Ireland needs to grow up - Queen Elizabeth's visit to Ireland
Posted on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 10:55 AM
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At the risk of getting a pasting, here goes: I fully welcome the Queen’s visit to Ireland in May, or whenever it is she’s coming.
You’d think in an Ireland that has done a lot of growing up in years passed this would go without saying, and for the vast majority of people it probably won’t be an issue, but already I can hear the hysterical cavalry saddling up. Within days of the announcement, I began hearing all sorts of reasons why she shouldn’t come: the expense, the worry that her coming will cause trouble, or simply because she’s the Queen. None of these pass muster.
First of all, why so hostile? When it boils down to it, the Queen is just another head of state, like Mary McAleese with a room full of jewels, visiting a neighbouring country, as heads of state are wont to do. And if the notion that the Queen is “just another head of state” horrifies you, why on earth would it? Even when the Anglo-Irish relationship was at its most fractious, the Queen’s role in the defining moments of The Troubles was negligible. It’s not as if she ordered the introduction of internment without trial, ordered people shot on Bloody Sunday or took a horrifyingly obstinate line against the hunger strikers personally. In that respect the Queen is a victim of her position: she can’t speak out against government policy no matter how much she might abhor it, as all hell would break loose otherwise. If you have a gripe with, as Gerry Adams referred to them as, “legacy issues”, then blame Margaret Thatcher, or Jim Callaghan, or Harold Wilson, or Ted Heath. Not the woman who spends her days visiting factories and youth centres and Commonwealth countries.
Let’s consider that phrase Gerry Adams used in reference to the visit, actually. “Legacy issues”. I mean, where do you start with that one? Throughout the general election campaign I was critical of the way Micheal Martin insinuated Sinn Féin still had a whiff of dodginess about them, and how it was wholly disingenuous of him to encourage Sinn Féin into power-sharing and talking about a new future in the North while simultaneously intimating they weren’t fit for office and their old past in the South. Now sadly it seems Gerry has used that same act on the Queen. Given the fact power-sharing was delayed in the North for so long by the likes of the Democratic Unionist Party because of the legacy issues they had with Sinn Féin, it was a bizarre choice of words. Nearly two years ago to the day Martin McGuinness called the dissidents who killed the soldiers at Massarene Barracks “traitors”. That was a huge leap from the dark days of “These shootings are inevitable given the actions of the British Government”, or words to that effect. Why a woman in her eighties still bothers them so much is beyond me.
And then there’s the money issue. We can’t afford visits like this, apparently. An economic situation like ours will inevitably account for an increase in utilitarian deficit hawks, but the cost of such a trip would be miniscule compared to, say, the cost of buying and then storing voting machines. Then of course, the old Wilde maxim about the difference between price and value comes into play. Within the space of twelve months, we’ll have had the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland, and an unvarnished mea culpa from the British Government on Bloody Sunday. The Saville Report, incidentally, cost £200 million, a figure scorned by those on the troglodyte wing of the DUP. You can’t put a price on banishing old ghosts.
That the Queen coming would stir emotions is unsurprising, but it certainly isn’t logical. It is however a chance to show that Ireland doesn’t have to feel like a victim for the whole of its existence, that it can look at its past with acceptance and its future with hope, and that it can look its neighbour and former foe in the eye as equals. And even if the silent majority of Irish people don’t, as Ward Bond put it in The Quiet Man, “cheer like Protestants” during her visit, polite indifference would do much the same job. And if the loud minority could keep it down, the kind of people who shout “800 years ya c**t!” at an (Irish) DJ friend of mine with an English accent while he’s working, or who talk about the occupied six counties despite having never been further north than Athlone, that would be even better.
70 comments
slainte39 | Mar 14, 2011, 08:28 PM EDT
I'm not saying the Queen shouldn't or can't come...I just don't think such a big deal should be made of it...a small squib on page 4. My postings about the reasons for the hostlity about the visit is to point out that there is validity to this anger, whether in good taste or not. The debate over partition could go on forever. LOL at one point you made Dan, was calling Cromwell a "regicidist", probably the nicest thing he was ever called in Ireland...and that for only killing one king. I guess you would have to kill at least two kings to be a "regicidal maniac".
Good thing he's not around today or HM might have more problems than the disgruntled Irish.
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hancock | Mar 14, 2011, 07:03 PM EDT
When should England grow up?
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DanOLoingsigh | Mar 14, 2011, 06:18 PM EDT
SL39 - Strongbow was Norman Welsh, James Stuart was Scottish, Cromwell was a republican regicidist and Dutch King Billy was just Dutch. Your list illustrates that the history of Ireland and the relationship with our neighbours was far more complex than the ‘800 years of English oppression’ narrative allows. Sure there wasn’t much democracy around, that wasn’t how the world was in those days. I listened to today's ‘Liveline’, where a Dublin publican defended his ‘No Queen’ banner against other callers, trotting out all the reasons why the British Queen should stay away. Maybe he’s right, and we are not yet mature enough to handle a visit from an octogenarian lady who happens to represent our near neighbour?
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DanOLoingsigh | Mar 14, 2011, 03:50 PM EDT
slainte39 – Remember the Turkish invasion was provoked by the 1974 EOKA coup and the drive by the Greek Cypriots for Enosis, union with Greece, then run by a military Junta. Also you only have to look at all the abandoned CofI churches around the country to see a major population shift has occurred since independence. Fear of a loss of power by unionists would certainly have been a major motivation in not wanting to join the then Free State, but it was the lack of power that motivated the republican movement, so why would it not equally be of concern to unionists? As for Lloyd George, he had led Britain through the major trauma of the Great War, so I don’t know his motivation but the compromise may have looked the best option – he could argue that neither side got what they wanted, but each got enough to end hostilities for the time being.
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slainte39 | Mar 14, 2011, 03:25 PM EDT
I forgot to mention that the so-called one nation-2 islands (Ireland and Great Britain) concept of the United Kingdom was hardly conceived by a democratic vote as a means of achieving such, by the likes of Strongbow, 1st Queen Bess, James Stuart, Cromwell, Dutch King Billy, and all the rest. Only when the wrong was being righted did it become convenient to become "democratic"...in "the 6". More democratic if you were Protestant.
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slainte39 | Mar 14, 2011, 03:04 PM EDT
DanO-True, islands are shared, even tiny ones like St.Martin/St.Maarten, but it's much more the exception than the rule. How about Cyprus?..ethnic division forced by Turkey. My point is the transplanting of people by a conquering nation to make this situation
happen...not an Irish idea. My thinking is more like...Probably a good portion of Latvia would now be part of Russia, if the voting for independence had been done on a section by section basis, because of the transplanting. Borneo..a Dutch/English proposition; Hispañola(Haiti/Dominican Republic)..a French/Spanish proposition; Ireland..a UK/UK proposition (Griffiths signed with a gun to his head ..figuratively and almost literally).After the adjustment period following independence, Protestants in the Republic were just as well off as their Catholic brethren...maybe more so. It was a power grab, or fear of loss of power by a minority in one corner of the country. Lloyd-George couldn't have given at rat's arse about the Unionists...it was just the easiest and least expensive way out for London.
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DanOLoingsigh | Mar 14, 2011, 06:12 AM EDT
slainte39 – I agree you make a fair point, and I apologise that my last post did not acknowledge that. But I hope you can see that there is another, equally valid point of view. The pre-1922 UK was also an entity, of two neighbouring islands. The majority on one island, Ireland, decided to leave, a minority chose to stay in that union, and there lies the United Ireland dilemma. To achieve UI the reluctant unionists had to either be coerced, or persuaded, perhaps over a longer period. Extremist republicans chose coercion, and we can see the result. One can also cite the US Civil War as a war between neighbours with one side wanting lo leave a union, far more destructive, but rarely alluded to by Irish American posters. On islands, Borneo is shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, Hispaniola by Haiti and the Dom Rep.
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slainte39 | Mar 14, 2011, 04:32 AM EDT
DanO- Not exactly a good comparison as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were artificially created states resulting from the break-up of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Ethiopia and Eritrea were lumped together by Italian colonial aspirations and so forth...India/Pakistan was many states. So each case you mentioned has special cimcumstances, whereas Ireland was always considered one entity by the people who lived there (maybe many clans) and even by the colonial British government. Ireland is also an island which makes it more insular and isolated than the Balkanization countries. Maybe Indonesia/East Timor would be a close analogy as that also fell into religious differneces...Muslim/Catholic.
My point is apparent.
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greensod | Mar 13, 2011, 09:46 PM EDT
Ireland united and free,then and only then can the past be considered.This is still a work in progress.
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hancock | Mar 13, 2011, 04:56 PM EDT
i'm glad we agree.
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FallsRNat | Mar 13, 2011, 04:24 PM EDT
hancock - Northern Ireland is a failed gerrymandered welfare state, should fit in perfectly with the 26 counties - another failed gerrymandered welfare state
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hancock | Mar 13, 2011, 03:46 PM EDT
Why don't you tell me Realist?
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Sparklet | Mar 13, 2011, 03:10 PM EDT
SeamusMor, spoken like a real Irishman.
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hancock | Mar 13, 2011, 01:51 PM EDT
Northern Ireland is a failed gerrymandered welfare state.
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