I shouldn’t do it. That is, write about
things. If I was more superstitious than I am I might have
said that I shouldn’t have tempted fate. No sooner had
I written the last time about verbal abuse received on the
cycycle than, there I was full of the joys of spring cycling
along on a lovely day, when pow, I was hit by a water bomb
thrown by kids (circa ten years old) as I passed a neighbouring
park/playing fields. I was a bit stunned for some few seconds
- since it was a bolt out of the blue sky - until I realised
what had actually happened. The boys scarpered and had the
advantage of a fence with a hole in it to play hide and seek.
But I was certainly not going to let the occasion go unremarked
so after a couple of chasings the advantage of the bicycle
– speed compared to being on foot, even on grass –
came to the fore. When I had them cornered but some distance
away (10 metres or so) I stopped so as not to frighten them
before advising them of the possibility of causing an accident.
My honour was satisfied by catching up with them and talking
to them and penitence was expressed by them, always advisable
in their situation whether there was true contrition or not.
While I expressed the view that messing among themselves was
fine if I thought of it at the time I could have said more
concretely they could have played a good game among themselves
in part of the park if they did want to throw water bombs
– at themselves of course rather than at unsuspecting
passers by who could come to grief.
In praise of small meetings
A meeting the other week that I was involved in turned out
smaller than expected and this reminded me of some of my feelings
and perceptions about small meetings. I suppose it depends
on what circles you move in, but in the NGO/peace/voluntary/community
scene which I would move in then ‘small’ could
mean anything from 2 to 10, and depending on the context even
over 10 could be ‘small’ if it was intended as
a larger public meeting. I’m thinking mainly of regular
group meetings where two or three are gathered together and
get on with the business regardless – sometimes it can
be a particular task group which is only meant to be a few
people anyway.
Of course it’s disappointing if you have
less than you expect at a meeting but I usually look on the
bright side: a) I have been at ‘meetings’ which
were not meetings at all because I was the only person and
I wondered at my wisdom and foolhardiness in coming at all,
but if you’ve announced a meeting you have to be there
in case someone does turn up. b) The fewer that are there,
the more urgent the work is, in a kind of a way. This may
seem perverse logic, however the fact that a cause is not
popular but I consider it necessary makes me feel even more
committed to the people that turn up. At times, visiting speakers
for a course or talk have looked askance at the ‘small
group’ I had helped assemble; my perspective, as above,
is to be grateful anyone has turned up and commit myself 100%
to the task in hand (in one instance it felt like a visiting
speaker was blaming those who had turned up for it being so
small, which was rather unfair). c) Small meetings can often
achieve more than larger ones because people just get on with
the tasks in hand, and there is more time, on average, for
everyone to talk and participate fully.
‘Small’ in this context may be beautiful
or it may just be necessary. Despite the possibility of being
unwieldy, I do like ‘large’ meetings too where
they get down to the task in hand in a productive way and
the reality is that both ‘sizes’ are needed in
social/political change and other movements (one of my more
embarrassing moments in organising meetings was when far far
too many people came to a speaker meeting I had responsibility
for, and simply could not get in, but sín scéal
eile). You can plan for the numbers you want, you may or may
not be able to deliver these, but ultimately we need to work
with anyone and everyone going our direction. And, do you
know, more often than not I find that patience and perseverance
are rewarded - with a bigger meeting, a bigger profile for
the issues concerned, and what might be termed progress.
Not in praise of a massive
gulf
Sometimes tiny little pieces of history pass by and there
is no reflection afterwards on what happened. Take the capture/kidnapping/arrest
of 15 British armed forces personnel by the Iranians in the
Gulf in March. Cause célèbre in the British
press and media, cue outrage, particularly in the tabloids.
Eventually they were released and the main ‘reflection’
was on the fact that a couple of those held were permitted
to sell their stories to the media – a typical non-story
in the situation.
My initial reaction when I heard the news of
their abduction was one of subdued regret that the incident
had happened and the angst and trauma for all concerned and
their families. Then over time other factors came into mind.
What were the British doing in Iraq and ‘Iraqi waters’
anyway, let alone possibly Iranian ones? The boundaries between
Iranian and Iraqi waters are also not as hard and fast as
the British stated. Then in terms of precedents, I heard of
the kidnapping of Iranian officials in Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan
by the USA some time back in January 2007 – the US were
trying to snatch two senior Iranian security officials legitimately
there (see e.g. London ‘Independent’ of 3rd April
2007) so it was the US who got there first. And also think
of other US and British actions in the area – Britain
has a long history of colonial and neo-colonial activity stretching
through the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Yes,
there may have been psychological ill-treatment of the British
captives, e.g. one time when they were blindfolded and thought
they might be shot, which is inexcusable. Two wrongs do not
make one right but considering what Britain has got up to
in the region it was not as brutal as some of the British
media made out.
In praise of No. 136
Here I am talking about Gene Sharp’s typology of nonviolent
action (from “The Politics of Nonviolent Action”),
reference to which is a bit like the nonviolent equivalent
of telling jokes by numbers. No. 136 is ’Disguised disobedience’.
And an excellent current film on the topic is the German “The
lives of others” (‘Der Leben den Anderen’,
directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) which is set
in East Germany some years before the fall of the Berlin Wall
(in Belfast in the fairly early years of the Troubles, partition
walls were sometimes known as ‘Merlyn Walls’ after
Merlyn Rees, NI Secretary of State 1974-76).
The main protagonist in the film is a Stasi
agent, Gerd Wiesler (played by Ulrich Mühe), loyal to
the regime but with some personal and revolutionary morality
left (unlike his boss and erstwhile friend who sees no contradiction
in serving the personal and warped wishes of the Minister
as assiduously as other duties for the state). Our main protagonist
is assigned to head an investigation into a popular playwright
who happens to be a love rival (if it can be called that)
of the Minister responsible for culture. Cue dirty tricks
or at least an attempt to use anything out of the ordinary
against the playwright. Our main protagonist is somewhat captivated
by the life and liveliness of the playwright, and a total
contrast to his own joyless, loveless and lonely existence;
he starts to defend the playwright by inventing reports on
what he is up to, rather than what he is really doing. He
eventually intervenes even further though the plot has a few
twists in its tail.
I am deliberately not going into too many details
of the film but it shows how a bureaucratic functionary of
an oppressive system can be liberated at a personal and heartfelt
level by a new vision, and be prepared to suffer for it. The
undermining of many an oppressive regime has taken place through
disguised disobedience; out and out disobedience is next to
impossible, or, where possible it is going to mean swift and
certain punishment – imprisonment, ill treatment or
even death. Cleverly disguised disobedience can make a system
much less efficient and thereby less invulnerable, and evidently
so; by itself it will not bring an end to such a regime but
it can help that end arrive much faster. So, as a nonviolent
activist I raise my glass, a toast, slainte agus beatha, to
all those who use No.136 in opposition to oppression and injustice
– long may you get away with it.
And in praise of 1916?
The following is a piece I thought I would never write. Even
in my school days when I was asked (this was in Norn Iron)
about my lack of pride in the World Wars whether I felt pride
in the 1916 Dublin Rising, I said no. Decades on I still feel
the same. So what was spurred me on to write about some positive
aspects of the 1916 Rising? Whose writing has caused me this
transmogrification not to mention self mortification? He has
featured previously in this Colm, a journalist and Colmist,
Kevin Myers. Now rioting (sic) primarily in the Irish Independent,
I caught a piece by him in the Belfast Telegraph (30th March
2007, presumably syndicated from the Irish Indo which is part
of the same O’Reilly stable as the Belly Tele).
What had Myers got to say? The piece was headed
“LIES writ large”. He goes on to talk about the
‘diseased cult’ of 1916, quoting ‘Thou Shalt
Not Kill’ against the men and women of Easter 1916 but
not against those governments who sent out millions upon millions
to die in the trenches of the First World War!! If the 1916
Rising was a ‘diseased cult’ then surely the latter
was a million times so.
The 1916 Rising was not a ‘democratic’
event. It was a military event engendered by British policies
in Ireland, nationalist-republican and loyalist counter polities,
and also by a World War where millions were condemned to their
death by ‘democratic’ governments, including the
British, and at a time when acceptance of such blood sacrifice
was a common view and certainly the view of the state. I don’t
support the Easter Rising, I don’t support military
action, I don’t support concepts of blood sacrifice
or martyrdom. But I can understand why certain military-minded
republicans took part and I can identify strongly with some
parts of the Easter Proclamation – such as treating
the children of the nation equally, surely a treasonable view
in this era of the Celtic eat-your-granny-and-grandchildren-for-breakfast
Tiger.
The Proclamation (“of the Provisional
Government of the Irish Republic”) was militarist, yes,
but to state “We declare the right of the people of
Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” or “The Republic
guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal
opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve
to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation
and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the
nation equally…” are not demented ramblings but
sound and principled political sense. Myers describes the
Proclamation as “simply a charter for murder”
and condescendingly lambastes what he calls ‘exceptionalism’
- “the belief that the law doesn’t apply to you
if you feel strongly about something, or you are generally
a nice person”, and lumps together – and writes
off - all he disagrees with (including Shell to Sea protesters!)
under this label. Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, the best known
pacifist of his time in those there parts, sought to defend
the integrity of the reason for the Rising by organising people
to prevent looting, which would have brought discredit; he
paid for this with his life. Myers may not know this but a
key concept in nonviolence is taking responsibility for your
actions – legal or illegal.
The men and women of the 1916 Rising were principled.
They may have inflicted suffering and killed civilians and
police but many also suffered. And the early Free State, despite
its conservative and often oppressive beginnings, had at least
the vestiges of a revolutionary morality which was later absent
a generation or two down the line in the time of Cathal (a
k a Charlie) Haughey. The 1916 Rising may have led indirectly
and partly to partition, the Civil War in the Free State,
and thereby political conservatism and economic stagnation,
along with many other factors in the equation that was Ireland
at the time, but to blame the men and women of 1916 for this
is about as valid as blaming the founding fathers of the USA
for the Iraq war (though, come to think of it, in the case
of the latter, internal colonialism subsequently became external
colonialism).
Of course the history of Ireland ‘could
have been’ different. But the past has been written,
not in stone but in washable ink or pencil. An African proverb
goes that until lions have their historians, tales (tails?)
of hunting will always glorify the hunter. The point of the
past is to try to learn from it so that we can deal with the
future, so that we can write the future story in a different,
more creative and positive way. Myers seems intent on anachronistically
and virulently lambasting those who, while making a choice
I would not agree with, had courage of their convictions.
Even Gandhi said it is better to resist violently than not
to resist at all; I quote this not in agreeing with the 1916
Rising but in defence of the fact that they had a worldview
they believed passionately in. Mistaken, yes, militarist,
yes. Unprincipled, no.
- - - - -
Anyway, there we go, and with an April which
leapt straight to summer (dry with temperatures two or three
degrees above average), what can happen to the old adage that
“April showers bring forth May flowers”? Perhaps
“April drought brings forth May water restrictions”
is a motto for the global warming era, but that doesn’t
quite have the same ring to it. And so, May I end off for
now until I June you (Cherryvalley or Dublin 4 accent) again
next month, Billy.
Who
is Billy King? A long, long time ago, in a more
innocent age (just talking about myself you understand),
there were magazines called 'Dawn' and 'Dawn Train'
and I had a back page column in these. Now the Headitor
has asked me to come out from under the carpet to write
a Cyberspace Column 'something people won't be able
to put down' (I hope you're not carrying your monitor
around with you).
Watch this. Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman
pass by (because there'll almost certainly be very little
about horses even if someone with a similar name is
found astride them on gable ends around certain parts
of Norn Iron).
