Joan, cop on. Ruth didn’t call the police dogs. It was much sillier than that

In the Dáil on Thursday (12/02/2015) Joan Burton missed an opportunity to address just how mad the notion that Jobstown is under attack has become. Having missed, help came from an unlikely source, Joe Higgins, but this second opportunity was missed as well.

Under the guise of a parliamentary question Ruth Coppinger characterised inept policing as something akin to state forces trying to put down an insurrection. This is now familiar hyperbole but then she went a step further, taking the fantasy to a new level. She said that no previous member of government – bad as they were – had “called out the dogs”.

Joan and others didn’t get it, complaining that Ruth had referred to Gardaí as dogs. Joe then filled in the gap in their education; Ruth was making a Shakespearean reference. “Read your Shakespeare. Read your Shakespeare”, he admonished. Still Joan didn’t get it.

Let’s see what Ruth and Joe were on about. The dogs to which they alluded are “dogs of war”. The reference is to Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1. The quotation usually given is, “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” (“Havoc!” was an English military command to soldiers to pillage as they wished.)

Ruth and Joe are well educated. Both are teachers. They know what they are saying. This isn’t some name calling directed at An Garda as Joan seems to think. Indeed Ruth subsequently made it plain that she really was referring to Shakespeare:
“Today I compared the terror campaign unleashed on the working class community of Jobstown to the dogs of war that were unleashed in the play Julius Cesar by William Shakespeare. Perhaps that was too high brow for TDs in the Dáil. Obviously they chose to seize on the word dog as if I was targeting all of the Gardaí as dogs,” – http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/ruth-coppinger-my-dogs-of-war-comment-was-too-highbrow-for-dail-colleagues-30988084.html

This is the fantasy world that Ruth, Joe and others inhabit. They really do think that a campaign of terror has been unleashed (“let slip”) on a Dublin suburb. As Ruth boasts, she may be too high brow for the Dáil but really Joan or someone else in the Dáil should have been able to see what she was on about and call it for the nonsense it is. I’m certain that there are many citizens of Jobstown who get it and are annoyed that their estate features in this bizarre fantasy.

Few may have checked Mark Anthony’s dogs-of-war speech in full. I’d be surprised if Ruth had not. With that in mind it’s worth reading:
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy —
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue —
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
– Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1