History Belongs With the People

Over the past three years I have had the good fortune to have met, via the internet, a group of people whose shared interest is that they once were – and in some cases still are – contributors to a particular website. For me it was a writing apprenticeship. For many of them it was another source of income for people who were already professional writers with a significant body of work in print. Of those who have ceased to be contributors to that site, several have gone on to create and manage successful sites of their own. One of these, the excellent Decoded Science, contains articles intended to clarify for the non-specialist information emanating from academia. Following on from the success of the first such site its owner has proposed an expansion of the idea to cover a wide range of subjects each with its own “decoded whatever” niche site.

With my usual lack of temerity I suggested that one such site might be called “Decoded Ireland”. This led one of the participants in the discussion to introduce the subject of taxonomy – in “decoded” terms, the problem of cross-over between categories whenever an attempt is made to assign things to a collection. Specifically, does Irish History belong in a collection headed “History” or in one headed “Ireland”?

My instinctive response to this question is to assert that it is not possible to separate a place – and inter alia its people – from its history. In other words Irish History may be a sub-category of History but it is first and foremost a key element of any discourse about Ireland and the Irish. How can such an assertion be justified?

Where Does American History Begin?

I shall begin my argument by looking not at Irish history but at the history of America. Did American history start with Columbus or the Pilgrim Fathers? Evidently not: America (or the Americas) was populated by various indigenous peoples before those events so the continent’s history must include the history of those people as well as of the Europeans who came later. And those Europeans brought with them their own past history which profoundly influenced their subsequent behaviour.

During a recent BBC documentary about Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon spoke of his shock when a much earlier documentary, produced in the USA in 1969 drew a huge amount of opprobrium with sponsors pulling out because of the inclusive nature of the political message it contained. Simon confessed that prior to this he had no idea that the whole population of the USA did not share the liberal ideals with which he had been brought up in the North East and which he took for granted. To me that is an illustration of the different histories of the states in the North and the South of the US. And not just the Civil War, but the different histories that migrants to the North and to the South brought with them from Europe.

But American history is perhaps different from that of other places in a very particular way: many of the “founding fathers”, as those early settlers are often referred to, came to America to start a new life because they did not like aspects of life in Europe. This is true, too, of many of those who came later: the way their original homeland was being governed left them destitute or persecuted or treated as second class citizens. They were driven by the belief that they could make a better life for themselves and their families in this new land of opportunity. So the culture, the politics and social attitudes that shaped the new land inevitably diverged from the pattern of history that continued to evolve in their former homes. And it must follow also that the history of those former homes is different from what it might have been had they remained.

Roman and Other Influences on Britain

Going further back in time and looking at the British Isles, can it not be said that differences between England and the rest of the mainland and islands of this highly influential archipelago are the result of the Roman occupation? This was a period during which there was much greater assimilation between the invaders and the indigenous people close to the points of invasion than was the case beyond the borders of modern England. As a consequence Celtic influences remain strong in Scotland, Ireland and Wales 1500 years after the Romans’ departure. The North and South of the archipelago were similarly subjected to different influences by subsequent invasions and occupations. Thus the Viking influence is stronger in the North whilst the Norman influence is stronger in the South. Ireland, like England, suffered, if that is the right word, at the hands of both these later occupying forces.

Finally, when looking at Irish history it is impossible to ignore the fact that Ireland as an independent nation is less than a century old. Its creation was followed by a brief but bloody civil war that is still within living memory for some of its oldest citizens and continues to have a strong influence on the nation’s politics and culture. And yet despite that independence it retains a strong affinity with the remainder of the archipelago. Meanwhile, the part of the island of Ireland which remains within the United Kingdom, was the source of violent rebellion that spilled onto the streets of England and the Republic as recently as the 1970s and ‘80s. Indeed, as I write, protesters are issuing death threats to politicians in Northern Ireland over a decision to cease flying the Union flag on public buildings except on certain days, an issue that must seem incomprehensible to the majority of outsiders.

To conclude then, it seems to me to be axiomatic that, whether the specific subject under discussion is architecture, music, literature, the visual arts, politics or even the landscape it is inextricably linked to the history of the place where these things are found. In short, history belongs with place and people, not the other way around.

The Future is Looking Good

Cassandra 2012 is retiring. He has been here for close to a year now which is about what I expected when I gave birth to him. I am quite proud of the fact that I have managed to keep him alive that long. Certainly the fact that I included 2012 in his name means that he was doomed to breathe his last no later than December 31^st 2012.

I cannot claim that he has been successful, certainly not as measured in page views. He began as an attempt to present an alternative view of Irish and UK politics in the context of collapsing currencies and government imposed austerity. There is a multitude of columnists, bloggers and angry citizens all too ready to tell the world how wrong the coalition governments in both countries are; how much pain they are causing to their populations. Cassandra 2012 came into existence in order to counter this cacophony of protest and to point out that it was not just the bankers who got us into this mess.

Previous governments created the circumstances in which bankers were able to do what they did and the vast majority of ordinary citizens who surely ought to have known better were happy to go along with the erroneous belief that how ever much they or their governments borrowed today they would be able to find the means to repay their creditors in the future. We were all complicit in the deceit – it occurs to me that conceit might be a more appropriate word – and must all now pay the price.

Work is the Only Way

“Why,” you ask, “should the bankers be allowed to get away with it?” And, in truth they shouldn’t. The problem is they did it all with other people’s money, people like you and me, people who believed that they’d get their money back with interest. If we write off those debts it is those ordinary people who will lose their savings. Either way it is us ordinary folk who will suffer, whether through government imposed austerity or through loss of savings. So Cassandra 2012 came about in attempt to remind people that the only way out of the mess is to work our way out of it.

My other objective was to provide a platform from which to market my books to potential readers. That of course depended on the blog reaching that audience, and it hasn’t. So it is time to say farewell and look forward. For if Cassandra 2012 must pass into history on or before 31^st December 2012, something has to take his place in 2013 and beyond.

Important Anniversaries

2013 marks the bi-centenary of the creation of the school that I attended in the 1950’s. It will also see mine and Freda’s golden wedding. Later in the year the 70^th anniversary of my father’s death will pass. He died when the Lancaster bomber of which he was a crew member crashed near Mannheim in Germany.

2013 is also the year in which my home town will host Europe’s largest agricultural event, the Irish National Ploughing championships. One of my neighbours when I was growing up in Herefordshire was English National ploughing champion so there is yet another link of a sort between the county of my birth and the one in which I now reside.

A much more significant link is the historical one concerning Roger Mortimer. Roger once owned a castle near my present home. He was born in Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire and is notorious for having ruled England (and Ireland!) after the suspicious death of the King and having entered an adulterous relationship with the Queen (Isabel).

Plenty of material there for a novel! I shall certainly attempt to mix these ingredients into a continuing on-line presence throughout 2013. The metaphors that spring to mind are clichés but I cannot resist the temptation to use them: “The King is dead; long live the King!” and “Something will rise from the ashes”.

Manners maketh the man

A quarter of a century ago I had the privilege of representing a small part of what is now North East Lincolnshire on what was then Humberside County Council. The council was split down the middle with the Conservatives having just one more member than had Labour. This meant that we four Liberal members had a lot of power for it gave us the casting vote on every decision the council took.

About half way through our four year term of office a former member of the British Intelligence Service published a memoir containing a great deal of information that was in breach of the British official secrets act. The book – Spycatcher – was published in Australia and its sale in the UK was banned as was publication of extracts in any British newspaper. It became a cause celebre, seen by some as another example of an unpopular government’s contempt for the people.

Behaviour unworthy of men with power

A fellow member of our group obtained a copy and all four of us made an ostentatious display of passing the book between us and commenting on it during a debate in the council chamber. We saw this as an act of bravado, demonstrating our contempt for censorship and of the acts of governments of both other parties over a number of years that were exposed in the book. Looking back it seems a rather adolescent thing to have done: certainly not worthy of mature men – half of us over 45 – entrusted with the power to make decisions affecting the lives of over 800,000 citizens.

On Saturday last, 22^nd September 2012, the Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, was observed apparently indulging in similar behaviour. As a member of a delegation from the Christian Democrat International political grouping he was attending an audience with the Pope. An Italian website has posted one minute and twenty seconds of footage showing him fiddling with his cell phone and failing to notice when everyone else stood to applaud.

Justified anger about clerical abuse

Mr. Kenny has made no secret of his anger at the Church’s response to decades of clerical abuse in Ireland and elsewhere. That anger is shared by many Irish people but Ireland remains a largely devout catholic country in which the Church plays an important part in people’s lives. Many still attend Mass daily; visits to sacred places such as Medugorje, Knock and Lourdes as well as Rome are undertaken by large numbers of Irish citizens.

Mr. Kenny has been granted the honour of representing these people on the world stage and it was in that capacity that he was present in Rome on Saturday. To date we have no way of knowing whether his behaviour was, like my own described above, a deliberate act of contempt or just the kind of ill-mannered inattention that the former primary school teacher would surely never tolerate in the classroom.

Phone etiquette

If the former then, like me, he was guilty of a childish act unworthy of a national leader. It would have been better, surely, to have declined the invitation. If the latter it was nothing less than sheer bad manners. It may be difficult to imagine the Pope reacting like Richard Griffiths to such behaviour but nor is it easy to believe that the Toiseach is unaware of basic etiquette.

No need to apologise or resign for speaking the truth

Big’ot, n.  One who holds irrespective of reason, & attaches disproportionate weight to, some creed or view. Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 1950.

My dictionary may, like me, be a little on the decrepit side of old but I would contend that the definition above accurately describes someone who opposes gay marriage. So why is Nick Clegg afraid to use it? The fact that he – or, more accurately, “someone in his office” – considered doing so apparently offended some Tory back-benchers.

I haveblogged about this subject previously, prompted by a series of news items. Once again the Nick Clegg story coincides with remarks by an Irish judge that have resulted in calls for that person to resign. Those making the call believe that Irish Travellers will be unable to receive a fair trial from this judge because he remarked that some people from the defendant's ethnic background were like “Neanderthal men abiding by the 'laws of the jungle'".

It would seem that the judge’s view is shared by a significant number of ordinary Irish citizens. In the town where I live there was held today a funeral mass for a Traveller lady. The wake last night was attended by a large contingent of her relatives – she is reputed to have 86 grand-children – and local publicans closed their bars for fear of the mayhem they expected to occur should large numbers of young Traveller men be granted admission.

A judge will have seen people of that ilk being brought before the courts for riotous behaviour and will base his comments on that experience. This does not mean that he will mete out punishment to Travellers that is in any way disproportionate to that meted out to non-Traveller perpetrators of similar crimes.

To return to the Nick Clegg story, my previous blog about free speech which included particular reference to the subject of gay marriage produced an interesting discussion via the Facebook message service with Will Faulkener who presents a dailycurrent affairs discussion programme on my local radio station. In the course of that discussion he described an interview with an openly gay woman councillor who argued against gay marriage on the grounds that marriage not blessed with children is inferior.

I would contend that such a view fits precisely the definition of bigot quoted above. Are elderly people who marry, often to great media delight, in an “inferior” relationship on account of their inability to bear children? And what about those heterosexual married couples who either cannot, or choose not to, have children? Are they to be regarded as not properly married? Surely only by those who have little or no regard for reason.

Freedom to Speak, not to Hurt

• In the USA the boss of a fast food chain tells a religious broadcaster that he is opposed to gay marriage and the authorities in some districts threaten to ban his outlets from setting up in their town. The governor of the man’s home state declares Aug 1^st to be a day of solidarity with the fast food chain boss. (The net is full of reaction to this debate, I linked to a New York Times article believing it to be a more trustworthy source than some of the other publications that appeared when I Googled “Chic-fil-a”)
• In Ireland a judge calls Social Security “a Polish charity”. Later the judge apologises citing the “context” as her excuse.
• In South Africa the government takes steps to suppress news of atrocities committed by, mostly young, Blacks on their white neighbours.
• In a televised discussion in the UK a black Tory MP tells a black churchman that his intolerance of gay marriage is equivalent to others’ intolerance of black immigrants. (This was featured on BBC Newsnight 2nd August 2002, I am unable to provide a link)

What do these four stories – and no doubt there are others that I could have cited – tell us about the right to free speech and the treatment of minorities in the world today?

It was, I think, Voltaire who famously said “I disagree profoundly with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Or words to that effect). Freedom of speech, the right to express an opinion however bizarre, is one of those “inalienable rights” guaranteed by the US constitution though not necessarily so well protected by laws elsewhere.

Duties accompany rights

But along with rights come duties and it is the duty of all those exercising the right to voice their opinion in public to consider the effect of their words on those who might hear them. It is also, it seems to me, necessary for the speaker to be able to defend his or her remarks with rational argument citing evidence. When the Irish judge was unable to do that she was right to apologise, recognising that the remark was hurtful to many hard working Polish people in Ireland.

I would like to know the basis upon which those who oppose gay marriage hold such an irrational opinion. How are they, or anyone else, harmed by the availability of such a ceremony? The rational answer must be that neither they nor anyone else is harmed by gay marriage. On the other hand, to oppose the idea is hurtful to those who wish to publicly declare their love for each other before their god and in the presence of a congregation of co-religionists.

Does that mean it is right to seek to prevent a person holding such irrational beliefs from setting up a business in my town? No, of course it doesn’t. Should defending his/her right to express that opinion extend to having a day set aside in his/her honour? Not unless you want to draw attention to unfounded opinions that are hurtful to some of your fellow citizens.

Is opposition to gay marriage equivalent to racism? Is it a “hate crime”?

We have come a long way in my lifetime

Before I attempt to answer those questions it is worthwhile taking a short trip back in time. Not so long ago it was considered perfectly rational to make the assumption that black people are inferior to white people. In parts of the USA as well as in South Africa it was against the law for blacks and whites to mix socially, let alone marry each other. This was the case less than 30 years ago in South Africa and little more than 50 years ago in the USA.

Go back another 20 years, to the time of my birth, and you would have no trouble finding people who thought it perfectly rational to argue that the world’s problems could all be laid at the door of Jews and that the solution was … you know the rest.

Within the same time frame it was illegal in many parts of the world for two men to have sexual relations. Indeed, there are still parts of the world where this is the case.

These days we, in the developed world at least, consider ourselves to be more enlightened; we understand that behaviour that takes place in private between consenting adults harms no-one else and is, therefore, not to be frowned upon by the law. We understand and accept that people of all races are equally capable of being clever or stupid, saintly or evil.

Engage the brain before opening your mouth

So incitement to, or the actual infliction of, violence against people because of their skin colour or their sexuality is inexcusable and the right to freely express such a view is, I believe, correctly prevented by the laws of most civilised societies. The same goes for expressions of hate towards particular religions, including those whose influence on the governments of some nations is so strong that those governments outlaw the practice of homosexuality. In such cases it is right to condemn the government and to argue rationally against the outdated religious teachings that are cited by the leaders of those religions. But to incite violence or to make hate filled statements is unhelpful and ought to be against the law.

So, hold whatever opinion you like but please think carefully about the consequences – the effect on potential hearers – before expressing them in public. And don’t use beliefs that you can’t back with rational argument to try to change the law of your homeland.

Motherhood, Apple Pie and Some Food for Thought

I listened to the Chairman of Fine Gael which, as the largest party in the Irish Parliament, is the senior partner in the governing coalition, talking to Will Faulkner on Midlands Today this morning (18th May 2012). (The programme is re-broadcast at midnight BST tonight, that's 17:00 PDT). Charlie Flanagan also happens to be one of my local TDs (Members of Parliament; in the Irish electoral system each constituency has more than one representative). “Growth is like motherhood and apple pie,” he said, “everyone thinks it is a good thing.”

And I suppose he is not far wrong. Most people do think that growth is a good thing. But, as I argued in my previous post, there are many who disagree. I ended that piece with a promise to explore some of the ways in which it could be possible to provide for all our needs without destroying the planet in the process. But first I want to add some more food for thought for those, like Deputy Flanagan, who still need to be convinced.

I was thinking about the idea that water might be the next big source of conflict in certain parts of the world and it occurred to me that we in Northern Europe import significant quantities of fruit and other agricultural produce from such areas, notably the Mediterranean region. That produce is made up principally of water. So, whilst it is true that fruit juices are concentrated before being transported thousands of miles, it is also the case that a lot of fuel is used transferring water from a part of the world that can ill afford to lose it to one where it is relatively abundant.

Population decline is inevitable

I tried to find statistics for the quantities involved and was unable to do so. The closest I came to it was in a study carried out a few years ago by the UK conservation charity WWF. This looked into the whole question of the effect of British food imports on the planet’s most vulnerable environments. What is clear from my reading of this report is that the issue is far more complex than I had supposed. And, for me, the most startling fact to emerge was this: there is a vital resource that we all take for granted, far more so than we do water, that is disappearing at an alarming rate. That resource is soil!

Allow me to quote: world-wide, soils under agricultural management are eroding 10 to 100 times faster than they are being formed meaning that agriculture is unsustainable over relatively short historical time frames – 100 to 1,000 years. This simple constraint on the lifespan of agricultural soils explains reasonably well the pattern of the rise and decline of historical civilisations. … [worldwide we are losing] 5-10 million ha of arable land each year. Much of this soil is removed from agricultural land and ‘entombed’ in deposits that cannot be used for productive purposes. For the UK food economy, erosion of soils in the Mediterranean used for fruit and vegetable production is particularly significant.

Our diet is destroying the environment

The report also has a lot to say about the original question of water usage, generally confirming my suspicions. Here are some more quotations:

The Mediterranean Basin comprising the land draining into the Mediterranean Sea … includes some of the most intensively farmed land in the world such as the Rhone valley in France, the valley of the River Po in Italy, and the Nile Valley that supplies vegetables to the UK. It includes much of the Spanish fruit and vegetable production areas, and the Middle East, including Israel. The UK is a major and growing consumer of the relevant crops – vegetables, fruit, wine and olives.

Water is the key constraint to production ... Water demand in the Mediterranean countries doubled between 1950 and 2000, and irrigated agriculture accounts for 65% of water consumed (Nostrum 2006). The irrigated area doubled between 1960 and 2000 … with the biggest increases in absolute terms in Spain and Turkey. The food exporters to the UK are Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Morocco is in more recent years the focus of significant investment in intensive agricultural production, including for the UK market. This has caused extensive and irreversible environmental degradation.

There is much more but the above should be enough to illustrate the problem. Although the report focuses on the UK’s food economy, Ireland’s pattern of consumption of similar produce is comparable to that of the UK’s, only lacking in significance by virtue of its relatively small size. In simple terms, we cannot carry on like this without further irreparable damage to the planet, notwithstanding the over-arching issue of climate change.

If Growth is the Answer ...

... you are probably asking the wrong question.

The political debate in Ireland, in the UK and, indeed, throughout the world is polarised between those who argue for so called austerity now - in order to stabilise budgets and support growth later - and those, mostly on the left, who argue that austerity is making things worse and we need growth now. No-one from the mainstream is prepared to face up to the possibility that growth has reached its limits; that maybe growth is the problem, not the solution.

There is however a growing number of people who argue not only that there are limits to growth but that we have reached them and that we need to find new definitions of prosperity that involve measuring the quality of life rather than material possessions. The idea has been around since at least the early 1970's. Those old enough will be able to remember the crisis in oil supply that occurred at that time. In Britain in 1973 and '74 the government introduced measures that included phased power cuts and businesses forced to operate for only three days each week. Some people began to wonder what would happen when the oil ran out altogether.

But new sources of supply were discovered and developed and the world fell back into its normal state of complacency. Governments continued to pursue growth as the means of ensuring ever increasing standards of living for their electors. Soon the developing nations began a game of catch-up which meant that their annual rate of growth was 2-3 times that of developed countries. In one of the books referred to in Tom Schueneman's piece, to which I provided a link above, its author points out that the price of crude oil peaked shortly before the economic crash of 2008. He suggests that the crash was as much a consequence of that spike in oil price as of the excessive borrowing that had accompanied it.

Four years on and growth is beginning to return in some of the advanced nations. And the oil price is once again increasing rapidly, the most visible evidence of this being the prices at the filling stations here in Ireland and in the UK. Meanwhile oil producers are developing increasingly costly and difficult ways of reclaiming the precious liquid from deep beneath the oceans, from shale and by fracking. Oil may be a long way still from running out but its price makes it economically viable to, as it were, scrape the bottom of the planet's barrel.

Oil is not the only problem

And it is not just the supply of oil that is reaching its limit. Demand for other important raw materials is, again as in the 1970s, ensuring that their prices too are increasing and new and more difficult sources of supply are being exploited, sometimes with potentially disastrous environmental consequences.

Perhaps the most worrying of all these pressures on resources is that on water supplies. We are fortunate here in Ireland to be blessed with an abundance of water. Some of it is arguably in the wrong place. There is anger in some quarters at plans to extract water from the Shannon and store it in a new reservoir in the Midlands to ensure security of supply for Dublin and its environs. That is a tiny scheme when considered alongside several gigantic water management schemes being undertaken in China.

There are those that believe that the wars that have plagued the Middle East throughout the half century of my adult life are bound to intensify in the future driven, not by a desire to control the oil supply so much as the need for access to the waters of the Jordan, Nile and Euphrates.

You will notice that, in identifying these dangers attaching to the continued pursuit of economic growth I have not mentioned climate change. The burning of fossil fuels that accompanies all our economic activity is changing our climate in ways the consequences of which are unpredictable. Droughts, storms and floods are part of it, so is the possibility of crop failure in parts of the world where food production is already on a knife edge.

Is there room for hope?

I argued in my second post of this series that austerity as experienced in Europe today would be viewed as luxury living by those who experienced the economic conditions that followed World War 2. Europe came out of that period with a programme of reconstruction that ensured two decades of near full employment.

Since the 1970s there have been varying levels of unemployment throughout the continent. It fell during the boom years, roughly 1997 to 2007, but even through that exceptional decade there remained a core of families for whom unemployment was the norm. Since 2008 unemployment has increased dramatically, at its worst in those places like Greece, Spain and Ireland, where the greatest debts accrued during those years. The fundamental question that needs to be faced is how to provide work for those millions without generating economic growth.

If all this sounds doom laden - and it is - I remain optimistic about the future, believing that humankind has the intelligence and the sense to adapt and respond to these unprecedented challenges. Sure, it will be painful for some, life is like that. But there are reasons to hope and I shall look at some of them in future posts.