According to Leo Varadkar all traditions in Ireland should be honoured equally. Others prominent in Irish life act as if the Ten Commandments have been Repealed. It’s as if Ireland has been brainwashed or lobotomised – not by the Christian Brothers nor Christian Sisters, nor by any of the faith groups or ethical bodies on the planet but by some Weird Sisters, of the Order, or Disorder, encountered by Macbeth and Banquo on the Blasted Plain.
FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL IS FAIR was the motto of the Weird Sisters and a prize should go to anyone who could write a lyric featuring The Irish Times,
the Indo and RTE as those Sisters and set it to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”
In i913 the Royal Irish Constabulary mounted a baton charge against unarmed Dublin workers, killing two and injuring hundreds, following the appearance of James Larkin on a hotel balcony in O’Connell Street. Following that outrage the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, established, for the defence of the workers, The Irish Citizen Army. Neither Larkin nor James Connolly at that time contemplated Insurrection, for the year before they founded the Labour Party to pursue parliamentary politics in the anticipated Irish Home Rule Parliament.
The silence of the Irish Trade Unions and the Irish Labour (God Help Us!) Party at the outrage prepared by the Government in commemorating the Royal Irish Constabulary is contemptible.
On St Patrick’s Day 1920 William Stockley of Universiity College Cork, an Alderman in that City went to Mass and breakfasted with its Lord Mayor, Tomas MacCurtain. On his way home the Professor, then in his 60s, was shot at by an RIC man, who missed. The Professor asked the pistol-packing Peeler why he had shot at an unarmed man. Two days later the Peelers murdered the Lord Mayor in his own house in front of his wife and family.
The Lord Mayor of Cork has disassociated himself from the commemotation of the RIC. So far as I know University College Cork has not issued a peep, not even from its Faculy of English, which Stockley led.
My grandfather, who taught at Christian Brothers’ College Cork, was a friend of Professor Stockley and my parents were presented with a painting from his family on their wedding. And my father, who was a student at UCC in 1920 was a member of the Volunteers there.
I have known and been friends with children of Gardai who joined that force on its inception, transferring from the IRA. I trust that some of those children will register their outrage at the betrayal of all that was best in Ireland.
Fair is not foul nor is foul fair.
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