Government’s poll slide is the result of its own insufferable arrogance
The poll was taken at the beginning of the week just after the Taoiseach commanded the airwaves with a virtual media blitz on the weekend celebrating Fianna Fáil’s 80 years in existence. He had major TV and radio interviews — on Ryan Tubridy on Saturday night and the This Week programme with Gerald Barry on Sunday afternoon.
These should have given the Government a boost because Bertie Ahern is running well ahead of his party in popularity. What’s gone wrong? The Government has become a victim of its own insufferable arrogance. In the last week alone, for instance, Transport Minister Martin Cullen went missing during the rail strike, which was a bit of a first for him, because he has never been one to pass up an opportunity for publicity.
Of course, he was back in the spotlight before the end of the week, talking about a zero alcohol limit for young drivers. He can’t enforce one of the highest limits in Europe, but then that is not really the function of his department. So why the hell is he talking about it, especially in the week that he funked the rail strike?
Kerry County Council voted by 20-to-one to allow the people of Dingle to hold a plebiscite on whether the town should be known by a new bastardised Irish name, An Daingean, or by the bilingual combination of Dingle and the old Irish name, Daingean Ui Chuis.
The Kerry county manager announced that the plebiscite would have no effect.
Eamon Ó Cuiv, the Gaelteacht Minister, has said essentially the same thing.
And you thought this is a republic which is supposed to be ruled by the will of the people! Yet we are being fed this contemptible arrogance by officials suggesting it does not matter what the people want; they are going to have to put up with dictation from the top.
The Government has also emasculated the Freedom of Information Act and this week we witnessed the most flagrant abuse of Dáil privilege when the Taoiseach launched an outrageous attack on the former chief executive of Aer Lingus, Willie Walsh, and two colleagues, who are widely credited with ensuring the survival of the company following the 9/11 disaster.
“They wanted to steal the assets of the company for themselves through a management buyout, shafting staff interests,” Ahern told the Dáil. Even his Tánaiste could not stomach that scurrilous allegation.
Anyone can make a mistake and inadvertently use the wrong word, but he should at least have the courage to withdraw the remark. Yesterday, British Airways announced a magnificent increase in profits in Willie Walsh’s first year in charge there.
Nice one, Bertie!
President Mary McAleese is in the US where she has spoken up for the undocumented Irish, and Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern is offering to fly to Washington on their behalf. More power to them.
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach and Justice Minister Michael McDowell are treating asylum seekers from Afghanistan with utter contempt. More than 40 of them have protested by going on hunger strike. Seven of them are under 18, so they probably have no real understanding of a hunger strike, but the Government has shown no sympathy. It has effectively challenged them to continue.
The hunger strike is largely an Irish weapon because it came to international prominence when our people used it. James Connolly used it in 1913, but it burst on the international scene during the hunger strike of Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney in 1920. He was actually one of 12 men on hunger strike, but it was his 74-day ordeal that captured the imagination of people around the globe.
The same thing happened again in 1981 after Bobby Sands was elected to Westminster and died on hunger strike. Nine others died with him, but very few people in the Republic would be able to name any of them, even the Dáil deputy in their midst. Yet people would have told you in 1981 that they would never be forgotten.
HOW many people can name either of the other two who died around the same time as Terence MacSwiney? Michael Fitzgerald actually died a week before him and Joseph Murphy, a 17-year-old, died in Cork on the same day as MacSwiney after 76 days on hunger strike.
Dr Daniel Cohalan, the controversial Bishop of Cork, virtually sanctified the death of MacSwiney by describing him as a martyr, yet he denied Denis Barry a Christian burial three years later on the grounds that he had committed suicide by dying on hunger strike, which the bishop described as exceedingly irreverent and “even blasphemous”.
In 1940, there was another major hunger strike in which two men died, but Eamon de Valera’s government refused to concede. “Prisoners would not be allowed to dictate the conditions under which they would be kept in detention”, de Valera insisted. The IRA was, in essence, demanding that any of its members should be treated as prisoners of war rather than criminals.
Seán McCaughey, a former chief of staff of the IRA, began protesting by refusing to wear prison garb following his arrest in 1942, but the censor suppressed news of his protest during the war years. In April 1946, after more than four years in solitary confinement, McCaughey went on hunger strike. Even though he was apparently disturbed mentally as a result of his treatment over so many years, he was allowed to die. After 16 days he stopped taking water and died seven days later.
Except for Terence MacSwiney and Bobby Sands, who were both elected members of the British parliament, the others have been largely forgotten.
How many people could name even Kieran Doherty, the Dáil deputy who died on hunger strike in 1981? No matter what one thinks of the politics of those involved, there can be no denying that they were men of enormous conviction. They believed in what they were doing and they proved it by making the ultimate sacrifice.
The Afghans probably don’t really understand the hunger strike. Those poor defenceless people can be easily beaten, and they will be forgotten, unless some idiot provokes an immediate disaster. But ultimately we will be the real losers because we will lose something precious — our national dignity.
The Government is asking for understanding for around 50,000 undocumented Irish in the US, while at the same time it treats with contempt less than a fraction of 1% of that number of Afghans here. There is no comparison between the conditions that our people left in recent years and those that prompted the Afghans to flee to this country.
Yet the reaction of the Taoiseach was that “we will not give way for threats”. What threats? these people are saying they would rather die than return home. Does the Government really believe they should be returned to the conditions from which they fled?
If it does, it is a disgrace to generations of Irish people who have sought political and economic refuge around the globe.
Today, hopefully, we will hear a rousing rendition of the Fields of Athenry in Cardiff. We should consider what that song commemorates and the bizarre behaviour of our Government. What is happening is an affront to the Christian values that our best have espoused.
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