As a long-time subscriber to HISTORY IRELAND I enjoyed the advertisement for the National Library of Ireland which usually featured superb old photographs showing humanity in Ireland in wonderfully human situations.
Alas, no more!
The May/June issue advertises its “Living With Pride” programme, “a public expression of the National Library’s commitment to LGBT + representation in Ireland.”
The “+” intrigues me. Perhaps it covers the Wankers whom the Library is too timid to publicly endorse?
The current, July/August edition carries a lurid photograph of zero aesthetic or other attraction to this layman, and is presumably by Christopher Robson.
The Library is delighted to feature an exhibition of photographs by Robson “of gay activism, Pride and LGBT + (?) life, a series of online events throughout 2021, a focus on exploring the Irish Queer Archive at the National Library.
Perhaps it’s facetious to recall the old joke about the schoolgirl on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral who asked what the photographer with the tripod was doing whilst covering his head. When told “he’s going to Focus” she exclaimed “All of US?”.
But I find nothing funny in the Library’s commitment, which, I understand is dictated by the Government Department responsible for honouring the murdering thugs of the Black and Tans who tried to smother Irish democracy and its creation, Dail Eireann, at birth.
I used take great pride in being Irish because of the creditable conduct of most of our people over many centuries and particularly the example and inspiration they gave to subject peoples in the twentieth century.
Today I can take no pride in a State which allows its airspace to be patrolled by a foreign power and one of its airports as a staging post for kidnapped prisoners on their way to torture or murder, and which allows its media to act as ventriloquists’ dummies for John Bull.
Nor indeed, a State, 78% of whose female voters chose to legalise abortion on demand.
James Joyce described Ireland (unfairly, at the time) as “the Sow that ate its own Farrow.”
Hand on heart, I couldn’t fault that description today.
PRIDE, ME ARSE!
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