Over decades of writing a political column, I have learnt that the one thing which can get people really upset is to state a fact or argue a case that doesn’t chime with current public thinking. Don’t kid yourself that this is a tolerant age. People are quite selective about what they’ll accept and not accept.
An example: the Easter Proclamation is generally seen as an enlightened document, not just because it gave voice to Ireland’s right to independence but because it gave equal place to both sexes at a time when women had few rights. “Irishmen and Irishwomen” are its opening words, and we rightly feel pride at the progressive thinking of the signatories.
But what do we make of the next five words of the Proclamation: “In the name of God”? Or of the Proclamation’s final paragraph, which begins “We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms.” ?
Can you imagine a political party today issuing an election pamphlet starting and ending in that way? Nowadays, belief in a God is seen as somewhere between a harmless eccentricity and a sign of mental delusion. Maybe that’s why people like Ruth Dudley Edwards enjoy portraying Pearse as just a bit crazy.
Time has a habit of turning things upside down. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, there were areas in our sick counties where to be identified as a Catholic meant you’d find it much tougher securing a job or a house. At the end of the 1960s, the Catholic/nationalist/republican people here said “Enough is enough” and blatant discrimination and sectarianism left the stage. But didn’t go away. A glance at the proportion of those from a Catholic/nationalist background in the PSNI or the prison service should tell you that sectarianism still lives. And check the proportion of Catholic-background current-affairs presenters in the BBC.
But whereas in the past northern Catholics suffered discrimination at the hands of unionism, today in the south of Ireland to declare yourself a Catholic is to invite pitying glances. As for attending Mass – well, in the polite and intelligent circles of Dublin 4 they discreetly roll their eyes. And you’d do better to say you believe the cow to be a sacred animal than to say you believe abortion is the taking of human life.
What all of this comes down to is that in contemporary society, you can hold any views you wish providing they’re progressive and in tune with the tenor of the times.
In Leiden University in the Netherlands, there’s a professor emeritus of quantitative science called Tony van Raan. He has compared what sometimes happens – the belated discovery of a valuable academic paper – to the Grimm brothers’ story of the Sleeping Beauty. His point is that there are academic articles published and neglected for years, then suddenly their worth is realized. Hence his term “Sleeping Beauty”.
Bad move. Prof van Raan’s latest work on medical articles was immediately rejected by the academic magazine he submitted it to, the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. For why? For because, he was told, “the use of any such terms [as Sleeping Beauty], despite connection to historical roots in literature, should be avoided.”
It’s amazing. In the 1960s when I was living in Dublin, I used to go home to Tyrone the odd weekend and return with copies of John McGahern’s powerful novel The Dark, for friends and acquaintances. For why? For because it was banned in the south of Ireland – the authorities reckoned it could put bad thoughts in people’s heads.
Are we really so different today, when we outlaw selected names from literature and denounce those who articulate a moral code different from our own?
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