It’s ironic that Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government should have done this particular study. The research looks at the US predilection for political dynasties – the most outstanding examples in recent times being the Bush dynasty and the, um, Kennedy dynasty. The study suggests that there’s a liking for dynasties because they carry a flavour of political nostalgia but particularly because it excuses voters from the bother of having to think about the issues. If the name is right, it gets the vote.
It’s true not just in the US. The present Taoiseach got his seat in the Dail in 1975 when his father Henry Kenny died and left the seat vacant. Enda is a former primary school teacher: other than that I’m not sure what qualifications he had for the job. But there’s no doubt about it – the name Kenny was a core factor in launching his political career.
I was with a group of Mayo people over the weekend and there was a slideshow of photographs. It included one of me standing beside Mr Kenny and I could feel the buzz of approval at the sight of the Mayoman ( although maybe muted a bit by my inclusion). Mayo people are very proud of having a fellow-county man as Taoiseach. What he has done or proposes to do in the office seems almost unimportant.
Which brings me to yesterday morning, when Enda Kenny honoured a fellow Mayoman called Louis Brennan. He’s been lying in an unmarked grave in London for years and the ceremony in Kensal Green in north London included the unveiling of a new gravestone. What other qualities besides being a Mayoman makes Louis Brennan worthy of this honour? Well he was an inventor. Notably he invented the torpedo. Some other things too but principally the torpedo. “His drive was always to imagine” Enda said, and added that his spirit of “why and what if” is what’s needed in Irish universities today.
Mmm. One might ask “Why did Louis Brennan invent the torpedo?” The answer is obvious: to kill people. Thanks to Louis Brennan’s invention, 1,198 people died on The Lusitania, 275 on The Belgrano, and some 9,400 men with the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. Which in toto approaches the 10,000 dead-men mark. What if Brennan hadn’t invented the torpedo? No doubt other means would have been devised to kill these people and thousands of others. But that’s a bit like saying to a crazed killer “Look, I know you’re going to find a weapon somewhere, so why don’t you use this fine machete that I’ve made myself?”
And there was me thinking Enda was agin violence to achieve political ends. There’s another illusion torpedoed.
You couldn`t make it up, do these people actually think before speaking? There is an obsequious, grovelling attitude towards the USA and indeed Britain shown by certain members of the Free State ruling class. It`s as if they are saying,` please do not hate us for being small, we can contribute to your war chest, not just in terms of suckers sorry soldiers who fight for you but also in the occasional invention of a weapon of death.` Embarrassing doesn`t begin to cover it. Hope it wasn`t an Irishman who invented the rubber bullet.
methinks Enda has a portait of Bush senior and junior on his wall. I guess what is hardest me to fathom is the hypocrisy of it all. Dublin bends over for England’s head, the same women who decoretd the perpetrators of Bloody Sunday. Kenny goes out of his way to assail gerry Adams on everything from the disappeared to global warming. Can not one politician ever think” If i put aside all the party politics and really push for a unified state that would benefit all, that would be a great legacy,”
Question for Mr Kenny: If company X called in the morning and offered to build a huge factory that would employ a thousand workers making plastic bullets, would you accept?”
My bet is “Yes”
paul
Sadly this is true of most governments. Do you imagine a SF government would be some kind of socialist utopia with swords beaten into ploughshares?
We have seen they are quite prepared to get in bed with US governments when it suits their purposes, and their military wing was happy to get arms from Gadaffi, not to mention those famous historic links with the Nazis.
Still, maybe they’ve changed.
Sure didn`t the UVF get their weapons from Germany? Also I think Glenn Barr of the UDA has a Libyan stamp on HIS ( no doubt British…) passport.
Yes but that only further illustrates my point surely?
I thought Jude’s initial point was about the sanctimonious nature of Enda Kenny and others within the Irish government and their parliamentary party rather than links with unsavoury characters or regimes. Cultivating links with Gaddafi’s cruel regime has been well-documented but I don’t think Sinn Féin claim to be whiter than white like so many of their critics in the southern Establishment claim to be.
Louis Brennan’s invention was the ‘Brennan Torpedo’ – a coastal defence technology employed to defend and protect harbours in Britain, Ireland, Hong Kong and Malta – from about 1900.
It was not a weapon used in the circumstances and instances described above.
Early descriptives of the torpedo can be found as long ago as 1275 in the writings of Hassan al-Rammah (Syria). It is far from being a new or recent innovation – but Louis Brennan’s was superior in design and function in a coastal defence role over what had existed previously.
Worthy too that he commercialised this for a considerable sum. Inventing and successful commercialisation are two very different horses.
Enda was right in signposting the achievements of Louis Brennan referencing modern Ireland and in holding Louis Brennan as a role model for ‘inventiveness’ generally in Ireland and by the Irish. It was right and honourable that Enda, many diaspora and both British and Australians stood proudly and saluted a great Irish mind – an inventive genius – a Mayo man. May we produce very many more like him. I was proud to be there at his grave last week and to pay my own respects to the man.
Phew – that’s a weight of my mind. I thought Brennan was the inventor of a Bad Torpedo, and here all the time it was a Good Torpedo, with no doubt instructions on the side stating ‘Cuation: to be used against evil people only’. I can’t wait to tell the wife. Thanks, Pol.