Will a nation gripped by fear get the leadership it badly needs today?

THROUGHOUT our country there has never been fear like there is right now.

There is so much fear, in so many homes and families, that it’s almost as if there was a terrible fatalism abroad, a sense that we must have done something terribly wrong to deserve whatever is going to happen next.

We haven’t done anything wrong, of course. At least most of us haven’t. Most of us have tried to lead the lives we have always led, caring for our loved ones, hoping that everything will turn out right in the end.

A few of us — a very few — have devoted the last few years to the pursuit of greed. And it is that pursuit, and its consequences, that have made the rest of us so afraid.

Leadership is the answer to all that. And today, more than any other day in our recent history, is a day for leadership. As it happens, I was in New Zealand the day our Government guaranteed all bank deposits. It made the lead story in every local bulletin in New Zealand which is, apart from anything else, the furthest country on the globe from Ireland.

It wouldn’t be every day that Ireland’s finance minister dominated the day’s news in such a faraway place, but he did that day. And since then, most of the countries of the Pacific have followed Ireland’s lead — and New Zealand is about to do so.

So a lot of these countries will be looking at Ireland today as well, wondering if a country like ours can show the way out of this mess we’re in. That probably wasn’t what our Government had in mind when they moved the budget forward from December to today.

But the reality is that we are to be the first country in the world to address the needs of the real economy, as well as the immediate needs of the financial sector. It’s another opportunity to lead.

But it is we who need leadership the most. When I say we, I mean the two sisters I know who continue to work into their 60s when otherwise their circumstances might have enabled a happy retirement.

Why are they still working? Because their mother is in her 90s, and she needs the support of everything they can earn. The two sisters are waiting, and hoping, that the fair deal that has been promised for several years now won’t fall victim to the need to pay for the greed of some.

And I also mean the mothers who have once again been told there is no room in the services for their autistic children. These are children who in some cases have severe emotional and behavioural problems, the sort of problems that can destroy families. But they too need resources that might have to be devoted to solving the difficulties faced by bankers and builders.

And I mean the communities that have been told to wait for regeneration. With hindsight, we might have seen those communities as representing the first straw in the wind, the first moment when the Celtic Tiger over-reached itself.

These are communities where hope has been at a premium for some years now, where crime, anti-social behaviour, drugs and violence are the role models for a lot of the kids.

These communities were promised public/private partnerships, a magic formula that was going to help them to rebuild, to make a fresh start, at no cost to anyone. Public/private partnerships were going to help those communities to move up the queue.

One by one these public/private partnerships have collapsed. And now, if you live in one of those communities, it’s starting to feel like you’re right back at the end of a very long queue indeed. Hope has once again been replaced by fear — and a terrible sense of betrayal.

A wise woman said to me over the weekend that I write a lot about extreme forms of poverty. But right now, poverty is the fear of losing everything.

It’s the fear that the house you invested so much in will end up worthless. It’s the fear that the little bit you had put aside for a rainy day will have to be spent on the next hospital visit.

It’s the fear that the mortgage you worked so hard to secure won’t be capable of being repaid after you’re forced to take a pay cut.

Against that fear — the fear of a whole community — the popular mantras of the day are a poor substitute for leadership. “It’s not our fault, it’s an international disaster. We’re not afraid to take the tough decisions. Anyone who argues against cutbacks simply doesn’t understand how grim the outlook is.”

Well, we’ve heard all that. And again and again, when I hear the mantras being trotted out, I think about a statesman who confronted almost exactly the same set of circumstances our Government confronts today.

Here’s how he described those circumstances: “Values have shrunken to fantastic levels. Taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen. Government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income. The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side. The savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problems of existence and an equally great number toil with little return.”

It was the beginning of 1933, a bitterly cold January day, in the depths of the Great Depression. The speaker was the newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he was speaking to his nation for the first time since taking the oath of office.

The description of the times I quoted above is taken from the third and fourth paragraph of Roosevelt’s inaugural address that day. In the very first paragraph, however, he said: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

AND that phrase about the only thing we have to fear has of course become something of a cliché, perhaps because it is often used out of context. When you read Roosevelt’s entire speech, and when you realise the similarities to today, the speech takes on a whole different meaning.

Here is Roosevelt, for instance, on the banks of the day — “the money-changers” he called them. “They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers — they have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.”

Roosevelt rebuilt America —not by cutting, but by investing. He educated, he trained, he employed people. He did it on the back of a national spirit — he didn’t have access to the resources we have today, just to leadership. He never gave in to fear or used it as a weapon against his own people. He confronted it, and he vanquished it.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We’re the richest country in the world if we harness the spirit that is in all of us and put it to work for all of us.

What an opportunity for leadership our Government, and our Minister for Finance, has today — if only they know it!