| A class division that we choose to
ignore By Joe Horgan
SOMEONE important is being buried in the town. Long coats and long cars.
Gardaí on the road, gardaí with peaked caps and stripes.
Two things spring to mind as we wait to get through on a winter’s
night. That this tradition of the big country funeral where everyone attends
to pay respects is so different from the sparse few you get at the English
funerals I’ve been to. Death is still not pushed out of sight here.
And secondly that the idea of Ireland as free of a class system is just
not true.
However much Ireland may have been able to hide because the class system
in England was so blatant the fact remains that this country reeks of class
divisions too.
And having listened to yet another government minister dismiss any of the
failings of today because the past was poorer I wonder once more just how
many of the political establishment have emigration running through their
families.
Maybe they do just like your family and mine maybe they do but I wonder.
I can’t help thinking that the scourge of past emigration we hear
so much about today was only a scourge for certain sections of society.
As Sean O’Riordan wrote on the eve of his sister’s emigration
in 1949: “The child is going to England tomorrow. Our poor girl. And
the bishops and the doctors and the professors and the motor car salesmen
are staying at home.”
So I watch the local great and good in their funereal best. Whatever they
think of themselves some truths remain. Everyone in the graveyard votes
the same.
I’m in the car because I have to be somewhere at a certain time and
public transport is sparse.
The hope is that in years to come it won’t be for the world is changing
and when even George Bush reckons America is addicted to oil you can bet
something is afoot.
Our government’s response to global warming has been fairly predictable.
They are buying their way out of their global commitments, have just announced
a new National Development Plan which seems to have been primarily devised
by their friends in the construction and road building industry and have
suggested that the way to counteract road pollution might be for us all
to buy new cars.
The storm that blew on and off for months has finally abated.
The stillness is strange. My mother who emigrated to England when she
was 19 and can still remember all these years on how much she struggled
to even cope with being there always used to say that she came to prefer
England in the winter.
She never wanted to stay and she never stopped being homesick but she felt
that England in the winter was warmer.
Now having lived here in old rural houses I can see what she means.
Windows leak and the rain seeps in. The open fire is beautiful of an evening
but it takes a while to get going and on some days it almost seems warmer
outside than in.
In this Ireland everyone is building extensions with huge windows and trying
to flood their houses with light but the small windows of these old houses
mark a time when homes hid from the elements and people sheltered.
Who could have afforded a room of glass? Who could have heated it?
What is odd about this new Ireland is how much those who enjoyed the benefits
of it all along are so busy reminding us how worse things once were.
It always seems to be those who didn’t emigrate that remind us of
how much emigration there used to be.
It always seems to be those who were never unemployed that remind us about
long dole queues.
Perhaps they do it because they were concerned about us all along and because
it broke their hearts watching us leave or watching us sign on.
Perhaps they have built this new country for us and not for themselves.
Perhaps they really do want a Republic we can all share. Perhaps from now
until election day they’ll promise us the moon if it means they win.
And almost certainly they will try to dance around concerns regarding the
health service and crime and education and the quality of people’s
commuting lives and instead try to bring us all down to their level by promising
a few more quid if we just go along with it all again.
As a lot of people have said we used to have a country, we used to have
a nation, we maybe even had a Republic but now they want us to believe
that all we have is an economy.
Up the lane the moon is out. The yard is lit from the sky and the trees
in this small corner of Ireland are still again.
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