Tale of an Admiral (maybe)

Understanding the past is a tricky business . A recent commenter (is that the word?) to my blog on Patrick Pearse mentioned Ruth Dudley Edwards’s book on Pearse. I haven’t read it so I can’t be certain as to what it says.  But I could guess by looking at Ruthie’s track record, notably her admiring account of the Orange Order, The Faithful Tribe.  The fact that her late husband Paddy Cosgrove wrote an admiring biography of Margaret Thatcher might also give a hint of the flavour to be found in Ruthie’s thinking and writing. 

But it’s actually a book headlined by today’s Sindo  that’s caught my attention. The headline is ‘New book sheds light on dark deeds of republicanism’ (no surprise there) and the book’s called Voices from the Great Houses:Cork and Kerry.  It’s by a woman called Jane O’Keeffe, and she’s put together interviews done by her husband with people from those same great houses. The Sindo recounts the killing of Admiral Boyle Somerville by the IRA in the 1930s. The interview is with Tom Somerville, the admiral’s great-great-nephew, who tells how local young men who wished to join the Royal Navy would go to the Admiral to get a reference, which he cheerfully did. The IRA saw this as recruiting young men to serve in British navy and they shot him.

Those are the facts of the matter. His great-great-nephew goes on to give other reasons for his killing: (i) the IRA wanted to give some momentum to its flagging campaign of the time; (ii) he was an admiral and a Protestant, so his death would generate headlines. The great-great-nephew also claims the admiral “was simply trying to do a good turn in helping to get employment for local boys, rather than to recruit for the Royal Navy”.

The great-great-nephew may be right in his interpretation of the Admiral’s motives. He may, on the other hand, be wrong. How he knows them, he doesn't explain. It certainly seems as though the Admiral was someone who was making it easier for young men living in the area to join the Royal Navy, which sounds like part of the recruitment process. Likewise, the IRA may or may not have wanted to generate momentum for its campaign through the killing; and the fact that the Admiral was a Protestant may or may not have been a factor in their decision to kill him. 

What’s at issue here is the interpretation assigned to the Admiral’s role in recruitment and the motivation ascribed to the IRA’s actions. His great-great-nephew goes with the decent man/morally bankrupt IRA interpretation, which allows the Sindo  to produce its usual anti-republican headline. But little or no attempt is made  to offer other possible interpretations to the thinking behind the event. The great-great-nephew gives no evidence other than his belief that the Admiral thought that way and that the IRA thought in another way.

History, Napoleon said, is an agreed myth - and, he might have added, a myth that’s used to shape the present and create the future. Never let it be said the Sindo  hasn’t done its little bit to nudge things its desired direction. 

Was Pearse mad?

Among the tens of thousands of words spoken during interviews for my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?,  those of Ian Paisley Jr  are among the most memorable - particularly his thoughts on the Easter Rising. 

“I’m an avid student of history, so I’ve absolutely no difficulty in exploring the Easter Rising further.  As I say, the more we study, the more we learn from it, and hopefully we learn not to repeat it. Regarding attendance [at Easter Rising centennial commemoration ceremonies], I don’t see why I would be inspired to attend. I’ve read about that history. It’d almost be like going and celebrating and understanding what happened in some of the death camps. I’ve always wanted to avoid going to Auschwitz.”

Then he gives his thoughts on P H Pearse. 

“I studied what happened with Pearse. I think he was a lunatic...I can only say that Pearse was, in my view, a madman. In his own writings he compares his blood sacrifice to that of Christ’s. Those are the words of a lunatic. I mean, he was going there deliberately to die. You go into battles to win - even if you know you’re going to die.” [Laughs].

So was Pearse a little bit insane? 

Hardly. For a start, his famous speeches about the need for the blood of young men to nourish Ireland’s soil were typical  of the rhetoric that was used at the time. The same images were used of those who died that same year at the Somme and in other Great War battles. 

My second reason for believing in Pearse’s sanity is that Pearse was right in his predictions. In a final letter written to his mother on 1 May 1916 from Arbour Hill Barracks, he writes:

“We have preserved Ireland’s honour and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland’s history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations.”

Which is precisely what happened. Hard things were indeed said about them.

“We said a week ago, with the scant knowledge we then had, that the connection between this disloyal movement and Germany was now complete; that the manner of Sir Roger Casement’s capture proved that German gold and German influence had all along been at the back of the sedition mongers in this country”. Belfast News Letter Tues 2 May

“No terms of denunciation that pen could indict would be too strong to apply to those responsible for the insane and criminal rising of last week. .. Were it not for the glory which has irradiated the Irish arms in the fields where the battle for human freedom is being fought [in the Great War], our heads might now hang low in shame for the misdeeds of those who have been the willing dupes of Prussian intrigue. - Irish Independent, Thurs 4 May

The Irish News  speaks of “ the terrible week that began with the seizure of a few public buildings and the posting of that unhappy ‘Proclamation’ “ and talks of the Rising in terms of ”the catalogue of the week’s blunders, disasters, crimes and retributions.”  - The Irish News, Thurs 4 May. 

But as history shows, Pearse got it right when he foresaw  defeat in the Easter Week battle but victory in the war for freedom, at least for most of the country. 

Above all, Pearse’s sensitivity and sanity shine through in his final letters to his mother and others from prison. Consider this poem, The Wayfarer, written on Tues 2 May 1916 in Kilmainham Gaol, the day before he died.

“The beauty of the world hath made me sad,

This beauty that will pass;

Sometimes my heart has shaken with great joy

To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,

Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,

Or little rabbits in a field at evening,

Lit by a slanting sun, 

Or some green hill where shadows drifted by,

Some quiet hill where mountainy men hath sown

And soon would reap”.

Lunatics don’t write like that. Beannachtaí na Cásca oraibh.    

How to be transparent

Transparency - lovely word, isn’t it? A word without jagged edges, a word that’s almost a sigh, a word that puts nothing between you and its meaning. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of it about.

Let’s take two examples - both fairly current at the moment. 

On 19 March 1988, two British soldiers, Derek Wood and David Howes were beaten and then shot dead when their car was intercepted in a funeral procession in West Belfast. When the recent motion expressing sympathy for these two men was widened to sympathy for all victims of violence in the Troubles, the DUP got very upset. Despite that upset the wider motion was passed.

The question no one chose to address in the Belfast City Council debate  is  fairly obvious: what were the two soldiers doing in the middle of that West Belfast funeral? OK, perhaps City Hall the other night wasn’t the time or place for an answer to that question -  but what about over the past twenty-five years? The only answer I’ve been given is that the two men “stumbled” on the funeral - that is, they got sort of lost and by mistake drove into the middle of it. Frankly, that sounds absurd. The first thing a British soldier arriving in the north would get during the Troubles was a clear notion of where to go and not go. There have been allegations that the two men were FRU operatives on reconnaissance.  There are also allegations that even the families of the dead men have been kept in the dark regarding their role. 

Given the detail which we have available on the horror of the two men’s deaths, you’d think that some detail would be available as to why they were there, what was the purpose of their presence, who sent them if they were sent.   Astonishingly, not so. I’ll be happy to be corrected but this window’s transparency looks to have been totally blacked out. Why?

The other, unrelated question no one can get answers to is “How much money does the UK Treasury give to the north each year?”  The prompt unionist answer is  £10.5 billion. Prompt but less than transparent, it seems, because it’s based on some dodgy British Treasury calculating which even they admit is flawed. For example, the British claims its expenditure on the north is just over £23 billion. But then it appears that some £5.7 billion never gets here. Over £3 billion gets spent on British forces in Afghanistan, War pensions,  Royal palaces, Royal travels - stuff like that. 

Equally muddy is how much money gets sucked out of here. You’d think, since they’re receiving it, the British would know how much we pass to them annually. But if they do they’re just not telling. The Department of Finance and Personnel here estimate  we cough up  £12.7 billion each year. So if you do the sums with that, you get Britain propping up this place with under £5 billion, not the £10.5 billion usually quoted.  And even that doesn’t allow for all the corporation tax and VAT generated by the many big British firms here. The bottom line? The facts and figures about the financial advantages of being part of the Union are as muddied as a pig-stye window. 

You think that these two matters are so important, the truth should be demanded and given? Me too. But it ain’t. The blinds are firmly down on both cases. I'll let you guess why.

A councillor, his high horse and his withered fig-leaf

Oh dear oh dear. When you’re climbing on your high horse, it’s important to check that your fig-leaf is thick and flourishing. Otherwise people will see, um, through you.

I was just at the Rice Krispies stage this morning when the voices of two Belfast City councillors joined me from Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster. They were having a debate. Or to be more exact,  Christopher Stalford (DUP) was attacking Mervyn Jones (Alliance). 

It appears that the DUP had put forward a motion  expressing sympathy with the deaths of two British soldiers killed in West Belfast 25 years ago. Mervyn Jones’s party, the Alliance Party, put forward an amendment, condemning violence from whatever quarter. This ignited Christopher Stalford and his party, who found such a widening of condemnation shameful. No matter that Mervyn Jones in the debate described the two corporals’ killing as vile - to amend the motion was still terrible, shocking. Was the Alliance Party saying that state violence was the same as terrorist violence? That the death of security force members was equivalent to the death of a terrorist?  Was the Alliance Party saying Mairead Farrell was a victim?  Jones suggested that, since she’d been brought into the discussion,  in one sense she was, and there was a  need to include all who had suffered. Councillor Stalford was even more disgusted. The Alliance Party had become so consumed with hatred of things unionist it ccouldn’t bring itself to support a DUP motion. 

Oh dear Number Three.  A whispered word in your shell-like ear, Christopher. If you’re going to sound high-principled, be sure no one can peek at your real motives. “Faux outrage”,  as Stan Collymore might phrase it,  is a poor, withered fig-leaf that exposes to all the iris-scorching truth: the DUP must hammer, hammer, HAMMER at the Alliance Party at every turn, because they need to, they have to, they MUST win back that blankety-blanking East Belfast seat.  

Nigel Dodds and 'child abuse'

It’s good to see the DUP’s Nigel Dodds concerned about child abuse. There’s something particularly cowardly and cruel about taking helpless children and submitting them to your selfish desires. Hellish wouldn’t be too strong an adjective to use of such actions. Right?

The abuse Nigel is concerned about is the dressing-up of children in dark glasses and semi-uniform by their republican parents. As abuse goes, it doesn’t seem immediately cruel. Children love to dress up. When we were small, my sisters were forever getting into their mother’s shoes and clanking around the place; and I, like my classmates, was constantly to be seen darting around the Christian Brothers school-yard pretending to be a cowboy shooting Indians in the Wild West. 

No, the abuse Nigel has in mind here is that the parents are inducting their children into a view of life and in particular the situation in Ireland. They’re encouraging their children to believe, however indirectly, that violent struggle against occupying British forces is commendable. That, as Nigel and many others would see it, is child abuse. 

But then one person’s abuse is another person’s revered creed. In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins claims that teaching children about religion amounts to a form of child abuse. Again, the act itself seems relatively non-abusive but, in Dawkins’s book, the belief behind it, being inculcated, is where the abuse lies. As a committed Christian, Nigel  would probably reject such an interpretation as a vile slur. 

So what it comes down to is what you believe in. If you hold something to be valuable and noble, you’ll want to pass it on to your children. It might be religious faith, it might be atheism, it it might be a way of looking at the world, it might be politics. In fact, if you didn’t pass it on, your conscience might trouble you. 

Ultimately, then, Nigel is saying he doesn’t like republicanism, especially republicanism which has suggestions of violence behind it. Just as lots of other people don’t like Orangeism and the history of sectarian violence behind it. And as Nigel is concerned for the welfare of children he believes are being abused by republicans, so Dawkins is concerned for children who are being abused by Christians and Catholics might be concerned about children who are being abused by anti-Catholic Orangeism. 

If you believe the philosophy behind the dressing-up is misguided or evil, you will condemn those who induct children in such a philosophy. If you believe the philosophy behind the dressing-up is noble or glorious, you will rejoice in the chance to dress children up in the garb their fathers wore. Simples.

Mr Edwin Poots and his disagreeable tweet

The DUP’s Edwin Poots may not cut what the Italians call a ‘bella figura’ but that’s no reason to attack him when he opens his mouth to express a view. Although in this case it’s his fingers he’s opened, so to speak, with what has now become a famous tweet. As republicans marked the anniversary of the 1916 rebellion on Sunday, Mr Poots tweeted: "Had forgotten it is the 97th anniversary of a failed rising by subversives."

This got a number of people going, in particular the SDLP’s Conal McDevitt, who told Mr Poots it was time he decided whether he was going to be part of a decade of reconciliation between parties or the opposite. I think Conall’s being a bit demanding.

For a start, it is possible that Mr Poots forgot Sunday was the anniversary of the Easter Rising. We all forget anniversaries. I forgot one last year and the love of my life has been making me pay ever since.  Mr Poots isn’t a republican so it is possible the whole thing just slipped his mind.  Who are we to claim we know the spaces inside Mr Poots’s head better than the owner of that head himself? Back off, Conal. 

Then there’s his description of the Easter Rising as 'a failed rising by subversives'.  Well, that’s how he sees it. His fellow-DUPer Ian Paisley Jr believes, after careful consideration, that Padraig Pearse was a lunatic. He told me so during an interview. And I’ll bet every last man and woman in the DUP would agree with Messrs Poots and Paisley on all counts.  After all, Pearse and his associates were trying to subvert the union with Britain. The DUP view of things was quite popular at the time, especially in newspapers like the Belfast News Letter and the ironically titled Irish Independent. And yes, the men who seized the GPO were, inside a week or so forced to surrender. Most people would call that a defeat. 

Except that it was a defeat that led to victory in the war.  Within six years of the Rising, republicans  had succeeded in achieving independence for twenty-six out of thirty-two counties. But again it’s worth emphasising - Mr Poots’s failure-thinking is not unique.

Let’s be frank: most people who got annoyed with the Poots tweet did so because they disagree with its judgement. I disagree with it myself.  But that doesn’t mean Mr Poots isn’t entitled to his views. I could call him a bigot, as that other DUPer Nelson McCausland called me when I wrote something he didn’t agree with; but that’d be pointless and stupid.  Besides, Mr Poots may well have been hoping for a backlash from nationalists/republicans. Just the thing to keep the backwoodsmen happy and voting right. 

But my basic point remains:  even if you think Poots’s point is loony-tunes bunkum,  he’s entitled to have it and express it. Now if he’d tweeted “Just remembered this is the 97th anniversary of a glorious republican Rising”, that’d have been something to shout about.  

Paolo di Canio: head coach as fascist

One of my sons is a Sunderland fan. Since he’s in New York, I haven’t had a chance yet to ask him what he thinks of the appointment of Paolo di Canio as the team’s head coach. I know what David Milliband thinks of it, since, although he’s about to depart for New York himself, he was since 2011 a director on the Sunderland board. Now he’s resigned over “past political statements” that di Canio has made.

Which were? Well, Virginia, Paolo has declared himself to be a fascist. When he played for Lazio, he was pictured giving a Nazi salute to adoring fans.  He has made no bones about being “a fascist but not a racist”.  And he has received support from an unlikely quarter - Stan Collymore, former star of Nottingham Forest and other clubs. According to today’s Guardian, Collymore has tweeted : 

“Faux outrage as always on twitter. No Italian ex footballer ever called me N*****. Just plenty from the wonderful UK shires."

Odd, the sources from which sane comment comes. 

Which leads me to ask when it was the great British public started judging their sporting men and women by their political stance (di Canio)? Or private life (John Terry/George Best)? Or drinking habits? (Paul Gasgoine, Best again) or their belief in reincarnation (Glen Hoddle)? The defence is that these sporting heroes are models for youngsters,. True enough. But they’re modelled for their playing skills - not for their wife-beating or thoughts on the after-life. If a brain surgeon is operating on me, I just want him to be really good with that scalpel or drill. His views on other matters are his affair. 

Paolo di Canio will be judged (I hope) on whether he can perform the miracle of keeping Sunderland from dropping into a lower division next season. That’s it - not, as Collymore puts it, “faux outrage”.