Crime and reward

I did a bad thing yesterday – I lied to the security forces…Oops. That’s not what we call them now, is it? The PSNI.  I was in Derry doing  a number of things, including checking why no copies of Tales Out of School  are available in Easons and arranging for more to be shipped in quickquickquick,  when a person, um, in a position of authority in the community asked me if I was going to see President Clinton give his talk at Magee College. When I said I hadn’t been invited, this otherwise respectable person immediately hatched a conspiracy whereby we would both pretend I was important and I would try to  ride into the hall on the coat-tails of his invitation. For a brief few seconds it looked as though it wasn’t going to work: a young and honourable PSNI officer said I needed a letter of invitation and not just a testimonial of decency from  my accompanying respectable person. Then an older, more corrupt PSNI officer leaned in and effectively said ‘Look at him – you don’t seriously think a geriatric like that is going to be a threat?’ and I was in.

The hall was bursting with bigwigs. In front of us were John Hume, Pat Hume, Reg Empey, Danny Kennedy, that young guy who’s currently Mayor of Derry, Mark Durkan, Raymond McCartney worthies by the yardful. Then the on-stage big cheeses came in -  the Vice-Chancellor of UU Richard Barnett,  Declan Kelly the US man,  First Minister Peter Robinson, Deputy First but-bloody-well-co-equal Minister Martin McGuinness. Richard  Barnett said he was delighted to welcome back Clinton; Peter Robinson said he’d been told to speak for no more than ninety seconds and then spoke for three minutes. Martin McGuinness recalled a happy event last week when he and John Hume (gesture towards the Nobel Laureate) were honoured to attend (look, I just report what happened, OK? I don’t write the script) were honoured to attend ‘the launch of Jude Collins’s fine book  Tales Out of School ‘.  I think he linked that to education and economic development but I can’t be sure -  I was at the bottom of a deep tank of even deeper smugness struggling for breath at the time. What is this man McGuinness doing as Deputy First Minister? It’s past time Ireland reverted to a life-time monarchy with full book-recommending powers.

Clinton looked old and almost frail – he’s been through some tough medical times in recent years. When he started his speech was tentative and his gestures cautious, as though afraid he might damage something. Then he took the glasses off the top of his nose (it’s a lot less red than it used to look), began to speak as though off-the-cuff (although I’m sure it wasn’t) and suddenly he was, if not the old Clinton, then near enough, near enough. He was informed,  clear and best of all, specific about how economic recovery here might take place, or at least begin. On the way out afterwards I told Raymond McCartney that I thought the speech should be made a model for politicians here, particularly the inclusion of specific proposals for action.  Raymond nodded. 

Outside, my co-conspirator  and companion tapped me on the chest and rolled his eyes. “I give up. You’re the only one in the hall there under false pretences and you’re the only one in the hall who’s singled out to have his book plugged!”  The feeling you get inside when you break the rules and then within minutes receive public commendation is of course a shameful feeling and, like absolute power, absolutely delightful.  

'He's a drunken moron, and so say all of us'. Or nearly all...

A man I knew studied Logic at university. He was pretty good at it too, got top marks, but the day he left university, he swore he’d never bother with the subject again.  When I asked him why, he said ‘Because nobody else uses it’.

He must have felt justified in his decision if he's been following the coverage of the Brian-Cowen-and-Morning Ireland affair. First there was Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney tweeting that the Taoiseach sounded half-way between drunk and hung-over, then the interview was  replayed and picked over by the deeply brainy pundits of Dublin 4, and finally Jay Leno on his US TV show got a few laughs by referring to ‘the prime minister of Ireland’ as a drunken moron.

Logic? We don’t do logic in these matters. I was asked for a comment yesterday on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback  and I said there must have been two interviews, because the one I heard featured a throaty Taoiseach who said ‘Good Friday Agreement’ when he meant to say ‘Croke Park Agreement’ then corrected himself immediately. Was he up late the previous night singing and doing his impersonations of well-known figures? Apparently so. Does that mean he’s a bad leader? No. Could his critics have deduced that he’d been up late the night before from his Morning Ireland  performance? I very much doubt it.  But that didn’t matter. They denounced him for conduct unbecoming a Taoiseach, for speaking in public with a husky voice (Cowen’s voice is always husky) and for briefly saying ‘Good Friday’ instead of ‘Croke Park’. And finally all was capped by the Jay Leno ‘drunken moron’ remark. Logical? Cheesh.

What’s happened is that the people of the twenty-six counties want  someone to  blame for all their woes, they figure Cowen fits the bill and so they do their level best to kick the stuffing out of him. As a result, he's punished for something he didn’t do (disgrace the nation) because of something he might or might not have done (screwed up the economy).

And as if that wasn’t sufficiently anti-logical, we now have word that a backlash of sorts has set in and quite a few Irish people are feeling defensive about the Taoiseach. “It’s not nice to be calling our Taoiseach a moron!” they say.  The cherry on top of the irrational cake: Cowen gets lambasted for something he hasn’t done and forgiven because the Irish people want exclusive rights on kicking him.

Sometimes we’re a small-minded, crooked-thinking shower. Fianna Fail may not be everybody’s ideal political party, but if we're going to put on the black cap and pass judgement, shouldn't it be on how he's handled the economy rather than how he's handled his non-existent hang-over?

Look out - dangerous myth about

 

Our book club met last night to look at Muriel Spark’s  novel Memento Mori. The book’s about a group of old people who keep being rung by a mysterious caller. The voice on the other end of the phone tells them ‘Remember you must die’, causing a range of reactions.  I was probably the only one in the group who unreservedly enjoyed reading it. Many reasons were given for disliking it but I think the principal reason was that the book deals with death and most people don’t like thinking about that subject.  The result was that even though the novel has a wonderful array of eccentric characters, even though the plot is turbo-charged, even though the dialogue is by turns hilarious and chilling,  most of those in our group had a response that was at best lukewarm. Their preconception of  what reading a novel about death would be like eclipsed the actual experience.

I thought of that this morning as I read a review of The Big Fellah, a play  just opened in London. It’s about Irish republicanism and The Guardian’s theatre critic Michael Billington, in the final paragraph of his review, makes the statement “Irish republicanism is wreathed in myths”.   Hardly an original declaration.  In fact, Irish-nationalism-as-myth is a view so often stated it’s hardened into fact and is even shared by a considerable number of Irish people. You want irrational, myth-wrapped political violence? Come to Ireland.

Sorry, chaps. Not so, or certainly not uniquely-so. Go to the graves of Allied soldiers in Normandy. Visit the Kennedy graves in Arlington Cemetery. Watch on TV the Edinburgh Tattoo or Remembrance Sunday services. Every country weaves myth around its military exploits, transforming them from terrible blood-letting into self-sacrifice, courage and heroism. So to select Irish republicanism for the  award of Unique Weaver of Self-deluding Myth, as Billington lazily does,  is  misleading, and it’s a preconception that warps the view of individuals and events here. You see it in unionist response to the prospect of Martin McGuinness becoming First Minister, you see it in review of plays such as The Big Fellah

Of course Irish history and Irish republicanism have their share of myth.  But the English and in some instances Irish habit of seeing Irish nationalism as uniquely steeped in myth is a holier-than-thou habit based on an obvious lie. 

PAW? Pshaw.

This is Positive Ageing Week in Ireland. PAW for short. I’m not clear what it involves but the general message is that being old/older should be seen as a Good Thing.

Spare us such steaming deposits of self-deception. Old or older age is about looking and feeling worse and worse, and being nearer to dying.  There’s no changing that, not even if you put umpteen smiling oldies on TV to say they’re having a wonderful time.  Yes, being old is better than it was. I’m 68 and I’m in generally better health than my father was at this age. But would I rather be 58 or 48 or 38? Three guesses.

PAW might be a good idea if they got a bit more specific. A good starting point would be to outlaw age discrimination,  making it illegal for example to fire  practically everyone when s/he hits sixty-five. It wouldn’t be allowed if race or religion was involved, so why should employers be allowed to do dirty on grounds of age?  The usual retort is ‘Yes, but as you get older you get less physically and mentally capable of doing  the job’.  I couldn’t agree more. So let’s devise tests that’ll establish if someone can do the job. If they can’t, there’s the door. If they can, then they’re entitled to hold onto their job, or at least to be free from dismissal on the grounds that they’ve reached a certain age.

Mind you, I like young people. They’re better-looking and generally more fun than oldies. They’re more open to new ideas, most of them,  and have an appetite for life that’s enviable. But being young isn’t enough. You could be 35 and hopeless at your job or  65 and brilliant at it. Or vice versa.

As for politics...Put it this way. The new UUP leader Tom Elliott is 46,  Sinn Féin’s president Gerry Adams is 62.  Now close your eyes and think hard: if Elliott were a republican, would he make a better Sinn Féin leader than Adams? I rest, as the barrister said, my case. 

Little difference in a large room?

The launch of the deathless Tales Out of School:St Columb’s College in the 1950s  took place in Lumen Christi College (the old St C’s site) last night and it was a hum-dinger of an occasion. For a start, we had a packed attendance – around 150, I’d say – in what was the old refectory and is now the Senior Study of L C.  What’s more, we had considerable emotion as thirty or so old boys met up with each other for the first time in decades, frequently prefacing their remarks with ‘Jesus!’  as the identity of an old schoolmate was revealed. Thirdly, we sold virtually all the books we had (but we can get more, we can, we can. Cross my palm with silver and yours will be winging your way inside hours). And finally, we had probably the two most significant political figures to emerge from Derry in the past half-century in the one room.

John Hume was in fine form. He delivered a sure-footed 5-10-minute speech in which he was eloquent in his praise of his old alma mater and eloquent in his praise of my book which he urged everyone to buy. If you ask me, they should give him a second  Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe take back that daft one they gave to David Trimble. Even he – Trimble – knows he didn’t deserve it, and after last night, Hume deserves at least two.

Martin McGuinness was in equally buoyant mood. He said (look, I’ll go into the next room while the rest of this sentence is completed, OK?) that he’d admired my writing and broadcasting contributions for a long time, that I was (oh dear) ‘honest and fearless’, and that I spoke up in support of him when it was by no means an easy thing to do....OK, I’m back. Was someone talking about me?

So what divides the SDLP, embodied in John Hume, and Sinn Féin, embodied in Martin McGuinness? Well,  the SDLP is older (always a liability, in politics as in life).  It’s more conservative (John spoke in support of the 11+,  Martin spoke indirectly in favour of change). And significantly, it’s no longer the stronger party (John Hume is retired, Martin McGuinness is at the apex – or near apex – of his political career).  And when you have power, your chances of shaping events are higher.

Martin was also a bit more daring in the things he said, though that’s not quite the same as saying he was better received by his audience. He noted that he hadn’t attended St Columb’s – in fact was never in the front gate before last night. But he had been round the back, he said. He’d been sent up as a young lad, during the famous Battle of the Bogside in 1969, to get sulphuric acid from the science labs to help with petrol-bomb making. While John praised his teachers and his education in St Columb’s, Martin spoke highly of most of the Christian Brothers who taught him in Brow of the Hill school (next door to St Columb’s) and lowly of some others – notably one Christian Brother whose days were said to have ended in Africa, either by falling off a mountain or being eaten by a lion. Martin seemed to indicate he’d give his vote for the lion.

It was funny, it was frank and it was very Martin McGuinness. Whether a difference in speaking style and in educational philosophy represents a major gulf between the two nationalist parties, I’m not sure. With the election of Tom Elliot as the new UUP leader, it’s maybe time the two nationalist parties sat down and defined for once and all the major issues  (other than self-interest) which keep them from becoming one.  It’d be terrible to think that the task of improving this part of Ireland and uniting the entire country should be kept back by dopey political selfishness, wouldn’t it?

PS. You got all that? Right. Now go out and buy/order up a copy of Tales Out of School. THIS INSTANT.

Iris and Peter: a private affair?

Poor Iris.  The First Minister’s wife has returned to the north of Ireland, we’re told, with on one side her ever-loving husband and on the other a nurse.  Peter Robinson is reported in the Guardian  newspaper yesterday as pleading for people and especially the media to leave them alone. The picture accompanying the report shows a grinning Peter at his desk in happier days with Iris standing beside him.  Her right hand is placed lovingly over his right hand, her left hand is at the back of his neck, massaging or God knows what,  and her head is thrown back, hair tumbling, as she laughs helplessly.

Sorry, Peter. It doesn’t work.  The photograph in question shouts aloud: “Look at us!  A loving couple! See how well we get on, the fun we have!”  If you’re going to have photographs like that taken which highlight your relationship with your spouse, you can’t complain if the interest is maintained when things get less lovey-dovey, and tears and betrayal take over. That’s just how we are. We shouldn’t be concerned with the private lives of politicians but we are. And if politicians thrust their private lives at us, as the Robinsons did, they really shouldn’t complain when our appetite for tit-bits refuses to go away.  Besides, Iris’s story carries an intriguing mixture of sex and money that bridges the gap between the private and the professional.  Of course the media will go hunting after it again, of course the public will lap up what’s offered.

And should we say ‘Poor Brian Cowen’?  Actually yes. I don’t like Cowen or his party, and in fact I stand to win a £1,000 bet if they do badly in the next general election. Providing that is Eoghan Harris wasn’t lying through his teeth when he took the bet with me in front of approximately  600 people in West Belfast  a couple of years back…Where was I? Oh right. Brian Cowen has been put through the mangle over the past week about his hoarse voice and verbal slip-ups in an early –morning interview on RTE. In fact the slip-up lasted approximately 1.5 secs, when he then corrected it. Yes his voice was hoarse, as is my own early in the morning; and whether he had a few jars the night before or not I don’t know. He was HOARSE, for God’s sake. You’d think he’d taken a 19-year-old lover and got him £50,000 from a friendly businessman, the way some people go on.

The moral to be taken from all this is that you should never believe the media or politicians when they say the economy is the only thing on the general public’s mind. We’ve room and appetite for a whole lot more. 

Greatest Irish Embarrassment ever

Sometimes I despair of the American people –  their latest lunacy shows up in nominating the likes of Christine O’Donnell as Republican candidates for their mid-term elections, not to mention several other Tea Party loopers. Not content with one Sarah Palin, they’ve now cloned what looks like and sounds like a second. Yes, it’s good to see Americans concerned for the welfare of their country; but do candidates have to have a lobotomy before they can rise in the Republican party?

I was seething with contempt until  I watched TV on Friday night and then opened the Venerable Organ this morning. Mother of God, what’s this?  It’s some people lining up to propose their nomination for The Greatest Irish Person.  They don’t say ‘The Greatest Irish Person Ever’ but that’s what they mean.  And they are? Oh God forgive me for writing them but here they are:  Bono,  John Hume, James Connolly, Mary Robinson, Michael Collins, Michael Flatley.  OK, OK, I made up the last one – there are just five. But in the name of God and the dead generations from which Ireland receives her old tradition of nationhood, have we sunk to this? 

John Hume is a man I admire -  that’s why, with Martin McGuinness, he’ll be joint guest of honour at the launch of my new book ‘Tales Out of School: St Columb’s College Derry in the 1950s’ at Lumen Christi College, Derry on Wednesday  22^nd at 7.30 pm. (If you’re going to plug, plug shamelessly.) But John as the greatest Irish person ever? And then there’s Bono. He’s done a lot for the developing world, I’m told. He’s also done a nifty side-step so he doesn’t pay Irish tax on his media millions. Plus hundreds of Irish priests, nuns and laity have devoted their lives to the developing world – do they get nominated? Ah no.  They don’t front a pop band that never recorded a single song you could whistle or hum.  As for Mary Robinson: I’m struggling to see how someone who resigned from the Irish Labour Party because she thought the Anglo-Irish Agreement was unfair to unionists could be the greatest Irish person ever. Michael Collins and James Connolly? Well yes,  they’re worth considering. But did you see who was proposing them on TV on Friday night? Joe Duffy did the pitch for James Connolly (funny,  I’ve never heard Joe, in all his decades on TV, espousing a socialist position) and (I can hardly bring myself to say this) Michael McDowell is proposing – brace yourself – Michael Collins. 

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dearydearydear. The man who kept warning us against the demons of paramilitarism – sorry, against the demons of REPUBLICAN paramilitarism. The man who was never happier than when cataloguing the suffering that Irish republicans had visited on the north over the last forty years. The man who could barely sit in the same room with Gerry Adams without breaking out in hives. This same man now toasts Michael Collins, the most totally ruthless and the most totally successful guerilla leader Ireland has ever produced. And McDowell comes on telly and says ‘Isn’t he great, vote for him! ‘

No wonder Tom Lehrer said, when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, that satire from now on would be impossible.  Besides which, the whole idea of saying ‘This person is the GREATEST’ is dumb beyond words. Nobody knows what the criteria are, nobody knows how you compare a man of war (Collins, Connolly) with a man of peace (John Hume) or a man of self-congratulatory posturing (Bono). But do you know what?  It’s almost worth it, to see  that ghastly man McDowell flushed out for the double-standards excuse for an ex-politician that he clearly is.

Meantime, for God’s sake don’t vote in this dumb contest. You'll only encourage the Venerable Organ.