What's the Point?

national | consumer issues | opinion/analysis

Thursday April 14, 2005 16:37

by Sean Crudden

sean_crudden at hotmail dot com

Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth.

087 9739945

Why are The Progressive Democrats Trying to Exploit Republican Imagery?

The Progressive Democrats Annual Conference held in The Silver Springs Hotel was dominated visually by a large wall-painting of the tricolour unfurled used as a backdrop for the platform and the speakers' stage.

Sean Crudden reading The Argus

When I was travelling down to Greenore (to play golf) around lunchtime on Easter Monday as the only passenger in my son Sean Og’s car I asked him

"Would you call yourself a republican?"

Without any hesitation he replied

"No."

I remarked

"Neither would I."

What I meant was that I would not call myself a republican either.

"That’s funny,"

I continued

"Because I heard Mary Banotti and Micheál McDowell both describe themselves as republicans on RTE Radio 1 this morning."

At The Progressive Democrats’ Annual Conference in The Silver Springs Hotel, Tivoli, Cork, on Saturday last I heard McDowell, speaking in front of a large wall-painting of the tricolour unfurled, describe himself again as a republican. Last year after that year’s conference in Killarney when the same device was used I pointed out on indymedia that I considered that it was wrong to exploit the country’s flag for flagrantly party political purposes.

To my simple mind there seems to be an inherent contradiction in McDowell’s stance. On the one hand he berates Sinn Féin talking about criminality and "sleepers" in the community and other republican crime faciloitators posing as "pillars of society." His mob-oratory was as well received as it is, in my humble opinion, dangerous. The audience rose almost as one man to welcome his tub-thumping speech last Saturday morning. On the other hand he wishes to describe himself as "republican." Does he envy the mantle of Martin McGuinness? Does he wish to usurp the classification of republican for himself - I really don’t think many of the members of his own political party (and mine) are particularly worried about this kind of semantics.

The phrase used by Dessie O’Malley twenty years ago "I stand by the republic" was re-echoed in McDowell’s speech. I think that what O’Malley was driving at then was that autocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship was the order of the day in Fianna Fáil under Charles J Haughey. My own opinion is that Charlie was less of an autocrat than O’Malley proved himself later to be as leader of The Progressive Democrats. Indeed, the case could be easily made that oligarchy is more a feature of O’Malley’s party than it is of Fianna Fáil.

Reading this morning in Ladywell Day-Care Centre "Cicero - Selected Works" (Penguin Classics) I noted a description of the republicans of Cicero’s time as aristocratic and conservative. Perhaps this is the sub-text of O’Malley’s speech long ago and of McDowell’s more recent rantings.

To my mind, in conformity with my upbringing and education, it is better to be poor, honest, open-minded, forgiving and democratic.

save preference

Comments (8 of 8)

Fear not

by Raymond McInerney - Global Country of World Peace

Fri Apr 15, 2005 21:05

You can have your own definition of 'Republic' on Wikipedia.

Power and Status

Fri Apr 15, 2005 20:58

Thanks, Redjade, for drawing my attention to Wikipedia.

What worries me is that the politicians - even in my own party - seem to me to be out of control. It seems obvious to me that they do not consider themselves to be beholden to anybody.

It looks to me as if elections are just a lottery and when they are over the party oligarchs are free to plot their own way forward.

Does this recipe meet your definition of a "republic"?

I suppose if Mc Dowell goes on stealing old slogans from lefties

by lol

Fri Apr 15, 2005 18:17

we'll hear "all power to the soviets" soon enough. Joe higgins will like that ;-)

of course, the definition gets a bit complicated in the Irish context...

by redjade

Fri Apr 15, 2005 14:47

Definition of Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic
A republic in its most basic sense is that is a state or country that is led by people that don't found their power status on any principle beyond the control of the people living in that state or country.

Mc Dowell has been playing "qausi-republican" cards for a while now.

by iosaf - (a citoig like cicero & daVinci btw)

Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:40

But I first noticed it a few years back with a speech he gave and used the phrase "reclaim the republic" several times. His words:-"Now is the time to appeal to the voters - especially younger voters - with a clear message to stand by the Republic."
He uses the word "reclaim" a lot, by the way, which just goes to show, we did get inside his head. The speech last weekend was a typical Michael effort, he has peaked in the oratory skills now, and more than his own peer group knows the necesity of going to the opposition benches. Ireland can not long more afford either socially or culturally to be ruled by the Gammas of mortgage paying nouveau riche xenophobes, and big swinging mickey mc do well, has been by our side all the way, and like many before him is prepared to become a caricature of himself to assist the parties of ethics, honesty, social policy and non corruption win.
here's the link to the report of the first time he used the phrase-
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2002/02/22/story23552.asp
In this he's in keeping in general theoretical scope with a certain bunch of thinktankers who have influenced the "centre left" parties and the coalitions built around them on continental europe in the last four to five years. Only problem being, the strategy (i've told you before in as many ways as is possible "tripped out groovy lingo or paratactic sesquipedalian prose") is designed around liberal parties with defined social rights agendas within either a republic or constitutional model as a "pan-european means of off-setting the rise of extreme right belief patterns in the next generation".Simply put - coalitions of centre and more left partiesand individuals with internationalist green components and very strong media backing.

Michael admires the strategy but his party is the wrong one to apply it- Which is why warts and all, I want him on the opposition benches, and cough cough- paying tax like all other second home owners on his investment.
Through that strategy we are offered the best hope of "libertarian democracy" which needs to be built at grass roots and local economic and cultural level. "outside the present system of governed and government". Anyway, his efforts are being mirrored on the other side as well, SF did an appraisal of how to "reclaim" their own version of republican ideals with the noisy and arrogant posturing of their "30 somethings" from 2002-2004 check the archives. They all get the general thrust, to some extent but because they "play for a tiny interest group team" they miss the main points, that XXI Europe has moved beyond fractitious single economic interest group policy making or party activity. This will be good news
for people like Joe Higgins (who has excelled himself in the last three years) and the greenies (who are now much less slimey) and bad news for both FG and FF who still analyse the situation like the gamma-beta business networkers they are.
"always willing to pull a fast one, and claim the credit, until the carpet is pulled out from under them".
Leave him to it, he's rather like Howard in the UK, giving a convincing performance to the middle ground, that his core policies have not changed and are unchangeable yet also ensuring they won't vote for his bunch next time. It's sort of honourable in a way, isn't it?

Oh and on a lighter note - I reckon he wants an invite to the RTS! 2016 gig.

Mc Dowell

by Peter Savage - Neighbour

Fri Apr 15, 2005 02:59

Greenore

It is a lot of hypocracy Sean. I think it is past time we went for the Dail. We better hurry up as it only seems like yesterday since you were cogging from me while we were in Armagh.

Regards

Peter

republicans,,,aye

by barry

Thu Apr 14, 2005 21:21

chances are obergruppenfuhrer McDowell has just become so jealous of reichsminister McGuinness that hes emulating his facist control freak nemesis. As a facist control freak himself its pretty understandable, probably just sorry he jumped on the wrong bandwagon.

And when one considers that McGuinness luxurious Berchesgarten (complete with private lake) in Donegal puts Mickeys roscommon gaff in the hapenny place, you cant blame him for trying to wave the flag a bit and see what happens.

At least the PDs never had the brass neck to sing "take it down from the mast", unlike stormont sinn fein outside leinster house when they all carried tricolours, which was highly disrespectful to the flag.

Never mind bizarre.

Pds and ff are not republicans:

by pds/ff

Thu Apr 14, 2005 16:54

they are our new landlords and probably due to an overreaction on their part to their upbringings in the context of post ww2 shortages are trying to squeeze every drop of $$ from the land/country/working people that they can before they get old and the economy collapses when oil reaches 70 - 80 dollars a barrel in the next ten years

if you are single and pay rent you are a slave

if you have a kids and a 25 year morgage you are a slave

if you are a civil servant you are a slave that has no freedom of speech

these people are too old and don't give a shit for posterity - if they did a barefaced liar and stooge for the construction industry like Dick Roche wouldnt be in charge of the irish environment building useless roads that willbenefit the private sector and be supreme white elephants in 15 years tops
if they gave a shit they would not be in the process of destroying tara, lough key forest park, the mayo bay - i could go on forever

they conflate those who want to do anything about it with hooliganism and give the nod and the wink for them to be beaten out of the way by 'community' gardai - their militia - if anyone raises anything more than a polite word in the irish times about any of this

time for a change

time to get the irish times out of the way

it's lifeblood is advertising of property and cars

they are [part of the problem with their fake sense of balance - lack of commentators on the left of the spectrum under about the age of 50

Number of comments per page

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

Voltaire Network

What's the Point?

Comments (8 of 8)