March 17, 2012
published by Portside
Someone has pinched the heart of St. Lawrence O'Toole,
and thereby hangs a typical Irish tale filled with
metaphors, parallels, and some pretty serious weirdness.
Who done it? The suspects are many and varied.
Could the heist from
have been engineered by the infamous "troika" of the
European Commission, the European Bank, and the
International Monetary Fund? Seems like a stretch, but
consider the following: O'Toole-patron saint of
was, according to the Catholic Church, famous for
practicing "the greatest austerity."
wear a hair shirt underneath his Episcopal gowns and
spent 40 days in a cave each year.
That is a point of view the troika can respect. They
have overseen a massive austerity program in
that has strangled the economy, cut wages 22 percent,
slashed education, health care, and public transport,
raised taxes and fees, and driven the jobless rate up to
15percent-30% if you are young. At this rate many Irish
will soon be living in caves, and while hair shirts may
be uncomfortable, they are warm.
There are other suspects as well. For instance, St.
O'Toole was friendly with the Norman/English King Henry
II, who conquered the island in 1171. The Irish are not
enamored of Henry II, indeed most of them did their
level best to drive the bastard into the sea. Not
the Church, "Paid him due deference."
So "deference" establishes yet another suspect: the
current Fine Gael/Labor ruling coalition. Fine Gael
leader and Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Edna Kenny
has already signed the new European Treaty, but was
forced to put it up for a public referendum at home (no
other EU county is being allowed to vote "yea" or
"nay"). Kenny is pressing for a "yes" vote, and Labor's
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore argues that a "yes" vote would be
a "vote for economic stability and a vote for economic recovery."
The Treaty will not only continue the austerity program,
it will move decision-making to EU headquarters in
when it comes to the economy. Think "Model United
Nations" and lots of earnest high school students.
Who will make these decisions? Good question. Well, it
turns out that a committee of the German Bundestag
debated the Irish austerity proposals before the
government even got a chance to look at them. How did
that happen? Again, good question, but no answer yet.
Maybe German Chancellor Andrea Merkel lifted O'Toole's
heart. She certainly has a motive: Merkel is leading the
"austerity is good for you" charge, a stance that has
battered economies from
the Irish are already suspicious of the German
chancellor. An anti-austerity demonstration outside the
Dail, Ireland's parliament, featured a poster calling
government ministers "Angela's Asses."
Much of the economic crisis in
of it in
speculation by German banks, along with the Dutch,
Austrian, and French financial institutions. "Yet it is
the working people of
asked to pay the price," argues Des Dalton of Sinn Fein.
It appears that the Germans have discovered that one
does not need Panzer divisions to conquer
bankers and compliant governments.
"Compliant," however, has run into some difficulties in
noun. On Mar. 2, Sinn Fein President Jerry Adams trekked
out to Castlebar in the west of
ghost of Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League and
leader of the 1878 Land War (there was an earlier one
from 1761 to 1784, but more on that later).
the
this treaty."
The Castlebar symbolism was about as heavy as you can
get. Davitt, along with the great Irish Parliamentarian
Charles Stewart Parnell, launched the land war from that
city, calling up the words of the great revolutionary,
James Fintan Lalor: "I hold and maintain that the entire
soil of a country belongs by right to the entire people
of that country."
These days that is not a popular sentiment in most
European capitals, where governments are shedding public
ownership in everything from airlines to energy
production. The Irish government is trying to sell off
several lucrative holdings, including Aer Lingus,
Ireland's natural gas company, and parts of its
Electricity Supply Board. The state's forestry will be
sold as well. "It is the depth of treachery to sell
billions of Euros worth of State assets to pay bad
gambling debts," Socialist Party member Joe Higgins said
in the Dail.
The land wars were a reaction to efforts by the English
to apply to
sold "common land" to private landowners and forced the
rural population of
hellishness of industrial
As Laura Nader and Ugo Mattei maintain in their book
"Plunder: When the rule of law is illegal," what is
currently happening in
a 21st century version of the Enclosure Acts. The last
vestiges of public ownership are being systematically
auctioned to the highest bidder, and the concept of "the
common good" is fading like the ghost of providence.
But not without a fight.
While
Davitt, demonstrators were besieging Parliaments in
pass them in a second round of voting. However, under
the new rules, it no longer has veto power. If 12 out of
the 17 Euro Zone countries endorse-pretty much
considered a slam-dunk-then the new treaty goes into effect.
A number of commentators are saying that the 12 country
threshold makes the Irish referendum irrelevant, but a
"no" vote will be a blow to the Euro currency, and it
might eventually encourage similar "no" votes in other
countries. In that sense, the Irish tail could end up
wagging the European dog.
Since Irish stories always include parallels, there is
certainly one to be made between the first land war and
the current debt crisis. The 1761 effort by English
landlords to apply the Enclosure Acts to
resistance, first in
dressed in linen masks and coats-hence their generic
name, the" Whiteboys"- burned hayricks, knocked down
enclosure walls, and hamstrung cattle. On occasion they
pitched land agents into the local bog.
The Irish resistance to the Enclosure Acts was not
unique, but a very odd thing happened in
won. A combination of population growth and war had
driven up the price of food, so even the small-scale
agriculture practiced by the Irish was profitable. Plus
the rent capital skimmed off the Irish peasantry was
playing an important role in helping to capitalize the
English industrial revolution. Add to this the
resistance, and the English decided that it was in their
best interests to back off.
The average Irish tenant knew nothing about
international finance or capital accumulation, but they
got the idea that if you dug in your heels and went toe-
to-toe with the buggers, you could beat them. It was a
momentous experience, and a collective memory that would
help fuel more than 150 years of rebellion.
Can the current Irish resistance movement turn the tide
against the austerity madness that has gripped the
European continent? Well, the Left is on the rise (in
some places, so is the Right). Sinn Fein's support in
the most recent opinion polls shows a 25 percent
approval ratting, up 4 percent. In comparison, Fianna
Fail-the party that ushered in the current crisis-has
dropped from 20 percent to 16 percent. Labor has fallen
to 10 percent, and Fine Gael is at 32 percent. Other
Left parties are also doing well.
Indeed, the Left seems to be resurging in other
countries as well. A center-left party in
ousted a right-wing government, and France seems posted
to vote socialist. The Greek Left is fractious, but its
various stripes now make up a majority.
Weirdness. Remember weirdness? For starters, an 832-
year-old heart is pretty strange. And it wasn't just the
heart that was snatched. Someone also stole a splinter
of the "true cross" (if one added up all the splinters
in all the Cathedrals of
size forest). And then there is the matter of the
cheekbone of St. Brigid that just missed getting lifted
from a church in
In the end, saints will not preserve
invasion of the austerity snakes. The Irish people will
have to do that. But they sport an impressive track
record of overturning imperial designs, and they have
long memories: put enough people into the streets of
Castlebar (
etc) and the bastards will back off.
As
united, and there is nothing we cannot achieve."
Read
middleempireseries.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________
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