The heroine of Hackney - Shall I Not Remonstrate?

Pauline Pearce, "The heroine of Hackney", stood up to street fighting thugs and vandals that were terrorising her community and local businesses during the London riots (see original video here). She stood up and put out against barbarism. This contrasts with people in Northern Ireland who have surrendered, capitulated and prostrated before the most fanatical and riotous thugs. Here's a sample of what she said:

"This is a f****** reality. Low up the f****** burning the property. [Stop] burning people's shop that they work hard to start their business. You understand? The shop up there, she's working hard to make her business work and you lot want to burn it up, for what? So that you can say you're "warring" and you're bad man. 

This is about a f****** man who got shot in Tottenham, this 'aint about having fun and rioting and busting up the place. Get it real black people, get real. Do it for a cause. If we're fighting for a cause let's fight for a f****** cause. You lot p*** me the f*** off. I'm ashamed to be a Hackney person because we're not all gathering together and fighting for a cause we're running down Foot Locker and TV shops. Dirty thief run off."

Asked by Simon Armitage on the broadcast Speeches that Shook the World (watch here) if her speech made a difference, Pauline said:

"I do think to some degree it did. People said to me it was kind of at that point that people started coming out with the brooms and everyone started standing up for the communities a bit more."

Simon Armitage commented, "You were the voice of decency in amongst a lot of chaos for a moment."

Read my previous articles on eamonnmallie.com on the need to protest and challenge extremism on the streets here, here, here, here, here, here and here. See the original video of Pauline Pearce here and by reading further.

Fintan O'Toole on the hyper-inflation of language and emotion

Father Alec Reid claimed on October 18 2005 here that Ulster unionists treated the Catholic community "like the Nazis treated the Jews." Fintan O'Toole responded to this with an article in the Irish Times with the title 'Comparison with Nazis is absurd'. He said:

"I happened to be in the Polish city of Wroclow. At lunch that day, when there was some talk about historical memory, I was on the brink of mentioning the controversy to my Polish hosts, but I just couldn't do it. I was too ashamed.

Fintan O'Toole called it a "combination of historical ignorance and monumental self-pity." He continued: 

"How could you possibly explain that Irish nationalists, who are thought to be so steeped in the past, know so little about the recent history of the continent they inhabit? There is no excuse for not having at least a general sense of proportion, for being wary of camparisons that are as inaccurate as they are offensive."

He spoke of the cognitive dissonance and contradictions:

"The irony of all the hyper-inflation of the experiences of Catholics in Northern Ireland after partition by involving the Nazis or, as Sinn Fein tends to prefer, apartheid Africa, is that it actually occludes those experiences themselves. It discredits history itself as a context in which we can understand the present."

In full here. Fintan O'Toole also wrote in The New York Review of Books here in 1998 that, "The analogy between Irish Republicans and Mandela is not in fact valid."

Jeremy Paxman on voter apathy

Paxman said in the Radio Times:

"Russell Brand has never voted, because he finds the process irrelevant. I can understand that: the whole green-bench pantomime in Westminster looks a remote and self-important echo-chamber. But it is all we have."

Jeremy Paxman then explained that he strongly believes in people actively exercising their vote and said that we "ignore the democratic process at our peril." He then reflected on the 2015 General Election:

"At the next election we shall have a choice between the people who’ve given us five years of austerity, the people who left us this mess, and the people who signed public pledges that they wouldn’t raise student fees, and then did so – the most blatant lie in recent political history."

He added: "It won’t be a bombshell if very large numbers of the electorate simply don’t bother to vote. People are sick of the tawdry pretences."

Peter Tatchell on challenging orthodoxy

Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) explained to Simon Armitage in the BBC 4 broadcast Speeches that Shook the World (view here) on what makes a good speech:

"I think a good speech has an element of provocation, controversy and even confrontation. Because that's the way you challenge orthodoxy. That's the way you get people to sit up and notice."

He also said on the power of language:

"Emotive words can change the course of history; but powerful language in the wrong mouths can be extraordinarily dangerous."

Writing is hard, Ctd Alex Massie

Do the Germans have a word for the period of anxiety between filing a column and discovering whether your editor thinks it is any good?
— alexmassie (@alexmassie) November 13, 2013

Ken Robinson - "You have to work at creativity"

The Educationalist Sir Ken Robinson appeared on Desert Island Discs here with Kirsty Robinson and explained how creativity is not god given, but man driven. In that it man has to nurture, develop, master and marshall the power of creativity. Ken explained that many people have no idea of what abilities they hold. He explained that, contrary to popular myth, creativity and innovation can be developed in a deliberate and systematic way. And according to Ken, what we need is a learning revolution. He explained that there are a number of misconceptions. He said:

"People think creativity is about special things. Yes of course you can be creative in Music, dance, theatre and literature. But this isn't just about the arts. You can be creative in science, technology, and mathematics. In any field where human intelligence is active there's opportunity for creative thinking and achievement. Our current systems of education tend to stifle these powers of creativity. Not in a way that is deliberate but it tends to be systematic."

He said:

"We're all born with tremendous confidence in our creative competences. Young children are tremendously creative and buoyant; but by the time they've left schools they've often lost that confidence. And most adults, if you ask them if they're confident they'll say that they're not.

He explained that hard work, grit and resilience is the teacher and creator of creativity:

"Creative abilities in any field Have to be developed and evolved. They don't just happen. When an adult says they can't draw, they're probably right, they probably can't. It's like if an adult were to say that they can't read and write, well they can't. It's not that they're incapable it's just that they haven't learnt what's involved. 

So the fact were born with these natural faculties doesn't mean they evolve naturally all of their own, you have to work at them."

More information on Sir Ken Robinson

His life began in a crowded house on Merseyside in the 1950s, full of visitors, noise and laughter. His front door was just a hundred yards from Everton football club, but his boyhood dreams of playing for The Blues ended when he contracted polio.

The first of his six siblings to pass the 11-plus and win a scholarship to one of Liverpool's best schools, his education would fundamentally shape the rest of his life. He said:

"If a teacher hadn't seen something in me that I hadn't seen in myself, my life might have gone in a very different direction."

Previous posts on our need to redefine our definition of success here, here, here, here and posts on creativity here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Richard Haass - Understand who is behind your political adversary

In a discussion here from 2011, Dr Richard Haass talks about the peace process in Northern Ireland. He said:

"In any negotiation, it's not enough to look behind you at maintaining your own domestic position, you've also go to look behind your adversary and ask yourself what he has to do to maintain his domestic position. In a funny sort of way negotiations only succeed if each side to some extent becomes an implicit partner of the other side." 

Fintan O'Toole on the Good Friday Agreement

In 2005 Fintan O'Toole wrote a fascinating article on the Good Friday Agreement on September 13 2005 in the Irish Times under the title, Folly of sectarian 'solutions'. On where the agreement ranks in human achievements, Fintan O'Toole said:

"[The agreement is] supposed to be a kind of constitution. It defines Northern Ireland as a political space and seeks to do so in a genuinely radical, exciting way. It is, indeed, perhaps the boldest constitutional document ever agreed between sovereign states. It creates space that is not ultimately claimed by any state, defines national identity as potentially both mutable and multiple, and rests sovereignty, not on history and geography but on that most complex and fluent of things - the collective mind of a majority of the population."

Alex Massie - It's about remembering not celebrating

Scotland's Alex Massie wrote on wearing the poppy in The Spectator blog here. He said:

"Consider the photograph at the top of this post. It was taken on Armistice Day in 1924. In Dublin.Yes, Dublin. The Union Flag is flown. The National Anthem – ie, God Save the King – is sung. A Celtic Cross is erected on College Green prior to its transportation to France where it would serve as a memorial to the 16th Irish Division. Some reports estimate as many as 50,000 Irishmen attended the commemoration. (There is British Pathe footage of it here). The Irish Times proudly reported that “the display of Flanders poppies was not equalled by any city in the British isles”. 

He continued: 

"Commemorations on this scale were not unusual in the 1920s. Two years later some 40,000 Irishmen marched to the Phoenix Park for a service of commemoration beneath the imposing Wellington Monument... The poppy and remembrance fell from favour in Ireland, elbowed aside by the rival story of the Easter Rising. A rebellion thought contemptible by most Dubliners became the national epic (in large part thanks to the British government’s obtuse reaction to the events of Easter 1916, a reaction that remains obtuse even if considered within the context of the First World War). But we can see more clearly now even if, paradoxically, also more darkly. This is Ireland, after all.

He continued:

"[The] enthusiasm was not restricted to Unionists. In 1919 Joe Devlin, the nationalist MP for West Belfast, declared that the 16th Irish Division’s dead “died not as cowards died, but as soldiers of freedom, with their faces toward the fire, and in the belief that their life-blood was poured out in defence of liberty for the world”. If England’s difficulty was, for some, Ireland’s opportunity there remained many others who saw the struggle for Ireland as a small part of a wider struggle to establish the rights of all small nations. Fighting for Belgium or for Serbia was a proxy for fighting for Ireland."

He concluded:

"No-one celebrates the First World War. How could you? But remembering it, in all its complexity, is one way of helping to understand who we are and how we came to be who we are, wherever we happen to be."

Read Alex Massie in full here. Read my previous blog post on the Irish in WWI featuring historian Diarmaid Ferriter and John Redmond here. 

Mark Forsyth - The Elements of Eloquence

On November 11 2013 Radio 4 ran a feature on the new book authored by Mark Forsyth (@Inkyfool) called The Elements of Eloquence. The book examines what makes a beautiful sentence. Here's some of the oratorical tools and techniques which add taste and texture to any delivery.

One. The AABA pattern (also known as diacope) is very common rhetorical tool. For example: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo"; "my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse"; "alone, alone, all alone"; "You villain, villain, you damned, smiling villain."

Two. Another rhetorical device is antithesis. The use of opposites in the same sentence, as deployed by Charles Dickens and then singer Katy Perry.

Three. Another tool is Chiasmus, a rhetorical device that originates from the Greekchiazo, meaning "to shape like a letter X." It is a figure of speech in which the second half of an expression is reversed to mirror the first half, i.e. A/B, B/A (where the letters represent words, phrases or parts of speech).

Perhaps the best known example of chiasmus is JFK’s "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." Another is, "We don't get stop playing when we get old, we get old when we stop playing."

Mark Forsyth also explained how he wants to move public speaking up the value curve in schools and society. He said:

"Since the 19th Century no one has really been taught rhetoric. That's why I want to bring this back. Shakespeare was steeping in it."

First broadcast on the Today programme on Monday 11 November, you can listen here. Read my previous posts on public speaking, including a post on Dale Carnegie here and here.

The young people will bring change to Iran

Alec Ross, Senior advisor to Hilary Clinton 2009-2013 appeared on Newsnight with Gavin Esler on Monday 11 November 2013. He said of young people in Iran and China:

"What is ultimately going to change China, what is ultimately going to change Iran are young people in these countries. There are half a billion people in china who us microblogging sites, 400 million of whom are under 25. That's what's going to change China. That's what's going to change Iran."

It's my belief that the same applies to young people in Northern Ireland, it is they who will bring change to Northern Ireland. My blog here features comments from Alex Kane and Justine McCarthy who said the current generation of politicians cannot deliver peace.

Carola Binney - Tutorials over Lectures

Oxford student and Spectator blogger Carola Binney (@CarolaBinney) contrasts the elite Oxbridge tutorship model with the mainstream lecture model. She said:

"Good lectures are interesting, but the tutorial system is infinitely better."

By extension, can we ask: Does that make an Oxbridge or any on-on-one tutorship education infinitely better than an ordinary university instruction? 

Conor Cruise O'Brien said the challenge was to move beyond nationalism and unionism

Cartoon of Conor Cruise O'Brien by Martyn Turner

Fintan O'Toole wrote of Connor Cruise O'Brien in a feature for the Irish Times in May 11 1996:

"His [Conor Cruise O'Brien] disavowal of Irish nationalism is based on his belief that it is ultimately inseparable from Catholicism."

Fintan O'Toole explained O'Brien's philosophy for Irish politics: "He does not accept that the really important challenge at the moment is not to move from nationalism to unionism, but to move beyond both." Fintan O'Toole then quoted O'Brien: "The main pressure is coming from the nationalists. It's dangerous not just for the North but also for us. In that context, I'm more useful taking a stand with unionists than I would be on some kind of neutral ground."

The article 'Cruiser's new voyage provokes 'no qualms, no heart-searching'' can be obtained from the Irish Times archive here.

The cult of university, Ctd

Hilary French, headmistress of Central Newcastle High School wants school leavers to shift their fixed gazed from university and towards industry. She has said she wants a "shift of focus away from university as the automatic first choice next step for sixthformers and a turn instead to employment." She further said:

"I'd like to challenge independent schools heads to embrace this. Parents too. There is huge potential in employer training courses and the new calibre of apprenticeships emerging. We must not be sniffy about them. Yes, at the moment we may associate apprenticeships with lower-level vocational training, but this need not be the case." 

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council spoke to the same effect. Calling for more work-based training he said:

"University is not always the best route to fulfilling job or maximising your job prospects."

The 18 year Amina Tagari from Preston has opted for an employer-sponsored training scheme as opposed to university. She explained her logic: 

"Most of my friends went to university - they sit in classes taking notes whereas I feel I am getting experience as well as learning. I will be more employable as a result."

Another young person, Nikki Cusworth (23) took an apprenticeship over a degree after the experience of the interview process for the apprenticeship. She said:

"At the interview, the practical experience I would gain blew me away. I decided I was willing to a HND through the scheme rather than an honours degree because the skills would be such an asset in my career."

My previous blog post in the cult of university series here featured another 18 year old who opted out of university. Thomas Gunning explained his decision to take an apprenticeship with PWC over university:

"I would have left university around £60,000 in debt. If I had done the degree, I would still have to complete an accountancy qualification after that. This way I am ahead of the game."

The skills minister Matthew Hancock has admitted that the elevation of academic learning to the position of par excellence has damaged the workforce. He said:

"Apprenticeships are a crucial part of addressing Britain's skills gap - concentrating only on academic training to the exclusion of technical training was a big mistake."

The reporters Sian Griffiths and Kathryn Cooper reported that the number of high level apprenticeships is small but growing. From 1,500 in 2009 to roughly 5,300 in this year. Full report in the Sunday Times, 'Top head urges schoolgirls to jet into job' here. Previous posts on the cult of university here, here, here and here.

2016 is a time for national embarrassment, Ctd

Kevin Myers wrote in the Sunday Times of August 11 2013:

"The surreal tone to this year's MacGill Summer School was established at its opening ceremony, as the Taoiseach declared: "To be a real republic, Ireland has to be a sovereign republic." What? Sovereign? After surrendering vast swathes of legislative and financial independence to Europe? Has the man gone mad?"

Previous post on this topic featuring Fintan O'Toole here.

Human Rights - "The UK is the best pupil in the class"

"UK is the best pupil in the class. It has always been seen as the leading nation on human rights." http://t.co/4VgqwvolVi
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) November 6, 2013

What does an artist do? - "They notice things."

Grayson Perry shared a funny anecdote during the fourth lecture of BBC Radio 4's Reith Lecture series. by telling a story he managed to distill what it is artists do. He said:

"Recently a friend told me that she was working on an education programme at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and at the beginning of the project she asked the children, she said, “What do you think a contemporary artist does?” And this very precocious child, probably from sort of Muswell Hill or somewhere like that, she put her hand up and she said, “They sit around in Starbucks and eat organic salad.” Now it was probably quite an accurate observation of many fashionable artists in East London, but I thought … you know anyway. So then after this, they spent some time looking at what contemporary artists did. And at the end of the project, she asked them again, “What now do you think an artist does?” And the same child, she said, “They notice things.” And I thought wow, that’s a really short, succinct definition of what an artist does. My job is to notice things that other people don’t notice."

Fourth Reith Lecture in full here.

Loyalists are traitors to Northern Ireland

Just as dissident republicans are "traitors to the island of Ireland", so dissident loyalists are self-destructive traitors who debase and deface their own cause. As Am Ghobsmacht said:

"If Sinn Fein went to the Bahamas or Cancun for the next 15 years and put their feet up they could easily find a United Ireland here when they get back. Loyalists are doing a grand job of demonising Unionism and encouraging educated Protestants, sorry, I mean ‘liberal naive Lundy types’ to leave Northern Ireland."

Irish racism

@NotThatBigIan @brianjohnspencr You're both welcome to express your ethnic identity in Ireland as are our immigrants. But Irish is Irish :-)
— Ruaidri Ua Conchobai (@Irish_Gaels) November 5, 2013

John McCallister - "I am no settler, no colonist"

John McCallister addressed the Collins 22 Society. He said:

 "Firstly, as with Collins, this island is my home. My family has lived in the same town-land for at least the past 220 years. I am no settler, no colonist. This island – its story, its geography, its rich cultures – is my home just as it was the home of Michael Collins."

This measure of language resonates with that of John Hewitt who spoke of being 'no rootless colonist'. John also explained that being British does not preclude you from being Irish. He said:

"George V addressed the overwhelmingly Unionist members of the Stormont Parliament as "Irishmen". It is a reminder of something that unionism has too easily and too readily forgotten: That being a British citizen, supporting the Union with the rest of the United Kingdom does not mean that we do not share values, interests and an identity with the rest of this island. It does not mean that being British excludes or denies a sense of Irish identity."

Read John McCallister's speech to the Collins 22 Society in full here. Also on Slugger O'Toole here. You can also read John McCallister's speech to the GAA Ulster Council here. 

The Irish in the First World War

Diarmaid Ferriter explains here:

"With the outbreak of the Great War, Redmond appealed to individual Irish Volunteers to join the war effort as a moral imperative. MacNeill accused him of mental and moral corruption and insisted British parties were conspiring to stop Home Rule, a defeat that only the Irish Volunteers could prevent. 

A split ensued, with Redmond supported by a majority of Volunteers, by a ratio of 15 to one, now termed the National Volunteers, while MacNeill retained command of the minority, keeping the original title."

Ashton Kutcher - The entitlement society and redefining success

Ashton Kutcher recently appeared in the US chat show 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ here and slated America's media, celebrity myth and the associated 'entitlement' culture that this industry has helped to create. In many ways we share this phenomenon in the Britain and in Northern Ireland. Our young people need to hear his words too. Ashton said:

"There's an entitlement that's starting to emerge that's unhealthy for people and unhealthy for the country. I talk to some of my friends and they don't want to get a job at Starbucks or wherever because they feel its below them. And I think the only thing that can be below you is to not have a job."

Vincent Browne - Ireland has forever lost its sovereignty

Ireland's exit from the EU-IMF-ECB bailout programme will be sounded as the great restoration of Irish sovereignty and independence. In the words of Vincent Browne, "It will be no such thing. Just more spin." In the article in which those words were written, Vincent Browne further said that repeated claims by Enda Kenny that Ireland would soon regain it's economic sovereignty. He said:

"A year ago, in a televised address to the nation, Enda Kenny told us: “I want to be the Taoiseach that retrieves Ireland’s economic sovereignty”. He told an audience in Chicago in March 2012 that Ireland would regain its economic sovereignty by the end of this year. He told a Fine Gael conference last month that Ireland was on course to “retrieve our economic sovereignty and independence”. 

That promise is an illusion. The Lisbon Treaty, for which Enda Kenny campaigned, copperfastens Ireland’s surrender of sovereignty to the EU forever, a surrender we sleepwalked into in 1992 in ratifying the Maastricht Treaty. 

Ireland is obliged to avoid what is known as “excessive government deficits”, not just now but forever. In that connection the European Commission has indefinite authority to “monitor” our fiscal arrangements and if we get out of line, there may be consequences, including daunting fines (article 126 in what is now known as the “Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”, a consolidation of several treaties). 

Specifically, in the case of member states that are members of the euro group, there are special requirements. “In order to ensure the proper functioning of economic and momentary union . . . The Council [of Ministers] shall . . . adopt measures . . . to strengthen the coordination and surveillance of their budgetary discipline [and] to set out economic policy guidelines for them, while ensuring that they are compatible with those adopted for the whole of the Union and are kept under surveillance” (article 136)."

Diarmaid Ferriter - 2016, a state bereft of meaningful sovereignty

Diarmaid Ferriter is professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin and has authored many books including The Transformation of Modern Ireland, 1900-2000, Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon de Valera and Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland. He wrote of the centenary of 1916:

"As we in Ireland edge towards the centenary of the events that comprised the revolution of the early 20th century, we face a stark conclusion: this is a state bereft of meaningful sovereignty due to its bankruptcy and a state whose governing culture has been exposed as rotten.

We may have little to cheer about in 2016."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/diarmaid-ferriter/state-of-ireland

Seamus Heaney for Protestants Too

Poets produce work that speaks not only for themselves but also give voice through which others can find articulation. Seamus Heaney does this for Protestant and Catholic alike. Fintan O'Toole commented on Heaney's conflicting impulses and how he gave expression to them.

"He was drawn to both Irish and English poetic traditions. He also lived through the death of the ancient rural world into which he was born and the emergence of a globalised modern Ireland. He struggled with contradictions, paradoxes, conflicting impulses. 

His genius lay in his ability to hover between them, to give each side of a political or emotional equation its full weight and proper due without becoming the prisoner of either. WB Yeats, the poet whose influence he both absorbed and transcended, wrote in a time of Irish violence that “we are closed in and the key is turned/ On our uncertainty” . 

Heaney humanised uncertainty, made ambiguity rich with possibilities. As he put it in the beautifully homely metaphor of Terminus: 

“Two buckets were easier carried than one./I grew up in between.”"

Fintan continued: "He was not, in that sense, a national poet. He knew too much about the dangers of tribalism and the foolishness of slogans to ever want to be a spokesman for the collective. He would have agreed with Yeats’s dictum that “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

Nick Cohen - Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists

Nick Cohen wrote in The Spectator here:

"Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists."

He continued: "The first step to freeing yourself from oppressive power is to find the courage to admit that you are afraid. The more people confess to being afraid, the less reason there is to fear and the easier it is to isolate repressive forces."

People in Northern Ireland have long been bullied, menaced, threatened, terrified and intimidated by hostile, hysterical and sinister gangs and sweaty politicians, and by extension have opted-out and silenced themselves from the process. This needs to end.

Day of Doodling with the Arts Council NI

  

On Wednesday 6 November 2013 I had the eminent pleasure and privilege to attend the Arts Council Northern Ireland staff and client day out to W5 at the Odyssey in Belfast as the rapportage illustrator. My brief was to capture events and to produce a cascade of illustrative candour. It still fascinates me, that we have the most unimaginable photographic and camera technology at our finger tips, yet men, women and children are awe-struck by the artist that can translate the fluid moment into a material object. It was this irresistible draw and awe to the almost-magical that first drew me into this area of cartooning people. 

What was extra special was that I was given the opportunity to showcase my drawings from the morning during the afternoon session. They say that imitation is the surest form of flattery. For me as a cartoonist, laughter if the finest form of compliment, because then you know you've captured the person and added a humorous extra. So let it be said, there were plenty of laughs. Taking to the podium also gave me the chance to talk about my morning's work and to also share my journey or "pilgrimage", as Grayson Perry calls it, from being an aspiring lawyer to artist.

Below you will see a selection of cartoons which I produced during the event of the various speakers. Hope you enjoy and please contact me on brianjohnspencr@gmail.com if you would like me to come to your event!

Fintan O'Toole on Arthur Griffiths

In 1992 Fintan O'Toole wrote of the founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffiths as a racist, an anti-Semite and a reverse imperialist. In the Irish Times of August 15 1992 he wrote:

"Griffith is many of the things Mr [Brian] Mae says he is - patriotic, far-thinking, personally honest. But he is also in many ways a repugnant figure, the progenitor of a particularly nasty strain of far right-wing Irish nationalism. If anything, he is the classic example of selfish patriotism, claiming for his own country rights which he was not prepared to extend to others among the oppressed."

Fintan O'Toole continued and explained Griffiths as a racist and reverse imperialist:

One of the reasons for remembering Griffiths now is that he stands, at this time of virulent and destructive nationalism in Europe, as a great example of how nationalist ideals can become detached from their origins in the Englightenment principles of equality, tolerance, and humanity. Whereas a great tradition of Irish political thinking from Swift through O'Connell to James Connolly understood that Ireland's rights are inseparable from the rights of despised races around the world and from the rights of the oppressed withing Ireland, Griffith tried to break that connection. To the extent that he succeeded, his memory should be a bitter one. 

Griffith strongest antecedent in Irish nationalism is not O'Connell's democratic populism, but John Mitchell's peculiar brand of reverse imperialism which could encompass both a passionate denunciation of English savagery in Ireland and a passionate support for slavery in America. The mind-set is not one which challenges the assumptions of Victorian and racial imperialism but merely one which wants the Irish to be given their rightful places among the master races."

Fintan O'Toole explained that Griffiths' racist nationalism came from his time in the latter half of the 1890s in the Transvaal "as a propagandist for Boer nationalism." Fintan O'Toole also explained Griffiths' hard-line anti-semitism:

"Griffith in the midst of the 1913 Lockout, in which he was strongly on the side of the employers, wrote and instructive afterword to a re-issue of Mitchell's 'Jail Journal'. In it, he makes plain his support for Mitchell's contempt for the anti-slavery movement in America... Mitchell, wrote Griffiths, needed no excuse for 'refusing to hold the negro his peer'... To [the race nationalism in Transvaal (where Griffiths spent the later half of the 1890s)] he added the worst of the influences of the worst of the modernising right-wing movements of the Europe of his day, drawing heavily on both Bismarckian Germany and anti-Dreyfusard France. 

The latter influence allowed him to add anti-semitism to racism in his political thinking. In the United Irishman he thundered against those newspapers which supported Dreyfus as 'the impotent ravings of a disreputable minority which is universally regarded as a community  of thieves and traitors.' 

When the Jewish people of Limerick were under attack in the pogrom of 1904s, Griffith, the great defender of Irish rights, weighed in against them, and even attacked the great nationalist Michael Davitt for his defence of them. His language is a remarkable foreshadowing of that used a little later by Adolf Hitler in 'Mein Kempf'."

As I wrote on the blog previously, Christopher Hitchens has made it clear that anti-semitism is a prejudice held by the mentally and morally unwell. Christopher Hitchens explained this of Billy Graham here. We can exchange the name Billy Graham with Arthur Griffiths and get a very clear picture and image of the nature and character of the founder of Sinn Fein. As Hitchens said:

"The evidence is that Billy Graham [in this instance, Arthur Griffiths] suffers from a very horrible disease, a version of paranoia that's known colloquially as anti-Semitism. It's impossible to be mentally or morally healthy if you suffer from this disorder. [He was] sick with this conspiratorial, infantile nonsense and that's not pardonable." 

On a side note, in 1904 Arthur Griffith suggested the idea of a dual-monarchy between Ireland and Great Britain in his book The Resurrection of Hungary. Griffith explained how in 1867 Hungary went from being part of the Austrian Empire to a separate co-equal kingdom in Austria-Hungary. Griffiths' was not a monarchist but supported the concept for the Anglo-Irish relationship. It was rejected by other Irish political leaders.

Grayson Perry - "How do we become a contemporary artist?"

Grayson Perry's fourth and final lecture in the Reith series was went by the title, I Found Myself in the Art World. This fourth lecture was directed by one question, as Grayson asked himself and the audience rhetorically: "how do we become a contemporary artist?"

Firstly. We need to work with an almost unconscious awareness. A "relaxed fluency". For as Grayson Perry said, "self-consciousness is crippling." As he said:

"Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” And I think what he’s trying to say is that you know a child has this unselfconscious joy of creativity and they’re always playing and painting and making things without a thought in the world, and then as we get older of course we become aware of art history and that what we’re not doing might not be very good and so it makes it harder and harder and harder as we get older."

The irony is that art education is an education in self-awareness. As Grayson Perry said:

"And one of the things that is very troubling, of course, is that art education in many ways is an advanced course in self-consciousness because you have to become very aware of the business you’re going into. A central irony is that the very enemy of expression - that is being very ‘oh my god, am I doing the right thing?’ - is tortuous necessity to enter the art world."

You need the "carefree joy of a child". That require's work. You need to kindle the child's flame of creativity and "keep that sort of burning, precious, childlike glimmer of creativity burning."

Secondly. Artists who've faced hardship and difficulty in their upbringing can find themselves using and transforming this experience, through an amazing process in the mind, into gold and into marvellous masterpieces that everyone can all appreciate. As Grayson said:

"The clinical scientist Raymond Tallis, he said, “Art is expressing one’s universal wound - the wound of living a finite life of incomplete meanings.” And I like that idea - that you know it’s quite a sort of noble journey we’re on."

It's the artist's mythologizing story.

Thirdly. Art is a "very primitive creative urge." As Grayson said:

"Art is not some sort of fun add-on. But if you go back to the Ice Age, the artists then, they still made art and yet they were constantly under threat from cold and starvation and from predators, and yet they still set aside hours and hours and hours to make art. It’s very, very deep - this need to express."

Fourthly. Outside artists can make great mainsteam artists because they can often operate free of the crippling self-consciousness. Grayson said:

"Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

Fifthly. It takes time. He said:

"It does of course exist and that shock of pleasure is one of the you know greatest things that anybody who’s interested in art can experience, but the best artists, they take quite a while to find their voice. It takes a long time. I mean an art career is a marathon, it’s not a sprint."

He further explained: "And I think one of the best descriptions of that process is by a guy called Arno Minkkinen, a Finnish photographer, and he had this thing called - The Helsinki Bus Station Theory, he said. And when you’re leaving art college, he said, and you choose your style and what path in the art world you’re going to take, it’s like going to Helsinki bus station. There’s about twenty platforms and each platform, maybe ten buses leave from it, and you choose your bus and you get on the bus. And each stop is a year in your career. And maybe after about three stops, you get off and you kind of walk into a gallery and you show them your work and the people look at it and they go, “Oh very nice, very nice. Reminds me a bit of Martin Parr though.” (LAUGHTER) And you go, uurrrgh!! (exasperated sound) I’m not original, I’m not unique, and you get really cross. And you get a taxi back to the bus station and you get on a different bus. And of course what happens is the same thing - you get off at three years and the same thing happens. What you need to do, says Arno Minkkinen, is stay on the effing bus!"
Sixth. Crossing the boundary from student into the realm of the artist. He said:

"And then there’s that boundary, you know the boundary between being a student and becoming an artist. And I think that moment often happens to you at a party. You’re at a party and someone says to you, “Oh what do you do?” and you go, “Errrr …” and you have to summon up the courage to say it and you go, “I…. I’m an artist.” And I think that’s quite a poignant moment. You know you’ve crossed that boundary, you’ve started out on that hazardous path."

Seventh. It's a privilege.

"I think it’s a very noble thing to be an artist. You’re a pilgrim on the road to meaning."

Eight. Be careful of the "Picasso Napkin Syndrome". He said:

"It started to get into this sort of airy-fairy whatever anybody will pay for it kind of arena, and that’s a very strange moment. And at that moment, you start getting what I call “Picasso Napkin Syndrome” (LAUGHTER) and this is after the mythological power of that famous artist. He could sort of pay for an expensive meal by just doodling on the table linen. And it’s a very dangerous blessing that an artist can get - that Picasso Napkin Syndrome - because it’s like the Midas touch. You’re suddenly tempted to churn out your signature works because there’s a big collector demand for it and anything you sign is worth money! I mean literally artists like Andy Warhol literally did that. He would just sign you know a dollar bill and then suddenly it would be worth a hundred dollars. And that temptation to churn it out is very dangerous."

Nine. Be wary of the art world. He said:

"It’s a delicate organism and the art world can be very corrosive. Caustic atmosphere. I protect my ball of creative energy, I protect it with a shield made of jaded irony. (LAUGHTER) A helmet of mischief and a breast plate of facetiousness. And I wield my carefully crafted blade of cynicism.

Lastly. As Grayson Perry said:

"There’s no recipe for being an artist. That’s what’s good about it nowadays - you can be any sort of artist."

Grayson Perry - Outside Artists

In the fourth lecture of his Reith Lecture series on BBC Radio 4, Grayson Perry said that, for artists, "self-consciousness is crippling." He suggested that non-trained artists are more unfettered, more unencumbered and freer from this concern. He said: 

"One of the groups of artists perhaps who don’t suffer from self-consciousness as much as others are outsider artists. Since I was a teenager, I’ve loved outsider art. Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

He continued:

"But becoming an artist is not just a process of having low impulse control or a burning unconscious desire to express yourself. There is a point, a fixed rung if you like, on the greasy pole of becoming an artist; and it does feel - many artists here will probably say - it does feel like a greasy pole. There is a fixed rung and that is going to art college because anybody can become an artist without going to art college - I mean outsider artists are a fantastic example of it - but it’s very difficult to make a career as an artist."

Grayson Perry made another interesting observation on the returns made by those who have invested time and money on going to university. He said:

"I mean on page thirty-one of the Department of Innovation and Skills Report, The Returns of Higher Education 2011, there’s a rather stark graph. I feel quite bad almost bringing this up in an art college, but I thought I have to confront this situation, which is that compared to someone who’s never been to university at all, the average art student will make just 6.3 per cent more money than that person. Women though will make 11.7 per cent more; men 1 per cent less than if you never go to art college. And that’s quite a shocker. But in many ways, I find it almost heartening because I think people still want to go to art college! And we’re always talking about arts, not about money or anything like that. So if these people, they still want to go to art college even though statistics staring them in the face are telling them they’re probably perpetuating their poverty by doing it, (LAUGHTER) I think that’s lovely. I think that’s a good thing. We almost need to celebrate it. But for an individual, there is no guarantee of making money in the art world." 

Giles Coren - Does education stifle your creative spark?

Giles Coren thinks so. Writing in The Times he said:

"It is more and more widely recognised that education cripples you, strips you of your originality and wit and spark."

He continued: "According to Jaron Lanier’s book Who Owns the Future?, the big tech companies are even now paying the brightest and best at Harvard and Yale to leave university and work for them while they are still fresh, uncorrupted and full of ideas. It is a given at the cutting edge that dropping out of college — like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg — is the mark of worth, not graduating.

He made an interesting observation on British universities, the democratisation of third level education, its effects and fees. He said:

"And if the internet were not enough to kill universities, then the determination of successive British governments to send every feckless dolt in the land into tertiary education, regardless of aptitude, has finished the job by necessitating the introduction of fees that will increasingly drive any genuinely bright candidate away from dusty halls full of dunderheads and straight into the workplace."

The similarities between Muslim and Irish anti-British language and feeling

Dr Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation

Dr Usama Hasan is a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation (profile here) and part-time imam. He appeared on BBC Radio 4's PM show with Eddie Mair on Monday November4 2013 to talk about anti-British sentiment among young muslim men. He said:

"This is a wider problem within British Islam. There are many young people who feel alienated. They are sometimes subjected to extremist teaching which says they cannot be a friend or loyal to the west. That their identity has to be with Muslims only abroad, that's the Islamist idea with Muslims worldwide, global ummah. And the ultimate result of that is young men that want to fight and die for a cause. They won't fight and die for their own country - certainly not a European of western country - but they will go and join a militant group like the Taliban or al-shabab or al-Qaeda and go and fight in Syria or Somalia or Afghanistan. We have to understand that and grapple with it openly.

He was then asked by Eddie Mair: "How do we counter it?" He responded:

"The best way to deal with it is to bring the debate into the open and challenge the extremist ideas with better ideas rather than drive it under ground... Young people holding extremist views should be listened to and debated with calmly, to show them that Britain is actually a very tolerant and inclusive society which will give them the opportunity to participate in this society. 

There is a paranoid and conspiratorial mindset that everyone is against them and that the west is against Islam. As long as they're fed that kind of mentality then they will continue to operate in dubious ways.

There is no absolute parallel between the anti-British sentiment held by muslims and more hardline Irish nationalists and republican; but the parallels are very much there. Joe Brolly explained how Britain was regarded as he was growing up. He said:

"If I’d announced thirty years ago I was intending to play rugby and arrived home from school with a drawing of the Queen, they would have been sending for the men in white coats."

This is still a mindset and regard held by many Irish nationalists and republicans to this day. Brolly's plane of regard has, frankly, broadened and matured and taken in the context of the 21st Century. (Much like the west-Belfast, Ardoyne Catholic, British soldier here.) . As Alan in Belfast reported, "Joe Brolly’s son plays rugby for Malone and goes to the Cubs (coming home recently with a drawing of the Queen) [and] Joe finds himself standing for the [British] national anthem if he’s at a Cubs service to pick up his son."

The anti-Imperialism, anti-colonialism language employed by Muslims and directed against America is so similar in tone, mode and demeanour as that used by Irish republicans against Britain. Take the language used by the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard, who said:

"The crimes of US leaders and international Zionism in dealing with Iran's great nation will never be erased from public memories and minds."

Like in Iran, Belfast and Northern Ireland has a class of young people who are participants of the emerging world culture, but they also have an angry, hostile and hysterical class who are lovers of medievalism and haters of modernity.

We in Northern Ireland, like Quilliam, need to calmly and openly debate those who hold extremist views and challenge those extremist ideas with better ideas. People in Belfast and across Northern Ireland are being fed and actively hold a paranoid and conspiratorial mindset that Britain is bad, that Britain is the cause of all ill in Ireland and that Britain is the transcendent issue even above the economy, jobs, education and healthcare (the same for loyalists of course). People will continue to be fed this perverse philoshophy and they will continue to act in dubious ways and so we must counter this with reasoned, considered argument. We cannot allow these superstitious ideas to fester under the surface.

Modernity versus History in Tehran and Belfast

Christina Lamb wrote in the Sunday Times from Tehran describing how the young people live. She said:

"It is Friday evening in the Lorca cafe in downtown Tehran. Norah Jones is crooning over the speakers and the tables are packed with young people drinking lattes and smoothies, smoking and texting on their iPhones as they plan their night out. 

The boys are in jeans, T-shirts and leather jackets; the girls in tight jeans and colourful trainers or boots, headscarves so far back on their heads as to be barely a gesture. Later some of them will go to a friend’s loft-style apartment to watch Modern Family or Top Gear on satellite television, while eating pomegranate pips or pistachio nougat, and surfing the internet. One leaves to head to a rock concert." 

However there's an important qualification. Christina Lamb quoted a 21 year old chemical engineering student called Sohail who said: 

"You might look at our lives and think what's the problem? We're doing all these things but it's behind closed doors. We've no freedom. We'd just like to be normal like the rest of the world."

Christina Lamb then reported how just down the road from the cafe is a former American embassy known as the "Den of Espionage", taken by Islamic students in November 1979 and now used as a base for the Basji militia. November 4 2013 was the anniversary of the takeover and was celebrated by a group called the Death to the US Committee in an event called a "Grand Day of Death to America." A deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard said:

"The crimes of US leaders and international Zionism in dealing with Iran's great nation will never be erased from public memories and minds."

YouGov finds that graduates aren't "work-ready"

YouGov has found that half of the regular graduate employers in Britain are finding their recruits without the basic skills to cope under pressure. The polling of company leaders found that just under one in five businesses believe that graduates are "work-ready". Only 19% of business leaders said all or most graduate recruits were "work-ready". Read more in The Telegraph here.

Libby Purves in The Times then piled on the pressure when writing in The Times. She said:

"Two years ago a poll of big graduate recruiters such as HSBC, KPMG and Procter & Gamble also lamented a shortage of “employability skills”. Specific grumbles concerned lack of punctuality, commercial awareness and willingness to work within a system and a team."

She the concluded: "One way or another, we should ease that gap between education and the hard-nosed workplace." Another point: Figures from earlier in  2013 showed that almost one in 10 students – 26,000 – were left without a job or a further education course after graduating in summer 2012. Data showed that the unemployment rate jumped much higher at some universities, with 22.6 per cent of graduates without a job after leaving London South Bank university.

Christianism versus Christianity, Ctd

Andrew Sullivan explains christianism, he says here: 

"I do not believe that adherence to doctrinal lines makes one a Christianist. A Christianist, like an Islamist, cannot rest until his view of the world is enforced by law on others through political action. A Christian can be a rigid doctrinal enforcer in his own faith community without being a Christianist. Let me give Rod an example of a doctrinal line I would not cross: the Incarnation. Or, in fact, the entire Nicene Creed, which I recite at Mass with conviction. But I have no desire at all to impose that view of the meaning of the universe on anyone else whatsoever – let alone backed by the coercion of the state.That is where I differ from Christianists."

In full here. Previous post in the series here.

Linda Irvine - Being a Protestant and being Irish

Linda Irvine explained to William Crawley on the BBC programme It's a Blas, which followed William's journey to learn Irish, how she viewed Irish identity and the language. She said:

"I feel I'm British, but I'm Irish. I feel that as Protestants from Northern Ireland we are the other Irish. We are the ignored, forgotten Irish that have been over looked. Because when people think of Irish identity they think of catholic, they think of nationalist and they think of republican. And that's not who I am. That's not my identity. So I think that is why people from my community have rejected that idea of an Irish identity and what goes along with that - Irish dancing, Irish language. So for them that is something that is alien to them. Yet for me I see actually now that that identity is mine as well."

Being a woman in Iran

Christina Lamb spoke with Iranian physics student and talented pianist Sepideh, 25, who was arrested two years ago for being improperly dressed with her coat was above her knee. Sepideh explained:

"The police bundled me into their van, then drove around and picked up other women until it was full. They took photos of us as if we were criminals and we were held for about five hours. Some of the women were crying and pleading but I was angry and determined to stay calm. Finally they called our parents to bring ‘proper clothes’. After that I wore shorter clothes, I just became careful to look out for the Ershad. I felt insulted." 

Khaterah of Tehran University suggested things have started to change under Rouhani. She said: "At Tehran University we are all dressing and speaking more freely."

Press Regulation - Prior restraint and self-censorship

The problem with the libel and speech/press-control laws is not necessarily the active litigating against journalists and bloggers but the fear of litigation. A journalist or citizen-blogger may want to pursue a line of inquiry but exercise prior restraint and self-censorship against the self in the fear that they themselves could be pursued for legal damages. The Sunday Times editorial of November 2013 said of this:

"When a reporter drops a particular line of inquiry, or decides not to risk writing about certain establishment figures, press freedom shrinks - and with it what the public is allowed to know." 

The editorial continued: "It is the job of the press to keep the politicians honest. It is not the job if politicians to decide what the press can print."

George Orwell on Celtic Nationalism

George Orwell writes here on Celtic nationalism:

"Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon — simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. — but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O'Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism."

Bureaucracy - The rule by Nobody

Steve Hilton, former director of strategy for David Cameron, left Downing Street in 2012 exasperated at the schlerosis, rolling tedium and near-impossibleness of getting anything done under the Niagra of Whitehall bureaucracy. As he said, "the bureaucracy masters the politicians."

An American friend recently recounted his experience of trying to negotiate an Irish passport out of the joint Irish-American bureaucracy. By his testimony, the process was a vapid and satanic mill of tunnels, u-turns, closed doors and no-men. It overthrows the senses and almost breaks the person. Hannah Arendt wrote fluently on the blunt awfulness of bureaucracy in her book On Violence. She also explained the bureaucracy's inherent leaning towards fostering unrest. She said:

"In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant."

She continued: "Bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest."

Hannah Arendt comes via Maria Popova here.

Christopher Hitchens on Opinion Polls

Christopher Hitchens lances the polling habit here:

"What we've done with democracy is to assume it's a measurement of public opinion. When I was young there was quite an argumnet as to whether newspapers should even publish opinion polls, because they were thought to be unscientific and probably too easy to skew. Now newspapers commission expensive opinion polls usually in concert with a television or broadcasting organisation. Commission their own polls and then print their own findings as news on the front page when they've got nothing else to do. This is a parody of democracy. It's not even populism really. It's pseudo-science for one thing and it's anti-democratic for another. 

No I fear people have got so attached to it, they've forgotten what it means, that word now. So it's quite possible we're now due for a new word and I'll brood on that. And popular sovereignty, no." 

Video (at 26 minutes) in full, Christopher Hitchens explains here. He also talks about polling in the video here and further below:

"Pollster originally meant huckster. Basically somebody making a living out of something that's vaguely fraudulent. It used to be that newspapers would wonder if they should print opinion poll results at all, let along commission them. Now they commission them and wonder if they should use them for their own background information or whether they should themselves print them. Now the Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC will combine to produce a front page story and lead story on the network. Bought and paid for themselves.

He continued:

"Absolutely economises on work, thought and reflection... it does itself. It doesn't require any work, any thought."

Christopher Hitchens on Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

"We thus find ourselves in a rather peculiar universe where good intentions are rewarded before they have undergone the strenuous metamorphosis of being translated into good deeds or hard facts and it becomes increasingly difficult to entertain the suspicion that there is something explicitly political in the underlying process of Nobelista decision making."

Richard Haass - Majority in Northern Ireland want compromise

"My own sense from the bulk of the submissions is that the vast majority of people here are ready for compromise, are ready for progress, are ready to move on."

Richard Hass in full here. You can submit your submissions to the Panel of Parties in the NI Executive here.

The First Amendment and Britain

When I made the point that Northern Ireland needs the same liberty to express ideas and opinions as in the US I was rebuffed on the point that the First Amendment allows channels such as Fox News and the ideas it disseminates to flourish. Fair point. And I took it without much of a response, although I knew it was a matter that needed more exploration. I think Nick Cohen writing in The Spectator is onto something. He said here:

"The left blames the failure of the masses to embrace its ideas on the malign influence of Murdoch and Dacre. If attacking freedom of the press will help their cause, they will do it. The left wants right wing journalists silenced, the right want left wing journalists silenced, and everybody wants to tell the BBC what it can and can’t broadcast. 

In the United States, Fox News and the New York Times fight like cat and dog. But when James Risen, the White House correspondent of Fox News, was being threatened by the Obama administration, the New York Times and liberal journalists across America defended him steadfastly. Whatever their political differences, they believed in the greater importance of the first amendment to the American constitution. 

It reads: 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" 

If you ever become a temporary dictator, and have the chance to enact just one law, make it a British first amendment. As each day passes, the need for it grows ever more urgent."

Being Irish is about more than being an uber-Gael

There is no such thing a model Irish person. Cultural nationalism may have created an mono-type set ideal, but these notions are incredibly dangerous. As Conor Cruise O'Brien said, it's "recklessly idiosyncratic." Fintan O'Toole has said that Irish cultural nationalism has created "a prison for the Irish people which [has] crippled their true identity. To be Irish was not enough. To be Irish you had to be not British."

This is the status quo. A perverse ideal that seeks a prelapsarian Irishness. And if you can't reach this, you're denounced as a "west Brit." You can't win. As Fintan O'Toole said, "the choice was to hate England or to be a West Brit." The supreme irony Anglo-Irish relation is, as Michael Kirke said, that "The Irish constitute Britain’s biggest ethnic group and vice-versa."

Going forward, said Fintan O'Toole, "[A] new identity has to be positive rather than negative. But it also has to find a way to include Britishness." As Brian O'Connor said: "Being Irish involves a lot more than some uber-Gael, Provo-lite, pub-patriot wet-dream. It always has."