So – what do you think? Will Joan Burton lead her party to a bright new tomorrow? She’s their new leader and she’s made a stirring beginning: she’s said she wouldn’t go into government with Sinn Féin. If that doesn’t bring support flooding her way , I can’t think what will.
The thing about Joan is – and I know it’s unfair – but when I see and hear her, I can’t help thinking of the Mario Rosenstock take-off of her, which kind of takes away from her natural dignity a bit. But anyway, I’m sure Labour know what they’re doing. Eamon Gilmore? Bad news, people can’t stand him apparently. Right then, let’s replace him with someone new and dynamic and popular. Joan Burton? Right.
And Fine Gael are getting their half-time oranges as well. The new Minister for Foreign Affairs (stop curling your lip like that, Virginia – Foreign Affairs naturally means he’s going to be responsible for the north) has been declared to be one Charlie Flanagan. Charlie’s father was a TD too. Oliver J Flanagan. Made a famous maiden speech in the Dail in 1943, in the course of which…how shall I put this…he expressed a certain admiration for the Germans in their handling of the Jewish question. But relax – Charlie’s not one bit like that. In fact, if you check the 2011 list of “Friends of Israel”, you’ll find Charlie is prominent among same. So you could say he was actively involved in foreign affairs before he became Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Now – which enterprising RTÉ journalist will ask him his views on what’s happening in Gaza these days? Maybe someone from the Indo, even. The words “fire” and “frying-pan” come to mind.
Morning Jude,
The more wisdom. I seek, the more things make sense to me? I sort of understand why my great grandparents would have wanted nothing to do with this Irish government. Still today the Irish are playing catch up. And dropping all that superstitious mumbo jumbo. God forgive you’s for the things you’s have said about the Jews? If you believe in God, this was all mapped out as he had to die on the cross. They are his chosen people, and when Israel ceases to exist, that will be the end of the world.
I think my attitude toward Catholics has gone into reverse mode, at the speed of light.
I knew you took advantage of the war when England was fighting the nazis, but this has really shocked me.
JAN
18
Oliver J. Flanagan of Laois-Offaly and the Dáil Éireann 1943
The only photograph I am able to locate at present showing Oliver J. Flanagan. He is the dark-haired gentleman back and left-center.
“There has been a tendency within Irish historiography to depict anti-Semitic outbursts within national politics or within Catholic discourse as atypical. Figures like Fr. Creach, Eoin O’Duffy, Charles Bewley, Oliver J. Flanigan, Fr Fahy or Stephen Coughlan can be portrayed as unrepresentative, yet they articulated anti-Semitisms shared by some key decision-makers and, arguabley, with Irish society more generally.” [Bryan Fanning. Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 82
In my uncle’s blog, a lively discussion has ensued regarding anti-Semitism in Irish officialdom and whether such a legacy impacts Ireland’s current stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the Irish participants in this discussion made detailed comments and remarks, some of which are excerpted below (the third excerpt might require some additional context).
‘The wedding of Devotionalism and Nationalism which occured following the revolutionary period was motivated by a desire to heal old Civil War wounds and a genuine zeal by most participants to replace all remnants of ‘Anglican’ culture with a purile Gaelic, Catholic culture. The Catholicism of Fenianism was not a new idea but only now was it so blatant.”
And:
“When De Valera came to power in 1932 he represented a full swing in Irish politics. For De Valera had a decade earlier defied the popular will and joined the irregulars in the Civil War. He more than anyone else deeply embedded Catholicism in Irish public life.”
Lastly:
”You may be right that there is a strong subconscious element of Jew hatred in Ireland. I simply don’t believe this. There is no evidence for this.”
What about the hypothesis that deeply embedded political Catholicism, an expression of the wedding of Devotionalism and Nationalism, as you framed it, imbued many aspects of Irish public and private life with “a strong subconscious element of Jew hatred?”
I am struck, for example, by the early career of Mr. Oliver J. Flanagan. Here is a brief synopsis of his bio drawn from Wikipedia:
Mr. Oliver J. Flanagan (22 May 1920 –26 April 1987) was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served in the Dail Eireann for forty-three years and was Minister of Defense for six months. He was elected to the Dáil fourteen times between 1943 and 1982, topping the poll on almost every occasion. He was Father of Dáil from 1981 until his retirement in 1987, and he remains one of the longest serving members in the history of the Dáil. (Wiki)
During Mr. Flanagan’s debut speech before the Dáil in 1943, in which an Emergency Measures Bill was being debated, he made the following remarks which are excerpted below:
“Mr. Flanagan: I should like to co-operate with the Government or with any Party that I believed was going to introduce legislation in the best interests of the Irish nation. I should like very much to be in a position to support any measure brought forward in this House with that object, but I am very sorry that I cannot associate myself with this Bill or with anything relating to the public safety measures introduced by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government or by the present Fianna Fáil Government because I have seen that most of these Emergency Acts were always directed against Republicanism. How is it that we do not see any of these Acts directed against the Jews, who crucified Our Saviour nineteen hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week? How is it that we do not see them directed against the Masonic Order? How is it that the I.R.A. is considered an illegal organisation while the Masonic Order is not considered an illegal organisation? You do not hear one word in these Acts against the banks who are robbing the people, right, left and centre. I told the electors in Leix-Offaly that the banks were robbers. The police were listening to me. Does the Minister for Justice think that, if the banks were not robbers, the police would have allowed me to make that statement in public without attempting to make me prove it? This Government is introducing an Emergency Powers Bill now to prevent the suffering masses of the Irish people from ridding themselves or the poverty, emigration, debt, seizures and a thousand and one other national ills which I could continue to enumerate in this House until this day-week, but I do not propose to waste your precious time doing so.”
And further on during the same address (outburst?):
“I want to ask that the Emergency Powers Order which prevents the division of land from taking place, be immediately lifted. The Minister for Lands wrote me some time ago to say that there was not sufficient staff in the Land Commission to deal with the division of land. How is it that there are thousands of well educated young men being forced to take the emigrant ship, not from Galway Bay or Cobh this time to take them to the greater Ireland beyond the Atlantic, but to take them from Dun Laoghaire and Rosslare to the land beyond the Irish Sea, the land of our traditional enemy, to help England in her war effort against Germany? There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair’s breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money. I do not propose to detain the House further. I propose to vote against such Orders and actions, and I am doing so on Christian principles. The Minister for Justice could not give me a straight answer a few moments ago. I am sorry that I interrupted him in the heat of the discussion. Of course, one needs great patience to listen to what is going on. I know very well that even the clergy in the Minister’s constituency are up against him.”
Source: Dáil Éireann – Volume 91 – 09 July, 1943
Emergency Powers (Continuance) Bill, 1943—Second Stage (Resumed).
Link: http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0091/D.0091.194307090010.html
Mr. Flanagan stood for election in 1943 running on a Monetary Reform ticket associated in a broader sense with the Social Credit party. Mr. Flanagan’s version of this party, small and said to be confined to his own constituency of Laois-Offaly, adhered to a an ideology that working-class Ireland was dominated by a Jew-Masonic system.
As your survey of Irish history demonstrates, Mr. Flanagan’s remarks made in 1943 are rather singular, even for Ireland at that time. Nevertheless, are historians to simply dismiss such episodes out of hand? One can not help but observe that during the course of this debate in 1943 no other Irish politician rose to rebuke Mr. Flanagan. Was this episode an example of “subconscious [cultural] Jew hatred?” Was such public discourse made acceptable within the context of a Catholic educational system that, for all its merits, bore the strong imprint of centuries of anti-Jewish dogma? Is one justified in viewing Mr. Flanagan’s remarks as a public expression of a significant segment of Irish society privately believed at that time?
If one admits this possibility, one must confront the fact that Mr. Flanagan continued to hold political office for forty-three years. Thus, the Flanagan speech, taken with the Hitler Condolence episode, in conjunction with Mr. Walshe’s tenure in the Office of External Affairs, juxtaposed against Ireland’s diplomatic policy toward Israel, indicate that there is evidence of a subconscious expression of Jew hatred within the institutions of Irish public life, particularly within the generation in which Ireland’s independent national public institutions were born and formed.
One may further note that these traces of anti-Jewish bias, perhaps the result of deeply embedded Catholicism in Irish public and private life, only begins to fade as the principal actors in this aspect of Ireland’s history begin to exist from the stage.
Only with the passing of that generation, let us say, since the early 1990s, has it been possible for Ireland to move beyond this cultural legacy toward a distancing from political Catholicism and its embedded biases. Nevertheless, this is a slow and uneven process and the question remains – how much of these deeply ingrained attitudes remain?
Kind Regards.
Posted 18th January 2009 by David Pelfrey
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Norma, I don’t want to constantly seem as if I am picking holes in your arguments, but you say –
“Still today the Irish are playing catch up. And dropping all that superstitious mumbo jumbo.”
Then follow it up two sentences later with –
“They are his chosen people, and when Israel ceases to exist, that will be the end of the world.”
Can you see the contradiction here?
Ms Burton may advise us what she will not do. Time will tell what she will actually do. At present, she is busy with concerts in Dublin. Why should she worry about radical nationalism undermining imperial control in various locations throughout the world? Why should she worry about the the fact that the Israeli Defence Forces and the C.I.A. continue to violate international laws with impunity? Why should she worry about the dispossession and extermination of the indigenous population in Gaza? Perhaps, when she has a moment, she might reflect on the demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
It is said that one of the saddest afflictions that can be inflicted on a man (it does not apply to women because there is no such thing as a ‘comedienne’- fact) is to be born with a comedian’s face but without a funny bone in one’s body.
Charles Flanagan is one of the afflicted. For, in the course of a long and TDious career as a public servant he has never, EVER, been known to crack wise, smile or even essay an effort at a subdued guffaw itself. Could you blame him, you might well ask.
No Buddy Hackett he, for sure. Buddy, with whom Charles bears more than a passing facial resemblance with that scrunched up physog of his – was a stand up wag well known in Las Vegas and other oases of show biz besides. You only had to look at Buddy to burst into laughter; you only had to listen to Buddy to burst into the laughter uncontrollable.
Charles Flanagan, TD, Minister of Foreign Affairs does not have that effect on folk and other onlookers.
But, wait, there’s Charles – and there’s Charlie. One is the public face of the Flanagan persona while Charlie is the private face of the F.p. This Charlie, believe you me, is one fun-guy. Ok, not in the Buddy class (come on, just how many could hack it with Hackett as an unflagging gag-man?) but still, a mini- riot in his own way,, not unlike, come to think of it, the one that greeted the visit of Anthony Armstrong-Jones and his wife, younger, resentful sis to M’am,, to the town of Abbeyleix in the Queen’s County.in a former century.
I know this from first ear experience. During my long and illustrious career in the Clock Watching unit of the Civil Service one of the benefits in kind was to be able to eavesdrop on the Festive Season shindigs (official not provisional) of the political parties, but especially the Fine Gael of Laughter one. (Keyhole Kate, one’s immediate boss, passed on all I know to me, her underling, but not, mind, all SHE knew).
And this is when the inner Charlie came into his own. His party piece was performed in tandem with another unlikely comedian, the aptly named Shatter. It consisted in doing the soft shoe shuffle of Shoneenism even while they crooned a medley of old, yes, Flanagan and Alan numbers: everything from ‘Run, Rabbit, Run’ (apt, how apt) to ‘We’re going to hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line’ (composed, one understands, by a p. little boy from Omagh) .What a hoot that pair are ! Or, rather, were.
Ironic, therefore, that the promotion of Flanagan (his stage name) was facilitated by the demotion of Alan (ditto), thus breaking up one of THE funniest duos ever in the Crazy Gang known as the Blueshirts.
The damage to the nation’s health (remember: laughter is the best medicine) has been collateral. Thus, it is left to one, one alone, to sing the greatest hit of those arch-West Brits, if not West Bankers,, Flanagan and Alan:
‘Underneath the Arches, on cobble stones I lie
Every night you’ll find me, tired out and worn
Happy when the daylight comes creeping
Heralding the dawn’
The solo nocturnal singer is, sadly, Tones, the former Knight of the Realm who failed to keep either the wolf or indeed Wolf Tone from the door. The first word of the last line refers to the Herald which used to have the prefix Evening. Now, that the hill of unsold back numbers of the Sunday (titter ye not) Independent has begun to dwindle, prey to the p-ssing rain and just plain p-ss into a soggy morass, the Herald has been called into play as a provider of warmth.
And as if trying to keep warm during the long night of the soul for the Knight with no soles in his patent leather brogues underneath the arch of a bridge on the west bank of the (yes) Royal Canal (loyal ot the end) some heartless prankster substituted the last remaining Sindos from the exposed toin of the Head Honcho of Heinz (former) with, yes, a hillock of unsold past numbers of the Beano.
Thus, was the sympathetic company of Eyelash O’Handjob and Eoghan ‘Love-Bomber’ Harris, aka Eoghainin na n-Aontachtoiri, withdrawn to be replaced by the smelly likes of Denis the Drug Menace, Methalated Minnie the Minx, those sad, aging refugees from Artane Reformatory, the Bash Street Gang, and the recidivist supreme, Roger the Dodger.
Underneath the arches with this lot of me feiners is what one can truly call ‘a cold house’.
Never was a sadder word spoken.
It is of note that Repubicans here feel more of an affinity to the plight of the Palestinians in Ireland and our Unionist fellow countrymen and women, generally, though not exclusively feel a kindred symbiosis with the ‘Besieged’ Israelis. There are many contadictions in rhe Rationale used by Unionists in their overt display of support for Apartheid Israel. Many, many Loyalists are far Right and anti-Semitic in thier outlook. The Fenians put up Palestinian Flags and their usual reactionary antipathy to everything ‘them’ kicks in. This is one reactiin as to why, there are others re Unionists supporting clear abuses by the Palestinians within thier clutches, and others outside them. Another notable tyranny that also recieved widespread Unionist approval, though I stress far from all, was Aparthied South Africa, from which the Loyalists recieved a mass of weapons from MI5 with their agent Brian Nelson. Thatcher supported this Regime. It is hard not to see how irrational rumps of Unionism would not follow suit. Israel, Aparthied South Africa and the sourhern Bible Belt of Dixie have almost exclusively been the sole Confederates supporting Orange Fascism here. Why? Because simply Who Else Would?
An old Uni friend of mine told me when growing up,-before ‘Enlightened’ against such Doggeral, they would be worked over in Christian Sermons relentlessly with the analogy of the Unionists in Ireland/Ulster being the Chosen People, surrounded and besieged bt a Sea of hostile Philistines…..Any questions as to why in many of the protestant denominations the Congregation are so conditioned to irrationalism….? As for the plight of the Palestinians, the vast majority of the Worlds Governments endorse resolution after resolution condemning Israeli aggression, War Crimes and Human Rights abuses….with of course a couple of notable exceptions though quite significant if you happen to be the only Super Power in the World” who regularly abstains….close nieghbor with a fraught relationship with us Irish over the Centuries…..and the Unionists with Palestinian Flags and Dixie keep darkie out……Progressives as always….keep the Israeli Flags fluttering at Twaddle, but hide those Nazi tatooes from the Cameras….Irrationalism and Hatred in the fists and knuckles of Reactionaries does indeed have a tenancy to contradict itself.
Re-read and meant Israeli, not Palestinian Clutches. The Palestinians have very limited scope regarding military cababilities in this very lop-sided ‘War’. Liked your post Jude.
My mistake Jude, I inadvertantly wrote this in response to a prior article of yours on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I cannot cut and paste in my phone do feel free to erase of course.
Charlie objected to SF TDs wearing easter lilies in Leinster house.He said he found the emblems offensive.I wonder did he find his own oul boy’s comments offensive?