Book links

If you've been frustrated in attempts to buy my book Whose Past Is It Anyway, here are the Amazon links:

Paperback: 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whose-Past-Anyway-Easter-Covenant/dp/1845887549/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350913583&sr=8-2

Kindle:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jude+Collins+Whose+Past+is+it+anyway

Paperback (US):

http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Past-Is-It-Anyway/dp/1845887549/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350913414&sr=8-1&keywords=Jude+Collins++Whose+PAST+is+it+anyway

Kindle (US):

http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Past-Anyway-Covenant-ebook/dp/B008RO3QWA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350913414&sr=8-2&keywords=Jude+Collins++Whose+PAST+is+it+anyway

Micheal's Big Day Out at Bodenstown

You gotta hand it to the guy. One good poll and he's outa the party grave, shaking a reproving finger at the state next door. Micheal Martin,  with the wind of that favourable recent poll rating, is suddenly started worrying about the north. Which makes a nice change from the fifty years or so when his party was dominant in the south and didn't give a monkey's nut what happened in the north, apart from the occasional rhetoric-leakage on St Patrick's Day or better still over Easter at Bodenstown.The very place, funny enough,  where Micheal was expressing his worry today.  it seems the parties in power up here aren't working right and the south's government are - yep - standing idly by. No - hold it. Sorry. I tell a lie.  Micheal is actually  OK with the unionist half of the Executive here - it's the republican part that's failing the people badly, apparently. And by way of proof,  Micheal offers a quotation from " a little-reported speech", in which Peter Robinson says the Shinners are not taking responsibility properly.

Pass the smelling salts,  Wilhelmina. This is the leader of Fianna Fail talking. The party that sent the south's economy into a tail-spin from which it'll be lucky to recover in about twenty years. And there he stands,  sporting a new ancient-Roman haircut, looking all soulful and sincere, speaking more in sorrow than in anger about the bad things Sinn Féin are doing at Stormont.

At the end of the RTÉ report,  David Davin-Power, he of the bouffant hairstyle, explained that this wasn't just an attack on Sinn Féin, it was really an attack on Pearl Harbour....No, only kidding. He said it was an attack on something or other which oddly, I can't remember. And I can't remember because I was so astonished that, immediately after listening to Micheal giving out yards about how Sinn Féin wasn't living up to its responsibilities, David D-P should try to convince viewers it hadn't  happened.

They haven't gone away, you know. If the southern electorate really want to get rid of the party that oversaw the most appalling economic disaster ever to hit the southern state, they'll have to get a very long, strong, pointy stick, wait until midnight and then drive it - more in sorrow than in anger - into Micheal's party's heart. They're certainly never going to die of shame.

Honours and how to use them

I'm reading at the moment a splendid book titled The Two Unions' by a man called Alvin Jackson.  The two unions in question are those between England and Scotland, and England and Ireland. I was reminded of it today by a report in The Irish Times, about which more later.

Jackson covers a huge amount of ground in his book - from the beginning of the eighteenth century up to this century. But it's his take on the British Honours system that caught my eye:

"A superabundance of honours launched the union [of Britain and Ireland] in 1801, and (less remarked upon) also sustained it". He exemplifies the absurdity of this profusion of honors by quoting from an E F Benson novel where a character "sports her MBE unfailingly and inappropriately, having received it for 'her services in connection with Tilling hospital...[which were] entirely confined to putting her motor-car at its disposal when she did not want it herself". Elsewhere, Jackson talks about the "voracious Irish appetite for title": "The Guinness brothers, Arthur and Edward, were prominent businessmen, philanthropists and statesmen who quietly bankrolled much Unionist activity through the Home Rule era, including the militancy of Ulster Unionists in 1912-14. The Unionist government duly responded with honours, granting Arthur a peerage (as Lord Ardilaun) in 1880, and Edward a baronetcy (1885) on the occasion of the Prince of Wales's (unsuccessful) visit to Ireland: a peerage (as Lord Iveagh) and the Order of St Patrick soon followed, in 1891 and 1895."

Fast forward to today' IT's report. Irish impresario Harry Crosbie yesterday received an honorary OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his part in the visit last year to the south by Queen Elizabeth.

"In a citation before the red-ribboned OBE was presented, Andrew Staunton, deputy chief of mission said the spur for the award was Mr Crosbie's key role in the performance at the convention centre, a concert 'which helped change history' "  As he received the award, Mr Crosbie was told that it was "in recognition of these valuable services that Her Majesty the Queen has appointed you to be an honorary officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire".  What the paper calls "a beaming Mr Crosbie" said the concert was a "collegiate event"  and that what he and others had done was "patriotic and sent out wonderful images of Ireland".

There's also a description of 'those cathartic few minutes when tears streaked down the faces of 2,000 Irish people giving Her Majesty a standing ovation at the end of the concert",  but I'll have to leave it there as the cat has just got sick on the carpet.

That clinic on Great Victoria Street, Belfast

The establishment of the Marie Stopes clinic in Great Victoria Street has blown into flame again the abortion debate, and if there’s one thing I don’t understand it’s the whole abortion thing. Questions? I’ve got plenty of those. Unfortunately answers are in short supply. It’s a bit like the national question: a lot of people dance around the central issue rather than tackle it directly. 

For example? Well, let’s try this.  Pro-abortion people get  indignant if you refer to them as pro-abortionists. We’re not pro-abortion, they say. We’re pro-choice. We want women to have abortion as an option, and we appreciate that the decision to have an abortion is an agonising one and is never taken lightly by a woman. 

Eh? If you are pro-choice/pro-abortion,  presumably you regard what’s in the woman’s womb as a bunch of tissue, not a human being. In which case  what’s to agonise about? Getting rid of a foetus should need no more soul-searching than blowing your nose or trimming your toenails.  Yet pro-choice/pro-abortion people insist that abortion is a soul-searching decision for any woman to make. 

And here’s another abortion-baffler.  There are those who are opposed to abortion - pro-life people, as they prefer to be called - who say that abortion should never  be used, except the mother’s life is at risk or it’s a case of rape or incest. 

OK with that first one, I get it.The mother’s life is at risk if the child is not aborted, so to save the mother’s life actions are taken that result in an abortion. Fair enough. That is a truly difficult decision - which life is it better to save, that of the mother or the child?  But I can see how many people would come down on the side of the mother.

But the stunner that leaves me cross-eyed is the no-abortion-except-in-cases-of-rape-or-incest argument. Rape and/or incest are indeed vile, cruel actions, and the thought of carrying the baby of a man who has violated you must be truly harrowing. But even when you concede that the child inside the woman has been forced on her, and that every second of her pregnancy must remind her of the horror she’s suffered,  the awkward, painful fact remains that the foetus inside her remains human, every bit as much as if had been conceived by a loving couple.  To say that the answer to pregnancy brought about through rape or incest is abortion looks suspiciously like passing a death sentence on the  child in the womb for the foul actions of the rapist or incest-inflictor.  

Just two more and I’m done. There were a lot of picketers outside the Marie Stopes clinic the other day.  Some people say there should be no pickets, others that it’s OK providing the picketing is “tastefully done”.  What they’re getting at here, I suspect, are those pickets carrying placards showing what a child in the womb looks like and/or what happened to it when it’s aborted. But if that’s what it actually looks like and that’s what actually happens, shouldn’t everyone involved in an abortion be reminded of what happens?

And lastly: some people say this is a women’s issue, men should have no say in it. Mmm. So should women have no say in how the medical world deals with prostate cancer?

Questions, questions. How I envy those with certitude.  

A tale of two state systems

So Ruairi  Quinn, the south's Education minister, is keen to shake up the post-primary curriculum. If you're a minister in a government, you've got to show that you're hard-working and imaginative, and so it helps if you come up with some bold, radical step. Micheal Martin wouldn't be where he is today (the leader of Fianna Fail) if it weren't for his imaginative ban on smoking in public buildings ( for example, pubs). So no doubt Ruairi is hoping he'll have similar joy with his attack on the Junior Cert.

But there's a catch. Yep, you guessed it - money. The teachers' union TUI has a letter in today's Irish Times  and they're keen to stress they're with the minister in the need for reform but...

"In respect of any new assessment methods, TUI’s long-held position is that time, external moderation, in-service training and payment where appropriate must be provided. Under these conditions and provided it is adequately resourced, TUI has always been a strong advocate of, and is deeply committed, to curriculum change."

Ruairi may have a fight on his hands. 

Meanwhile up north Education minister John O'Dowd carries on a long, long battle over post-primary education - to wit, the abolition of academic testing at eleven years of age. He's dead right, as anyone who knows anything about education knows, even if they won't say it; but he too has a fight on his hands: the grammar schools. When you have power - in this case, what's seen as the cream of the crop  in your school, you're not too thrilled when someone tries to take all that away from you. Hence the long, long fight against the abolition of the Eleven Plus here. 

What I don't understand is why O'Dowd isn't down knocking on Quinn's door and asking him to sit down and compare how they both see education. Is there something happens to young people, once they go north or south of the border, that an entirely different curriculum has to be devised? And what about that Easter Proclamation about "cherishing all of the children of the nation equally"?

If ever there was a case for cross-border co-operation, this  is it.  Fingers out, lads.

Robert Ballagh, Tom Barry and an attempt to smudge

I see artist Robert Ballagh is under some fire in the Letters page of today's Irish Times.  That's because,   speaking at a commemoration ceremony for Tom Barry in Cork on Monday, Ballagh rejected Irish government plans to commemorate those who died in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence with those who died fighting in the First World War. I'm with Ballagh on this one but you can see what the Irish government is trying to do. You could also mistake what the Irish government is trying to do.

The mistake would be to think that the Irish government wants to give due respect to those who fought on the side of Britain in the First World War. It's certainly true that many of those who went to fight in British uniform did it for commendable motives like the freedom of small nations. It's also true that a lot of them did it, believing John Redmond's claim that there would be Irish Home Rule at the end of the war. There were also many who joined because it sounded like an adventure that'd be over by Christmas, and probably more still who joined because they desperately needed a job. So is the government  working for a joint commemoration so we'll all give due respect for these men who died in an imperialist war of massive slaughter? Ah no, Virginia.

What the Irish government is trying to do is take the sting out of the coming commemorations of Easter 1916 and beyond. The fact is,  Tom Barry and the men and women of 1916 fought for an Irish republic, one that, in that near-to cliched phrase, cherished all of the nation's children equally. And the republic they had in mind was not one that stopped somewhere between Dundalk and Newry, or Belleek and Ballyshannon. The government knows that the twenty-six counties, which has been screwed by a bunch of bankers and bloated developers, will look very  shriveled and hopeless alongside the vision of Tom Barry and the rest. They also fear that people may ask why successive governments in the twenty-six counties did damn all for half-a-century and more about the partition of  their country. So what to do?

Well, that's obvious. Hop on the respect-for-the-Irishmen-who-died-in-World-War-One bandwagon. And then hitch that bandwagon to the struggle for independence in the early part of the twentieth century. That way, anyone who objects to joint commemoration may sound as though they think little of those who died in the First World War.

I've interviewed Ballagh in detail on this matter and I know he has genuine respect for those Irishmen who died in World War One. It's in my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?  But he's not going to let Fine Gael or the gallant Labour Party cow him into silence about the difference between men who died in a pointless war between imperial powers and men who died fighting for a self-governing, self-respecting thirty-two-county republic. He asks “Can you imagine any US president or French president calling for the proud republican commemorations of the 4th of July or Bastille Day on the 14th of July to be muted or balanced by commemorations of North American loyalism or the Bourbon dynasty ?"  

That's what I call a good question. 

Forget being sorry - just remember it right

I note that Arlene Foster is keen for an apology from the present Irish government for the failure of the Irish government during the Troubles for not being sufficiently efficient in manning the border and putting an end to the activities of the IRA. A short answer to that might be that since Britain imposed the border with the threat of terrible force,  Britain should have been the one to patrol it.  But that would be dismissive and even unfair. I'm sure Arlene is sincere in her request and isn't thinking how her request might play with her constituents. At the same time, this whole thing of apology is  at core pointless. It doesn't change what happened or didn't happen, it's being asked in this case of people who, for the most part, had nothing to do with the events of which Arlene complains, and were it to be made, the past would continue to be exactly the same. Once deeds are done or neglected, they cannot be changed by an apology or anything else.

The best we can do with the past is remember it as it actually happened and try to learn how to do better in the future. I've been reading a bit about an even bleaker period in Irish history, the Famine, for which Tony Blair made a fatuous apology of sorts, and if ever there was an event which was presented falsely in history, it was and is the Famine. Starting with the name. In Irish it's An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger, which is nearer the mark although still relatively mild. How so? Well, here are two short excerpts from that time. They were written in the same month  by two different sources. Read  and then tell me you still think 'Famine' is the best word to describe what happened over 150 years ago, and why its memory scars the Irish psyche to this day.

"Famine - pale, gaunt, ghastly - is walking throughout Ireland, withering up men like the flowers of the field, consuming millions of human beings with the breath of his mouth; and pestilence is following fast behind him to devour what he leaves, and yet there are men who have the hardihood to deny his presence". (The London Universe, May 1846)

"Ireland must in return behold her best flour, her wheat, her bacon, her butter, her live cattle, all going to England day after day. She dare not ask the cause of this fatal discrepancy - the existence of famine in a country whose staple commodity is food - food - food of the best - and of the most exquisite quality". (The Chronicle and Munster Advertiser, May 1846)

Ask the average English person - or Irish person - why so many died in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. I'd lay odds the answer you'd get would be "Because the potato crop failed".  Which is true, but only a half-truth. The other half is a lie of omission, and one which many historians continue to propagate. Reading accounts like that above explain something of Irish people's hunger for Home Rule in the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond.