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Post by kj on Feb 13, 2018 18:22:37 GMT
I normally loathe Fintan, but am right with him for once. An excellent article on why Irexit is madness. Just to confirm his views on how the English view us, I'm in London for work for a day or two and overheard this on a bus, speaker was a posh Englishman: "Ireland is still trapped in so many ways by its atavistic Catholicism. It's what preventing her from progressing in the modern world." It's the closest I've ever come to wanting to assault a stranger on public transport. Fintan on Irexit |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Feb 13, 2018 19:36:31 GMT
I'm sure Fintan O'Toole is tremendously worried about Irish nationalism!
He argues:
"We know what dependency is really like. It’s not Brussels sending you a big cheque and telling you not to spread slurry on your fields in return. It’s not a nice man from Poland coming to install your bathroom or a Latvian woman who speaks five languages coming to work for an American multinational that wouldn’t even be in your city if it couldn’t recruit people like her."
Well, actually it is. Freedom of movement within the EU is a fundamental tenet of the European Union and there is no way, in my view, that the Irish nation can survive in the face of it. As Trump says, a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.
The argument is always made that economic dependence is the same as political and cultural dependence, but I don't see that that's true. O'Toole's argument is that Irish nationalism was healthier after 1973 than in the decades before it. That seems absurd to me. We stayed out of World War Two, for instance. We had our own laws on abortion and divorce etc. and we were implementing our programme for cultural renewal, such as compulsory Irish in schools.
As long as we retain our own political structures, dependency may be a transient thing. But ever-closer integration into the E.U. is only ever going to go one way, and (in my view) there won't be an Ireland left, in any meaningful sense, after a few more generations of European membership.
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Post by assisi on Feb 14, 2018 14:02:39 GMT
O'Toole quotes Lemass as saying:
"....Our people have always tended to look to Europe for inspiration, guidance and encouragement”?
But is this true? Maybe Lemass was thinking of the French Revolution and revolutionary ideas from Europe. But the likes of France and Spain, although sympathetic to Ireland, were waging their own power wars against Britain and it could be argued, had their own interests at heart. And what about the ideas themselves? The French revolution led to French expansionism in Europe and begot Napoleon, in other words they ended up being, or attempting to be, occupiers themselves, every bit as cruel as Britain.
It could be argued strongly that in this century and last century the influence of Britain and other English speaking countries, particularly the U.S. , have been far more influential. Sport wise a vast number of Irish men will be drawn to the soccer teams of Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and London for inspiration.
On the music front you would be hard pressed to name a Spanish, French or German group that has had a fraction of the influence of say, the Beatles, Stones, Bowie, Elvis or Dylan.
Perhaps our best known literary figures are Anglo-Irish, Swift, Wilde, Stoker, Synge, Yeats, Beckett whose English influence would have been great. Admittedly they would have been influenced also by European movements also (Beckett and the theatre of the Absurd), but they were grounded in the ‘anglo’ tradition.
In the recent troubles in the North Nationalists often looked to the U.S. for help and guidance rather than Europe. They only looked to the European Court of Justice when there was an opportunity to counteract an undesirable British law or judgement.
Even quite recently I was shocked at the high standing of British royalty amongst many in Ireland. Remember when the Queen spoke a few words of Irish, President McAleese gasped with pleasure and the audience broke into sustained applause?
I think a lot of Irish and English people have no problem with French, German, Italian or Spanish people or nations and enjoy going there to enjoy the culture and the weather. That doesn’t mean that these same people want to be subsumed into a European superstate where a ‘one size fits all’ morality, economy and attitude is the goal. I don’t accept O’Toole’s view. Perhaps on the economic front we can all be honest and say that no-one is sure how Ireland (or Britain) will fare outside Europe, but as for nationalism, the only way is down under an increasingly ideological EU.
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