in utero than was previously thought. Binge drinking has been highlighted as particularly harmful to the foetus, even when weekly average alcohol levels are relatively low.
The effect of prenatal alcohol exposure often masquerades as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with similar attention difficulties and behavioural control problems. My knowledge of Dickens' novels tells me that there are "hard times" ahead for these children.
Dr Siobhán Barry, Cluain Mhuire Service, Blackrock, Co Dublin
Radio column - Maggie 'shut the feck up' Kenneally
Could Maggie Kenneally please "shut the feck up", to borrow her own phrase as directed at Pat Kenny in her latest radio review?
Her opening line, "Pat Kenny could be a good radio broadcaster," is as nonsensical as it is insulting. Pat Kenny is a presenter of at least 25 years' standing and, as interviewers go, he has it down "pat".
No other presenter has his breadth or depth of knowledge and none can explain things as clearly or succinctly as he can. We can be thankful that his research is so thorough and his intros so good that his interviewees are spared explaining themselves at the get-go.
It is the mark of a good interviewer to row in with explanatory comments when the interviewee is unable to make himself clear and twitters away with increasing futility, which they all too often do. If Pat Kenny interjects needlessly at times, that is a very small price to pay for the most intelligent and empathetic interviewing on Irish radio.
Other hosts on the same station relish the longwindedness of phone-in guests, maybe because they help them get through their time-slots with minimum effort. Pat Kenny doesn't take that road, he doesn't waste air-time, he earns his keep.
Kenneally also takes a stab at Vincent Browne for interrupting too much. But it is Browne's continual interruptions that force dissembling politicians to get to the point and answer his questions. That's a plus, not a minus and it's great radio.
Perhaps Maggie Kenneally thinks a radio review is supposed to be full-on criticism. But really, the best reviews simply reflect what listeners are thinking because everybody wants their opinion validated. If Kenneally is unable to see that, she should shut up or ship out.
She is a voice crying in the wilderness, not with John the Baptist's cogent urgency but with the babble of a demented begrudger. Please nominate her as "Idiot of the Week".
Cóilín MacLochlainn, Sandyford, Dublin 18
Maggie's media mistake
I expected better of Village magazine! Reading Maggie Kenneally's column on Talk Radio (20-26 April), she told us that she had never heard of Henry Kelly and had to Google him for background. I'm not pretending that Henry is our foremost media export, but I doubt if a person with such little knowledge of media matters would be invited on the Vincent Browne radio show!
Stephen Ryan, Dublin
1916 - Obsessive revisionists
Fair play to Maurice O'Connell, he is one of the very few revisionists to openly admit that all their efforts to criminalize the heroes of 1916 and the tan war, and to legitimise the British Empire's version of "democracy" in Ireland, are not really about what happened 90 years ago but about what's happening today and will happen tomorrow. If they can undermine the expressed desire of the Irish people in 1918 to live in a 32-county Irish Republic, then they can subvert the desire of the vast majority of Irish people today to live in the same united Irish Republic. And if British rule can be shown to be valid then it can be shown to be valid now. The word "democracy" seems to be their principle weapon to beat the Republican people into submission. But, of course, there is no such thing as real democracy in an occupied country.
We are told that the majority of Irish people in 1916 had accepted Home Rule as the best way forward, but the fact is that 700 years of British terrorism, contrived famine and forced emigration had left the people believing that Home Rule was all they could hope for. The outstanding events of Easter week 1916 took a step outside of British Imperial parameters and British-controlled "democracy" in Ireland and opened the eyes of the Irish people to the possible. Sinn Féin was reorganised and when the people got the chance, in 1918, to vote for a republic they did so. The British Empire immediately used violence against the democratic institutions of the first Dáil Éireann and, during peace negotiations, showed its commitment to democracy by promising "immediate and terrible war" if the people did not change their vote. Tragically, the people did change their vote under threat of British violence; a regressive step which still distorts and retards Irish democracy and remains the ultimate source of much of the alienation felt by many from the modern state.
In the past 30 years, every single poll that has been taken by any newspaper shows that the vast majority of people in both Ireland and Britain favour a united Irish Republic and yet they have never been given a chance to express that desire in a referendum. All we got was the Good Friday referendum which merely asked us to accept continued partition until such time as the British and Unionists voluntarily drop the threat of "immediate and terrible war".
Ultimately, the threat of Unionist violence is the knotted trauma around which our attempts at democracy seem doomed to circle. Concealing this trauma with tales of republican villainy while keeping our political imaginations fixated on Unionist demand is the obsessive strategy of the revisionist movement. In this project they have been well financed by British sources and, notably, by a well-known native tax exile family who have already been rewarded by the British crown.
Donnchadh MacGill, Chapelizod, Dublin 20
1912 came before 1916
Both Pierce Martin and Maurice O'Connell take issue with me on the significance of the 1912 Ulster revolt against Home Rule and seek to downplay its impact on subsequent events in Ireland (Village 27 April – 4 May).
Pierce says that it is a "monstrous falsehood" to say Home Rule was killed off as a result of it and Maurice says: "There was no armed Unionist revolt in 1912 – although a very serious threat of force." Rather than play around with words let's look at what actually happened. With a bloodsigned covenant the Ulster Unionists organised an alternative Provisional Government backed up by a new army, the UVF, armed with 100,000 guns, mostly Mausers from Germany; they had the regular army mutiny at the Curragh in support of them; theyt had the full support of the Tories (the natural party of government); and they made arrangements to give allegiance to the Kaiser.
Bonar Law, the Tory leader and future prime minister, quite confidently and accurately said the government "know that if Ulster is in earnest, that if Ulster does resist by force, there were stronger influences than Parliamentary majorities" (on 18 June 1912). If anyone was in any doubt, Carson followed up: "I do not care tuppence whether it is treason or not" (on 26 Spetmeber 1912). And: "I tell them [the government] that if they dare come and attack us the red blood will flow" (on 17 January 1914).
There is plenty more along the same lines where this came from.
Mr Asquith was forced to wring his hands and complain that "a more deadly blow has never been dealt in our time by any body of responsible politicians at the very foundations on which democratic government rests" (on 5 October 1912). He did not care to explain why this all happened under him and was allowed to happen by his government and as a result Home Rule became just a piece of legal paper gathering dust in the parliamentary archives – where it remains.
1912 was not democratic and it was successful. People learn lessons from such things, and four years later the Nationalists had learned the lesson and got their act together to do something similar, but they were amateurs compared to the Unionists.
I am sure Maurice O'Connell must agree that he should also spare a thought for those brave men of Ulster that led the way in destroying the democratic process in Ireland. I am sure he is a fair-minded man and will be even-handed in assessing these things. I am sure he also acknowledges that history operates through cause and effect, and in chronological order for the most part, and that 1912 did come before 1916.
Jack Lane, Millstreet, Co Cork
Home rule and 1916 - Redmond's Great War gamble
After physical force had been put centre stage by the Ulster Unionists along with Redmond and the British, a few hundred men and women handed out a political leaflet, barricaded themselves in buildings around Dublin and waited patiently to be attacked by the forces of the British Empire. True to form, and ever ready to indulge in killing sprees in other peoples' countries, the British forces duly obliged by bombing the city centre to rubble and killing hundreds of non-combatants. Then out of pity for what the British were inflicting on the civilian population, the rebel leaders called the whole thing off.
Redmond explicitly recognised that physical force, not democracy, was the basis of the British position in Ireland, as manifested in centuries of Sedition Law, Coercion Acts and military dictatorships. In the House of Commons debate on the Home Rule Bill, Redmond declared that he was not attempting to alter this condition of subjection by force: "[Ireland] is held by force; but does the present Bill try to take away that force, which, I presume, means the English army, navy, and police? No, it still leaves these forces under Imperial control. But, in addition to physical force, you would have working on the side of connection and against separation the moral force springing from justice conceded, which the English government of Ireland has never yet had upon its side."
Some bargain, a post-dated cheque which bounced before it was presented!
This dubious concession had already been reneged upon when Redmond looked into his heart at Woodenbridge in 1914 and committed Ireland to unmandated slaughter against Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey. Though he accepted that Ireland would continue to be held in the Empire by force, Redmond urged the people into forelock-tugging obedience to their genocidal, world-conquering Imperial masters.
In effect Redmond was also committing Ireland to involvement in the subjection, coercion and starvation of India, the Amritsar massacre, the aerial bombardment and poison-gassing of Iraqi villages, the military terror against Kenya and Malaya, and all the other horrors of what Maurice O'Connell describes as the realities of 20th-century warfare, as waged unremittingly around the world by Britain in its pre-destined, providential guardianship of civilised values, fair play and the underdog. Because, as Pierce Martin constantly reminds us, Redmond wanted Ireland to have a piece of the British Imperial action. But the Ulster Unionists and the Tories were having none of it, and when these people were brought into an unmandated, unelected British government after organising for military rebellion against their parliament, Redmond's Home Rule movement was finished, along with his unmandated Great War gamble.
Pat Muldowney, Derry