Quo vadis Hibernia?

As the afterglow of Betty and Obama’s visits wears off, commentators in the Irish established media have tried to make sense of it all. And in so doing, they showed themselves poorly equipped, lexically, morally and intellectually.

In a piece of media manipulation that Malcolm Tucker would be proud of, the Irish Government used the Royal and Presidential visits as cover for some very bad news. Irish Central Bank figures reveal that more than 35,000 people are now over six months in arrears on mortgages worth more than €7bn. But by and large, the media was much more interested in Betty Windsor's green dress and Michelle Obama's hair.

On the one hand, newspapers like the Irish Independent took a predictably fawning crypto-unionist stance in their apologia gombeenus. If one was to believe the Dublin commentators so beloved of the Indo and the Tan Times, most of Ireland is longing to return to some kind of Edwardian idyll where our relationship with Britain is forever fixed in a summer of benevolent paternalism.

So while the aspirational Dublin would-be intelligentsia largely fell over themselves in an orgy of self-congratulation at how the native Irish didn’t make eejits of themselves in front of the English Queen, there were few voices in that cosy coterie who were prepared to countenance anything other than gratitude and mawkish sycophancy.

Eoghan Harris was able to spin the 1950s exodus from Ireland as an act of philanthropy on the part of Britain: “let us not forget, on the eve of the Queen's visit, that it was England which took in the spalpeens who left... England which took in our emigrants in the 1950s, England which is still our best friend in Europe.

Even more shocking however is his Malthusian take on the Great Hunger.  According to Harris, the Famine was really victory for his class, the gombeens: a victory for the people who’d use a “rusty shotgun to scare away the starved spalpeens who would skulk round stealing turnips”. I can only speculate at how unpleasant Mr Harris must be in person but I rather suspect that I’d have to stop myself taking my spalpeen shovel and cheerfully beating out the Angelus on the side of his empty head.

Now don’t get me wrong, I happen to believe that Ireland needs to forge closer ties with the United Kingdom (as least as long as it remains United but more of that anon). Anything else just wouldn’t reflect the political, economic and demographic realities of life on this European periphery.  But let’s be very realistic about this new closer relationship.

The recent news that the British Government had no intention of delving further into the records to get to the bottom of persistent and credible allegations of British Intelligence involvement in the Dublin-Monaghan Bombings of May 1974, underlines a troubling aspect of Anglo-Irish relations that will not be erased by contrite geriatric nods in a Fenian Garden of Remembrance.

If it indeed turns out that British Security services were actively involved in that outrage, then it would plainly be an act of war. The deliberate killing of civilians by one’s security services in another jurisdiction is never anything else. A very English act of war; manipulative, undeclared and unacknowledged. This week, Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil that the information supplied by the British government on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings is all the relevant information that they intend to supply.

The reality is that Britain and Ireland’s interests have never been the same. There is of course common ground but we are fooling ourselves if we think that our relationship with our avaricious (and only dimly self-aware) neighbour is ever going to be one of equals.

There remain very good reasons why Ireland fought generation after bloody generation to rid ourselves of the English yoke. It’s all very well pointing self-righteously at the bilateral loan doled out to us by John Bull as part of the EU/IMF Gang-rape (excuse me, Bailout) but that completely fails to take into account the defining characteristic and founding principle of our greedy neighbour; naked economic self-interest. Ireland is Britain’s largest trading partner and of course vice versa. Where else after all would Britain find a geographically captive audience for all its shoddy, overpriced and over-marketed tat? If Ireland sank, it would surely drag Britain down with it.

But, as was shrewdly pointed out by Paul Gillespie in the Irish Times, the stability of the UK is not necessarily a sure thing and may have little to do with Ireland north or south. Gillespie  ponders the significance of the SNP’s victory and the likely outcomes of a Scottish referendum on independence. “What are the implications for Ireland of an independent Scotland and a scaled-down UK successor state?” he wonders.

“Conceivably... we could face the prospect of a more normal and stable Ireland alongside a more abnormal and unstable Britain, however improved the relations between Dublin and London.” Hitching our wagon with little Englanders who are unable to unite their own kingdom doesn’t seem so clever in that scenario. Perhaps our foreign policy-makers should be searching for a way to revive the ancient kingdom of Dalriada rather than brown-nosing the declining anglo-saxon oligarchy.