If Fianna Fáil doesn’t learn from the past it will soon be history

MICHEÁL Martin sent me looking for Edmund Burke, and I’m not grateful. I’ve spent several hours searching Burke’s writings (or as much as I could find online) for one phrase. As great a mind and a philosopher as he was (Burke not Martin), he is no easy read.

But I had to find that bloody phrase, because it kept running through my mind when I read Martin’s interview in Saturday’s Irish Examiner, and I wanted to quote it right. You know the phrase I mean — those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.

Actually, I was entirely wrong in thinking that Burke was the phrase’s originator. It was the American philosopher, George Santayana, who said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Burke said something slightly different — “People will not look forward to prosperity who never look backward to their ancestors” — although, I suppose, it has the same broad meaning.