Councillors not showing bravery

Lone parent Hugh Mellerick returned from a protest at ECB headquarters for an anti-household charge protest in Cork

A no uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a yes merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble, said Gandhi.

My name is Hugh Mellerick. I am a single parent, of one beautiful boy, living in Mallow, Co Cork, and living on lone parent’s allowance of €217.80 per week. I am currently exempt from paying the household charge.

I scraped, saved, and borrowed the money together and joined the group from the Ballyhea Bondholder Bailout Protest and got myself to Germany last week.

Our destination: ECB headquarters. Our mission: To attempt to do what our publicly elected representatives are paid handsomely to do — ask for a writedown from the ECB, on the private banking debt (€67.8bn) which above all other factors, is single-handedly crippling Ireland. We, a group of ordinary, gentle, affable, everyday folk, having to do, what our paid professionals will not.

On Monday, I, a lone parent who hasn’t had money for gas central heating in more than a year, drove from Mallow to a meeting of Cork City Council, where a motion was being put forward by Mick Barry of the Socialist Party, which would effect that Cork City Council would not pursue people who hadn’t registered for or not paid the €100 household tax.

My 11-year-old son had to come with me. Regular child-minders are something I cannot afford.

The motion was defeated, six votes for to 17 votes against. Three abstained from voting.

After the council meeting had adjourned, the journalists present posed the question, very pointedly, as to why we had shown so much anger and displeasure towards the 17 councillors who had voted against the motion.

“Those councillors were merely conduits,” they said, “having to obediently implement governmental legislation. The legislation, was not their fault,” they said.

This was a very pertinent question. On the face of it, even if the motion had been carried, we were told, it would still have no legal bearing on what the city manager had told us was his civil and legal duty to perform.

So why did the 33 people there react so angrily towards those who opposed the motion?

I was outraged at those councillors’ lack of candour. I was outraged because they are in a position of leadership and obvious influence, yet obviously didn’t show any form of independent thought or stance on the motion.

They have an official standing in the land. They are widely seen as a mid-way between the electorate and the Government.

Surely, they couldn’t have, all of them who opposed the motion, believed that the household charges are morally right?

It was a time when these publicly elected leaders could have stood up and been counted. Yet they didn’t.

Instead, they did what we all felt just seemed personally easy and convenient for them to do.

It wouldn’t have cost them, would it? Really?

Are they not human beings too, sentient beings who can have an independent thought of conscience and duty, and then act on it?

To think beyond the constraints of protocol, if said protocol is, in effect, causing greater and greater hardship, greater and greater suffering?

Would it have been such a leap out of their cosy comfort zones, to face a party disciplinary committee for not toeing the official “party line”?

Would their imminent expulsion from their respective political parties mean that they would be less well-off than, say, I?

I had just completely expended my tiny resources to go to Frankfurt for the sake of my son and my fellow people, to do what’s right, and these people couldn’t even voice their objection to the unanimously unjust household tax, just for one evening.

Could they not form a new party, made up of those politicians who faced expulsion for the sake of speaking and acting on the truth?

The old party would rot and crumble away.

I found myself wondering what kind of goodly, wonderful society we would have if leaders especially did what they knew in their hearts was the morally right thing to do, even if it meant facing retribution from their peers and superiors.

Yes, I know. Even if the motion had been carried, it would not have been effectual in any event.

But if they had voted in favour of this vital motion, they wouldn’t have morally condoned the actions which are now sure to follow — the harassment and subpoenaing of already hard-pressed, ordinary, decent citizens.

Citizens who have had nothing to do at all with the bad debts incurred by private banking speculators, and yet now have to foot these tremendous debts by way of household and water charges, Vat increases, pay cuts, hospital and garda station closures, job losses, emigration and suicide.

Cork City Council might not have had any legal mandate on this motion even if it were passed, but they could at least have not condoned this injustice. In doing so, they have just perpetuated the immorality throughout society.

Three councillors had actually spoken quite condemningly of the household charges, and yet declined to vote on the motion.

I found myself standing there incredulously watching all this unveil as the votes were being cast, my son looking up at me with questioning, worried eyes.

I have been actively campaigning against this injustice for five months. I have had no previous experience with any of this before. I am just an ordinary person, with a conscience, and a will to do what’s right, no matter the cost.

“What’s happening Dad?” was my son’s question afterwards.

“The big, important people are not showing bravery,” was all I could say to him.