Letters to the editor 2005-11-03

Hope for small communities

Dismantle the pipeline

Noel Dempsey's statement that work on dismantling Shell's illegally-connected pipeline will not be halted is the very least that one might expect from the minister. The Rossport Five had to endure 94 days in jail so that the law might be upheld. Let Shell immediately disconnect that pipeline as they were directed to do by a Government Minister of this State more than 90 days ago. Anything else is contempt.

I believe that the struggle of the Rossport Five is not just a local issue. A man in Rossport told me that he hoped that their struggle would give courage and hope to some small community somewhere in the world that is being trampled underfoot by power and money and greed. And of course that is the very last thing Shell want to happen.

Despite the appointment of a mediator, I still fear that attempts will be made to steamroll and crush opposition to the Corrib gas pipeline so that Shell may have its own way. If that happens, shame on our Government, shame on us all.

SEÁN Ó RIAIN,

An Charraig Dhubh, Co Baile Atha Cliath

Wasting Irish assets

Stripping our natural resources

When the amount of public money wasted by the current Government (as outlined in your recent article) is added to the potential billions of euro lost to the nation under the current exploration licence agreement (introduced by Ray Burke as Minister for Energy and outlined in Gerry Adams' recent article, Village, 6 October), there is a strong possibility that this current period of Fianna Fáil hegemony has resulted in stripping more natural resources from the Irish people then 800 years of British colonial rule.

Matthew Sadlier

North Circular Rd, Limerick

The Good Friday Agreement

Self-determining Irish unity

The Good Friday Agreement was freely negotiated. It was also freely endorsed in an act of self-determination by the people of Ireland, North and South, who had ample opportunity to consider whether they agreed with the type of objections put forward by Colm Mac Aonghusa (Village, 27 October). They did not. The option of Irish unity is contained in the Agreement, when a majority of the people North and South can agree on the terms and vote for them. The Agreement is supported by all shades of Republicanism bar small dissident groups with practically no electoral mandate.

Those who still claim a right after that, by force if necessary, to establish the conditions for a coercive all-island majoritarianism do not deserve to be described as either republicans or democrats. They have no respect for other traditions, and no respect for the will of the people.

Martin Mansergh

Seanad Eireann

Unionists and Nazis

Horribly familiar unionist activity

In light of the recent hysteria and outrage surrounding Fr Alec Reid's comparison of Unionists to Nazi's, I would ask your readers to consider the following:

In 1934, Lord Craigavon, Northern Ireland's first Prime Minister, declared, "We have the Orange Order, the Black Brethren and the B-Specials and they constitute all the fascism that Ulster wants."

In June 1969, Northern Premier, Terrence O'Neill said of Paisleyism, "To those of us who remember the thirties the pattern is horribly familiar. The contempt for established authority; the crude and unthinking intolerance; the emphasis upon monster processions and rallies; the appeal to a perverted from of patriotism each and every one of those things has its parallel in the rise of the Nazi's to power. A minority movement was able, in the end to work its will simply because most people were too apathetic or too intimidated to speak out. History must not be allowed to repeat itself."

In September 1969 Paisley wrote to the British home secretary telling him the cause of high Catholic unemployment and poor housing was because "these people breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin".

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, began his political career in the neo-fascist Ulster Vanguard Party. This party held Nuremberg style rallies in Lisburn and elsewhere in 1972 complete with reviews of ranks of uniformed paramilitaries giving fascist salutes to the cry of "I do."

Vanguard, which had links to the fascist British National Front and the paramilitary UDA also had it's own paramilitary wing, the Vanguard Service Corps. But its acts of intimidation did not stop at the parade ground as the Vanguard leader Bill Craig said on 19 October 1972, "we are prepared to come out and shoot and kill, let's put the bluff aside. I am prepared to kill and those behind me will have my full support."

In Omagh in 1981 Paisley said, "Our ancestors cut a civilisation out of the bogs and meadows of this country while Mr Haughey's ancestors were wearing pig skins and living in caves."

On the 29 May 1984 Belfast DUP councillor George Seawright said of Catholics "Taxpayers money would be better spent on an incinerator and burning the whole lot of them. The priests should be thrown in and burned as well"

When you allow unionism to speak for itself then comparisons to Nazis, or any other right-wing supremacist groups, are obvious. The differences are not so much one of principle as they are of degree. The British government ensured that only an "acceptable level of violence" was ever permitted and the Loyalist philosophy of "yabba dabba do, any taig will do" was molded to target Catholics such as Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finucane. One would want to be blind not to see the similarities between the anti-catholic pogroms of the late 1960s and the Nazis' Kristallnachof 1938, which we now know was the beginning of the Holocaust.

Alas, just as there are those who would tell us that the Holocaust never happened: in Ireland we have no shortage of revisionists either. Fr Reid has been criticised for comparing like with like and accused of damaging the peace process. On 13 October 2005, a few days after Fr Reid's angry outburst, a 15-year-old Catholic schoolgirl from North Belfast was attacked by two women in their 40s. The schoolgirl was subjected to a tirade of sectarian abuse before being dragged by her hair into a garden and beaten about the face and head, while a crowd of women and children gathered and looked on. She managed to escape and was taken home by a neighbour, who spotted her on the Ligoniel road covered in blood. The principal of Our Lady of Mercy girl's school said it wasn't the first time a pupil had been attacked. While this attack on a Catholic schoolgirl did not provoke as much media attention as Fr Reid's words, the actions of those unionists are all too "horribly familiar".

Cathal McCarthy

Rosbrien, Limerick

Health Services

End patients' nightmare

We have a major problem in the Irish health service and it is simply not good enough, after eight years in power and massive resources available, that there are still people on trolleys in our A&Es, children and adults with disabilities on waiting lists, children that cannot get speech therapy and occupational therapy service and not enough community supports for mental health patients. Its a crime, its a scandal and above all it is unacceptable in this day and age. 300 people on trolleys every day is a disgrace, when 500 new beds would resolve this priority issue.

Let me suggest three sensible ideas to resolve this issue for once and for all:

• The immediate implementation of an action plan, including the A&E ten point plan, to bring about some improvement in the short-term;

• The development of a hospital development plan, with a definite timeframe and funding commitments, for the introduction for the additional acute and non-acute beds promised in the government's health strategy;

• Better management of existing resources – the lifting of employment ceiling upon nursing and other frontline staff – the opening of all closed beds with appropriate staffing – the proper administration of admissions and discharge policies.

The Independent deputies in Dáil Eireann are always putting forward practical and sensible solutions to the problems in our health service. I urge the Minister of Health to listen to our cries and end this nightmare for patients.

Finian McGrath TD

Dáil Eireann, Kildare St, Dublin 2

Response to Jack Lane

Was 1916 a crime?

Jack Lane's astounding arrogance is only matched by his sheer stupidity. From his high citadel of historical objectivity, entirely of his own construction, he accuses me of eschewing historical analysis, and engaging in the abuse of "a variety of people both living and dead".

Jack's self-serving supposition, that because Irish nationalist soldiers fought in the first world war under the rhetorical banner of the freedom of small nations, that it is therefore reasonable, to infer from this, that these same soldiers were in principle, and in fact, fighting for the same objectives, as those who engaged in a criminal murderous revolutionary conspiracy inside Ireland, in order to achieve an independent republic. This is patently ridiculous; not to mention insulting and abusive to the memory of those very soldiers, who fought in order to secure democracy against German Imperial aggression, and who rejected both the methods and objectives of the revolutionaries at home, whom they regarded as traitors and criminals. Jack's citing of Barry is disingenuous, this man was wholly atypical of the national volunteers. Only an infinitesimal number of ex-servicemen joined the IRA, and many of them solely out of fear of retribution, falling upon their families from republicans. Jack should note that one third of all killings by the IRA from 1919 to 1921-23 were of ex-servicemen.

Like all defenders of the so-called national patriotic epic, from 1916 to 1922, Jack shows ignorance of the political, cultural, economic, and social history of nationalist Ireland from the death of Parnell in 1891 to 1916. He clearly regards this period, as Yeats also did, as merely a stage in the development of national independence. The reverse however as Senia Pastea has established, was far more the case. Nationalist Ireland from 1912, and long before that, had been moving in the direction of a historic political reconciliation with the British crown and empire; this was further enhanced by the new economic relationship with Britain, one greatly beneficial to Ireland.

Home Rule was not about de-anglicisation in any form, but rather about the "annexation of anglicisation", by nationalist Ireland. Jack should acquaint himself with Desmond FitzGerald's view that nationalist Ireland was heading straight into the heart of the British political metropolis. From FitzGerald's perspective this was the end of any support for independence, and the "moral" justification on his part, and his co-conspirators, for revolutionary violence, and the commission of a terrorist coup.

"The great man theory", propagated by Thomas Carlyle in his 'Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History', published in 1841, extolling the virtues of the strong hyper-masculine man, who by his, and the collective will of those around him could transform an entire age, provided the "real context" for the 1916 insurrection, there was no historic context, that was invented later. Blaming Britain, Ulster unionism, or anyone else, is self-delusion, and downright hypocritical. Those who committed the crime of the insurrection were to blame, and nobody else. The context that Jack gives for this event, and nationalist historians like Michael Laffan, and his cohorts, is pure myth.

Jack can't face this, nor can he face the reality that the insurrection brought war into the peaceful lives of innocent Dublin people. Might Jack have preferred if the "rising" had happened in Cork. Might he have been happier if IRB bullets, and Slatterys cannisters grenades, made in St Enda's, had whizzed and bobbed about in Main Street. Would he have fobbed off, as he did at the beginning of this debate the deaths of three hundred civilians, scores of children, and the wounding of thousands, as a form of collateral damage, if this act of war had been undertaken in Cork. He probably would, and if not why not.

Pierce Martin

Celbridge, Co Kildare

Politicians and businessmen

Love that dare not speak its name

It seems extraordinary that in the dawn of the 21st century that we know almost nothing of a love that dare not speak it's name.

I boldly speak of the love between a politician and a businessman. A love so beautiful it is misunderstood indeed reviled in some quarters. But it is a love barely whispered in the media. It is expressed simply by the businessman giving the politician a donation and the the politician accepting it and telling the world he will do no favours in return.

Is it merely a coincidence then that the same construction companies who always go way over budget win state contracts again and again?

Is it only an accident that legislation governing the drinks industry was scrapped and now the vintners are allowed to regulate themselves?

Is it not strange that health and safety laws and labour laws are not enforced or never enacted?

Or that foreign workers are exploited and paid slave wages? Or when robbery is committed and the thief turns out to be a bank then it is not a crime.

Perhaps, we cannot ever know because the press dare not speak about these coincidences but those inhabiting that circle of love recognise these as the little signs of affection of the love that dare not speak its name.

JOHN HANAMY

Rathmines, Dublin 6

Magdalene Laundries

Inclusion in the Redress Act

Child abuse has been widely reported recently, as have issues surrounding the conduct of some members of the legal profession representing clients perusing the Redress Act. A group of women are experiencing real pain and anxiety. Their story is going unreported.

The Magdalene Laundry girls have not been included under the Redress Act and are therefore not entitled to any of the provisions of the Redress Board. Industrial laundries were a very tough place. We all carry something, but few have had to carry such brutal heritage as these women.

Despite many attempts to raise the issue of the industrial laundries, few seem to care. Is it morally right to ignore the welfare of such courageous women? It is only right and proper that this group of people be added with out any further delay to the Schedule of the Redress Act.

Victor Boyhan

Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

Education

Women should manage schools

The Minister of Education, Mary Hanafin, said recently she was taking steps to ensure that as many men as women entered teaching. Gender equality of opportunity is important, to be adhered to in any progressive society. However, it has to be tempered with reality: sexually, males tend towards aggression and promiscuity while females, in general, are more concerned with caring, long-term, monogamous relationships. Women are naturally more nurturing in their approach to the care of the young. Because of these characteristics, sexual abuse by women of young people in their care is almost unknown. It is, therefore, a mistaken liberalism to think that men should be encouraged just as much as women to become teachers, particularly at primary level.

The minister's comments lack credibility for another reason: if she were genuinely concerned about gender equality she would not preside over an arrangement where, in the majority of cases in this country, women simply cannot become the managers of national schools. This is because the position is vested in the Catholic Church, which not only does not allow women into the role of priests (the parish priest is normally the primary school manager), but also requires its clergy to forego any kind of permanent, long-term, sexual relationship. Our Government cannot allow to continue a situation where the male managers of our national schools are obliged to live in a state where the natural balance provided by sexual association with women is almost permanently absent and, above all, where women are routinely disbarred from the position of primary school manager.

Seamus McKenna

Sandyford, Dublin 18