An echo chamber for political verbiage

Saturday, July 28, 2012

IT’S that time of year again.

Up in Donegal, in the village of Glenties, the townspeople are overrun. Their picturesque settlement becomes the focus of national media attention as the intelligentsia meet to expand and expound on the issues of the day.

Welcome to the Patrick MacGill Summer School, wherein a nation’s hopes and fears are encapsulated and disseminated to the masses. Over the course of the week, a collection of people who have been running or influencing the State for years meet and discuss how, if only they had a chance, they could make the State a better place.

Dispatches, as reported in newsprint and on air, are heavy with democratic ideals and Republican concerns. What emerges is a kind of utopia, something to aspire to, the basic ingredients for a better society. And when it’s all over, they pack up their bags and return to the real world, leaving all that feelgood stuff behind in the Highland Hotel, from where they will pick it up again in 12 months.

The school usually sits in the week after the Oireachtas goes on its extended summer break. This facilitates politicians in making the smooth transition from the real world to the echo chamber tucked away in a beautiful and sedate corner of the country.

Senior politicians often consider it a duty to attend the school. A few years back, that must have been in Noel Dempsey’s mind when he commandeered the Government jet to fly him to Derry, from where his ministerial merc met him and whisked him back over the border to Glenties. I’m telling you, the audience had no idea how lucky they were that he deigned to walk among them.

Contributors to the school and the audience are largely, but not exclusively, made up of the elite which runs the State and its institutions. At times like these, this is the section of society which decides who gets it in the neck.

Academic Elaine Byrne made a reference to the make-up of the school when she delivered a speech on Monday. “So I’m looking around here and I looked at the programme this morning and I see what I would describe as official Ireland. It is predominantly male, predominantly over 50, predominantly people who earn over €100,000.”

She went on: “I’m probably making too many generalisations there. But it is people that think in a particular way and isn’t always challenged about different ways of looking at things.”

The speech apparently, was not greeted with rousing applause. You got to be careful who you target in an echo chamber.

The Taoiseach got a better reception. Here’s what he had to say on political reform, and who could be against political reform.

“This day three years ago, here at MacGill, I stood before you and stated that ‘our political system is broken. Our political culture is discredited. We cannot fix our economy or create a just society unless and until we also fix our politics.”

Three years ago he was in opposition, and hats off to a serving Taoiseach who is still on speaking terms with something he said while in opposition. But then he lurched into the ridiculous.

“During the election people kept faith with us. With our reform agenda we now show we are keeping faith with them” Reform agenda? Where? If you see it, please approach with caution. It may be an imposter.

And then, this: “With our reforming zeal we show them that the finer qualities, the high standards of their own lives, will be demanded and reflected and enshrined at the heart of in the heart of their government.”

Now, Kenny hasn’t done a bad job since assuming office, particularly when compared to his two immediate predecessors. But reforming zeal? Truly, he must have travelled to Glenties by air and left his head in the clouds.

Michael Martin gave a fine speech the following day about political reform and what have you, and God be good to the man but if you didn’t know better you’d swear he had just arrived in politics with big ideas of how to make the world a better place.

Another man of action who regularly attends at MacGill is Michael McDowell, former minister for justice, attorney general and Tánaiste. He had things to say about how duties owed to the State receive little public attention compared to the clamour that surrounds the rights and protections of citizens. He went to declare, “we have a Republic, and we, and we alone, bear the ultimate responsibility for the wellbeing of that Republic”.

I have no doubt that McDowell is absolutely genuine in his belief of such statements. But he also sat at a cabinet table for seven years where, it is now widely accepted, the main concern was electoral politics rather than any fidelity to the nation state.

It’s all very well to blame Bertie Ahern for that shambles, but McDowell is no shrinking violet. Did he ever give the benefit of his views to his cabinet colleagues when they were driving the State towards ruination?

These days he earns his crust as one of the leading counsel in a legal system that is often an impediment to the functioning of republican values, rather than a conduit through which all citizens can access justice. Good luck to him, but maybe he should save the lectures for an echo chamber sealed off from the real world.

Joan Burton was another to put in an appearance. She berated tax exiles and the “many wealthy people who, through tax shelters, escape paying the share of their income needed to finance the efforts of the State.”

Well said, that woman with the measured rhetoric. The Government should take note of her concerns and act. Oh, sorry, Joan is a member of the Government.

That’s the thing about the MacGill Summer School. It allows politicians in particular to indulge in the ideals that are undoubtedly a component in the mix that propelled them into politics. They get to wistfully recall all that they were going to be before they became what they are. They get to ignore the fact that precious little of those ideals survive when the cynicism of real politic in the current political culture sets in.

What would Patrick MacGill have made of it all? MacGill, the navvies poet, was a talented writer, who documented the wretched conditions endured by those at the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder early in the 20th century. He would most likely have agreed with all that is routinely said at the school which bears his name. But if he knew the record of those expanding and expounding, and the gilded positions of the bulk of the audience, he may well have taken a different approach. Knowing one end of a shovel from the other, he may well have entered the hotel with violence on his mind, intent on smashing up the echo chamber knee deep in verbiage.

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