We all change. Physically most certainly: the smooth skin and bright eye give way to the weary wrinkle and the rheumy pupil. Mentally too we change – we begin to forget names, become slower-thinking, give up on old problems that we once grappled forcefully with.
Attitudes are different, I think. There are those who, if they change in attitude, it’s in a downward direction: instead of moving on and developing, they drill down and display more pronounced forms of the attitude they always had. Two parties are displaying signs of that at the moment.
Bob Geldof is making much of the fact that he has handed back his award of Freedom of the City of Dublin because it was also granted to Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. He describes her as “a handmaiden of genocide” and says he couldn’t hold the award with such a one. Those who criticize him for this are dismissed as Sinn Féin people, which in Bob’s mouth is an insult.
For example, when people ask him why he hasn’t handed in his knighthood in Britain, since any number of unsavoury people have been knighted, he says it’s a “Sinn Féin non sequitur”. Which it’s clearly not. Sir Bob stands in the serried ranks with such as Sir Winston Churchill, who ignored pleas for food aid for millions of Bengalis and left them to starve as their rice paddies were turned over to jute for sandbag production. Is Bob under the impression that the Shinners pinned a bum rap on Winston for this appalling action?
Or how does he feel about the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973? You remember Kissinger – he’s the man who sanctioned bombing raids in Cambodia in 1972, causing the American humorist Tom Lehrer to say that giving the award to Kissinger “made political satire obsolete”. Should John Hume and all other recipients have handed back heir Nobel Peace Prize?
No, it’s got nothing to do with principle or concern for human rights. Bob has always been a look-at-me man. Now in his sixties, he’s wild to to keep the world’s attention. It’s OK, Bob, we’ve looked at you. Now back under the stone you go.
The second party exemplifying the downward drive of attitude is a political party: to wit, the DUP. Now that talks between that party and Sinn Féin have ended, it’s safe to say that the DUP, which doesn’t feel bound by the Good Friday Agreement because it didn’t sign that document, now doesn’t feel bound by the St Andrew’s Agreement either, which it has signed.
The DUP attitude has always been that republicans and probably nationalists as well can’t be trusted. They must therefore be held at arm’s length, in case they’d plunge a dagger, literal or metaphorical, into you. These upstarts are forever trying to find ways of asserting their rights, which true DUPers have been resisting at least as far back as the late 1960s. So although Ian Paisley may be gone, his loyal lieutenant Peter Robinson may be gone, the fresh face of the DUP in such as my dear friend Nelson McCausland, fair-minded Ministers such as Paul Givan and strong leaders like Arlene Foster continue to display, to an even greater depth, a contempt for those who call themselves Irish, and a hardened resolve not to give an inch on anything – human rights, Acht na Gaeilge, responsibility for the RHI.
It’s hard to believe there’s much point in dealing with people whose scornful attitude deepens with every conciliatory word from their political opponents. Most nationalists and republicans can see this, which is why there’s a slightly weary acceptance of the fact that Stormont is an experiment that didn’t work out.
Maybe Bob and the DUP will surprise us all by becoming respectful, modest and conciliatory. And maybe Santa will bring me that Lexus GSF for Christmas.
Comments are closed.