How to be neutral ( but not annoy people)

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Don’t you just loath the Swiss? Not only because they are responsible for cuckoo  clocks or are disgustingly clean and brain-numbingly boring. But because in World War Two, they remained neutral.  That’s why you’ll  see constant references to their cowardliness in the British press.

And then there’s Ireland. Or rather, the twenty-six southern counties of Ireland. They too opted out of World War Two. Can you get much more cowardly than that? Happy to take the benefits that flowed from success by the Allies. Happy to live in a free Europe, not one dominated by German power and ideology. But yellow-bellied when it came to putting Irish boots into the Normandy invasion.

But hold.We live in better times. Paddy Smyth, the Foreign Policy expert of the Irish Times, says that the south has been accepted as neutral by the  EU. So no sending of young lads to protect EU interests as part  of an EU army.  At the same time, he says, “given Ireland’s political commitment to the EU and its integrity, it seems to me inconceivable that Ireland would not voluntarily join in the defence of any member under attack.”

Wise words. We’ve seen how the Irish government has stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of Greece (an EU member) when it was under concerted attack.  The fact that the attacking was being done by the EU is neither here nor there. Nor that the EU attack was led, ironically, by Germany. Ireland voluntarily stood up for Greece.

Paddy Smyth has also explained to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions  that the provision of Shannon Airport for both the Afghan and Iraq-related troop transporting flights is “consistent politically and legally with both the spirit of our neutrality and our commitment to multilateral security through the UN”.

So isn’t that a relief? You feel so rotten when you let down your nearest neighbour, don’t you? Not to mention the rest of Europe. And I haven’t even mentioned the Americans yet. But sure the feeding and watering at Shannon of rendition flights must go some way to making the Americans think kindly towards us.

In the end, you could say that the twenty-six counties is a slightly-neutral state.

6 Responses to How to be neutral ( but not annoy people)

  1. Iolar July 19, 2015 at 1:42 pm #

    Time out

    This part of the world has a lot to learn from Switzerland, one of the world’s oldest surviving republics. Attempts by Switzerland’s Nazi Party to create an Anschluss with Germany failed because of Switzerland’s rich multicultural heritage, a proud sense of national identity, combined with a tradition of democracy and civil liberties. Yes, there is evidence of large private fortunes held by local and foreign persons, however, the Gini Index suggests that there is more inequality in Britain and America than in Switzerland. Swiss clocks are one hour ahead of us and 3015 years in cultural terms.

  2. Seán McGouran July 19, 2015 at 2:47 pm #

    Begod Iolar, that’s a bit rough.
    Switzerland outside the cities smells of old-fangled cow dung, which is used to fertilise the fields. So far as contrasts between it and Ireland are concerned Switzerland is nearly eight centuries old as a state or political entity.
    I. e., it became a state roughly about the same time as Ireland was becoming the property of the King of England.
    The Nazis used its money landing facilities – wasn’t the compensation for the ‘accidental’ bombing of Dublin in 1940 (’41?) paid via Switzeland?

  3. ben madigan July 19, 2015 at 4:06 pm #

    totally off topic with this info Jude – hope you will forgive me- but I think the news is important –

    The australian TV programme 60 minutes has just broadcast a film about pedophilia, child rape and murder. One of the main witnesses is a man who was from kincora Boys home. People can watch the programme here

    https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/who-murdered-and-raped-british-children-part-2/

  4. sherdy July 19, 2015 at 5:23 pm #

    Jude, what was the point in Germany losing the first and second world wars, and now we in Ireland are being ruled by Frau Fuhrer Merkel?
    We could have saved ourselves all the 30mn deaths, trouble and countless expense, and been much better off financially, and no different politically without going to war twice.
    Paddy Smyth reckons that Ireland would answer the call to arms if any EU member was ‘under attack’.
    We should be very careful there as the Ukraine is now an EU member and is a pawn in the power play between Obama and Putin,
    Should we go to war because Obama wants to annex Ukraine by proxy, in the name of the EU, just because Putin annexed Crimea, which of course has a 90% Russian population and had no objection of returning to its former home.
    You seem to think that Ireland supported Greece.
    Nothing could be further from the truth, as we had Noonan and wee Enda hectoring and lecturing them at every opportunity, in their campaign to show Frau Merkel what good Europeans they are. And also the fact that had Greece got debt relief or any other sweetener all opposition parties in Ireland would have been able to pillory Ireland for paying off all the German banks in full.
    Rendition flights – Paddy Smyth thinks it is consistent with our neutrality to co-operate with the US in their rendition flights, which have the sole purpose of harassment, torture and sometimes the death of the prisoners on these planes who have never even had a charge or a trial in a court of law under God knows what law!

    • Virginia July 23, 2015 at 12:50 am #

      No, she is not.

  5. Perkin Warbeck July 19, 2015 at 5:29 pm #

    You mention the feeding and watering at Shannon, Esteemed Blogmeister.

    There was a lot of that going on there as recently as this week when a sculpture was unveiled in the airport: the feeding of egos and the south-watering myth of Munster sport.

    The sculpture is based on a photo taken during ‘one of the great Irish moments in the new millennium of O’Connell being heisted by two of his Irish team-mates (from Munster, as it happened), marking a symbolic new chapter in Anglo-Irish relations when Ireland met England in a rugby game for the first time ever in the HQ of the GAA’.

    The only blemish on that great Irish moment (not just an Irish sporting moment, mind) was the failure of the GAA to revert to the original name of Hill 16. That would have been Hill 60 in commemoration of the gallant and non-neutral members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who bit the dust on the hill of the same name in Gallipoli, 1915. At the going down of the sun and in the morning.

    -‘Among the guests of honour at the unveiling was one Sean Kelly,Uasal, former President of the GAA and now Fine Gael MEP for, yes, Munster. It was during his, erm, distinguished presidency that the ban of non-GAA games in Croke Park was lifted’.

    Note the way the b for ban word is sneakily inserted there, with all the panache of a skillful scrumhalf throwing the egg into a scrum. It might be said that the critically acclaimed Kelly in the eyes of the non-neutral media fulfills the role of a pet President of the GAA similar to the one played by the pet priests of the RC. It affords the non-n. media the figleaf of fairness.

    His stock as the President of the GAA (Grab All Association) rose to Dizzy Gillespie heights with his blank refusal to take the easy option, the quid in return for the quo. The ban on GAA games in the Aviva (ne Lansdowne Road) is still in rigid effect.

    Though a diminutive man in his street clothes, Sean Kelly MEP is truly a political giant, who strides the European stage like a Colossal. This was evidenced by the way he courageously pilloried the feckless Greeks last week. Truly is he a Pillar of Hercules.

    He showed his courage in another way, which demands not to go unremarked.

    A Kerryman, he might have pushed the claims of another O’Connell, his fellow Kerryman. That would be Mick O’Connell whose elegant leaps for a high ball provoked two memorable images: salmon-like in the case of his leaps; snow-covered in the case of the ball.

    But, no: Sean Kelly the European Stateman opted for the statemsmanlike position rather than the mere political and parochial one.

    Even though this meant choosing the housepainter over the artist as a subject for the Shannon sculpture. For, a high catch in rugby compared to a high catch in mere bogball is l akin to, say, Valeriy Brumel, the legendary Russian highjumper western rolling over the bar in his prime or taking in his retirement, a ten foot stepladder, held in position by two dogsbodies, to clear the same bar.

    But, then, opting for one O’Connell over another O’Connell, Mick over Paulie, would scarcely have forwarded the Oirish bid for the Egg-chasing World Cup, one solitary inch in the, erm, hard yards that have yet to be traversed..

    It is at iconic moments like this that the genuine, gold-standard Statesmanlike gesture shines through.

    To conclude with a diminuendo, by downsizing from a river to a brook, from the Shannon to Rupert.

    In a corner of the non-neutral National Irish War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge, Dublin 14-18, there stands a domed temple. And on the floor of this domed temple is etched a quatrain from a poem by a doomed Rupert Brooke.

    He was the young poet whom W.B. Yeats (and old Willie B. was one to know) once described, as ‘the handsomest young man in England’.

    Alas, the opening lines from his most famous poem (‘The Soldier’) were not the chosen lines, which is rather unfortunate. As their aptness is there for all to see:

    ‘If I should die, then only think this of me:
    That there’s some corner of a foreign field
    That is for ever England’.

    Mind you, old Willie B. might not necessarily agree with that posthumous, geographical assertion. Knowing more today what may or may not lie in Drumcliffe boneyard beneath Bare Ben Bulben than we did this day last week.

    Hold your horses there, horseman.