3 December 2014

Civil War Politics

When I was naught but a nipper, Old Man Tickell once caused a fight in a pub in Kerry with what he thought was an innocuous question. Always interested in the politics and history of the Republic, he guilelessly asked one of the friendly locals, "what's the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael these days anyway? Ideologically, what separates them?" Cue one mighty stramash, as the punters around him fell out, and fell out dramatically, about what distinguished Ireland's two biggest parties ideologically.

The cynical answer might be: not a lot. But the orthodox answer is a historical one, rooted in the bloody, divisive and unnecessary experience of the Irish Civil War. The great houses of Fianna Fáil fell in behind Eamon De Valera, and the principle of an Irish republic. Fine Gael represented those who struggled for the Irish Free State, gradualism, and the awkward compromise Michael Collins struck with Lloyd George in London in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The Free State may have won the war, but under the premierships of the scheming and reactionary Eamon de Valera, Sean Lemass, Jack Lynch, and the odious and greed-rotted Charles J Haughey, the Fianna Fáil machine crushed all before it for decades -- until 2011

Just as Scottish Labour was swept out to sea, the Soldiers of Destiny found themselves kicked into the soup by the Irish people, outraged and disgusted by the recklessness, incompetence and corruption of the Cowan government, and the poisoned legacy of profligacy, incompetence and mismanagement which  the cute hoors of Bertie Ahern's cabinet had abandoned the country to.

To the British political anorak, peeking across the Irish sea, the idea of structuring contemporary politics along civil war lines, rather than political ideology, seems bizarre. All of our large political parties are coalitions of opinion - a spectrum within which compromises must be struck - but organising your contemporary political struggles according to whether your great-grandfather favoured De Valera or Collins seems bonkers. It obscures, rather than illuminating, the key schisms dividing political points of view. 

But in Scotland, increasingly, I wonder if we aren't drifting quietly towards our own - peaceful - sort of civil war politics, with the splits and divisions of the 2014 referendum running deep, papering over the more significant political splits which untie and divide the country. Alex Massie has the droll but slightly horrifying gag that the electoral battle between Labour and the SNP is to decide "who gets to be Scotland's Fianna Fáil." I begin to suspect that this is truer now than it was before the September poll.

And if any figure is likely to reinforce this tendency, and to root it deep, it is Jim Murphy. The smoothest and most media-savvy of Scottish Labour's leadership candidates he may be, but Murphy is also the one most identified with the referendum, and most likely to alienate those who took a different view on the 18th of September. He has made much of his intention, if elected, to unite the country. In many ways, Murphy is uniquely incapable, of the three, of doing so. The memory of those Irn Bru crates won't fade soon.

And art is already anticipating politics. In Stanley Odd's Son I Voted Yes, we look forward to the kind of inter-generational political conversations and expectations which have been the stuff of Ireland's civil war legacy. "My da' was a Yes voter," you can imagine a proud wean explaining to his wee pal, who remembers in turn that his parents voted No. And dimly, in the future, anticipate a fight in some rural pub on this side of the Irish channel, the compliment of history repaid, as an inquiring Irish visitor to our shores enquires: "Can you tell me what the difference between the SNP and Labour is anyway?"

"Well," I'd say, "back in the referendum of 2014..."

40 comments :

  1. "He has made much of his intention, if elected, to unite the country. In many ways, Murphy is uniquely incapable, of the three, of doing so. The memory of those Irn Bru crates won't fade soon".

    The evil that men do live after, the good is oft interr'd with their bones...

    What about the hero of the Clutha? Does that not count?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Didn't ask you, asked LPW, it's his hypothesis. But your ill-grace is noted.

      Delete
    2. Hero? He did what most anyone would do, yet because he is a Labour MP, he becomes a 'hero'?

      I remember much was made of him being interviewed with blood on his shirt; so much so he repeated it with egg...

      Delete
    3. Surely anyone who didn't do what Murphy did would have been a coward, and to be fair there will have been some of them.

      But if I were Murphy I would be affronted at being called a hero for doing the only decent thing to do adn what any half way decent person would have done.

      A hero is a very different kettle of fish.

      Delete
    4. Murphy is clearly a man of some physical courage.

      Delete
    5. The total lack of any ability to give the other guy any credit, or lack of grace, or lack of class, is one of the reasons you lost. And thank goodness.

      On the night of the disaster Murphy did a decent thing.

      On the 100 towns soap box trip, he was courageous, being attacked by mindless Nationalist thugs, but standing up to relentless bullying and intimidation.

      He hasn't burnt books or held mindless flag-waving rallies.

      Whatever you think of his politics, and it is progressive compared to the SNP's, he is a good guy, a clever politician and a potentially good leader.

      If you can't see that you are lost, whether we are eventually "independent" or not.

      Delete
    6. "The total lack of any ability to give the other guy any credit" Hypocrite.

      "mindless Nationalist thugs" Thugs is a strong word, but plural? Name the others.

      "mindless flag-waving rallies" Is there is a theme developing here?

      People who oppose Jim Murphy, or more to the point you are 'mindless thugs'...

      Delete
    7. "Progressive." Adjective. Definition: to enthusiastically endorse hawkish foreign policy interventions, unaffordable and pointless nuclear deterrents, internal markets in the provision of public services, and a sub prime market in student debt.

      Just wait till I've got that scribbled down...

      Delete
    8. To boldly travel by Irn Bru crate; armed only with a plastic bottle against the little old ladies of dissent.

      Jim manfully ignores 'mindless Nationalist thug', safe in the knowledge she wasn't heavily armed with a box of dozen.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zji4dTx-j8w

      Delete
  2. Possibly. (Perhaps even probably in the short term.) But memories of Irn Bru crates are probably less enduring than the memories of blood shed during the Irish Civil War (eg) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executions_during_the_Irish_Civil_War

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lazarus,

      I was trying hard to avoid any suggestion that this was a direct comparisons: they're crass and misplaced, and as you so gently imply.

      Delete
  3. If there is going to be nothing to separate Labour and the SNP ideologically, it will have to be the SNP that tries to steal Labour's clothes. Because Labour will not become a Nationalist Party and the SNP is not the party of social justice it pretends to be and needs to be to match Labour.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't want the SNP to match Labour's standards of social justice - the world is a heartless enough place as it is. And Labour is arguably more of a nationalist party than the SNP - they both believe in the existence of an independent nation state (Scotland in the case of the SNP, Britain in the case of Labour), and Labour are probably a touch more Eurosceptic.

      Delete
    2. If you don't want the SNP to match Labour's standards of social justice you don't have to do anything. They've not come near so far.

      Unless you can do what the Nat leadership has been unable to do, despite being asked numerous times, and name one progressive policy they have enacted.

      Delete
    3. Oh, "Braveheart", you always do such a splendid job of pretending not to understand. I meant that the SNP's standard of social justice is considerably superior to that of Labour, and I wouldn't want them to slip back.

      Delete
    4. So, you can do what the Nat leadership has been unable to do, despite being asked numerous times, and name one progressive policy they have enacted.


      Please do.

      Delete
    5. No bridge tolls? Free prescriptions? Free tertiary education?

      All those not socialist enough, or too socialist?

      Delete
    6. Not really.

      Bridge tolls not exactly revolutionary or costly. Help a very few. Not the many.

      Free prescriptions. Were free or reduced for the 90% of the population who were in work, not on benefits, not pregnant, not pensioners, not students etc. anyway and only helps only 10% who previously could afford it. And the £60m used to subsidise the better off has been taken from other worthy health services such as cancer treatment.

      Labour removed up-front tuition fees. I approve of that.

      Delete
    7. What does 'not really' mean? You are not really a socialist anymore?

      Abolition of tolls 'not exactly revolutionary', as it only helped 'some' people.

      Ditto prescription fees; all those rich people waiting in the long queues at the health centre for all these free drugs had one thing in common with those poor folk.

      They too, had paid for them with their NI contributions.

      "Labour removed up-front tuition fees. I approve of that."

      So you disapprove of them voting for fees in England then?

      Delete
    8. Both are authoritarian political parties. They both look at our lives and see an apparently infinite number of things to ban. In the next election, I've heard that Labour's flagship policy will be to outlaw smoking in public parks whilst the SNP are fighting to ban wine gums because they glamorise alcohol for young people.

      So both parties are good on the micro.

      Delete
    9. Getting pissed on wine gums. That takes me back.

      Delete
    10. I knew that was a myth in Primary 7. Smoking banana skins now, that lasted to third year...

      Delete
  4. The bees build in the crevices
    Of loosening masonry, and there
    The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
    My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
    Come build in the empty house of the state.
    We are closed in, and the key is turned
    On our uncertainty; somewhere
    A man is killed, or a house burned,
    Yet no cleat fact to be discerned:
    Come build in he empty house of the stare.
    A barricade of stone or of wood;
    Some fourteen days of civil war;
    Last night they trundled down the road
    That dead young soldier in his blood:
    Come build in the empty house of the stare.
    We had fed the heart on fantasies,
    The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
    More Substance in our enmities
    Than in our love; O honey-bees,
    Come build in the empty house of the stare.

    WB Yeats - extract from Meditations in Time of Civil War (1928)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your old man caused a fight in an Irish pub?

    I'm shocked...shocked I tell ye.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Andrew: 'in Scotland, increasingly, I wonder if we aren't drifting quietly towards our own - peaceful - sort of civil war politics, with the splits and divisions of the 2014 referendum running deep, papering over the more significant political splits which untie and divide the country.'

    I lived in west Waterford by the Cork border for a while in the 60s - outwardly all very peaceful, but gradually you became aware of the undercurrents - one of my neighbours had arranged the killing of the father of another neighbour and so on. Later, when I read the novels of Sebastian Barry, it all came back.

    The important distinction was not between FF and FG of course but between the fair dealers and the gombeen men - corrupt men of all parties and none, who flourished in the fields of God's Country.

    At that time another Civil War legacy was fading in the US south. Once it would have been unimaginable for southern whites to vote Republican - now it is normal.

    And so in our own ungodly land, it looks as if the new normal in the west central belt will be to vote SNP and not Labour - not terribly surprising if so, but will be an absorbing struggle.

    The struggle in the north east - the lands we called in the now distant pre-referendum days, the SNP heartlands - looks like being between the SNP and the Tories. The first round in that fight has happened already, and the SNP won it last week, taking a Tory council seat and taking it well.

    The funny thing about that battle is that the SNP likes to pretend the Tories are extinct in Scotland - so they are fighting a foe who in their own mind does not exist,

    Imaginary parameters, real struggles - the battle ground of Scottish politics is getting like Marianne Moore's definition of poetry - 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "The struggle in the north east - the lands we called in the now distant pre-referendum days, the SNP heartlands - looks like being between the SNP and the Tories"

      You mean like it has been in quite literally every election since the 1970s...? Moray, Banff and Angus had been solid Tory since the 1920s until the SNP broke their hold in 1974.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. ( that post was illiterate deleted it)

      But the Liberal / now Lib Dem vote was always a factor in those elections - that seems for now to have evaporated, so the fight in the north east looks to be even more of a two way fight between Tories and SNP (which way will the LibDem voters go?) just as much as the west central belt does between Labour and SNP.

      Interestingly Labour took Midlothian East last week and I have seen it suggested that they got a lot of Tory second preferences.

      We are in new electoral territory and May is going to bring a fair few shocks - for all the parties I think.



      Delete
    4. The I-haven't-a-clue-General-Election.

      It is going to be one entertaining night for the political anorak. I'll put the sausage rolls on.

      Delete
    5. Veggie ones for me but I'll bring my own - the Linda McCartney ones are not brilliant.

      Delete
    6. Heresy! Take a black pudding one, in the alternative. Am pretty sure that's chock full of vegetably goodness.

      Delete
  7. This is a fascinating article about the tribal roots of the FF/FG division in Irish politics, based on statistical analysis:

    http://noworsoon.com/639

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My pleasure. The Byrne and O'Malley research papers that suggest the difference dates back to the Norman invasion are intriguing. Ireland is indeed sui generis.

      Delete
  8. Surely Labour would be the UDA?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I do apologize young peaty fiddler; the arrogant, asinine, assertions by one of your avid followers fair scunnered me.

    I shall try and not let such blethers to influence my jottins in yonder.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I believe in full equitabilityness even if it isn't a word, and from that point of view if eyebrows are to be raised at Murphy as leader of the Labour branch office because of his part in the referendum then equitably eyebrows should be raised at Sturgeon as leader of the SNP because of her part in the referendum.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Interesting new political spectrum poll has Labour voters at 4.1 in Scotland closer to the average Scottish voter at 4.4 than SNP voters at 3.9
    http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/trading-places-left-right-placement-in-scotland-by-professor-phil-cowley/#.VJkw2F4iA

    ReplyDelete
  12. merry xmas LPW

    2015

    Union

    "to be on the back foot"in retreat; to be at a disadvantage and under pressure, responding.

    ReplyDelete