‘The Northern Catholic II’ - John Hume in The Irish Times (May 19 1964)

John Hume by cartoonist Ian Knox

The Irish Times published on May 18 and 19 1964 two articles written by the 27 year old John Hume. You can read 'The Northern Catholic I' here and II in full here:

'In fairness to some of the Nationalist political leaders it must be said that they have given indications of their awareness of the shortcomings of their approach. Mr. McAteer in particular since his assumption of the leadership of the party has given several. The only Nationalist M.P. with a constituency organization behind him, he it was who flew the first kite of conciliation which led to the Orange-Green talks. Although in one sense a failure, they did catch the public imagination and have made a considerable contribution towards the change in climate. His St. Patrick’s Day speech in Derry and the eagerness with which the Maghery opportunity was grasped show a realization of the need for change.

La verite est en marche et rien ne l'arretera , Ctd

Fintan O’Toole wrote in The Irish Times here:

"Over time mainstream opinion comes to recognise that honest beliefs once held by decent people were reprehensible, not because the people were bad, but because the beliefs were shaped by prejudice. This will happen, probably quite soon, with beliefs about sexual orientation."

He continued:

"Sincerity is as irrelevant here as malevolence – it simply doesn’t matter why people uphold structures of discrimination. Throughout history, decent, moral people have believed with complete sincerity that slavery is a moral good, that women are lesser beings who must be protected from their weakness by being obedient to men, that Jews should be confined to ghettoes, that the Irish are incapable of rational thought, that Catholics are unfit to live in democracies and so on."

He continued:

"This is true even of very great men. Aristotle thought slavery entirely natural. Abraham Lincoln thought for most of his career that when slavery was abolished blacks should be shipped out to Africa because they couldn’t possibly live side by side with free whites. Does this make Aristotle and Lincoln bad men? No. It just makes them examples of highly moral and intelligent people who cannot escape inherited structures of discriminatory thought."

He concluded:

"The whole point of the law is that it’s not about giving people equal status because you like them. It’s about freeing people from subjection to the arbitrariness of other people’s benevolence. Gay men and lesbians shouldn’t have to care one way or the other whether the members of the Iona Institute love them or not. Just as the rest of us shouldn’t measure the rights of our fellow citizens by what they get up to in bed."

In full here.

Fintan O'Toole - "A parody of culture"

Northern Ireland makes a lot more sense if you replace the word 'culture' with 'hobby'.
— Newton Emerson (@NewtonEmerson) September 12, 2013

In an article in The Irish Times from August 29 2000, 'When bigotry takes on a life form of its own,' Fintan O'Toole questioned loyalist culture and it's definition. Calling some loyalist "cultural events" as a "parody of culture". He wrote of Johnny Adair and elements of loyalism:

"For the peace process to work it was necessary to sustain certain myths about Northern Ireland. The most potent, and potentially the most dangerous, was the idea that NI was divided between two "cultures" or "traditions", one catholic, the other Protestant. 

This notion was useful and perhaps indispensable, for how can you show "parity of esteem" to two different cultures if you don't recognise their clear existence? Yet it is also a lie. For one thing, it ignores the fact that surveys of attitudes in NI have consistently shown that something like 40% of the population does not identify with either the unionist or the nationalist (i.e. politically Protestant and politically Catholic) "traditions". For another, the most dangerous mindsets in NI don't belong in any real sense to a "culture" or "tradition".

Pictures - Fintan O'Toole at work

As you may have guessed, I'm a bit of a fan of Fintan O'Toole. He spoke to The Irish Times here inside the Dublin offices which included some nice panoramic shots of the office, his books, workstation and him typing. Call me a stalking, but I thought these inside glimpses were fascinating. You can see what he's reading, how he organises his affairs, and that he's an old-timer - as per his one-finger-stab-the-keyboard typing style! 

You can see the original footage and accompanying article here and here. He made two especially interesting remarks. One:

"And what we know in Ireland is, unless something is being driven very very clearly, what happens is it goes back to the default mechanism in Ireland which is patronage, which is cronyism, machine politics. Which is the way these things get done."