Cumann na nGael in Government, before its conversion to Fascism and changing its name to Fine Gael, was not greatly enamoured of freedom of expression, and its last gasp in office alone was to have Frank Gallaher, Editor of the Irish Press, charged before a military court for reporting on the ill-treatment of republicans or republican suspects by the Gardai.
It had previously attempted to have all candidates swear allegiance to the King of England before their names could go on ballot papers, and once out of office had fought tooth, nail and knuckle duster to retain the servile oath for Dail Members, and bowing and scraping to the King’s Governor General in the Phoenix Park.
The party should have drawn its last breath in 1948 except that a rag-bag collection including two feuding Labour Parties, and a Republican splinter group of more ambition than sense threw them a lifeline, whereupon, without changing one syllable of the Constitution enacted by the electorate in 1937, they labelled the State a Republic.
Fine Gael led that ragbag coalition from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957, when it was followed by a second 16-year spell of uninterrupted Fianna Fail rule.
The treacherous attempt by Jack Lynch to railroad Ministerial colleagues, a faithful serving Army Captain and other innocent citizens to gaol for following agreed Cabinet policy was thwarted by an honest jury, so another Coalition was cobbled together under Liam Cosgrave in 1973.
A Garda Heavy Gang repeated the tactics exposed by Frank Gallaher 40 years earlier, a British led murder gang set off bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, and not a peep of protest was made by the Irish Government. Labour’s Conor Cruise O’Brien, the former scourge of Western Imperialists in the Congo, Vietnam and elsewhere, took an iron grip on RTÉ and showed an American Washington Post Editor a file of letters in the IRISH PRESS whose Editor, Tim Pat Coogan would have his wings clipped. O’Brien later quoted with approval one of the Heavy Gang who “beat the shit” out of a prisoner.
The London OBSERVER included on its staff a number of British Secret Servicemen or gave such spooks, such as Kim Philby, the credentials which facilitated his defection to Russia. It didn’t make that mistake when it made the Cruiser its Editor in Chief. By then he was a fully fledged British agent, who, on his 90th birthday was to be hailed in THE TIMES as “the Greatest Living Irishman” by the coked-up Michael Gove.
Today FINE GAEL poses as a champion of liberty and free speech. Enda Kenna had the appalling Catherine Zappone appointed to Seanad Eireann. She had declared that “as long as the Constitution treats the foetus as equal to a woman, her autonomy is nothing more than a myth.”
I would never argue that a foetus is capable of talking sense or nonsense as a woman or indeed a man does, but I’m damned if I can see that its right to life can be extinguished at the whim of a grown human being whom we should assume to have the ability to reason.
Infant life matters and the more that has been discovered about it in recent times shows that it is human life.
A foetus is not a piece of shite. As an exercise in free expression I will declare that Catherine Zappone’s statement is of a low grade of manure that I wouldn’t use on a rose bush.
Elected to Dail Eireann in 2016 Zappone was made Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. It was said that political satire died the night Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently it arose again by some voodoo process when Zappone was given that portfolio. The most zealous champion of infant destruction was made Minister for Children. Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller and Mel Brooks together could not have imagined such a grotesque situation.
Though she lost her seat in the February 2020 election, Zappone retained her Ministerial post for another four months.
Then she betook herself to her native USA to campaign for Joe Biden in the presidential campaign. She campaigned in Massachusetts. where this week the Senior (U.S.) Senator Elizabeth Warren, interviewed by TEEN VOGUE, is reported as saying –
“Both voting and abortion are basic. They are about the functioning of our democracy and about the protection of our personal autonomy”. Senator Warren is pressing for Federal Legislation to pre-empt individual US States curtailing abortion on demand.
As I understand it most US teenagers are ineligible to vote in Federal elections, and those under eighteen are forbidden to buy alcoholic drinks. I know for a fact that the sale of alcoholic drinks to citizens or visitors is forbidden by law in some U.S. States. What does that say about Senator Warren’s concern for equality and autonomy under the law?
If all citizens of 20 years and older were allowed to slaughter all teenagers, the principle in operation would be no more bizarre and grotesque than the one nearest the Senator’s heart.
But back to Catherine Zappone, who threw a big party in Dublin and canvassed for appointment as a special Envoy to the UN to promote Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
The Tanaiste complied without telling the Taoiseach. The whole stunt collapsed as did the credibility of the political establishment in Dublin. But the prospect of expressing one’s views without being banged-up in Belmarsh. Guantanamo, or in a western, liberal Gulag must be seized while it’s still open.
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