Heather Humphreys, acting Minister for Justice in the south, was to have spoken at the annual Béal na mBláth commemoration this year. What with Covid doing things it wasn’t supposed to do, she had to deliver her speech online. After you’ve read even a few sentences from it, you realise that an evil spirit has in the night removed Heather’s sense of irony or that she wants to see how far she can go talking twaddle before someone jumps up and shouts “The Acting Minister for Justice has no (rational) clothes on!”
Heather, naturally, uses the speech to attack Sinn Féin who, she says, have “an emotional reverence for the atrocities of the past”. Ah here, Heather, stop that, would you? You are delivering a speech honouring the man who arranged the wiping out of the ‘Cairo gang’ of British spies on Bloody Sunday morning. Michael Collins led, with some success, the fight against the British forces in Ireland. There is even some recent speculation that he may have been shot by one of his own side, to scupper plans for a future assault on the North. And in former Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny’s office (and probably in the office of Leo Varadkar as well – and if it’s not, shouldn’t we be told?) there is a huge oil-painting of Michael Collins in his officer’s uniform. Michael Collins effectively gave birth to Fine Gael, and Michael Collins was a man who believed in the use of violence. Hence his military gear.
Heather follows up with charges that Sinn Féin are trying to “weaponise history and in some cases re-write it entirely to suit their own political narrative.”
I’m not really certain what “weaponise history” means, but I’m going to guess it’s got something to do with looking at history and referring at the degree to which past events support your thinking. If I’m right, it seems an eminently sensible thing to do. Sometimes past events actually shape our thinking (Exhibit 1: the execution of the 1916 leaders. Exhibit 2: the Ballymurphy Massacre. Exhibit 3: Bloody Sunday 1972). Come to that, isn’t Heather’s speech ‘weaponising history’ when she commemorates the heroism and patriotism of Michael Collins?
But enough. All this may just be Heather yanking our chain and giggling as she does so. Could you blame the woman? For a number of reasons, the south’s government has to grasp any and every opportunity for a chuckle rather than a groan.
Comments are closed.