Both my wife and I can clearly remember where we were when we heard of the disaster at Aberfan in 1966. She was in University in Aberystwyth, and I,
(who was not to meet her until two years later), was visiting Belfast (from London) to see a young person studying at Queen’s University. The Aberfan disaster impacted on the minds of great numbers of people at the time and on the lives of thousands who are still alive today whose memories are still clear and worthy of respect.
Imagine somebody aged 8, or 5 today, asked some decades hence, to reflect on the disaster, who chose to ignore that event, and the evidence
of the survivors and eyewitnesses but instead wrote about how they remembered its 50th Anniversary. And imagine 50 years from now, on its 100th
Anniversary when all who now remember the disaster are dead, only the bogus accounts are deemed worthy of repetition. Such a travesty would mock
the living and the dead and convert a tragedy into farce.
To Fintan O’Toole and Fergal Keane the Irish people’s long struggle for mastery of their own country, its resources and destiny was but a trouble of fools and
they “could not be arsed” to do the research necessary to write informed and balanced commentary on it. Keane sneers at Ireland and her people from his
well remunerated mountain of ignorance. O’Toole is no better. Asked to explain the historical context of the 1916 Rising, the motives and actions of its participants,and its outcome, O’Toole can write only about Fintan O’Toole in 1966 when he was 8 years old. The survivors of the Rising, insurgents and civilians alike, were all about him in 1966 and had together since 1916 established by hard work, endurance and heroism, in the teeth of a terrorist empire, a sovereign and democratic Irish State.That State had inherited the worst slums in Europe and rehoused most of their occupants in decent housing,
eleven years after the 1916 Rising it had completed the largest hydro-electric scheme in the world,and had many other achievements to its credit. It had
played a constructive role in the League of Nations, urging the League to honour its charter when Japan seized Manchuria and Italy invaded Abyssinia.
De Valera said he’d ask Dail Eireann to commiit Irish troops in Abyssinia’s defence in support of the League, but its big powers,Britain and France reneged
on their League obligations.
A child of eight might be forgiven for not saluting Ireland’s achievements. But not an enfranchised citizen with intellectual pretensions and avowedly marxist leanings, such as O’Toole.
I suppose FOT was also a product of a different time .A few years make a lot of difference, intellectual or not. He was a child of eight , after all ,and lived in a very different world , with many different concerns. As a fourteen year old myself in 1966, the events of Aberfan in Wales possibly impacted even more on my teenage self than anything to do with the 50th Anniversary of the Rising , I have to say. Of course part of that is that I remember being asked to write an essay about the tragedy in class, as we all identified with the lost school-children and i suppose it was how our teacher thought we might deal with such an event in our developing minds.Earlier we had to do something similar when JFK was killed in Dallas and the following year ,in the Spring of 1967 there was the Torrey Canyon oil-spill to record too. I don’t ever remember the anniversary of the 1916 Rising being mentioned at all and I don’t believe we were asked to record it, but many were politicised ,scant years later, by the mad over-reaction to the Civil Rights marches on the streets in front of our eyes. We knew there really was something wrong by then and there was no escaping it.That was the background for us, but if truth be told we were probably even more interested in pop music and unattainable girls at that point in time.
Cool it, Paddy!
An adult, a professional paid commentator, when asked to give an adult’s comment on the
Rising, should do so or decline the invitation.
O’Toole could only write about himself, revealing his narcissism
Or maybe his lack of knowledge,,,