Household insurance at Redfellow Hovel requires three locks on the rear doors to the garden. After all, that’s the weaker, less observed point of access. So very reasonable stuff.
In another context Malcolm found himself reviewing how Éire coped with the outbreak of World War II. That’s a far bigger topic than can easily be contained here; and others — Brian Girvin, John Duggan, and Clair Wills sit on Malcolm’s shelves, alongside more general histories — have done it more than adequately anyway.
Risteárd Ua Maolchatha: asked the Minister for External Affairs if he will state the number of occasions since the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 25th April, 1938, on which there was direct personal discussion between Irish and British Ministers on matters of mutual trade, and if he will say in respect of each such occasion the date, the various Ministers who took direct part in the discussion, and the matters discussed.Minister for External Affairs (The Taoiseach): There have been no direct discussions between Irish and British Ministers since April, 1938. Questions connected with the trade between the two countries have, of course, been discussed from time to time through the High Commissioner and the British representative here, and within the last few months officials of the Department of Supplies and the Department of Agriculture, acting on behalf of their respective Ministers, have had direct discussions with officials of the corresponding Departments in Great Britain. I may add that, following these latter discussions, the Minister for Supplies and the Minister for Agriculture will go to London next week for conversations on certain outstanding points with the British Ministers concerned.
General Mulcahy: Seven months of the war situation have passed without any of our Ministers discussing their problems with the British, and nearly two years have passed since the Agreement was made. Is that so?
The Taoiseach: That is so.
General Mulcahy: Will the Taoiseach say whether he intends to report to the House, as a result of the meeting that, happily, it is proposed should take place next week after such a long period?
The Taoiseach: I do not know. Any arrangements that may be made will have to be reported to the House in one form or another.
Read, mark and inwardly digest!
Most sentient beings here present may be raising a knowing eyebrow.
That was happening a fortnight afterthe German invasion of Denmark and Norway, and six days afterthe Dutch PM announced a “state of siege” (doubtless aware of troop movements next door).
Risteárd Ua Maolchatha had been Chief of Staff for Óglaíg na hÉireann (should you prefer: the IRA), and it was his signature on the ceasefire order for 11th July 1921, when the Treaty negotiations were begun.
The Taoiseach is none other than de Valera, himself. Dev was never one to use words lightly, and without deliberation.
Richard Mulcahy was no goat’s toe: the image at the top of this post is Mulcahy, watching his back, while Michael Collins wonders what he has just stepped in. Even in 1940 Mulcahy was the coming man in Fine Gael. Ua Maolchatha was, as far back as the War of Independence, Mulcahy’s backstop. Even if this was no “planted question”, the speed with with Mulcahy jumps in, and de Valera’s reply implies all parties were aware more was being said than being spoken.
The question was, ostensibly, about “trade”; but the answer seems more general: “There have been no direct discussions between Irish and British Ministers since April, 1938″.
That has to be a clue to intense frustration in Dublin. In any case, “trade” (the ostensible subject of that question) was code for beef, bacon and butter in exchange for fuel and some minimal matériel for the Defence Force.
There had been constipation in London. A proper diplomatic channel with Dublin had not been opened. De Valera wanted a British minister or ambassador in Dublin (a grandeur which Chamberlain couldn’t accept). The term “high commissioner” was too colonial for de Valera: its parallel was the British High Commissioner in Egypt, the de facto power in the land. The gap was finally plugged by Sir John Maffey, retired as permanent under-secretary for the colonies, becoming the British “representative” in Dublin — a rôle to which he was shackled for the next decade. All too little, too late.
We’d need to have in mind the other numerous other frustrations the British imposed, mainly out of necessity, on the Irish. All telegraphic and external postal traffic — and pretty well all other communications — went through London. Folk from Donegal could not pass through Northern Ireland into Great Britain — Sam Beckett, born in Dublin, claiming Irish citizenship, was refused permission to return to France by the only route possible. And so on.
Meanwhile Churchill, in the Cabinet, was muttering about invasion and seizing the Treaty Ports.
What had Neville Chamberlain’s Government in London had done to keep De Valera and Éire on side? Even after eight months of the war, had no serious attempt been made to lock the back door?
There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge.
Clearly it was a well-worn axiom, even then.
Or, as Dominic Behan — ambiguously — had it:
The sea, oh the sea is the gradh geal mo croide Long may it stay between England and me It’s a sure guarantee that some hour we’ll be free Oh! thank God we’re surrounded by water.
Somehow that was transported (like much else) to Newfoundland, where Joan Morrissey gave it new life:
The whole point of the relationship of the Celt and the Saxon is mutual incomprehension. It is a gaping chasm dividing the nearest of neighbours. A couple of the Great Moments of Anglo-Irish history were:
Queen Elizabeth I being verbally lambasted (in Irish) by Shane O’Neill (6th January 1562):
John Onell the Frenshman who had don much myschief the sommer past in Ireland cometh by save condytt into England and was receved gentelly in the courte in his saffron shorte the twelveth day at night. He accuseth the erle of Sussex of great crymes, crueltie, breache of promyse, putting to death of divers contrary to promyse and saue conduytt, pilling and polling etc.
O’Neill and his party were the subject of much chatter at Court. They were so unlike us, my dear. The version given on electricscotland.com is strong on romantic imagination, if nothing else:
Few scenes could be more picturesque than this visit of the great Ulster chieftain to the capital of his unknown sovereign. As he came striding down the streets of London on his way to the Palace, attended by his train of gallowglasse armed with the battleaxe, his was indeed a figure to strike the imagination. Like the great golden eagle from far-off Donegal, when seen among homely surroundings, Shane the Proud impressed those who gazed at him as being indeed a king of men. He stalked into the Court, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre. Behind him followed his gallowglasse, their heads bare, their fair hair flowing on their shoulders, their linen vests dyed with saffron, with long and open sleeves, surcharged with shirts of mail which reached to their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoulders, and short, broad battle-axes in their hands.
The redoubtable chief had no reason to be dissatisfied with his reception. The Council, the peers, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, were present in state, and the assembly included ambassadors from the King of Sweden and the Duke of Savoy.
O’Neill, later that same year, sweetened the occasion by sending Elizabeth, through Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a present of two horses, two hawks, and two Irish wolfdogs.
Then early in September 1593, Gráinne Ní Mháille (a.k.a. Grace O’Malley), de facto (leaving aside any legalistic details) lord of Umhall Uachtarach, came to Greenwich to make her complaints.
On her husband’s death, O’Malley, according to her own account, ‘gathered together all her own followers and with 1000 head of cows and mares’ went to live in Carraighowley Castle, co. Mayo, on part of her late husband’s territory, where she continued to ‘maintain herself and her people by sea and land’ . She may initially have established friendly relations with the new president of Connaught, Sir Richard Bingham, but she and her sons soon fell out with his regime. Owen was killed by the president’s brother George Bingham in 1586 and O’Malley was imprisoned and threatened with death. Theobald was maintained in the president’s household for some time as a pledge.
O’Malley was implicated in the Burke rebellions of 1586 and 1588 by Sir Richard Bingham, who accused her of drawing Scottish mercenary soldiers into co. Mayo. Her actions suggest, however, that she was primarily concerned to protect the interests of her immediate family and particularly those of Theobald. By 1591 Theobald had emerged as the leading Burke and the strongest contender for the position of MacWilliam but despite submitting to the government he was still regarded with suspicion. Her son’s arrest precipitated O’Malley’s visit to Elizabeth I in the summer of 1593. A remarkable aspect of O’Malley’s petitions was that she acted as spokesperson for the men in her family. She asked the queen for the release of her son and of her brother, who had also been arrested by Bingham. She also requested that her two sons and two other male members of the Burke family be given letters patent for their lands. As a widow under English common law, O’Malley also laid claim to dower from the land of the O’Malleys and of the O’Flahertys. In a much quoted passage she explained that a widow under Gaelic law had no right to her husband’s land. The royal visit was a success from O’Malley’s point of view. Bingham was ordered by Elizabeth to release Theobald and to grant O’Malley maintenance from her husbands’ lands. As a demonstration of loyalty, O’Malley claimed that she had ‘procured all her sons, cousins and followers of the O’Malleys’, with a number of galleys (some newly built on her return from London) to assist the Elizabethan forces in the Mayo area . The Irish administration was, none the less, slow to implement the queen’s instructions and in 1595 O’Malley made another visit to London, renewing her requests for herself and her male relatives.
There are umpteen accounts of the meeting of O’Malley and Elizabeth — the number of them alone testifies to the strangeness of the occasion, of two worlds colliding. Here is E. Owens Blackburne, doing one of those mid-Victorian (1877) shelf-fillers, in Illustrious Irishwomen: Being Memoirs of Some of the Most Noted Irishwomen:
Tradition says that Grainne O’Mailly and her retinue performed the entire journey by sea, and sailed up the Thames to the Tower Gate. In this case tradition does not seem to be far wrong, for her little son, Theobald, or Toby, who was born during the journey, was called, Tioboid-na-Lung, or “Theobald of the Ship.”
The meeting of the two royal ladies must have been a strange sight, — the light-haired, light-eyed, fair-faced and rather shrewish-looking Elizabeth, and the swarthy, black-eyed, and black-haired Queen of Connaught. That the latter and her retainers were not attired in the then prevailing mode is pretty certain; but it may also be positively stated that, whatever was the fashion of their habiliments, the texture and workmanship would have borne comparison with any to be found at the Court. For in Ireland, from the earliest ages, skilled needlework was held in the highest esteem.
There are many traditional accounts of this memorable interview, but the chief and best result of it was that it consolidated the treaty already made between Grainne and Elizabeth. At the same time the Irish chieftainess although expressing herself grateful for the protection afforded by the English Government did not cede one inch of her royal dignity. The English Queen offered to create her a countess ; to which Grainne replied that she could not do so, as they were both equal in rank. But she said she would accept a title for her little son Toby, who had been born on the passage from Ireland. Accordingly, the infant was brought into Court, and then and there created Viscount Mayo ; from whom the present noble family of the Earls of Mayo is descended.
When the Irish chieftainess arrived at the English Court, she described herself as “Grainne O’Mailly, daughter of Doodarro O’Mailly, sometime chief of the country called Upper Owle O’Mailly, now called the Barony of Murasky.” This statement rather puzzled Elizabeth, who knew that Grainne was a married woman, until it was explained to her that it was customary amongst the Irish for the women to retain their maiden names after marriage.
They haven’t gone away, you know
The cultural differences extend well into the 21st century. Hence the Celt (who has a more intimate experience of the pained relationship) views the Saxon with amused contempt; while the return glance — when it is deigned to be afforded — remains devoid of real understanding.
Given Cameron’s role in this affair, it’s difficult for an Irish person not to take some unwonted pride in a recent speech by much-maligned Irish poet-president Michael D Higgins; Joyce, Beckett, Marx, Sartre, de Beauvoir were all name-checked by a career politician who has read their works.
Moje kamarádka se, naproti tomu, byla dobrým teroristou, protože byla dobrá v plnění rozkazů. My friend, on the other hand, she was a good terrorist because she was very good at following orders.
Somehow that incongruity fitted the extraordinary ‘performance’ of Euro-minister David Lidlington, under scrutiny by Andrew Neil, on the BBC1 Sunday Politics. It was only when John Rentoul put up the transcript the whole disaster became evident.
So allow Malcolm to switch his metaphors in mid-stream, and revert to something nearer home: the wooden heads walls of Old England.
Action stations!
It began quite amiably (Cap’n Neil is at his best when the cannonade is loaded but the battery not yet run out):
Andrew Neil: David Lidington, the Tories led the yes to Europe campaign in the 1975 European Referendum. A Tory Prime Minister signed our accession to Europe, the Single European Act and Maastricht. Did David Cameron’s speech represent a break with the past?
David Lidington MP: No. What David Cameron’s speech was about was the recognition of the fact that change — and dramatic change — is already taking place in Europe and Europe’s going to change further. The speech was not just about the situation of the UK vis a vis the rest of Europe, it’s about how the whole of Europe needs to respond to the challenges of global competitiveness, democratic accountability and getting the relationship right between the eurozone and the others.
Wow! At first hearing, that almost convinces. It’s not as if the main crisis is UKIP rolling up the soft-Tory vote (and more by disaffection on gay-marriage, grammar-schools and such like), which is scaring the excrement out of the marginal Tory MPs. Well, is it?
Engage the enemy more closely!
Anyway, that was merely Neil’s bow-chaser finding his range. Once the target was close enough, the broadside:
AN: Now less than two years ago junior Tories in the government, including your own parliamentary secretary had to resign because they voted for a referendum. What changed?
DL: What that debate and that vote was about, in October 2011, was over whether there should be a referendum when the future of Europe was very far from clear. What the prime minister is talking about is having a referendum in the UK to settle matters to get the consent of the British people at the end of a process of European negotiation and reform. It’s two completely different questions.
AN: Well is it really? I mean in 2011 your – let’s just look at what you said. You said, ‘When I go round the constituency at political and non-political events, this is the last thing on their minds a referendum.’ You said, ‘they’re more concerned about jobs.’ I ask you again, what’s changed?
DL: It’s still the case that whether you look anecdotally in my constituency or whether you look at the opinion polls that Europe ranks below issues like jobs and the economy in people’s minds, but what has change –
AN: I understand that, but these people were fired because they wanted a referendum and you’re now giving them a referendum.
The simplest questions (“What has changed?”) are the most difficult — and Lidlington has to fluff this one, effectively three times.
England expects that every man will do his duty
Then Neil goes for the hard-pounding on the terms of the negotiation:
AN: Well let me see if I can help you. This is what the last Conservative manifesto said. ‘A Conservative government will negotiate on three specific guarantees. On the Charter of Fundamental Rights, on criminal justice and on social and employment legislation.’ You wanted these to come back to Westminster. Let’s say you add in protection for the City of London from new regulations from Brussels. Is that the bare minimum?
DL: You’ll have to wait and see for our manifesto exactly what is going to be in there.
This is clever stuff. Lidlington offers a tacit but unqualified “yes”. Anything less than that 2010 commitment and the Balubas go AWOL, and joining the UKIP marauders. Let’s be honest, even with those impossibles achieved, the true eurosceptic will still be off with the mutineers.
Malcolmian aside:
Balubas came to have a particular meaning in Irish politics, particularly so when Seán Lemass, having finally succeeded Éamon de Valera, was seeking to bring his party into the second half of the Twentieth Century
In November 196o, an Irish platoon in the Congo crisis were surrounded by the Baluba tribe. In that Czech expression, there’s the notion that terrorism needs close obedience to orders. In the Congo there was endless bloody terrorism, and the only orders in effect were those constraining the poor blooded infantry.
Nine of the eleven soldiers of that platoon were killed. Their bodies repatriated. O’Connell Street was packed for the courtege on its way out to Glasnevin. Yes, Malcolm was there.
Hence, the ‘Balubas’ became a term for the wild culchies who came up from the bog lands to torment the Fianna Fáil leadership.
And if you don’t recognise a “culchie” is, ask any Dubliner.
Finally, Neil holes Lidlington below the water-line:
AN: Let me show you another thing the Prime Minister said. He wants the EU to think again about its aspirations to ever-closer union. Now, this is what the Treaty of Rome in ’57 said. It’s the founding document. ‘Determined to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe.’ Now, it beggars belief, doesn’t it, that the rest of Europe is going to overturn that founding principle?
Prepare to pick up survivors!
The whole Cameron case, as defended by Lidlington founders on that:
Macmillan accepted the ‘ever-closer union’ concept at the first application for membership.
Heath was something of an enthusiast.
Wilson worked around it.
As did Thatcher. Indeed, she was hot for economic union, particularly if it gave the UK’s quaternary sector access to the European market in finance, management, insurance and derivatives.
Major carried on regardless: it wasn’t an important issue.
Blair was, as always, insouciant.
Suddenly, after half a century, it becomes the make-or-break issue.
And we know that Cameron, the Tory financiers and backers in the City cannot accept a break.
Well, not quite (though the Israelis and Iranians seem intent on heading that way). We are, though, coming to the end of Fintan O’Toole’s A History of Ireland in 100 objects, which has been a staple in the Irish Times, Saturday edition, since February last year.
It wasn’t an original notion — Neil MacGregor got there earlier, was a bit spicier, had a much broader canvas — and a far bigger budget. All the same, O’Toole has done us pretty well.
So Malcolm will be buying his copy tomorrow:
A history of Ireland in 100 objects What single item sums up 21st-century Ireland? A decommissioned Armelite? A hospital bed? Jean Butler’s Riverdance dress? The smartphone?
Tomorrow in The Irish Times we present the icons of our age, the objects that symbolise boom and bust, conflict and peace and life as we know it. Tomorrow in The Irish Times
If there’s to be only one Twentieth Century object, it’s clearly this one:
When today’s Times [£] runs out of “news” (it’s page 20), Simon de Bruxelles (d’ya want sprouts with that?) gives us:
£150,000 hen house is just chicken feed for millionaire
Do a quick squint around the rest of today’s press, and you have the complete set of plans for this erection:
Let’s break through the Murdoch pay-wall for a peep:
One of Britain’s richest men is building a stately home — for his chickens.
Crispin Odey, a 53-year-old hedge fund manager, ism erecting the Palladian-style hen house at his country estate in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.
His birds will enjoy the run of a property built from local stone that features stone colonnades and windows made from English oak, topped by a decorative “anthem” design.
The palatial premises were designed by Smallwood Architects based in Chelsea, West London, which is known for designing multimillion-pound dream homes, though usually not for chickens.
The hen-coop will stand 16ft high and cover 775 sq ft, roughly the size of a typical two-bedroom flat.
The £150,000 building will replace a dilapidated warehouse at Eastbach Court, Mr Odey’s Grade II listed home in the village of English Bicknor. Mr Odey, who has a personal fortune estimated at £455 million, hit the headlines when he predicted the credit crunch.
Despite foreseeing the economic collapse, Mr Odey appears to have confidence in the property market, for chickens at least. Since planning permission was granted in 2010 he has applied to make the premises 30 per cent larger than originally planned.
Forest of Dean District Council and his local parish council raised no objections to the structure, which is designed to blend in with the main house and not “mock the nearby listed building’s historic features”. The doors will be painted Hague Blue to “match the doors around Eastbach Court”, according to the plans.
In her report to the planning committee, Anna Welsh, a planning officer, said: “Whilst it could be considered that the design and materials are rather grandiose for its purpose as a chicken shed, it is in keeping with the character and appearance of the listed building.
“It also replaces a concrete block building which was not in keeping with an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The chicken house is an individual and unique structure within the landscape and these materials will ensure that its character and appearance is enhanced.”
Mr Odey runs Odey Asset Management, which controls around £4.5 billion of assets and made £64 million in 2008 by successfully gambling on bank shares falling. Mr Odey was listed as the sixth wealthiest fund manager in The Sunday Times Rich List 2012.
His wife Nichola Pease is a former chief executive of J O Hambro Capital Management and is on the board of Shroders.
told a press conference in Dublin that “one of the main backers of Mr Declan Ganley, who has lately taken up the cudgels against Lisbon again, is a London-based hedge fund which could hardly be described as being interested in the economic wellbeing of this country.” In fact, “quite a number of these hedge funds have taken out specific bets” on the insolvency of Ireland , Mr Lenihan said.
Lenihan had discovered, from the UK Electoral Commission, Odey had divvied up £3,000 in cash and £13,964 otherwise to Libertas.
Hedge-fund Boss Crispin Odey has threatened to move his firm out of Britain to avoid the 50% income-tax rate on high-earners…
“We are seriously considering leaving,” said Odey, who runs the £3 billion Odey Asset Management. “This government is not interested in keeping London alive as a financial centre. Hedge funds are not yet flying but they are fluttering. Everyone is thinking about leaving.”
he had added £28million to his personal wealth in a year that his £3billion fund management group had been among those short selling the stocks of failing banks — notably Bradford & Bingley.
It would, of course, be invidious to note that Odey’s wife, another banker, just happened to have been on the board of Northern Rock, with — doubtless — insights into other boardrooms. Odey is co-treasurer of the Tory Party (which may be relevant here), and believes Britain is going to hell in a handcart:
Foreigners have been busy selling gilts and the Bank of England busy buying them. The answer is that if you carry on, that is called Zimbabwean and that is monetisation. Probably we are going to have a visit to the IMF.’
Obviously Mr Odey reckons himself an authority above mere national governments.
But there’s more!
Back in 1st October 2009 Malcolm engaged with the Tory shill, Iain Dale (then running his Iain Dale’s Diary). This was recorded here on the Home Service:
This mid-day Iain Dale set about a Daily Mail style defamation of David Miliband, coupled with a defence of the creepy Kaminzi and the other eastern European allies the Tories have mustered up.
Malcolm deposited the following on the thread, for Iain Dale’s moderation:
In the modern Tory Party, if you speak your mind and are seen to be out of line, you lose your job (consider Alan Duncan);
If you vote with your conscience, because your principles cannot compromise with some very dodgy characters, including Kaminski, you are given the heave-ho (consider Edward McMillan-Scott);
If you donate to political parties standing against Tories — say £13,000 here to Declan Ganley’s Libertas and £25,000 there to George Hargreaves’ theocratic, homophobic, anti-abortion campaign (the “Christian Party”, as of today, had no other policies on its website) — , you are celebrated as a co-treasurer of the Tory Party. Well, Crispin Odey did, and is.
Now, lecture the rest of us on what we should do and what we should say.
No: I’m not calling it hypocrisy. I’m merely saying that in the upper reaches of Toryism, money (£30,000 in Odey’s case) speaks louder than words or votes.
The response was:
Iain Dale said…
Who is Crispin Odey? Never heard of him.
October 01, 2009 3:51 PM
Malcolm replied:
Oh, Iain @ 3:51 PM, do try to keep up to speed.
Crispin Odey is one of the few leading lights in the City who genuinely qualify as a “grandee”. The renowned investment manager and founder of Odey Asset Management, who has just collected an annual performance bonus of almost £28 million, is married to Nichola Pease, the chief executive of JO Hambro Capital Management and part of the dynasty that founded Barclays.
He and his wife are, between them, worth £300 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, although that was reduced from £338 million last year.
As you will see there, and elsewhere (the Daily Mail money pages also like Mr Odey), Ms Pease was an independent director of Northern Rock, into the bargain. He and she are touted as (ahem!) the “Posh and Becks of the City”.
October 01, 2009 4:12 PM
So there was a further example of Mr Odey’s eccentric approach to loose change:
First his money, the use and abuse of it was above the law. Irish electoral law is pretty elastic (as recent former Taoiseachs have exploited); but it properly looks askance at imperialistic foreigners muscling in to lobby.
Second, how can a Tory co-treasurer (we met another of those in the morally-flexible Peter Cruddas) finance no fewer than three political campaigns — two of which were in direct competition with the Tories?
Mulcaire received as much as £850,000 from the News of the Screwsfor his dutiful services, hacking upwards of 5,795 people (as of the November 2011 count). We may safely assume it wasn’t out of petty cash. The obvious name in the frame is Greg Miskiw, the News of the Screws Assistant Editor, That’s assistant to Andy Coulson. Now — conveniently — Miskiw is a resident of Palm Beach, Florida.
A further reasonably assumption is this went all the way to the top, even beyond Miskiw, particularly because Max Clifford waived his claim for compensation after he met with Rebekah Brooks (but before Mulcaire’s conviction) and agreed a fee of a cool million for Clifford’s slimy future services.
The Orange card
Miskiw may have a 28-pounder shell, primed and ready, in his ammunition locker, because nobody, but nobody will be too keen on developing the Northern Irish dimension. Once again we are back to Stakeknife.
Miskiw was buddies with Alex Marunchuk, once the Screws crime reporter, then Irish editor. Marunchuk was a partner with Jonathan Rees in Pure Energy. Miskiw and Rees were partners in Abbeycover, which itself was an adjust of Southern Investigations, which takes us to ex-copper and child-pornographer Sid Fillery. The Rees-Marunchuk link takes us into trojan emails and computer hacking (and so to the police Operation Tuleta). Then there’s Operation Kalmyk, which is focused on Rees hacking Ian Hurst (a.k.a. Martin Ingram) — which is the Stakeknife connection.
As Malcolm was noting a year back, by that stage we are into the viscera of the beast, the notorious Force Research Unit, at Thiepval Barracks, in Lisburn.
_________________________________________
No, no, a thousand times no. This is not paranoia.
The Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin is looking at the IRA murders of Chief Sup Harry Breen and Super Bob Buchanan of the RUC at Jonesborough in the South Armagh/County Louth border country, apparently returning from a covert meeting with the Irish security service in Dundalk. Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP, has alleged that the IRA were tipped off by Garda DS Owen Corrigan. Corrigan’s IRA “handler” is alleged to be the (equally alleged) double-agent Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci. Scappaticci, along with the late John Joe Magee of Dundalk are (even more alleged) to have been the key members of the IRA “nutting squad”. One further “alleged” is that Scappaticci was second only to the OC IRA Northern Command, a certain Máirtín Mag Aonghusa, MP, MLA.
Ian Hurst, after extensive going-and-froing was induced to give evidence to Smithwick: that was redacted for public consumption. The RTÉ reports, especially that of 26th April, should be required reading.
Until the M6 was built, this was the cross-roads of the Dublin-Galway N6 (which took one down Bridge Street, and past the distillery) and the Nenagh-Dundalk N52. Now you turn off the motorway onto the Tullamore Road.
The gift wrapping for McNally’s offering is the Kilbeggan Distillery, in the County Westmeath. That was originally the Brusna Distillery (because it sits on the River Brosna, and has a water-mill — soon again to be functioning). The original licence is dated 1757; and so claims to be the oldest continually licensed distillery in the world. Let us remember that every bottle of Bushmills boasts a 1608 licence from James I to distil uisce beatha … in the territory of the Rowte (Rowte = rout, the area controlled by the private army of the MacQuillans), and that the Old Bushmills Distillery was recorded in 1743.
Malcolm will happily drink to either claim.
The original Brusna distillery was set up and owned by the McManus family, and control passed to the Codd family in 1794. The distillery manager was John McManus, who was also a colonel in the United Irishmen, and who ended his life, condemned for treason (and apparently for breaching the curfew), on the gallows at Mullingar in the aftermath of 1798.
In 1843 the distillery was taken over by John Locke and Sons, by which name it became better known until Locke’s closed down in 1959. That led to one of those typically Irish shenanigans: the assets — which amounted to the run-down property in Kilbeggan and some 60,000 gallons of mature whiskey — had been “acquired” in 1947 by The Transworld Trust, based in Switzerland. To nobody’s great surprise The Transworld Trust, and its £305,000 was a wide-boy operation. From the start Oliver J Flanagan was asking awkward questions. As McNally puts it succinctly:
A subsequent tribunal of inquiry found that Flanagan had over-egged the allegations, somewhat. Even so, a bad smell lingered. And the Locke’s scandal helped usher De Valera out of power after 16 years, to be replaced by the first inter-party government.
… which all sounds dismally familiar
Inside this wrapping, McNally rattles through a broad view of what went wrong for Irish whiskey. His account boils down to:
1. Coffey
In 1830 a Dublin-born (the DNB prefers Dublin to the alternative of Calais) exciseman, Aeneas Coffey (left), came up with an alternative to the ancient alembic:
The Coffey still (a.k.a columnar still) consists of three interconnected towers equipped with perforated trays stacked at intervals of approximately 20 – 30 centimetres. Each tower has to inlets; one for the alcohol-containing liquid the other for pressurized steam. The ferment is fed through the top inlet and the steam from the bottom. As the liquid trickles down the steam rises and literally strips the alcohol from it at a high temperature and speed. The vaporized alcohol travels to the top of the tower and to the next tower to undergo the same process. The third tower usually shorter distils a smaller quantity, as the volume is now much smaller than at the beginning of the process.
At the end of the run, a highly purified (90 percent ABV) alcohol is obtained which is, regardless of the base material, tastes the same -colourless, and tasteless much like vodka or industrial food-grade alcohol. This alcohol consists mainly of ethyl alcohol and very little, lethal methyl alcohol.
The result was a lighter distillate, cheaper to produce. The Scots took up the invention: the Irish stuck with traditional methods, or as the DNB has it:
Initial production problems and the conservatism of Irish distillers meant that Coffey had little success in introducing his apparatus in Ireland, and in 1835 he moved his business to St Leonard’s Street, Bromley by Bow, Middlesex. From the 1840s his patent still gained in popularity, notably in Scotland. During his tour of 1887 Alfred Barnard found Coffey stills in all the major Scottish distilleries. Improved versions are widely used in the manufacture of grain whisky, gin, and other potable and industrial spirits.
2. Prohibition
The Volstead Act (the National Prohibition Act of 1919) implemented the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Instantly Irish whiskey lost its main export market.
Worse still, the Locke’s brand and others were so well known they was counterfeited for hooch. By 1928 whiskey production in the Free State was 36.6% down, to 560,000 barrels.
When prohibition was repealed in 1931, the reputational damage had been done.
3. Independence
Sales in Britain of all things distinctly “Irish” were damaged by the War of Independence.
In 1932 the incoming Fianna Fáil government of Éamon de Valera ramped up tariffs on imported goods, which in those days were mainly British exports. In retaliation Irish whiskey went AWOL across the British Empire.
4. Overpaid, over-sexed and over here
There should have been a reprieve when the GIs arrived, during the Second Unpleasantness.
Alas, thanks to a combination of the above factors, the American occupation developed a taste for Scotch, in McNally’s racey account:
Dev’s economic war with Britain was a disaster, and neutrality didn’t help much either. All those US troops stationed in the UK were a whisky marketer’s dream, bringing their newly acquired taste for Scotch home with them after the war.
… and a round finish
They are back distilling at Kilbeggan: production restarted in 2007, and will be on the market in a couple of years time.
Meanwhile the Cooley Distillery (now yet another subsidiary of the Jim Beam operation) in the County Louth will offer substitutes: Kilbeggan, Locke’s Blend and Locke’s Malt. The link with Kilbeggan, for the moment, is that the maturing process takes place in Locke’s old granite bond-store.
… it has fallen to Northern Ireland assembly Speaker Willie Hay to rule that the term “village idiot” is not acceptable for use within the chamber, after health minister Edwin Poots said his political rival Kieran McCarthy was acting like one. This appears to overturn precedent. Lord Alderdice, a previous Speaker, judged “eejit” to be OK. The key seems to be pronunciation. Fewer problems in the Republic, where there is a list of words banned in the Dáil, including chancer, coward, guttersnipe, rat, scumbag and fascist. But then they had reason to act after one former representative shouted “Fuck you, Deputy Stagg, fuck you!” Seemed better to have some rules.
Emmet Stagg (brother of the more famous, loopier, and more defunct Frank) can look after himself, and needs no defence. Anyway, as a Labour man with a TCD connexion, he gets respected here.
However, Paul Gogarty deserved all he got, and has a track-record for staging similar stunts — Babygate, Callely, numerous “celebrity” outings for RTÉ (not that the bar for celeb-status is that much lower in Dublin). He won the soggy biscuit when he denounced Free Education for Everyone protestors as “muppets” and supported the physical intervention of the Gardai — doubtless in retaliation for FEE previously taking over his office. How Green! What a brave civic activist!
The electors of Dublin Mid-West had Gogarty’s number, all right: in the 2011 General Election, he lost his seat ignominiously. He took all of 3.5 % of First Preferences, limping in eighth of the fourteen runners. The previous outing he had taken 10.8%, and finished second after transfers.
CHANGES ARE likely to be made to the document dictating acceptable parliamentary language in the Dáil and Seanad after Green Party TD Paul Gogarty’s defence of his use of an expletive in the Dáil last week.
The 18-member Dáil committee on procedure and privileges, which meets tomorrow, will deal with Mr Gogarty’s use of the “f-word”, directed against Labour party whip Emmet Stagg.
Second, a cultural chasm
Anyone familiar with Hibernicisms knows that “eejit” and “idiot”are no way near synonyms.
You’d take a drink with an “eejit”, even a “mad eejit”, and even respect him. You take a swing at an idiot, and be cheered for doing so and laying him out. Gogarty, for example, belongs in this latter category.
Parliamentary insults are offensive rhetorical acts performed in a highly competitive institutional setting. They are deliberate in the sense that they are intended to be perceived and recognised as such by the person targeted. Unparliamentary language uses can provide important clues about moral and social standards, prejudices, taboos, as well as value judgements of different social and political groups in a community. Because they underlie culturally defined negative values and norms, insults are meant to reduce the targeted person, group or institution (and what they stand for) to stereotypically undesirable or detestable attributes. Cross-cultural studies are particularly enlightening in this respect, since it can safely be assumed that the forms and functions of insults and their respective feedbacks vary in different cultures and institutional settings.
Enjoy that? Then your sociology degree must be showing.
… we need to change, and we will change, the way we behave. I’m fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name calling, backbiting, point scoring, finger pointing.
The right hon. Gentleman will not take any lectures on the fuel strike because he is in the pockets of the people who called the fuel strike. That’s right. They vote for his policies, they sponsor his Members of Parliament, they got him elected. Absolutely irresponsible—that is what we have heard once again from the right hon. Gentleman. Not good enough to run the Opposition, not good enough to run the country.
Of which Ann Treneman said in her Parliamentary Sketch for The Times [£]:
Dave did his usual Flashman, refusing to answer the questions, changing the subject to Ken Livingstone’s taxes, playing to the gallery. He was sneery, insulting, preening. When you seeDave like this, you just know he deserves to end up in panto.
In another context Malcolm found himself reviewing how Éire coped with the outbreak of World War II. That’s a far bigger topic than can easily be contained here; and others — Brian Girvin, John Duggan, and Clair Wills sit on Malcolm’s shelves, alongside more general histories — have done it more than adequately anyway.
