ARE AN GARDA REALLY RIGHT WING OR CAST AS STOCK CHARACTERS IN A STAGE MANAGED DRAMA?

Citizens have two ordinary expectations of their police force: that the law as it stands will be applied and that any use of force will be strictly necessary, moderate, and will not make a situation worse. Many who identify as left do not share these expectations and want An Garda to defy the law and also to use force without consideration of consequences.

This is most in evidence when An Garda turn up to keep the peace while occupiers of a building are removed by security workers acting on a court order. It makes for a very sinister display that the Gardaí feel they must wear masks to protect themselves, their homes and families. It’s in evidence again when Gardaí remove a small inoffensive workplace occupation or picket while on another occasion they’ve declined to confront right wing agitators who are spoiling for a street fight.

Drawing on a tradition of struggle, many leftists want An Garda to take sides and if this means selective application of existing law or conceding a riot, then so be it.

Now, in terms of fomenting revolution, i.e. disorder with the intention of bringing down or taking over the state, this makes perfect sense but the reality is that they’ve neither the slightest chance nor the intention of doing any such thing. They live a safe fantasy by associating with real revolutions in other times and places. Bluntly, they are image polishing and play acting in full confidence that media workers will report on and interview never asking them to discuss revolution.

Now, Lia Ypi of LSE – based on her experiences in Albania – has been discussing revolution in the meaningful sense of the word. She has included the proposition for discussion among her students. She may, however, be up against the probability that those students have a quite different understanding of the word itself, an understanding conditioned by their experience of leftists for whom revolution is a matter of campaigning style, appeals to people-power as a cliché, and a tendency to historical re-enactment, i.e. staging incidents as if they were involved in, say, Cable Street or similar.

Unfortunately ordinary police can fall victim when easily manoeuvred into performing the role of counter-revolutionary as if in a drama. That is to say, An Garda are mired as bad guys for failing to side with “revolutionaries” who have not the slightest interest in causing a real revolution, either in terms of violence or system change.

Because the various meanings of revolution, the intentions of campaigning leftists and the careless use of “fascist/anti-fascist” are never forensically scrutinised by media workers, it becomes commonplace – even acceptable – to portray An Garda as something akin to an occupying force oppressing the people. In Ireland that should be risible but with journalists/interviewers entirely focussed on news episodes or lacking the competence to deal with history and political theories, nonsense spreads among the gullible.

BROADCASTERS, FANTASISTS, EXAGGERATION AND MEDIA MYTHS

Something changed for the better on RTE’s Liveline on Dec. 5^th. The prog. had been accepting, if not promoting, the belief that there were no Gardai on the streets of Dublin City. All of a sudden calls to the contrary started to appear on air: calls to tell of seeing Gardai on the streets and one to thank Gardai for their prompt help at a crime scene in the GPO and for their caring follow up calls.

This might be a turning point for the programme which has a tendency to promote outrage fuelled by audience members claims which go unchecked, indeed mostly unquestioned. It’s a problem for wider public discourse as it presents imaginary problems and behaviour as real.

Let me explain. I accepted that a large proportion – if not a majority – of motorists used their phones while driving. I believed this because it was said so often and appeared regularly on social media. Then came a day as I began a drive home from Wicklow, I heard a contributor to Liveline talk about the ubiquity of motorist phone use; he said he saw this constantly and his word was accepted without question. I decided to check. Not once on that drive did I observe a motorist with a phone in hand. I’ve been checking ever since. While driving and out walking, I have seen two drivers on their phones; it was on the same day and both were moving inside a supermarket car park.

Next there’s the outrage over the extent of dangerous driving particularly on the M50. Now, I drive the M50 regularly and I’ve never felt unsafe. Perhaps I’d not been paying sufficient attention. I began to observe carefully. Yep, you’ve guessed: it just wasn’t happening. Of course I’m not suggesting that no incidents of dangerous driving occur on the M50 but the notion that dangerous driving is ubiquitous is a fantasy which seems to be advanced by those who consider themselves top class drivers and who wish to cause outrage with their imagined poor standards among lesser drivers.

Finally, there’s dog shit. This is an incessant topic on RTE radio. According to the outraged, it is a dreadful – again, ubiquitous – problem. The stuff is all over the place, no one is cleaning up and life is being made miserable for the majority. I live in Lucan. On a walk through Hillcrest, down the hill, around the village and home, I saw one instance of dog shit; my dog did it and I cleaned up. I related this experience on a local social media site. The outrage flared; I’d been looking in the wrong places. Three roads outside the village were mentioned as being defiled. Right, let’s see. I walked all three and found … nothing. Again, I’m not suggesting perfection. Of course there must be instances but the filthy ubiquity described by the outraged seems to be their disgusting fantasy.

What is going on? It’s difficult to know why people feel the need to exaggerate, to become associated with a running tale of outrage and above all why they are believed.

Journalists – especially Liveline’s Joe Duffy who prides himself on local knowledge and ordinary experience – cannot be unaware that popular outrages of the kind I’ve described are fantasies or do they too imagine great danger from hordes of bad drivers on the M50? It is likely that they will not abandon “good” stories by questioning the contributors who feed them. In other words, they see it as their job to report/relay myths which are providing them with material rather than deflate them.

A short comment on Vittorio Bufacchi’s book, “Why Cicero Matters”*

For fear of prompting a flight of general readers, I’d better not start by saying that Vittorio’s book is erudite, covering not just Cicero but a great deal of political philosophy along the way. But stay! It’s highly accessible, an enjoyable read. It’s important too; it works to restore a word drained of full meaning and traditions by modern usage, variously US politics, Irish irredentists, and simple opponents of monarchy. He’s arguing for republicanism, redolent of informed, participative citizens coming to judgement on matters concerning their polis. He uses the work of Cicero and Roman times to comment on today’s politics.

I’ve never met Vittorio but I know him as we engage fairly regularly on social media and often on matters related to our common membership of the Labour Party. I was therefore a little nervous on approaching his book as he’d asked me for comments and I feared I’d have major differences; I’d assumed it would shy away from the fraught state of politics today. It doesn’t. Nevertheless, I do have problems located for the most part in my own relatively demoralised views on the future of democracy. I should explain.

I followed the late Brian Farrell, a fond friend and mentor, in teaching a long-standing BA elective course in Political Communication at UCD. (It sometimes had a slightly different title and one witty student dubbed it “Dead Philosophers Meet the Internet”.) It had a practical bent in that I incorporated an understanding of technology and reached into policy starting at that time with broadcasting and print, and then changed with the technology. It led me to a position where I had to move the old distinction between the needs of liberal citizens and republican citizens to a core aspect of the course and this meant sundering the mass element of mass political communication. From that point on elitism threatened to swallow the republican. As others – including JS Mill and Habermas – have done I resorted to the standard get-out of raising the masses to republican participation.

Now, let’s come abruptly to the point. I tend to argue of late that the possibility of recreating that mass no longer exists, that huge numbers, perhaps the overwhelming majority, would not merely prefer – as before – an absence of politics and other “old” serious matters but are now outside any realistic chance of discursive material reaching them. The situation didn’t arise suddenly or lately; it’s been developing for decades. Indeed there’s an opportunity to write a largely technological history: broadcasting, narrowcasting … all the way to personalised advertising and at every point there’s a familiar political clash over regulation to achieve public service.

Vittorio is of course well aware of the necessities to republican participation, the education, leisure, equality, security, ability and tendency to philosophise. He has faith in the possibility of delivery, primarily through education. I don’t. I seem to be staring confused into a very different era in which traditional remedies cannot be effective. Damn right, I can become demoralised about the survival of democracy but also excited by these interesting if dangerous times and the drive to think this through.

Thanks, Vittorio.

*https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/why-cicero-matters-9781350376694/

THE NEED TO TALK ABOUT RTE’s CHANGE OF COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR

Gavin Deans is to replace Geraldine O’Leary who has retired as Commercial Director at RTE. What difference will that make? Well, it’s expected that he will operate an approach to commercial activity that is in accord with that of Kevin Bakhurst and Siún Ní Raghallaigh and utterly unlike the G O’L approach.

It has never been explained why media coverage and political interest have been docile in accepting the superficial nonsense that RTE management was a single domain and the consequent framing of the RTE debacle as a failure to manage. The reality is that there was a struggle between two irreconcilable approaches to commercial activity.

There can be no finality until the two are presented side by side, discussed and a decision made that one or the other is no way to conduct business.

It’s quite easy to characterise both as they represent arguments familiar since at least Celtic Tiger days.

One is the buccaneering approach that regards constraint, rules, regulation, conventions, due process etc. as inimical to business success. It tends to see the high life not as reward but as creating business. It dominated RTE management until it imploded after revelations provoked public outrage.

The other approach sees commercial activity as prudent, most successful when governed, orderly, paying attention to rules and conventions, keeping records.

Here are the unasked – or rigorously avoided – questions about RTE commercial activities: Is the garish, buccaneering carry on, with the tickets, dinners, travel and general high living necessary to commercial success? Alternatively, is the boring, rule bound, bookkeeping, corporate governance approach compatible with commercial success?

Rather than facing these practical questions, there is a pretence that the former never existed. It therefore isn’t discussed and examined. Bluntly, there is no resolution. That’s bad for truth, for RTE and bad for business.

It’s important to reiterate, a choice is required; it cannot be both. One of these approaches is the road to failure in RTE and indeed in any commercial industry. How should successful business be conducted?

Activists for ordinary decency are needed to resist on-line haughty bad manners, on-street abuse and downright gougerism

Everyone but especially those with experience of social media would be aware of the rise in, let’s call it, bad behaviour; it ranges from simple lack of civility, through crude and aggressive comments and on to actual thuggery. To describe it as a range is to suggest a commonality or connection between the parts and instances. However, few among the forthright would be pleased with such a thought.

Dublin shopworkers risk having coffee thrown at them should they say anything a gouger might consider confrontational; while in the safety of social media, ordinary users regularly endure abuse for failing to submit.

Let’s be blunt. There are many who consider themselves activists in an arena so important that ordinary conversational courtesy can be thrown aside. They regard all questioning, disagreement and contradiction as something to be dismissed, ridiculed and answered with haughty, bad mannered disdain – yes, akin to a preference for direct action over expressive protest.

The concept of culture is used as often to lump the dissimilar together as to whitewash or too easily forgive obnoxious behaviour and talk. However, it seems appropriate here to throw the blanket of culture across the haughty bad manners and the down-market thuggery. That is to say, give short shrift to pretentious activism which would likely despise the foul-mouthed coffee-throwing gouger.

Somewhere in there between on-line bad manners and thuggery there are the street comments and shouts.

It seems left to decent people to insist that no matter what the area of activism, civility is a requirement and also to demand that social media platforms facilitate reports/complaints on that basis.

ARE THOSE WHO ARGUE OVER THE RIGHT TO PROTEST AT CROSS PURPOSES?

The recent scenes outside Leinster House (Irish parliament building) have drawn attention to something quite basic: Those who cherish the right to protest are now confronted by those so angered that they regard some activists as mere thugs rather than protesters. From an activist perspective there’s a different conundrum: how can an activist protest a state when the state defends protest? It might therefore be useful to look at protest – what it was, what it became and what it might mean in future. In doing so, the question of activity close to parliament will not be addressed as it belongs to an altogether different realm of discussion.

Three distinct phases can be used to explore contestation over what counts as protest in Ireland.

1. Traditional marches and demonstrations

Should ordinary – normally compliant – people turn out to march in numbers sufficiently large as to constitute or represent an electoral threat, a government may pause for thought. However, the days of authorities quaking when people attend a protest are long gone. The talk now is of security and stewarding, with organisers looked upon as managers. Nowadays, it is usual to hear senior police officers say that people have a right to protest and that police will defend that right.

Long experience has revealed that protest is unthreatening but there’s more: protest has been institutionalised. It has become quasi-constitutional, a part of the way that politics is done. It is now an effective lightning conductor, discharging anger and resentment safely to earth. It is conservative, part of the management of dissent.

Political activists tend to enjoy protests. They rate them as good or relatively good and reminisce about protests they’ve attended. It’s a badge of honour to be able to claim attendance at some of the famous ones. It’s even a way of meeting up with old friends and comrades or resuming association under a respected banner.

The established march, however, is not supported by all in attendance. Some reject state stewarding and protection and seek to restore confrontation. Typically they would leave the main body of protesters and take an action thought likely to cause some disruption or a confrontation with the police. This would lead perhaps to a fracas which could be characterised as state opposition to protest. There have been amusing outcomes as when the confrontation stops traffic and prevents law abiding protestors getting home.

2. The water charges dispute and the rise of Effective Protest

During the campaign against water charges comments on social media began to make an interesting distinction between protest and effective protest. Typically a protester would be told by a Garda to stand aside from the installation of a water meter and to protest nearby. This they would see as pointless since the objective was to prevent the installation of water meters. Standing aside with a placard was not deemed effective protest. Effective protest is aimed at preventing something or perhaps causing something to happen, while protest as facilitated by An Garda is essentially communicative – protesting about something.

It might seem sensible at this point to tidy up the terminology but it’s not that simple. The inviting course would be to distinguish between protest – institutionalised as communication – and direct action. Here’s the problem: since the controversy is essentially about widening the definition and therefore acceptability of protest to include actions that are not exclusively communicative, creating a distinction right here between protest and action would prejudge the outcome of the discussion.

“Peaceful” seems to present a complicating factor. Many protest actions were accompanied by chanting “peaceful protest, peaceful protest”. The proposition would seem to be that any action that does not directly offer violence is legitimate protest and should be defended by the state.

As mentioned above, examination of the institution of protest was brought forward in Ireland by activists opposed to water charges and the installation of water meters. They actively tried to prevent the work being carried out by standing into earthworks, blocking roads to contractors and slow marching in front of contractors’ vehicles. Leaving aside the claimed justification of acting on behalf of the people, the proposition here is that preventing or delaying work is legitimate protest and should be defended by the state. It’s by no means a new proposition; environmental activists have occupied tree tops to prevent projects that involved the destruction of the trees. Blockades preventing workers or supplies reaching a disputed site are not unknown.

While they sometimes lead to violent clashes when police try to keep a road open, the blockade or slow march is now accepted as legitimate protest. The activist gets to make an effective protest which prevents, say, work happening for a time. The state accepts that protest will cause delays but projects tend to completion in the longer term and it is recognised as necessary to dissipate anger and opposition. Occasional clashes between protesters and police are inevitable as an accommodation is achieved between two accepted rights: the right to protest and the right to go about lawful business without hindrance. The currency here is essentially time.

The activists involved in the Jobstown protest directed at a visit by the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) to an educational conferral proposed that preventing or disrupting the visit or preventing the Tánaiste and her assistant from leaving was legitimate protest. The Director of Public Prosecutions disagreed and some were charged with illegally detaining citizens. This outraged activists who saw it as undermining the institution of protest. Indeed, in closing argument a defence barrister argued that the prosecution was an intentional assault on effective protest. In doing so, he ridiculed conventional protest as both old fashioned and akin to Father Ted holding a banner inscribed with “down with this sort of thing”. *

Two distinct arguments have emerged. Firstly, it is argued that a blockade preventing entry is not the same as preventing a citizen from leaving.** As the charging of the Jobstown protestors indicates, the State is intolerant of protesters detaining a citizen but this intolerance does not sit easily with police facilitating the slow marching of workers on a contested project trying to go home. Indeed, at Jobstown the slow march home was apparently negotiated between police and protest leaders/managers as an accommodation which would end the protest.

Secondly, a strange new proposition was advanced by a defence barrister: that because one of the detained citizens was a government minister she could be detained in order to ensure that she listened to the views of the protestors. In other words, the freedom of the minister to walk away from communication was contested. Like the slow march this could be developed into a peaceful accommodation: that a citizen can be detained in order to ensure that they hear some viewpoint. Again the currency would be time.

Now clearly there’s a great deal of pretence going on. On the state’s side there is a pretence that protest leads to change. In Ireland where decisions are subject to the delivery/pressure system, protest is just one pressure among many; e.g. interest groups, non-government organisations, sympathetic journalism.

On the side of the activists there is an implied pretence that if the state recognised a range of actions as protest, they would support the state. The reality is that since the state has assimilated protest, something else has to happen if the state is to be confronted.

In other words, one side says that protest is a right, encouraged, recognised and protected; the other side says any limitation on direct action undermines the right to protest. The two sides simply are not talking about the same thing.

Let’s take both at their word: that the state really does approve and encourage dissent, and that the activists do not seek confrontation but want to extend legitimate action beyond marches and standing with placards.

As suggested above the currency is time, delay. Negotiations are already the order of the day. The proposition is that activists may do as they wish as long as they are not violent. In many cases this will work out fine. A blockade of some engineering project is very likely factored into costs. Workers delayed by slow marches can probably be compensated by overtime payments. An extended list of accommodations might suggest that this is easily resolved but switching attention to different more basic examples of rights clashing reveals something far more problematic.

Leaving aside all question of violence like attacking an individual at whom a protest might be aimed or breaking up property, the extension of legitimacy (state recognition and protection) to all activity labelled protest could cede rights to groups at the expense of citizens. This returns consideration to the nub of the matter.

Citizens tend to be content to have rights limited in order to ensure public safety but this necessarily involves threat. It would be quite another matter if, say, freedom of movement were denied indefinitely or for a considerable period in order to defend a right to protest. While the state now negotiates with protesters, an authoritarian paradox emerges.

Should the institution of protest be extended to include all actions that a group or individual was willing to claim to be a protest, then a group or individual could rely on the state to constrain others. Thus the word “protest” – never mind “peaceful protest” – would trump all other liberties. Clearly no state with the slightest pretence to being liberal could cede such power to anyone willing to take action.

Rather than worrying excessively about what might happen – what obscure or mad action might be adopted to oppress fellow citizens – it might be better for the purpose of discussion to codify protest actions and this appears as the conclusion to this piece.

Come on, though, let’s be frank. If activists are committed to opposing the state, none of this is relevant because they must devise actions such that the state will oppose them. The position would seem to be that while protest is quasi-constitutional and effective protest can be accommodated, the last thing that anti-state/anti-establishment activists want is to be part of an effective lightning conductor, discharging anger and resentment safely to earth, part of the management of dissent. Though they frequently say that they are no longer interested in revolution, they still cling to some undisclosed role for confrontation and crisis***.

3. The return of the communicative protest

To be clear, there is no suggestion here that current protest actions are entirely about communication. They are mostly anti-state, usually confrontational, they block access and they often occupy. However, they tend not to negotiate with an Garda and – whether it is anti-abortion or anti-vax etc. – they are seeking to deliver their messages.

Crucially, objections to their protests or, as it might be put, to the legitimacy of their protests, focusses on the unacceptability of what they have to say.

This is an extraordinary development and new to Ireland. The proposition is that there are viewpoints, positions whose public demonstration should not be tolerated. It is of course part of a much wider consideration of whether a free society can decide that a viewpoint can be morally repugnant, never mind controlled or even banned. Typically, fascist or neo-fascist demos/protests ask questions about liberal tolerance.

In present-day Ireland protests are increasingly labelled fascist and opposed – sometimes aggressively – by left activists on that basis. The left see Garda claims to maintaining peace as a refusal to side against nazis and a statement of collusion, i.e. they want the state to move against protests. Against this, it has to be said that there is no overt neo-Nazi movement in Ireland. However, many protests behave in a recognisably nazi way, e.g. opposing races, refugees, unvetted men, transgenderism, occupying libraries which stock certain books and using a familiar, expletive-rich lexicon to put boundaries on “the people” and to label “traitors”.

The point here is that there is now an appetite to have the state act against protests considered repugnant. That this might extend beyond bantam nazis is evident in the claim that pro-life protesters should not be allowed demonstrate close to clinics. This is not merely a question of blocking easy access but of asserting that patients should not be upset by placards, pictures and words.

To conclude, here’s that codified range of protests

i) There is now no dispute over the protest march. It is a recognised institution.

ii) The sit down protest in a public street is disputed. It will normally be respected/tolerated by the state until it inconveniences a large number of citizens or a smaller number for a protracted period. Business interests tend to intrude as shops fear disruption of trading or the creation of the impression that going into town is subject to disruption.

iii) Slow marching is now virtually recognised by the state as a useful way of ending confrontation while allowing activists to feel that they’ve been effective in at least causing delay.

iv) While they may be peaceful and may not impede movement, protests which express views abhorrent to, let’s say, the Irish establishment are now considered unacceptable.

Discuss!

_________________________

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT9xuXQjxMM

** In answering irrelevant questions at the trial of Paul Murphy et al, witness, Karen O’Connell, made an interesting distinction. She suggested that while blocking citizen entry is “peaceful protest”, preventing a citizen from leaving is not.

*** It’s hard to imagine what non-revolutionary street politics is about. It seems to be a compromise between joining that strand of socialism which opts for reforms within the system (frequently mocked as social democracy) and a revolutionary style/tradition without the substance. In practice it sides with all popular movement/sentiment including that which is right wing. It views class in terms of polling categories rather than political values and seeks to represent those it views as working class by putting pressure on the government/establishment/political class. Thus class is reduced to a pressure group and activists termed “hard left” operate within the Irish cargo/pressure system of politics.

“OOH, AH, UP THE RA”; THE UNSUBTLE BUT WILY WOLFE TONES UNTANGLED IN 320 WORDS

“Celtic Symphony” is a typical Irish ballad, the stuff of a genre familiar since the late 1960s ballad group boom. It’s about supporters of Glasgow Celtic being together, marching along, having a good time with their mates. Then utterly unconnected with all that, we’re told, there’s graffiti on a wall proclaiming, “Ooh ah, up the RA” and each time it’s chanted six times.

In terms of the song and if it must have a chant at that point in the lyrics, it could have been anything. It could have been, “Ooh ah, where’s me ma” or indeed “Ooh ah, stuff the RA” but “Ooh ah, up the RA” was the composer’s deliberate decision.

FYI, the lyrics and song are available here: https://genius.com/The-wolfe-tones-celtic-symphony-lyrics

The difference between the song and the contrived chant is glaringly obvious. (Note that in the lyrics printed here the chant is written just once each time but in performance it is six.)

The composers are known for their support of Prov. Sinn Féin and it’s unsurprising that they would insert an IRA chant, hoping it would be taken up. It’s obvious PR, it’s manipulation and it’s not subtle. Outside of fellow supporters, any thinking person coming across the song with the sudden pro-RA chant would free themselves from the intended manipulation, asking themselves the obvious, “Jaysus, where did that come from?”.

It came from a desire to chant support for the Provo. IRA and a hope that it would be taken up by the clueless and gullible alongside actual supporters in order to create an impression of mass support. Nowadays an impression of mass support is important to the lie that is the SF “Marytale”*.

The Celtic-Symphony trick wasn’t particularly controversial or successful until the Irish Women’s Football team obliged by performing the chant during their dressing room celebrations on qualification for the World Cup Finals.

* This may explain the Marytale: https://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2022/08/06/news-production-normalisation-and-telling-the-marytale-in-ireland/

LAZY FRAMING: HOW SIMPLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MANAGEMENT HELPS TRIVIALISE THE RTE DEBACLE

It is handy, superficial nonsense to view RTE management as a single domain and consequently to frame the RTE debacle as a failure to manage. The reality is that there was a struggle between two irreconcilable approaches to commercial activity.

There can be no finality until the two are presented side by side, discussed and a decision made that one or the other is no way to conduct business.

It’s quite easy to characterise both as they represent arguments familiar since at least Celtic Tiger days.

One is the buccaneering approach that regards constraint, rules, regulation, conventions, due process etc. as inimical to business success. It tends to see the high life not as reward but as creating business. It dominated RTE management until relatively recently.

The other approach sees commercial activity as most successful when governed, orderly, paying attention to rules and conventions, keeping records.

Here are the unasked – or rigorously avoided – questions about RTE commercial activities: Is the garish, buccaneering carry on, with the tickets, dinners, travel and general high living necessary to commercial success? Alternatively, is the boring, rule bound, bookkeeping, corporate governance approach compatible with commercial success?

Rather than facing these practical questions, there is a pretence that the former doesn’t exist. It therefore isn’t discussed and examined. Bluntly, there is no resolution. That’s bad for truth, for RTE and bad for business.

It’s important to reiterate, a choice is required; it cannot be both. One of these approaches is the road to failure in RTE and indeed in any commercial industry.

For a little more detail see here:

Public sacrifice of a few senior RTE executives is not what is required; a way of thinking about business and management needs to be uprooted

Public sacrifice of a few senior RTE executives is not what is required; a way of thinking about business and management needs to be uprooted

Corporate governance is the system of rules and conventions which dictate how a company is directed and controlled. Importantly, it identifies who has power, who is accountable, and who makes decisions. It relates to the purpose of the company, the reason it is governed.

Interestingly, corporate governance has quite a few synonyms but no antonym.

When corporate governance comes under scrutiny, the focus tends to be on poor performance or on poor design of the system. It’s not surprising that absence of or opposition to corporate governance itself is not mentioned. That’s a thought that appears too exotic, unlikely or extreme, not something that journalists or managers need consider. Asking a manager to think about opposition to management might seem akin to asking a block-layer to ponder opposition to blocks.

In reality opposition to governance (management, planning, control, bureaucracy and all things “paperwork”) is not at all unusual. Indeed it has been popular and fashionable among a putative elite for decades. Adherents favour action over thought and planning, cultivate a buccaneering, high roller personal image and have a very clear understanding that their approach to commercial activity should prevail untrammelled by what they regard as outdated, anti-commercial conventions.

As in many walks of life this kind of garish approach struggled for dominance in RTE from about the 90s and it was evident. At its mildest it poured scorn on reports that exceeded a page and on minuted meetings but it also sought to reward its affiliates.

As the debacle in RTE dragged unpardonable behaviour into light, media reports lazily adopted the handiest frame; it was presented as a failure of RTE management to exercise corporate governance – and a recent failure at that. Those involved were characterised as mere chancers with a taste for living the life of Riley. They were nothing of the sort. Their approach – their particular type of commercialism – had sought to rule RTE and their silly spending, lavish entertainment, travel, tickets, questionable retirement deals etc. are just the familiar trappings of their ostentatious approach to commerce.

There was no evidence that in recent times corporate governance failed to control rogue senior staff. Rather there was evidence that sufficient semblance of corporate governance survives in RTE. That remaining governance should be enough to end the old struggle by confronting and eliminating not commercialism itself but the kind of commercialism that came close to destroying RTE.

It might be asked why it is important to look at the long roots of the debacle. Well, it’s because believers in the destructive approach are still in place. It is the approach itself that needs to be floodlit, defeated and eliminated as a credible approach to business, management or society. Media reporting and comment on the Tubridy affair and the flashy spending which treats them as recent failures by RTE managers or Board members help divert attention from a more serious and enduring problem. Reporters and commentators too need to think rather than piling into the easy story; they need to perform a public service.

IF YOU THINK YOU SAW A “CELTIC TIGER”, YOU WERE RIGHT AND IT HOPES TO HIDE AND SURVIVE

The “commercial” debacle at RTE was decades in the making. A look back at the origins of the problem may stop a rush to isolate commercial from public service.

It defames ordinary commercial/business practices to associate them with the behaviour that has been dragged into the public gaze. Straight, legal business people and managers are as appalled as anyone else. A quasi-Marxist formulation may put it better: there’s an intra-class struggle here. Those who would fritter money away in the belief that that’s how business is done, that it’s normal, know that if their view does not prevail, they will be seen as wrongdoers while ordinary business people and managers with, let’s say, traditional or conservative values will win out in what has been a long struggle.

It’s hard to put a date on the beginning but it’s sometime in the 90s when disrespect for order, planning, records – all the routines of business and management – became a fashion and an affiliation signal among a buccaneering wave of careerists who prided themselves on getting things done as opposed to “bureaucracy”. They never had a decisive victory but they remained powerful and enjoyed considerable support until now that it has come to a head.

Those who want to break old rules and conventions seldom have the ability to realise that if successful they will recreate the conditions and problems that gave rise to those rules in the first place. That is to say, when they get their way, they land their industry back where it started.

It is important that this be ended, that they be routed. For that reason any move to separate commercial and public service funding must be resisted. A separation would be a victory for those who caused this debacle and an abandonment of business and management practices, values and – importantly – people who would have no difficulty operating in a public service environment.

It’s been said that the revelation of garish spending and disregard for how it might appear is a flashback to Celtic Tiger excess. It’s not. It’s evidence that an old struggle continues today and it matters a great deal that it end in the elimination of “commercial” as revealed before the Oireachtas committees.

Emphasis on RTE’s corporate governance and culture is a mistake – a very familiar Irish mistake

Once enquiry focusses on “corporate governance”, citizens can expect bewildering nonsense. Then if “culture” is mentioned, nonsense is confirmed. The process is familiar over decades of Irish scandals and invariably leads to similar outcomes. It works like this:

No person is ever responsible. Whatever anyone did wrong, it was caused by the culture or by a failure of corporate governance.

Then typically an entirely innocent senior manager (possibly a Minister or even the Taoiseach) will be forced to apologise on behalf of the organisation or even the state, while the perpetrators go to earth.

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When a company or profession is selected to perform a job, they will unsurprisingly address it with their staff, experience, expertise etc. Essentially they will do as they always do. To explain: It’s a bit like putting land into the care of the OPW; they will build paths, seating etc. because that’s what they do and it would be foolish to expect otherwise. So, when managers in the business of corporate governance address a scandal, the approach will be one of corporate governance and the solution will be reform of corporate governance. Now, of course changes to corporate governance are indeed required to ensure that the temptation to wrongdoing is eliminated but that is perfectly compatible with corporate or cultural as opposed to personal blame.

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In a similar vein, naive questions encourage this view of corporate culpability. The silliest question is perhaps, “who signed off on this?” The answer is that no one did; that’s not how groups usurp management. Considerable research – way beyond the interest or expertise of specialists in corporate governance – is necessary to find out who first came up with the idea of the dodgy barter account and with whom did they first discuss it.

This is a crucial point because even in an organisation funded both commercially and by the public, coming up with a proposal so at odds with public service sentiment and tradition, the originator would have to be careful and would speak only to those known to have similar views. It’s by no means a conspiracy but a quiet awareness of affiliates, like minded people, who have signalled contempt for management’s failure (in this case) to have a more aggressively commercial approach. Incidentally, affiliation signalling is a feature of wider managerial moves against conventional management.

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It is likely that those who brought RTE low form a coherent group without formal structure but having an oppositional – even contemptuous – attitude to what they would regard as old fashioned, anti-commercial, prudent management. It is likely too that they operate other oppositional practices and some of these may have been listed by Emma O’Kelly, RTE’s Education Correspondent and NUJ Broadcasting Branch Chair when she referred to equipment, pay, bonuses, and pensions.

That directors and senior management – those involved in corporate governance – knew nothing is not in the least surprising; that was the general idea. People who thought themselves smarter, more in tune with, let’s call it, commercial reality made it so and probably had a laugh at public service traditionalists.

THE DITCH, DEMOCRACY AND FAILURE TO ERODE A POPULAR DOCTRINE

Tánaiste, Micheál Martin is experienced and perceptive. He realises that the Ditch represents something new and anti-democratic. However, the difference between it and other outlets is not great; it’s a matter of degree, rather than of kind.

The Ditch has been outspoken about what it sees as its role and what it considers a success. Its role is to harass whoever is in government by seeking out instances of wrongdoing and its success is triggering a resignation. That’s not very different to RTE; the claim is that the Ditch does it better.

No one at all is opposed to reporting on wrongdoers in government but that is a limited, small corner of investigative journalism and an even smaller part of what an active, discursive citizen might expect of journalism.

Unfortunately a situation has been allowed to develop such that a journalist’s/interviewer’s reputation stands or falls on the degree to which they are seen to give politicians a hard time. This requires promotion of the popular view that all politicians are up to no good and must never be believed. By contrast activists are believed, praised and seldom if ever pointedly questioned.

The good interviewer/presenter is the one who sticks it to the minister while favouring the activist whose role is also to stick it to the minister. It’s tediously familiar because it reflects a well established perspective.

Three points need to be made. Firstly, it was predictable that a specialist would emerge and that – despite assurances of its intentions to treat the next government similarly – it would for now have the appearance of a campaigner. Secondly, it is not the Ditch itself that is anti-democratic but the bland acceptance that politicians, especially those in government, are to be treated as dishonest enemies of the people while activists, advocates etc. are to be assumed honest and disinterested. While this is almost certainly the dominant viewpoint, it is no more than a highly contentious proposition. That it is not routinely called into question, made a matter of public controversy, is anti-democratic. Thirdly, cogent criticism of established doctrines delivered day in, day out is precisely what citizens of a republic require of their journalists, interviewers and presenters.

Enough of “Don’t shoot the messenger”: a brief look at impartiality

When contrasted with the sort of partisan agitation that can appear in unregulated media, impartiality is a good and has an honourable history. However, it is so regarded as an unalloyed good that it has never been subject to criticism, never mind revision.

Impartiality suits the industry more than the citizen and its problems are certainly not recent.

Impartiality’s natural home is a binary system or controversy, i.e. uncomplicated, with two contesting sides. Its basic demand is that everything should be reported without editorialising, i.e. without comment or criticism.

Impartiality is enthusiastically supported by journalists because it keeps them out of trouble: it has always provided a useful shield with which to fend off both the demands of power-holders for supportive coverage, and the expectations of citizens that journalists tell the truth rather than act as passive messengers, delivering whatever was said. Most citizens don’t ever think about impartiality and expect broadcast journalists to be responsible for the content of their reports.

Bluntly, a journalist impartially reporting a statement is too often insufficiently different to a social media user carelessly sharing.

BLINDED BY THE SACRED: 1916 AND FINDING IRISH VALUES

Taoiseach, Leo Varadker, believes that tricolour-draped xenophobes do not represent the Irish way. He believes that an Irish way exists and that racism is not part of it. It’s something like Imelda May’s dictum that one can’t be racist and Irish. Put it another way: that racism is a view so morally repugnant as to be beyond any sense of what we are. Incidentally, it also opens up the possibility that other views might fall into the same category.

The idea that there are views so morally repugnant that the nation might want to exclude the bearer from membership is interesting. Openly debating it may, however, not be compatible with the established Irish approach to contesting national values. In Ireland there’s not so much debate and more a clamour to create, claim and inherit the “true” meaning of 1916.

For example, a Twitter debate flickers into life every so often over what James Connolly said or didn’t say about racial intolerance. That might be expected to be a matter for Marxist examination of a socialist writer but in Ireland it’s wider and that’s because no political party dares cut themselves adrift from the 1916 Rising. What all are impelled to do is argue that their values and aspirations are those of the insurrectionists.

Leo Varadkar (the urbane liberal), SF (who would normalise car bombers), anti-fascists (who want to “bash the fash”), the Labour Party and Trade Union movement and, yes, anti-immigration protesters must all root their claim to be quintessentially Irish (true inheritors of the national flag) in their various interpretations of 1916.

Predictably this competition to own the state’s foundation myth creates a frame such that the open, continuous debate necessary to thrashing out shared values becomes more like a battle between heretical sects over a sacred document or event.

A very short blog. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; ARE POLITICAL THEORISTS AND POLICYMAKERS IGNORING AN IMMINENT FUTURE?

I’m not a software engineer. However, it seems to me that in consideration of artificial intelligence (AI) far too little attention is paid to an enormous change likely in the short term.

Two areas unsurprisingly hog attention: ChatGPT and machine consciousness. Because these are exciting and newsworthy, little space is left for the relatively boring issue of algorithms that learn to adapt.

Firstly, for all the fuss over ChatGPT, it’s not a radical break with the past but merely a fabulous example of a system that learns to interact in a way that mimics the presence of a person.

Secondly, philosophers and indeed all those who like to paint on a large canvass are preoccupied with machine consciousness or the creation of a singularity.

However, something that will cause a lot of disruption and change is just about upon us and there’s little or no sign that political theorists and policy makers are paying due attention. AI in the form of algorithms that adapt look set to wreak enormous change. Initially they will compete with software companies and staff who update or create new generations of their product. The likelihood is that they will disrupt the software industry, making redundant many of those who seemed impervious to the ravages of new technology. They will then push on into other industries that seemed unassailable, e.g. law, accounting, taxation, academia. Bluntly, this looks akin to an industrial revolution and since the first of these algorithms already exist, social theorists and policy wonks had better get their thinking caps on.

“COMMUNITY STANDARDS” PROTECT PERSONAL ABUSE

Ceist: Have you ever reported nasty, abusive, name-calling, mocking, filthy comments to Facebook or Twitter? If not, you should try it; you’ll get a reply, a very informative reply. They both have their Community Standards which you can read and your complaint will be judged by whether or not a Standard has been breached.

The problem is that the Standards are not at all communal. They are highly individualistic – essentially liberal – but they have a selected list of sentiments which have been deemed unacceptable. That is to say, promoting violence or affronting on the basis of gender, disability, sexual orientation, race etc. will likely be censored and the offender may be suspended. However, with a nod to defending freedom of speech, personal abuse is permitted and this is where there’s a high dive into libertarianism, an isolating individualism.

Let us suppose that on Twitter you have been subjected to weeks or months of common abuse: ridicule, name-calling, accusations of wrongdoing, attribution of views you don’t have, foul-mouthed innuendo etc. You decide to submit a report. What happens next is that you receive an expression of regret which TELLS you that you have been offended by something which unfortunately complies with community standards, that you should not have to endure offence and suggesting that you block, cut off contact with, the offender. In other words, the victim is allowed no reaction other than offence and must take responsibility for their own isolation from the supposed offence while the offender can carry on abusing others.

Now, let’s clear up something here. There is a world of difference between i) allowing someone to censor expression by claiming to be offended (Salman Rushdie has done an excellent demolition job on this.) and ii) allowing an intruder to ruin a conversation. Look at it this way: if a group were having a conversation on a street corner and an intruder persisted in coming up to them, casting rude/obscene comments, that would be regarded as simple bad behaviour and no one would argue that the discussants were responsible. Bluntly, addressing on-line nastiness has nothing whatsoever to do with being offended and a lot do with saving ordinary conversation.

If the sort of vile stuff directed most prominently at female politicians but also at anyone trying to make a civil point is in compliance with “community standards”, then whoever takes care of those rules misunderstands both “community” and “standards”.

At this point we come to an old political divide, opposing traditions: liberal versus public service. The liberal approach – in the past applied to print media – is to have everyone more or less free to say and do as they please and competition will produce a desirable outcome; essentially it’s a market. The public service approach – in the past applied to broadcasting – is to subject a media provider to obligations to supply a public good which a market may fail to do – typically, ensure coverage of current affairs, public controversy and in accordance with rules like objectivity, fairness etc.

There’s now a political choice to be made, just as there was for newsprint and for broadcasting. In dealing with social media platforms does the state go basically liberal, allow them do as they please including the formulation of their own standards; or should “community” be taken back such that the state acting in the public interest will decide on, formulate and legislate to have social media conform to the standards of a real-world community.

Of course this is a simplification whose purpose is to draw attention to an old political choice. It might be said that the policy choice doesn’t belong to the I.T. age. However, this has been the controversy at the centre of thinking about virtual worlds right back to when John Perry Barlowe’s 1996 “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” sought to prevent government crossing into the vast new spaces beyond the cyber frontier.

In summary, in our ordinary day-to-day community we all know damn well that personally abusive tweets/comments have nothing to do with either freedom of expression or the right to offend.

REPUBLIC OF COVID

During the 2020 Covid lockdown, I was – like most people – confined to my home and garden. I had my dogs and cat for company. There came a day when I wondered why I was not unhappy in my confinement. The answer was obvious: ICT. I had internet and communication technology at my disposal such that it was possible to talk with my friends, read widely, stay abreast of all that was happening, research to my heart’s content and contribute to discussions.

But hang on, it’s not just a matter of equipment and access to the technology. There’s more; without an education, security, income and leisure, it would not be possible to function as described. In short, lockdown was better than tolerable because I was well-placed to enjoy, let’s call it, a life of the intellect or as Jurgen Habermas might have put it years before, a life in the bourgeois public sphere or bluntly indeed, the life of an active citizen of a republic.

Here’s the proposition: Deprive a person of adequate income, security, free time, a good education (such that research is a meaningful, familiar activity) access to masses of information and contending arguments and they cannot possibly function as a republican citizen. In the 21^st century lack of internet access and the ability to use it is deprivation of the same order.

Taken a step further, here’s another proposition: If the mass of citizens are not so endowed, there cannot be a republic. Yep, it’s a very old-fashioned notion.

On-line around this time I happened upon Dr. Vittorio Bufacchi , a philosopher at University College Cork. I was delighted to find that he too was not greatly troubled by confinement and was linking that experience to his education, background and equipment. He used his time to good effect and produced a book, Everything Must Change, which argues that the pandemic period should serve as a great hiatus, affording the time and opportunity to consider the making of a more sane, decent and egalitarian society.*

It is now unfortunately the case that media coverage and everyday discussion of the making of a different society post Covid 19 has just about fizzled out. However, there may still be another impetus. For all the antagonism to politics and discourse, there are those – perhaps relatively few – who continue to take mass democracy seriously, who would restore a meaningful public sphere, and who realise that means responding to the material needs of participative citizens.

It’s a faint 20^th century hope adrift in the very different 21^st century and that’s work for another day.

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* https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526158772/

THERE IS A VERY DISTURBING REASON FOR THE DEGREE OF SHOCK/OUTRAGE AT THE SPIRITAN REVELATIONS

It is clear now that perverts in expensive schools took their sado-sexual pleasures to the extreme on young boys. Blood flowed as buggery joined hand and bare backside lashings; it was demonic brutality. So many are now aghast, bordering on incredulous, that such could happen.

But, stop, think, what is it that they find so appalling or a related question, what did parents expect would happen when they sent their children to these schools?

Are they aghast that the children were abused or are they aghast at excessive abuse? In reality there could only have been an expectation that the children would be beaten and touched-up because that was the norm in Irish schools.* Today’s hand-wringing over the Spiritan schools is because violent paedophiles exploited an opportunity to sate the extremities of their cruel passions.

There are those in Ireland who approve of beating children. They reckon it harmless or even good. They tend to whitewash child abusers as “hard but fair”. When they suffered themselves, they reckon they deserved it. There are those too who will laugh while telling how they knew to avoid a Father or Brother “fiddly fingers”. Many do both. They want to portray an Ireland of common child abuse as a happy place, if only the “politically correct” and the “snowflakes” would remain quiet.

If there is to be a public inquiry limited to the Spiritan schools, there must be two conditions. Firstly, its remit must include inquiry into lesser abuses at the Spiritan schools, i.e. beyond the fiendish horrors so spectacularly revealed. Secondly, it must be made clear that the limitation to the Spiritans is for ease of administration only and that it does not preclude an inquiry into the likelihood of mass child abuse immediately on conclusion of the Spiritan inquiry.

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*On Nov. 11^th the radio programme, Liveline, featured for the first time a victim who did not suffer the excesses and who explained how Spiritans could abuse while an entire school class looked on: in the classroom context they kept their activities within accepted bounds.

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This too might be of interest: https://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2022/11/09/the-exceptional-horror-at-the-spiritans-must-not-mask-the-extent-of-abuse-in-irish-schools/

THE EXCEPTIONAL HORROR AT THE SPIRITANS MUST NOT MASK THE EXTENT OF ABUSE IN IRISH SCHOOLS

The experiences emerging from schools run by the Holy Ghost Fathers/Spiritans are so horrible they create a risk that the public gaze will be blinded, that interest will be confined to exceptional evil and that a discussion of child abuse in Ireland will for the umpteenth time be circumscribed.

Three things need to be emphasised.

i) As the victims of the Spiritans graphically related on radio, the routine Irish distinction between physical and sexual abuse is false. The former being more common, perpetrators have an interest in promoting the distinction.

ii) There is a gender issue which tends to trivialise adult male abuse of boys.

iii) There is a need to look down the scale of horror to consider what acts are deemed sexual abuse.

These three combine to paint an erroneous picture that sex abuse in Irish schools was rare, whereas the truth may be – dare to whisper it – mass sexual abuse. Calls are coming now for an independent enquiry. Should they be successful and the enquiry be limited to the horrors of the Spiritans, it will copperfasten the view that abuse was rare and banish the thought that it was commonplace.

Perhaps my own story from a somewhat earlier period might serve as a vehicle to explore these issues.

I attended Goldenbridge boys infant school before moving on to primary school at St. Michaels CBS, Inchicore (Richmond Barracks/Keogh Square) and there were violent incidents aplenty. However, here I want to talk about James St. CBS (Dublin, Ireland) where I received my secondary education in the mid-1960s.

As we developed sexual awareness all of my peers knew full well the difference between affection and sexual contact. (Indeed the very idea that affection would feature in such a school is ridiculous.) Being felt-up, leered over and told vaguely homo-erotic stories were routine. It became central to our slagging and jokes. If anyone had been left with one of the feelers, he could expect jokes along the lines of, “Did he get you? Did ‘Touche’ queer you?” (Touche was a Brother’s nickname)

There was sport on Wednesday afternoons in the Civil Service grounds beside the Memorial Park, Islandbridge, Dublin. Everyone who took part had to squeeze past a Christian Brother who placed himself in the doorway of the changing room and tried to check for “tight tummy muscles”. Avoiding him became part of the sport.

There are other examples but enough said to make some points. a) All of the pupils knew precisely what the touchers/feelers were up to. b) Joking was how they coped with it. c) It is highly improbable that anyone who attended that school at that time avoided this type of abuse.

Having spoken casually over the years to very many people who attended other schools, I formed the view that the carry-on in my school was not exceptional. The addendum below from the Irish Times (2012) lends support.

As mature adults and aware of dreadful sexual assaults in other schools, I had a number of conversations with former classmates. We were concerned that we might have failed to notice much worse than touching-up. We wondered had there been someone quiet and not part of our immediate close gang who could have been isolated and used terribly. We could think of none. This is remarkably similar to Maurice Manning’s reported comment in the addendum below.

The next step in the thinking is vital and this is where there will be disagreement. It is at this point that we enter into the business of defining sex crime to include touching-up a child. There may be different positions on this: that while it is sexual and it is unacceptable behaviour, it is too minor to warrant a fuss; that it is very wrong but falls short of criminal behaviour; or that it is very serious and most definitely criminal.

The debate very likely turns on gender inequality. The touching-up mentioned here is male adult on male child. There is not the slightest doubt that had it been male adult on female child, there would be universal condemnation and calls for Garda action. Moreover, it was when I read court reports of what a priest had done to a girl that I began to view the James St. CBS touching-up as not mild, low-level sexual abuse but criminal. The actions were identical and the man was in the dock. The point is this: the label of criminal can be withheld from the CBS abusers only if it can be successfully argued that it is less wrong for a man to touch up a male child as opposed to a female child.

The alarming proposition is this: if touching-up male children is sexual abuse and if the practice was universal in schools or even widespread, then the scale of the Irish scandal has changed considerably. It would seem that Ireland has so far looked only at the horrors of the likes of the Spiritans but behind this lies the routine. It is the word “mass” that disturbs; the likelihood is that Ireland must face up to, discuss and decide what to do about mass sexual abuse.

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ADDENDUM

Here’s something published in the Irish Times back in 2012. It’s not entirely clear if the journalist realised the significance of these 170 or so words.

“But how widespread was this abuse? Did senior clergy or other students know what was happening? Those who attended Holy Ghost schools describe their contrasting experiences.

Maurice Manning, a former Fine Gael senator, recalls that while there may have been rumours about a handful of priests when he was a student at Rockwell, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, most of the teachers were well liked.

‘Maybe there were one or two you wouldn’t want to get caught alone with . . . There were kids who were more vulnerable than others. But I wasn’t aware of anyone being abused. And I think that was the honest view of most of my classmates.’

Gerald Montague, a philosopher who lives and works in Germany, was a student at St Mary’s College during the late 1950s and early 1960s. ‘I didn’t recall anything of a sexual nature until I discussed it recently with some friends,’ he says. ‘They reminded me of a father we used to call ‘Fr Fiddly Fingers’. It seems I just didn’t want to know.’”

Carl O’Brien, Sex abuse in private schools, Weekend with The Irish Times – Saturday, September 8, 2012 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0908/1224323728889.html

The words attributed to Maurice Manning are curious and he needs to clarify. He seems to be saying that while he was aware that some of his teachers were likely to abuse and that some of his classmates were at risk, he wasn’t aware of any particular incidence of abuse. That’s chilling.

Though I didn’t attend an expensive school, my experience is more similar to that of Gerald Montague but with the significant difference that at our school we laughed and joked about the sexual nature of the abuse.

By including this material in his article Carl O’Brien lent support to my deepening conviction that what has happened in Irish schools was mass sexual abuse.

FOOTBALL AND CHANTING, “OOH AH, UP THE RA”

“Celtic Symphony” is a typical Irish ballad, the stuff of a genre familiar since the late 1960s ballad group boom. It’s about supporters of Glasgow Celtic being together, marching along, having a good time with their mates. Then utterly unconnected with all that, we’re told, there’s graffiti on a wall proclaiming, “Ooh ah, up the RA” and each time it’s chanted six times.

In terms of the song and if it must have a chant at that point in the lyrics, it could have been anything. It could have been, “Ooh ah, where’s me ma” or indeed “Ooh ah, stuff the RA” but “Ooh ah, up the RA” was the composer’s deliberate decision.

FYI, the lyrics and song are available here: https://genius.com/The-wolfe-tones-celtic-symphony-lyrics

The difference between the song and the contrived chant is glaringly obvious. (Note that in the lyrics printed here the chant is written just once each time but in performance it is six.)

The composers are known for their support of the Provo. IRA and it’s unsurprising that they would insert an IRA chant, hoping it would be taken up. It’s obvious PR, it’s manipulation and it’s not subtle. Outside of fellow supporters, any thinking person coming across the song with the sudden pro-RA chant would free themselves from the intended manipulation, asking themselves the obvious, “Jaysus, where did that come from?”.

It came from a desire to chant support for the Provo. IRA and a hope that it would be taken up by the clueless and gullible to create an impression of mass support. Nowadays an impression of mass support is important to the lie that is the SF “Marytale”*.

The Celtic-Symphony trick wasn’t particularly controversial or successful until the Irish Women’s Football team obliged by performing the chant during their dressing room celebrations on qualification for the World Cup Finals.

Staunch opponents of the IRA who were also football supporters, found themselves delighted by their team’s success but let down, disappointed and angry at their team’s chanting. Victims (and their families) of IRA attacks were offended, proponents of peaceful Irish reunification reckoned their project had been damaged, and UEFA had a headache**.

Football supporters who are also fans of the IRA and the Marytale were delighted. Some SF apologists argued that this was an indication of support from young people or even expression of a strong “anti-establishment” perspective. They were joined by ostensibly leftist voices who thought it a class and/or feminist expression. (Opposition was characterised as picking on a working class sport and/or bullying women.) Other SF apologists combined with the disingenuous and downright naive to claim this was merely a song having no significance.

All in all, it’s a mess, it’s complex and has usurped the favourable international publicity which is the national team’s due.

It remains to be seen what becomes of the chant. It has appeared at League of Ireland matches but far from full-throated and not at all of them. Citizens and fans will have to take sides but interpretation of the outcome will be contested because while silence/absence is never limpid, there are also different motivations for the chanting. One thing is certain: at the World Cup the most sensitive recording equipment will be deployed to find that chant and make it a story. The opening match is Ireland Vs hosts, Australia, with the world watching.

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* This may explain: https://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2022/08/06/news-production-normalisation-and-telling-the-marytale-in-ireland/

** The Provo IRA campaign (Many will not concede that it was a war.) was conducted largely by targeting civilians, either by gun or by bombing public places. Such bombing and other atrocities are unambiguous war crimes or crimes against humanity. On a scale multiples greater than the IRA campaign/war, Russian forces have bombed public places. Eastern European football terraces are already plagued by chanting in support of morally repugnant positions e.g. neo-nazism, racism, islamophobia, homophobia. Assuming acceptance that celebration of public bombing is a morally repugnant position, a major problem for UEFA will arise when Russia returns to international football. It is probable that their worst fans will chant in praise of their public bombers. EUFA would find themselves disarmed if they had not dealt with precisely the same offence in an Irish context but rendered more egregious in that the chanting was performed by members of a national team.