In letters and articles over many years I have let fly at Fergal Keane’s broadcasts and articles and in private conversations indulged in what an unlettered but inspired neighbour described as upstream
language.
When I heard him on the BBC claim that Michael Collins had tried to get his comrades accept the
partition of Ireland, I took from my shelves the original collection of his speeches printed in Dublin
weeks after his death in 1922 under the title THE PATH TO FREEDOM where that Lost Leader’s
contention that the “Partition Act” had failed filled a seven page chapter.
Keane had claimed that BBC TV transmissions had not been received in Dublin until the late 1960s.
Whereas I remember a classmate of mine who missed school to watch Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation
in 1953 in his home in Blackbanks, Raheny on his TV.
My mother watched the wedding of Grace Kelly a couple of years later on the TV next door on the Hill of Howth
In 1960 I was enjoying a pint in in Howth’s Royal Hotel,when there was a stampede of women through the public bar to the Lounge to see Princess Margaret’s wedding to Armstrong Jones. They were coming from a meeting of the Erskine Childers Cumann of Fianna Fail, and were veterans of the War of Independence and the Civil War, when some of them were on Hunger Strike in the latter struggle.
By that time Dublin was getting BBC transmissions from Wales and Belfast,and ITV from the North
West of England and Ulster TV.
Most Dubliners watched Sunday Night at the London Palladium and many used repeat its catchphrases, eg. “Swingin” Telefis Eireann was inaugurated on 30th December 1961,
Ireland in 1932 celebrated the 15th Centenary of the of St Patrick’s Mission to Ireland with
Pope Celestine’s approval. Fergal’s middle name is Patrick.
I wondered why Fergal broadcast the Schoolboy Howler that the Eucharistic Congress was
held in 1936.
The Congress was planned well in advance of 1932. And took place in Jume of that year.
On 9th of March Fianna Fail took office from the party which had tried to crush republicanism
since June 1922.
Fergal Keane appears to despise Catholicism but I think his real bete noir is Fianna Fail.
I have before me as I write a piece he wrote for the now defunct INDEPENDENT of London
on 27 October 2,001.
Headed –
“Ireland has paid a high price for its dishonest myth-making.”
Among other things its says that he, Fergal, loves his country and his native language, music and writing but never had anything for the creed of Gaelic nationalist exceptionalism, which “reached its zenith in the thirties in de Valera’s fairy-tale country but lingered long on into my childhood.” Fergal was born in 1961.
De Valera’s Fianna Fail came to power in 1932 during the Great Depression, which in the USA
inspired “the Grapes of Wrath” by Steinbeck and The Road to Wigan Pier by Orwell. Dev reduced Ministerial salaries saying that if some people had to make do with hair shirts everyone else should, and he hoped that in time there would be silk shirts all round. The British Economist Lord Keynes visited Dublin and voiced his approval of Dev’s economic programme.
An Economic War with Britain resulted from a financial deal concluded by William Cosgrave in 1925 which had not been submitted to the Free State Parliament for approval. ( I use this term. because on its first meeting in 1933 Laurence Ginnell, who like the others attending, had been elected on a Republican ticket in 1922 was unable to establish that it was in fact Dail Eireann. Some of the “anti-Treaty” TDs had been murdered or imprisoned by the British appointed “Provisional Government” and others were still being pursued by the “Treatyites” for similar fates.
Anyhow Ireland won the “Economic War” and the industrial work-force was greatly increased, workers were guaranteed annual holidays before such a boon was introduced in the UK. A national airline was established. It is not a fairy tale to record that de Valera was such an enthusiast for trans-Atlantic aviation from his own constituency that he witnessed, with risk to his own life and limb, the first ever in-flight fuelling of an aircraft. His son Terry was with him, in a plane with no seats, together with Frank Aiken, and senior civil servants, and they were all thrown about on top of each other. All the pilots involved were British and there was no Gaelic, nationalistic exceptionalism involved.
Sean Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce invited businessmen from Britain with expertise
to set up in Ireland. Some of these were Jewish with Germanic surnames, and James Dillon gave
Lemass some stick in the Dail over it. Fine Gaelers were parading in Blue Shirts and giving Fascist
salutes and mocked Lemass for his French surname and Dev for his Spanish one. Religious
bigotry, racism, anti-semitism and snobbery were anathema to Fianna Fail. At the League of Nations
de Valera as President of its Committee and later of its General Assembly insisted in vain that its
members honour their covenant when Japan invaded Manchuria and Italy attacked Abyssinia.
The British made Mussolini pay Canal Dues to them, for passage through Suez for men and materiel.
Dev was willing to commit Irish troops to a League force to defend Abyssinia.
Fine Gael demanded Ireland support Catholic Italy in its aggression. Pope Pius XI was no better than
the Blue Shirts in this matter.
De Valera negotiated an end to the Economic War and to the British Occupation of Lough Swilly,
Bantry Bay and Cork Harbour.
He had already taken advantage of King Edward VIII’s abdication to draft a Republican, Liberal Democratic Constitution , which was enacted by the electorate.
He kept most of Ireland out of the Second World War.
Blue shirts and begrudgers never forgave him.
I’ll return to an examination of the mental world of Fergal Keane presently.
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