Saturday, June 2, 2012
The Irish Times - Saturday, June 2, 2012
Scots crowned chief Brit haters after Ireland cedes throne
DONALD CLARKE
A YEAR has passed since some posh lady in a hat caused a commotion by staggering her way through a few words of the national language. In the late spring of 2011, columnists (quite properly) made much of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Republic of Ireland.
A million years of discord had been put behind us. Ned Flanders embraces Homer Simpson. The Road Runner shares Acme Brand cordial with Wile E Coyote. You remember how it was.
Pop-cultural boffins had been aware of the thaw for many years. Consider a peculiar incident that occurred last weekend. Poor old Engelbert Humperdinck – the singer from Leicester, not the composer from Siegburg – did not cover himself with glory at the Eurovision Song Contest.
As the counting moved into its later stages, it looked increasingly likely that the great man representing the United Kingdom would finish dead last. In the end, only four countries delivered votes for Engelbert: Belgium, Estonia, Latvia and, yes, Ireland.
Nothing remarkable in that, you might say. The United Kingdom is our nearest neighbour. All those made-up east European countries vote for one another. The Greeks stand up for Cyprus and that island nation always returns the compliment.
But, until relatively recently, the Irish jury (such a thing existed in the days before public voting) made it its business to offer two fingers to the UK entry. Heck, we only gave three votes to Save Your Kisses for Me, and that was a Eurovision classic. The following year, 1977, offered a classic example of the feud’s lopsided dynamics. The Irish entry, which finished third, took the full 12 points from the UK. The British tune, which grabbed the silver medal, was awarded null points by the Irish jury.
Fans of “sport” tell me anecdotes about English friends who complain that, whereas they always support Ireland when that team are playing any nation other than England, their Irish pals insist upon urging anybody (even the Germans) to defeat the supposed old enemy.
Until the current defrosting, a similar rule applied during the Eurovision.
We hardly need to list the reasons behind the antagonism. I dimly remember history lessons concerning some sort of forced occupation (still going on, according to some commentators). By turning our backs on the likes of Lynsey De Paul and Mike Moran – whose contribution to the colonial atrocities was limited at worst – we reasserted our independence and put the brakes on one, relatively insignificant school of British hegemony.
Football fans will continue to wish England ill. But the volume of the booing has declined. Meanwhile, the Eurovision freeze-out has been entirely reversed: the British can now count on a sympathy vote from their new pals across the Irish Sea. It’s not a big thing. But the change does – in spite of recent economic reversals – speak of confidence and maturity.
So, we are landed with an interesting question. Who has taken over our role as chief Brit haters? Former colonies such as India, Canada and New Zealand seem reasonably tolerant of their erstwhile rulers. The Australians can, however, certainly make a claim to the title. The Antipodean nation has constructed an entire persona – jolly, drunk, fanatically unpretentious larrikin – in opposition to the caricature of Englishmen as bowler-hat- wearing fops with a passion for cucumber sandwiches.
Most Australian cricketers would rather lose a kidney than see their off stump deposed by an English googly. Yet every second British person seems to long for a life in the land of Vegemite. They love the bloody place.
No, the Aussies don’t quite qualify.
Your current correspondent is spending much of this week in lovely Scotland. Today it is Glasgow. Tomorrow we progress to Edinburgh. Before moving on to crown the Scottish champions (it’s time they won something, after all), we should clarify the argument somewhat. When the Irish Eurovision jury contemplated the effects of their psychological parsimony, they did not imagine men in kilts flinging cans of Irn-Bru at their deep-fried televisions; nor did they much ponder the effects on the Rhondda Valley. Hatred of Britain invariably means hatred of the English. Nobody, but nobody, engages in Anglophobia with greater relish than the Scots.
We offer all the usual provisos. Most Scottish people get on perfectly well with their lower neighbours. But the belief that Scotland and England are “old enemies” stubbornly persists. Once again, it’s largely a one-sided feud. English football fans regard their chief rivals as Argentina or Germany. You can’t get the bleeding royal family out of the Highlands. The English have consistently voted for political parties whose front benches are packed with Caledonians. This is akin to watching the progress of a tragically unrequited love affair.
Well, it looks as if the Scots will soon get a chance to vote for real independence. Give it a go. You may like it. If nothing else, a
Yes vote should give you the opportunity to snub your nose at the 2020 British Eurovision entry.
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The Lark
and the Freedom Fighter
By Bobby Sands, MP
My grandfather once said that the imprisonment of the lark is a crime of the greatest cruelty because the lark is one of the greatest symbols of freedom and happiness. He often spoke of the spirit of the lark relating to a story of a man who incarcerated one of his loved friends in a small cage.
The lark, having suffered the loss of her liberty, no longer sung her little heart out, she no longer had anything to be happy about. The man who had committed the atrocity, as my grandfather called it, demanded that the lark should do as he wished: that was to sing her heart out, to comply to his wishes and change herself to suit his pleasure or benefit.
The lark refused, and the man became angry and violent. He began to pressurise the lark to sing, but inevitably he received no result. so, he took more drastic steps. He covered the cage with a black cloth, depriving the bird of sunlight. He starved it and left it to rot in a dirty cage, but the bird still refused to yield. The man murdered it.
As my grandfather rightly stated, the lark had spirit--the spirit of freedom and resistance. It longed to be free, and died before it would conform to the tyrant who tried to change it with torture and imprisonment. I feel I have something in common with that bird and her torture, imprisonment and final murder. She had a spirit which is not commonly found, even among us so-called superior beings, humans.
Take an ordinary prisoner. His main aim is to make his period of imprisonment as easy and as comfortable as possible. The ordinary prisoner will in no way jeopardise a single day of his remission. Some will even grovel, crawl and inform on other prisoners to safeguard themselves or to speed up their release. They will comply to the wishes of their captors, and unlike the lark, they will sing when told to and jump high when told to move.
Although the ordinary prisoner has lost his liberty he is not prepared to go to extremes to regain it, nor to protect his humanity. He settles for a short date of release. Eventually, if incarcerated long enough, he becomes institutionalised, becoming a type of machine, not thinking for himself, his captors dominating and controlling him. That was the intended fate of the lark in my grandfather's story; but the lark needed no changing, nor did it wish to change, and died making that point.
This brings me directly back to my own situation: I feel something in common with that poor bird. My position is in total contrast to that of an ordinary conforming prisoner: I too am a political prisoner, a freedom fighter. Like the lark, I too have fought for my freedom, not only in captivity, where I now languish, but also while on the outside, where my country is held captive. I have been captured and imprisoned, but, like the lark, I too have seen the outside of the wire cage.
I am now in H-Block, where I refuse to change to suit the people who oppress, torture and imprison me, and who wish to dehumanize me. Like the lark I need no changing. It is my political ideology and principles that my captors wish to change. They have suppressed my body and attacked my dignity. If I were an ordinary prisoner they would pay little, if any, attention to me, knowing that I would conform to their insitutional whims.
I have lost over two years' remission. I care not. I have been stripped of my clothes and locked in a dirty, empty cell, where I have been starved, beaten, and tortured, and like the lark I fear I may eventually be murdered. But, dare I say it, similar to my little firend, I have the spirit of freedom that cannot be quenched by even the most horrendous treatment. Of course I can be murdered, but while I remain alive, I remain what I am, a political prisoner of war, and no one can change that.
Haven't we plenty of larks to prove that? Our history is heart-breakingly littered with them: the MacSwineys, the Gaughans, and the Staggs. Will there be more in H-Block?
I dare not conclude without finishing my grandfather's story. I once asked him whatever happened to the wicked man who imprisoned, tortured and murdered the lark?
'Son," he said, "one day he caught himself on one of his own traps, and no one would assist him to get free. His own people scorned him, and turned their backs on him. He grew weaker and weaker, and finally topled over to die upon the land which he had marred with such blood. The birds came and extracted their revenge by picking his eyes out, and the larks sang like they never sang before.'
'Grandfather,' I said, 'could that man's name have been John Bull?'
Source: Originally published in An Phoblacht/Republican News, Feburary 3rd, 1979, page 2. Contributed to this website by "Patrizia" from Italy. Patrizia can be contacted through this website.
Written by Bobby Sands, MP, while on the blanket protest in the H-Blocks,Long Kesh, Northern Ireland. Because protesting prisoners were not allowed books or writing materials, this essay was composed on a square of toilet paper and smuggled out of the prison.
Bobby Sands embarked on a hunger strike on March 1st, 1981 and dies 66 days later on May 5th, 1981. He was protesting the "criminal" status imposed on Republican prisoners from 1976 onward, and was fighting to regain the right to wear his own clothes, have free association with other prisoners, and other rights given to political prisoners.
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Get a grip, Clarke, we only gave Humperdinck four points and you've spun an entire column out of it. You should run along and be a spin doctor. You're like a shaman with a penis gourd who's been at the sherry bottle.
Sometimes you are forced to wince when, without warning, a reporter inadvertently exposes his inner workings like this. What has been seen cannot be unseen. For his sins, Clarke will be made to endure ten minutes of watching Martin Lee smiling and "dancing".
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