| The Joe Horgan Column By Joe
Horgan
It is hard sometimes to get a handle on the values of a society, especially
when a society is changing as rapidly as Ireland’s. As someone raised in
an Irish family in Britain, you are always aware that you are looking in,
that there is some kind of glass curtain between you and Irish society.
You comment from the outside, from the margins, but not from the middle.
So no matter how well you know the place you are always trying to figure
out what is going on at some kind of remove.
I remember watching the protests over the road that was being built through
the Glen of the Downs in Wicklow. It took a while for the nature of the
debate around this to become clear as I had presumed it would obviously
be between those who were opposed to the road on environmental grounds and
those who were for it on essential development grounds. Strangely though,
none of the debate centred on this. Whether the road widening was unnecessary
or vital was never really discussed. What was pointed out, as if it was
the essential element of the whole issue, was that the protestors in the
trees were, by and large, not Irish. However interesting and informative
that may have been it was hard to see that as being anything but a side
issue but it was treated as being what the whole story was about. It said
nothing about the worth or otherwise of the Glen of the Downs, nothing about
the road programme across the island but it did say a lot about the culture
surrounding the environment.
More recently with the Hill of Tara it has been clear at times that outside
the main issue of whether or not the motorway is a good or not there has
been an undercurrent of other issues. As various opinions from around the
world spoke out in favour of protecting the landscape it was hinted by more
than one commentator that the perennial ‘outsiders’ were interfering again.
Yet somehow the inference here was slightly different, this wasn’t a mere
display of xenophobic resentment. It was instead a reflection of the confused
attitude that appears to exist with regards to our environment and what
we think of it. On the one hand Irish society loves the land, extols the
beauty of the country and values somewhere in its heart what it has. On
the other it thinks it has no intrinsic worth, is merely Irish after all
and somewhere in its heart almost despises it. So the Hill of Tara should
rightly be celebrated, for haven’t we a beautiful, ancient land after all,
but we can’t stop progress and we were backward and poor long enough and,
after all, doesn’t everyone have motorways?
There remains somewhere in Irish culture a belief that a regard for nature
and animals and the environment and all that jazz was the preserve of those
in the Big House. In some ways it isn’t truly Irish to look upon the land
and the living things on it as anything but commodities. A little bit of
that could be said to be a healthy rural sensibility that is free of the
mawkish sentimentality of those who don’t get any mud on their four-wheel
drives. More of it though seems to be the strange psychology of those who
were colonised.
So looking at these little controversies in Irish life around landscapes
and development it becomes clear that there are a few undercurrents drifting
around and that the outsider looking on could easily be washed away in the
confusion. It’s hard to get a strong grip on what is going on. Then, just
when you think you have it, you’re confounded again. So these men from the
main government party see things like protests over Tara as being the obsessions
of a few serial protestors and some romantic culture vultures. They on the
other hand are serious, realistic men, real Irish men of the republican
party that has dominated so much of life since the inception of the Irish
state. These men reflect the hopes and ideals of the real Irish people and
their core values are the values of the people as embodied by the founders
of the state. The latest news is that the house that was the final headquarters
of the Provisional Government during the Easter Rising is a derelict shopfront
bearing no plaque or protection whatsoever. The house where Connolly nursed
his wounds is falling apart. So now you really are lost. If these people
don’t value any of these things, what do they value? And does this new Irish
society have anything, anything at all, at the heart of it?
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