June 7th 1979 saw the first direct elections to the European Parliament in the United Kingdom. While votes were cast on a Thursday, they were not actually counted until Sunday 10th, as the other member states voting had their polls on that day. Barely a month after Britain had become a Fascist Police State following the victory of the Tories under Thatcher, the European election results were similarly depressing, as 60 Conservatives and 17 Labour were returned to Strasbourg.
I recall watching David Dimbleby and Bob McKenzie, sans swingometer as there were no previous elections to base their psephological calculations on, showing a colour graphic of the results of all the EU states, with left wing winners in red, centrists yellow, conservatives blue and others grey. From a distance of 32 years I recall one country was shaded differently; that country was Ireland where, regardless of the political hue of those elected, the only colour used was green, despite the fact that 4 of the 15 seats were taken by the allegedly socialist Labour Party. Dimbleby explained that the only difference between the two main Irish parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were what your grandparents’ opinions about partition had been 60 years previously, which caused the Canadian McKenzie to guffaw loudly.
Irish politics had first entered my consciousness aged 4 in 1968 when I asked my dad what the Clancy Brothers song The Bold Fenian Men that he was so fond of singing along with, was actually about. Same as when he explained to me what the word circumference meant when I’d seen the term used in relation to the size of football prescribed by the laws of the game, I didn’t really understand what he told me, but I nodded earnestly in agreement as he explained. Mind, 43 years on, Ireland, the Clancy Brothers and football are still probably the three subjects I’m most passionate about.
I think I probably started to form an opinion about Irish politics in August 1975. One Friday night late in August, Eamon de Valera’s death was marked by a BBC1 profile of the man. It was shown directly after the 9 O’Clock News, in place of the final, never to be screened, episode of a long forgotten satirical show called Beneath The News, which mildly irritated me at the time. However I watched the programme and, as someone who’d decided aged 9 that I was a Communist, I promptly became a Republican as well. Politically, not much has changed for me since then, though I tend only to remember the Republicanism in song when I’ve had a few. I’m intending that for this weekend coming when my friend John McQuaid, now of Maynooth County Kildare but from Boyle in County Roscommon, pays his bi-annual visit to see Newcastle fail to win at home. We’ll sink a few pints, sing a few songs and no doubt discuss the results of the Irish General Election.
In brief, following the allocation to the 166th and final seat to Fine Gael’s Sean Kyne at 8.30am on Wednesday 2nd March, over 100 hours after polls had closed on Friday 25thFebruary, the scores on the doors are, Fine Gael 76, Labour 37, Fianna Fail 20 (only 1 in Dublin), Sinn Fein 14, United Left Alliance 5 and Independents 14. At one stage, former players with Sporting Fingal offered to act as TDs for Galway West, Laois Offaly and Wickow as the counts were taking so long. As ever, the result means no overall majority. Fianna Fail were the last party to achieve this in 1977, which makes their net loss of 61 seats this time around so glorious. Mind, considering that during their last administration they jettisoned one Taoiseach, Bertie Aherne, when stories of fiscal impropriety began to surface daily, then saw another Brian “Biffo” Cowan preside over the economic disintegration of the country and an alleged bail out that left most Irish people materially worse off at any time since independence, before finally choosing the humourless and confrontational Michael Martin, a man who makes Padraig Pearse seem like Emo Phillips, as the leader chosen to preside over the greatest electoral hiding in the history of the state.
One of John’s 4 TDs in Kildare North is the Labour Party’s Emmet Stagg, brother of the late Vol. Frank Stagg who died on hunger strike in Wakefield Prison in 1976. Emmet’s three main claims to fame are that he went against the wishes of his dead brother's widow, by having Frank buried in the Stagg family plot, rather than in the Mayo Republican graveyard in Ballina, as Frank had wished for, that he was told to fuck off by Green Party TD Paul Gogarty in the Dail during a debate on pension reform and that he was arrested by Gardai in a public toilet popular with male prostitutes in Phoenix Park, Dublin, though no charges were brought.
Stagg is one of 37 Labour TDs, which represents a high water mark for the Party. Do not be deceived; they are as much the enemies of the working class as David Milliband’s shower this side of the water. Pat Rabbitte may have gained credibility for bollocking Pat Carey on Prime Time (please look for this on YouTube if you’ve not seen it), but his party, despite including the ever more discredited and atrophying remnants of the Workers’ Party / Democratic Left, are currently in talks with the dismal descendents of The Blueshirts about getting hold of power. While Dev’s grandchildren in Fianna Fail have failed, The Kerry Sex Aid’s offspring are closer to Emmet than Frank in the Stagg Party stakes.
Context is required; Fianna Fail, whose name is often translated as Soldiers of Destiny, were formed by Eamon de Valera in 1926 and, since forming their first administration in 1932, have been in power for 61 of the last 79 years, with their longest stretch in opposition being just over 4 years between March 1973 and July 1977. Their ideology is allegedly social democratic, but they are in fact rabidly socially conservative and in love with mammon more than any other political party in the known world. After de Valera moved upstairs to the Irish Presidency, the party was led successively by Sean Lemass, Jack Lynch, Charlie Haughey, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern, Brian “Biffo” Cowen and currently by the atrichorous Michael Martin, who bears no resemblance to any other person of that name. De Valera, Lemass and Lynch were of the flint faced, GAA playing Pioneer pin tendency, while from Haughey onwards, Fianna Fail leaders have uniformly been a rapacious collection, of shifty, shiftless, corrupt, grasping, lying bastards who should have been drummed out of the state and drowned somewhere in mid Atlantic. Martin, conscious of the reputation of his party as the best and last refuge of boozy, smug, corrupt cute hoors and gombeens, is now trying to bring back a bit of the Jesuit to Fianna Fail. If there's any justice, he’ll be as successful as Biffo was in running the State. In other words, a complete shambolic disaster of epic proportions.
Fine Gael, allegedly a kind of Celtic Soft Tory Party, though they’ve never been in power without the support of the Labour Party, were formed in 1933. They were home to the Irish Fascist brigade, The Blue Shirts as they were known, under the command of Eoin O’Duffy. Subsequently Fine Gael have spent decades trying to throw off that stain on their soul, and they’ve been partly successful, having been coalition partners 6 times, with a seventh in the offing. Since I’ve been taking notice of these things, Garrett FitzGerald, a boring, patronising West Brit snob, has been their most notable leader and Taoiseach, with non-entities Alan Dukes, John Bruton and Michael Noonan following him, before current leader, the detestable, smarmy, dwarfish, intellectual pygmy Enda Kenny took over. If Kenny is the answer to Ireland’s problems, then I’d hate to know what the question was in the first place. He'll be a complete and utter disaster as Taoiseach, not just because he's a prick, though that is a factor, but also because of the ridiculous return to slavery deal cut with the IMF by Biffo and his pals, and the fact that Fine Gael and Labour are yet more old wine in newish bottles. Eventually they'll come to their senses and realise capitalism is finished, a conclusion that is inescapable when the fate of Ireland over the last decade is examined.
Kenny’s government will no doubt be bolstered by The Labour Party, who used to be led by former rugby international, the legendary Kerry Sex Aid himself, Dick Spring; a man so bland he would have failed a personality test, whose role in politics appeared to be Ernie Wise to Garrett Fitzgerald’s Mike Winters. After the failure of subsequent leader Ruari Quinn to be recognised in a Gardai ID parade by his own family, former lefty Pat Rabbitte took over for a while. Now while he was great on telly, Rabbitte’s main dealings as leader were in destroying any Socialist principles the Labour Party had. He’s been replaced by Eamonn Gilmore, who seemed to be the only person who wanted the job. As Fianna Fail had failed and Fine Gael have a dodgy history, Labour picked up their record number of seats simply by being neither of the other two.
Irish politics has long had time for a protest vote party. Between 1985 and 2007 the Progressive Democrats, a kind of D4 equivalent of the SDP were in existence, even being in coalition with Charlie Haughey’s lot at one stage, but these collection of FF and FG rejects disbanded just in time to allow the Greens to take 6 seats in 2007. The fact they have none now shows just how successful they are. The fourth party now is Sinn Fein. Sir Gerald Armani resigned his Westminster sinecure to help the Die Hards take 14 seats on a bizarre platform of social inclusiveness and a strong law and order element, that included a desire for more police on the beat; no doubt attired in balaclavas and answering to the name of P O’Neill.
As well as the Boys, there are now 14 Independents, ranging from Wexford Youths FC chairman Mick Wallace, a failed property developer and Juventus season ticket holder, who looks like Peter Stringfellow reared entirely on Black Porter and rasher sandwiches, to Waterford’s former Stickie John Halligan, to Jackie Healy Rae’s glove puppet son Michael, who is no doubt eager to carry on the cretinous leprechaun tendency in Leinster House. Interestingly Luke “Ming The Merciless” Flanagan, who originally stood on a Legalise Dope ticket a decade ago, is now TD for Longford Roscommon. I bet him and Sir Gerald can have a good auld craic about ganja and where to sell it, though they may differ in what to do buy with the profits.
However, there are some diamonds in the mouth of the corpse of Irish democracy. Ming Flanagan is one and John Halligan is another, but the 5 shining lights are the seats won by Joe Higgins, Clare Daly, Joan Collins, Richard Boyd Barrett and Seamus Healy for the United Left Alliance, whereby the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and Unemployed workers Union have come together to say unequivocally that neither Fine Gael and Labour's supine continuation of Fianna Fail's incompetent treachery, nor Sinn Fein's bizarre mix of obsessive Political Correctness and butter before guns Republicanism will advance the material conditions of ordinary Irish people one iota. That, as much as Kevin O'Brien and Alex Cusack's magnificent bludgeoning of English bowlers at the Cricket World Cup, is reason to celebrate with a few of Ronnie Drew's greatest hits on Saturday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment