Dublin Opinion

No he hablado español en el año pasado, y estoy oxidado. Yo quiero estudiar y hablar español mucho más… pero es un poco difícil quando leo y hablo inglés todos los días. No tengo excusas. Soy perezoso.

Pues… I have been a bit busy I suppose. Apart from the ongoing examination of Irish class relations which just devours my days - I’m still working my way through primary and secondary reading on the cattle industry and its role in Irish economic and political life from the 17th century onwards - I’m also co-writing a book with a friend of mine on the labour movement in Kerry and Limerick in the years before independence. Well, I say co-writing, but really I’m editing his doctorate and adding an introduction and final chapter. It’s not quite a cheat to say I’m co-writing, but it’s not far off one either.

And in between all of that I spend my days here, in Dublin’s second city, Glasnevin cemetery. Not every day of course, but at least once a week I call in and walk among the dead. My grandmother, who I never met, is here, as are two of my uncles and one of my aunts. They are all buried in the same grave, which is not far from Parnell’s. A stipulation of my granny’s, my father used to tell me, as she was a Parnellite all her life. There are so many republicans, political leaders, trade unionists, radicals, drunks, anarchists, and papists all at rest here that it would be possible to give a fairly detailed narrative of the history of Ireland over the last two hundred years purely by pointing to the graves and reciting the particular spiel.

Not that I’m going to do that here, but what I always find interesting in Glasnevin is the light it throws on current trends as regards Irish history. The more well-maintained the grave, the more relevant the person is, I suppose, to the lives of those alive today. I constantly marvel at Parnell’s ignored, stoic block, for example, marking the mass grave of cholera victims he asked to be buried with. For others, the resting-place of Michael Collins is a pilgrimage, a constantly-regenerated memorial to a man mythologised beyond recognition.

Not far from here lies the de Valera family plot. In the week that saw the publication of the report into systematic child sexual abuse in Ireland’s Church-run institutions, I suppose there’s no real rush to plant any flowers on the man who did more than his fair share of carving the shape of the nation which condoned such rape and violence. In 1932 Fianna Fáil had a mandate to radically alter Irish society, but instead, after a few, short, studdering steps, it soon fell back in line with Irish agricultural and financial capital. The middle classes, and their investments, were soon safe again, while the children of the majority - the children of the country’s working classes - were guaranteed what can only described as torture if they fell into the hands of the Roman Catholic State apparatus.

The lack of flowers on de Valera’s grave, however, reflect trends in Irish historical study, not judgement or condemnation. Collins, who was idiotic enough to go to the heart of his enemy’s territory during a fucking civil war, and (oh! surprise!), gets his thick head blown off, is smothered with the bouquets of his wishful admirers, who spend the days whispering “our lost leader” and dreaming of what Ireland could have become if only Collins hadn’t been ‘t dumb-ass stupid enough to win a bloody Darwin Award.

Something tells me that getting shot in the head before he shot himself in the foot was probably Collins’ best move.

Oh well. This post started off light, but the child abuse report has given it a tone such that the type of playful rant I had planned just doesn’t seem appropriate anymore.

Rape. Torture. Neglect. and Murder.

You know what? We’ve never had a majority left-wing government in this country. The conservative, right-wing, Irish elite have had it pretty much all of their way.

This is their legacy, not ours.

En la ciudad de los muertos.