Only politics remains unchanged
Ten years ago, there was a delight in having a Nokia phone that had a camera, there was a delight in having a computer with a 1 GB drive, there was a delight in the arrival of voice over internet telephony. Ten years, later the technological scene has changed beyond recognition, as have many other scenes.
Only politics seems to have remained constant, this was the post from ten years ago today:
I met the Minister of Education on Saturday afternoon. She comes to our church fete every year.
“Congratulations, Mary”, I said, “even if I didn’t vote for you.”
“Who did you vote for?”
“Labour”, I said, “as have generations of my family before me.”
“Labour, what have they ever done for you, or for your church, or for your school?”
The minister’s comments encapsulated Irish politics. What’s in it for me?
The church says nothing, we collude in the clientelism. Something needs done and we phone whoever we know, do this for me and I’ll vote for you. This is our version of democratic politics; this is the governance of our country.
Playing Christy Moore this evening, I noticed a subtle change in the lyrics of an old Ewan McColl song, a change which probably sums up how people see the Church.
MacColl used to sing the “Moving On Song” and included the words:
“Born in a wagon on a building site
Where the ground was rutted by the trailer’s wheels
The local people said to me,
You’ll lower the price of property”Moore’s version of the song, “Go, Move, Shift” is unambiguous about who it is that represents the rich and the powerful, it is not the local people in Moore’s song.
“Born in the common by a building site
Where the ground was rutted by the trail of wheels
The local Christian said to me,
“You’ll lower the price of property.”From the other end of the political spectrum from Christy Moore, the Minister clearly expects the church to represent particular interests in the way that Moore accuses us; to be thankful for what we have paid for with our own taxes, and to say nothing critical.
It is hard to imagine Jesus of Nazareth being so compliant as we have been.
A decade later, and it is hard to discern Irish politics has altered in any way from former times. The horse trading, the promises, the clientelism is as powerful as ever, and the local Christians still say, “Go, Move, Shift.”
Ohh it moved alright, only in the 180 of the way you and I would’ve hoped. All the State protections and the agents set up to protect the disenfranchised from that 18th century system of Irish Freemasonry were first hit in the cuts. And the civil service renewed it’s efforts to eject people off the island.
In college days, it always seemed a mystery that Irish people did not become more angry. The bailout of private gamblers by working people in the name of financial probity was a breathtaking piece of politics.