More Possible Than Ever!

I always had an interest in monasticism, which was not surprising since one of the salient features of my childhood and youth was visiting my mother’s sister, who was a Carmelite nun, and another the fact that I was educated by Benedictine monks from the age of nine to that of nineteen. This was however to become a cause of regret to my agnostic father, who though perhaps speaking from a temporary exasperation, once said as much. “Those monks” had filled my head with a lot of fancy notions, whereas at the local grammar school I might have been taught to simply “get my foot on the ladder”!

This rather gives the lie to the popular narrative, which asserts that people pay big money sending their children to posh private schools simply in order for them to get ahead in the rat-race, - not that one can deny that there is a huge element of truth in this. It doesn't even matter very much when everyone is convinced that 'the ladder' is going upwards, but when the suspicion gains ground that, on the contrary, it is going in the opposite direction, then one is in trouble. That, in Blighty and the USA, is the difference between the WW2 and the Vietnam war generations. Ladders, after all, must lean on something; if the building turns into a pit, down they must go!

Few private schools are run by monks, but back then in the '60s, I got the feeling that the tension between the monastic aspiration to seek and serve Truth alone, and the worldly requirement to enable young people to ‘get on’, was tearing at the very heart of my alma mater…. You can read all about that if you care to delve into the stuff From the Fractal Frontier back in this blog.

Before ever Christ came on the scene, Plato asserted (in the Republic) ‘that it is impossible at one and the same time to worship money and keep a high standard of honesty among the citizens; one or the other will have to go.’ In words that were apparently attributed to Socrates, he moreover associated democracy with this ‘worship of money’, asking ‘Does not a city change from government by a small class to government by the people through uncontrolled pursuit of wealth as the ultimate object of life?’ 

We might argue that ever since, for the last two and a half millennia, civilisation has been struggling with this issue, and doing its best to have it both ways, equating 'getting on' with being good, virtuous, etc, whenever it was remotely plausible to do so. Even so, we have very often seen the privileged 'guardians of truth' unmistakeably give way to smart 'wide boys', with the result that 'privileged' tends now to be a term of abuse; instead of being proud of it, one is inclined to feel guilty, while notions like noblesse oblige are laughed out of court. It's come to the point where one hardly dares to assert that anything is actually true, for one thereby implies that one has some kind of superior knowledge. 

Is it surprising that we find ourselves in trouble, with political leaders who say anything provided it serves their purposes? It is a tragic fact that the present 'champions of democracy' seem to have failed particularly dismally when the curved ball with Covid-19 written on it came their way; yet without of course being able to foresee it, I have been living with an ever stronger premonition of disaster for years, and I am certainly not alone in that. Whatever way one looked at it, The Bubble was going to pop! There could be no general well-being when the world was so sick.

Where then do we now stand ? It seems we will have to reinvent democracy for a start. Perhaps we might learn from monastic traditions, where democracy has been practised for ages, but not idolised? It is but a method of governing that only works well within a proper ordering of society, with a view to the Trinity of truth, solidarity and the active worship of God. For those who follow Christ, and recall how he (like Socrates) was put to death by popular demand, democracy is anything but an end in itself!

A smother from the East.

Nowadays Fiona and I find ourselves perforce living a quasi monastic kind of life. Undoubtedly we are very privileged, living on our beautiful and so far safe island, but after all we did have to choose to do so, and it has not been easy; yet in most basic and practical ways, it almost seems we might have been preparing for this time for years, what with the new sunroom that I have been slowly and painfully constructing now at last complete, with our communications more or less up to speed, a new fridge and the boat laid up in a safe and cheap place, and in various other little ways. 

Our lives have fallen into a rhythm that could almost be described as delightful except that we miss our family and friends, but then, one cannot be indifferent to all the terrible suffering out there. Yet what's new, except that mass misery and horror seem to be getting ever closer to home?

Our crucified Saviour offers the only hope of living with it! We say our morning prayer with the Church on universalis.com. After breakfast and a morning ‘communication session’, I generally get out to do some physical work, priority at the moment being the construction of a new wood shed. Noon brings that little effort to an end, with Mass online from Glenstal Abbey at 1210. (I thought that was an odd time at first, but find it works very well at the pivot of the day, before lunch.) A read, a snooze, a

Nugget on the beach.

cup of tea, before I head for the garden, and generally going for a walk with Nugget in the evening. Then another look at the computer, supper, phone calls, a game of backgammon, night prayers and bed. The days whistle by.

So where is this going? Might we manage to simply drive all the woe from our heads and hang on to our privileged position? Yet it is a precarious, funny kind of privilege! Here am I, aged 73 with a bit of a heart condition and Fiona struggling to get herself around, with apparently no future and no way out, and the world we are leaving to our grandchildren in a terrible state. I labour away, and most likely will be called away from this lovely spot just when I imagine it is coming right.

However, I am not depressed. Far from it, in fact; perhaps I was never better; and I shall be even happier if I feel that the world is at last actually making the Great Transition, and we have made a little contribution to it; that the world is at last waking up to the threats and the possibilities of a new era. Surely we will finally put behind us silly notions like 'there is no such thing as society', - but can we avoid too the opposite, totalitarian danger?

I am more convinced than ever that small communities, not in isolation, but in dynamic relationship with other communities and also with Nature, are the way to go. Their members will balance prayer, physical and mental work. In their mutual dependency, encounter and solidarity, a new space will open for truth seeking; they will rediscover transcendent reality, as people do when facing challenges together, even while they will become increasingly self-sufficient. They will be thoroughly orientated to sustainability, yet undismayed by all the disasters of this world; they will become convinced of the transcendent reality of love and its final victory. They will discover and worship the Lord and Master of it all, and celebrate their redemption!

It is a vision I and many others have had for years, many centuries in fact, but all too often felt ourselves struggling in vain to realise. 'new worlds, i suggest, are born and not made', said e.e.cummings. A bit of both, I rather think, but it does now feel more possible than ever!

‘The Triumph of Liberty and Peace over Tyranny’.

Primroses for the confined

“I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody.” -
Mr Johnson at the press conference where he had announced his Government’s ‘Coronavirus Action Plan’ on 3rd March. 

You can watch him saying it here. A week later, on Saturday 8th March, he was at Twickers for the England v Wales rugby game, setting an example of ignoring the coronavirus for the Cheltenham Festival to follow 3 days later. ‘There is growing concern at the decision to run the four-day Festival, which attracted more than 250,000 people, after a number of attendees reported symptoms consistent with the virus’ reports The Guardian.*  At his press conference on 12th March, Mr Johnson claimed that “We’ve done what can be done to contain this disease and this has bought us valuable time.” It's worth recalling that this was nearly 2 months after the World Health Organisation labelled Covid-19 as a “public health emergency of international concern”. Is the British Government really that incompetant?

With Mr Johnson himself in intensive care as I write, one does not want to be hard on him, and we hear the call from Dr Ghebreyesus' of the WHO for people not to use the virus to score political points, but reality does not fit into convenient compartments. This pandemic raises profound political and economic questions. Mr Johnson is but an extreme example, but he got where he is with a thumping majority. We all need to realise more clearly than ever just how very dangerous our lazy disregard for reality is. Is there any hope that a close encounter with death might precipitate a change, in the UK Prime Minister himself, and more importantly, right across our civilisation?

Two long months ago, in all his glory with his shiny new majority, Mr Johnson set out his vision for Brexit Britain. It is worth having another read of his speech* in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. He began by referring to Thornhill’s painted ceiling overhead, which he even touted as England’s answer to Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel! He explained that it is entitled ‘The Triumph of Liberty and Peace over Tyranny’. 300 years later, this slogan seems to have degenerated into ‘the triumph of ideology and the feel-good factor over reality’!

The “gorgeous and slightly bonkers symbolic scene that captures the spirit of the United Kingdom in the early 18th century”, which spoke of the “supreme national self-confidence” which our hero was claiming to be reincarnating, set the tone for the rest of his appalling speech. I have been asking myself for years what it might take to dethrone such an entrenched and pervasive, though thoroughly warped, narrative? Now all of a sudden, the question is becoming immediate and very urgent, as events lay bare the destructive perversity of that narrative at this particular time. That Mr Johnson was so engaged in promoting his Brexit fantasies, at the very time when he was failing dismally to prepare for the pandemic crisis, speaks volumes. The feckless failures to heed the warnings in both cases are certainly of a piece.

Turning to the Brexit issue, that a proper new agreement with the EU might be thrashed out by the end of June is of course out of the question. Does this suit the likes of Mr Raab, who apparently relishes the prospect of crashing out with no deal at the end of this year?  Does their penchant for self-harm know no bounds? The harm that Brexit has done, and which will only become a lot worse when and if the ‘cliff-edge’ event unfolds in its full glory, has been endlessly flagged by experts on all sides. ‘Fake news’, said Johnson and the Ducky, just as they did subsequently about the pandemic. Do we let them away with their lies?

Is Mr Johnson really determined to inflict another completely unnecessary disaster on top of the current one?  The exasperating thing about him is that he is intelligent enough to know, in some corner of his mind at least, that this is plain ‘bonkers’; the frightening thing about Raab is that he appears to have no such doubts. If Johnson were to go down, where would that leave us?  But leaving this aside, and after all we have to pray for the man’s recovery, is there any chance that a close encounter with death might cause him to review his record in this case?

Speeches of his such as that one at Greenwich are such a dollop of b******t that it would take a book to answer them, so I shall just offer a few ‘steers’, since according to Mr Raab, this seems to be the way the U.K. is being run these days.

1)Lesson one from the pandemic:- the human race constitutes a single entity, but despite this totality, physical propinquity counts for a great deal, while the cohesion of this body is only a work in hand, and suffers from a constant tendency to break down.

2)We still do not know how the health crisis will pan out, let alone the economic one. In terms of health, enhanced European cooperation could certainly have improved things, helping to raise the awareness both of scientists and governments (especially the British one) in a more timely fashion; in terms of the economy, it will be indispensible. In the face of the opposition of the Ducky and the UK, this will however be only harder. To claim that somehow the UK will make a bigger contribution by means of a futile attempt to relaunch the British Empire (Commonwealth+free trade area) than by taking its place in Europe is, again, downright bonkers.

3)‘Free Trade’ indeed constitutes a most important facet of the global economy; at Greenwich Johnson said - “It was fantastic at the recent Africa summit to see how many wanted to turn that great family of nations (the Commonwealth) into a free trade zone, even if we have to begin with clumps and groups”. So the Commonwealth is ‘a family of nations’ while Europe is not, and the work is only just beginning half a century after Europe? Which body is more likely to help the world up its game in relation to the threats we face? Any statements that I have come across on the matter from Commonwealth leaders were to the effect that they would much rather relate to a Britain within Europe than one trying to resurrect the British Empire, and as for Ireland and indeed Scotland...!

4) The notion that ‘freedom’ equates with the absence of constraints and laws is spurious, in trade or any other sense. How free were the pirates and buccaneers of 1707? Perhaps Mr Johnson would like to have been one of them, but in fact the particular ‘explosion of global trade’, which he celebrated and professed to champion anew in that ‘charter for Brexit’ of his, was underpinned by the British Empire.  For all the self-identification with those romantic buccaneers, it seems probable that actually he would rather situate himself safely within the Establishment, and would have been, like so many insiders, quite incapable of perceiving how very unfree most of the Empire’s subjects/victims were.

Along with bringing on the end of formal empires, the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century finally generated two huge, as it happens highly pertinent, steps forward: public health services like the NHS in Britain, and the European Union. This century we have two massive economic shocks of a different kind.

Time to be reading books again!

What benign developments may they yet finally produce? What lessons can we already begin to learn?

*https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-in-greenwich-3-february-2020

Clear Sky on the Gannetsway.

The stars have never seemed brighter than on these last couple of nights, and the blue of the sky by day is all the better for the absence of vapour trails. The Earth seems to taking a big, deep breath. While life goes on fine here for Fiona and me, one cannot fail to be affected by the trauma that is going on in the world. 

From the point of view of gannetswaysailing, it is hard to talk of anything other than the Big C, and also hard to imagine that I might have anything useful to add to the tsunami of words being expended on it; yet I think it is worth sharing an aspect of the business that greatly fascinates me.

From the sixties up until this moment, the one dominant idea in Western culture has been that of personal autonomy. As my generation looked back on the past, we were united in being more or less horrified above all at the way such autonomy had been sacrificed on the altars of the usual suspects, duty, patriotism, religion etc, which now however appeared to have been, more often than not, foolish and misguided, besides being used on all sides for nefarious purposes. 

This did not of course prevent us from finding all sorts of other gods to worship; pop music, sport, all the panoply of consumerist trophies, indeed even science tended to become a kind of cult. It has been interesting to watch 'the science' about the pandemic turning out to vary with differing ideological mentalities. One favourite trick of cults is to persuade us that in their case we are in fact enlightened rebels. When push comes to shove, we are mostly afraid of taking personal responsibility, but we are adept at finding ways to disguise this fact from ourselves, and also anxious to disguise our anxiety and insecurity both from ourselves and others.

When Western people talk about the shock of loosing jobs or businesses, I guess that it is the loss of the sense of autonomy and of dignity which they derive from them, rather than rational fear about money and survival, however critical this may be,  which is the more deeply distressing. It is noticeable that people with a strong sense of being in control, and who have not suffered too much major trauma in their lives, are all the more likely to have difficulty accepting that constant of growth which we call 'crisis'. 

Does one react with yet more frantic efforts to 'get ahead', as if anyone can really get ahead on a chronically sick planet, or does one take what is for many a wonderful opportunity to take a step back from the rat-race and take a good look at our fundamental values and reasons for living? Of course I consider that the latter course is the way to go; but how does one get there, in the midst of confusion and bewilderment, and the ripping up of the rails upon which we were just lately clacking along quite nicely? It may help to start by recognising that we had not much business to be 'clacking along nicely', considering what our way of life has involved for so many other people, but also for our own inner selves. 

'Horseman, pass by!' From his grave, the poet Yeats admonishes the strong and confident horseman not to bother with him and his poetry. The horseman hates to admit that actually everything we have is gifted to us, and the fact that we have come as far as we have is one long string of miracles. Some of the best memories that I have of cruising are those of conversations with other sailors, especially the poorer ones, who are generally lurching from one crisis to another, interspersed with little moments of bliss that are all the more beautiful for that! In one such conversation, I referred to the fact that we certainly did not make ourselves. My interlocutor replied that if we didn't, at least our parents did; he simply could not admit that our lives stem from and refer to some kind of transcendent reality, call it Evolution, Nature, God or what you will!

Well, now is the time to rediscover that, whether we like it or not, the human race and indeed the planet are all in some sense a single organism, and successful living is a matter of being able to accept and relate positively to this fact. Such has been the true religious quest of humanity. I might further urge you to consider that the only possible way for a person to find true autonomy and fulfillment is within relationships of love, and frankly there is only one possible candidate who might enable such a relationship, when it comes to respecting personal autonomy while also accepting our place within a single entity on the cosmic scale! 

Happy Patrick's Day.

Happy St Patrick's Day, all of you.!

     Some of you might be feeling blue, with the usual fun and games subdued, many of us deprived of our usual supports, and even the weather conspiring with its lowering grey sky and driven mist; but let us bear in mind the great mystery of Spring, with life upwelling in the spare and blasted trees. 

     This pandemic has taken us all by surprise, yet in a way it should not have done, and I want to suggest that the way to hope and joy is not a matter of trying to ignore the miseries that come our way. Personally, I have had a sense of forboding, not to say dread, ever since I started to think - about 55 years ago. Living with it has often been difficult, but happily it has left Fiona and I in a good place right now, so far virtually unaffected in our beautiful island home.

     For myself, the Dread started with fear of nuclear holocast, the Cuban missile crisis being seminal, followed by the assassination of, in particular, President Kennedy, who held out hopes of finding a better way. There seem to be grounds for believing that he was killed because of his decision to pull out of Vietnam. Whatever about that, that war caused the likes of myself to finally lose faith in what is loosely called 'Western Imperialism'. Bob Dylan was there to tell the oldies to get out of the way, while we built a new world. Pity it didn't work out too well! Has the Ducky to stand as the ultimate representative of our generation?

     I have to say that I have been in some ways agreeably surprised at how resilient our civilisation has proved to be, while at the same time revolted by the determination on so many sides not to admit and face up to the very many signs that we have been on an unsustainable course. Must I mention the usual suspects - global warming, ocean acidification, horrendous pollution, bio-diversity loss, 'insect Armageddon'? This is before one comes to such matters as the explosion of debt, the vast expenditure on weapons of mass destruction, the extreme disparities of wealth, the refugee crisis, the difficulties of finding good and honest work or even a sense of truth, and the breakdown of religion, marriage and family.

     You may be asking, why bother with this litany of woes, darkening our minds with the thought of them, and anyway why should we associate all these  woes with each other, and with the coronavirus? There is no easy answer to this question,  but might we not agree that any solutions to any of them individually will have much in common with the rest? While we have based our society on the attempt to divide things up into relatively manageable compartments, wisdom comes of tuning into the underlying unity and coherence of it all. Evils are legion; their answer is One.

     I found that both sailing and fishing helped me to live with fear and the sense of dread, being such elemental exemplars of the wondrous combination of peril and opportunity that is on offer. Art and literature may also help, but what is indispensable in the end is a relationship with God, which alone can pull reality together for us. Indeed such a relationship consists precisely of this pulling together. What's more, God is active and indeed relentless in promoting it, and here lies our fullfilment and salvation.

     This is a great opportunity to rediscover the Great

Aileen by Fionnuala

Pullertogether, so that in our response to the pandemic, hopefully we will discover a whole new solidarity, a new willingness and ability and urgency in addressing all those other evils that beset us, and more especially our grandchildren, in the hope of 'a new Heaven and a new Earth'. Yes, it will come. It's even surer than Spring! St Patrick, father of Spring, keep praying for us.

  

Bad Faith in No.10.

It feels to me rather as it did to W.H.Auden in 1939*, when he found himself ‘Uncertain and afraid/As the clever hopes expire/Of a low dishonest decade.’  It becomes clearer by the day that P.M.Johnson negotiated his Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, and in particular its Irish Protocol, in bad faith. He made clear his cavalier disregard for its provisions promptly enough, saying at the outset - ‘“There’s no question of there being checks on goods going NI/GB or GB/NI”. On his visit to Northern Ireland in November last year, he promised business leaders there would be “No forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind” attached to trade across the Irish Sea under the new regime. Numerous statements from the EU side, and not a few from the British, have made it clear that this is false.

     Normal accountability has been shut down, by the simple expedient of not allowing ministers to face hard questions; those radio and television programs on which such questions are generally asked have been boycotted. Access to briefings for troublesome political correspondents is denied. Indeed Mr Johnson was also supposed to have purged troublesome Tories from party and government, but has already fired or lost three key ministers - Northern Ireland Secretary, Attorney General and Chancellor of the Exchequer - who were evidently insufficiently compliant.

     Meanwhile Mr Johnson’s new chief negotiator, Mr David Frost, was supposed to put some kind of respectable intellectual case for all this, at his recent speech to the Université Libre de Bruxelles. According to The Spectator’s print-out, he kicked off with this:- ‘So in 1790 Edmund Burke, one of my country’s great political philosophers, wrote a pamphlet that is justly famous, in the UK, in any case, called ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’. And my title echoes that tonight. It is not just history, that work is highly relevant today and indeed lots of modern British conservative politicians who would consider themselves to be intellectual heirs of Burke.’

     Pity his English is so bad for an intellectual heir of Burke’s, who could indeed write good English; then of course he was not English, but an Anglo-Irishman born in Dublin, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother (like myself, I may add, though I travelled in the opposite direction, from England to Ireland). The references to him come thick and fast:-

‘The state, to Burke, was more of an organic creation, entwined with custom, of tradition and spirit.

‘I think in Britain the EU’s institutions, to be honest, never felt like that. They were more abstract, they were more technocratic, they were more disconnected from or indeed actively hostile to national feeling. So in a country like Britain where institutions just evolved and where governance is pretty deep-rooted in historical precedent, it was always going to feel a bit unnatural to a lot of people to be governed by an organisation whose institutions seemed created by design not than by evolution, and which vested authority outside the country elsewhere.’

     Where does one begin? Auden again:- ‘All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie’. For a start, the notion that the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th century were ‘an organic creation, entwined with custom, of tradition and spirit’ is of course absurd. No wonder Burke bailed out of Ireland, to live in the affluent metropolitan bubble of London. Anyway, if he were honest, he would have to go back before the Reformation to find an England that was indeed anything like ‘an organic creation of tradition and spirit’. Auden again:-  ‘Accurate scholarship can/Unearth the whole offence/ From Luther until now/ That has driven a culture mad’.

     In fact England was spiritually part of Europe since long before nation states were even thought of, but in the Ireland of Burke’s day, the Catholics were a dispossessed people, who were not even permitted an education. Meanwhile, in both Britain and Ireland, the bulk of the people were beginning a long slide into destitution and squalor, even while the few were reaping massive profits from slavery and exploitation.

     So ‘institutions just evolved’ in Britain, did they? Tell that to the slaves transported from Africa to toil in the colonial plantations, or to the Irish and the Scots, or to King Charles I, or the representatives of the old Church who were hanged, drawn and quartered, or even the heirs of the kind of 18th century idyll envisioned by our friend Mr Frost, whose world was brutally shattered by the wars of the 20th century. How does the man think he can get away with such tripe? Anyway, can he really expect us to take his boss seriously as an old-world conservative?

     Yet there are a few lessons that he might have learnt from Burke, such as that ‘Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.’  In truth it is the European Union that has been doing the evolving for the last 50 years, and it remains an ongoing project. It should be unnecessary to repeat, with the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, that we face huge threats; another saying of Burke’s is relevant:- ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’  We should also bear in mind that ‘Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.’

     It is very difficult to unite good men, even if any such are to be found! In truth, if the European project is to have any future, it will have to be more mindful of its roots and real friends; one might look up the Catholic social doctrine of subsidiarity for a start. We will also have to learn again how our sins may be forgiven. Nonetheless, to quote Auden’s poem for the last time, ‘We must love one another or die!’

Burke thought that with the French Revolution ‘the glory of Europe was extinguished forever.’  Little did he know how much worse things could get! Nowadays a generation has grown up for whom the World Wars, the Holocaust, and the whole disaster which generated the modern European movement, are ancient history. They often appear to think that the peace and prosperity which they have enjoyed for the last half century in Europe can be taken for granted. They are wrong. We can only hope that they will not have to find this out in an even harder way than their forebears!

*'September 1, 1939'

The People Voted For Change

'The People voted for change' is being repeated ad nauseam here in Ireland, especially by Sinn Fein supporters. One is tempted to reply, 'have they not noticed that change happens all the time, and increasingly in spades?' Much of it is thoroughly undesirable from my point of view, such as the introduction of abortion and homosexual 'marriage'. More generally, all sorts of people are complaining of all sorts of other things, most genuinely the shortage and cost of housing; but this is a direct result of the banks' failure, and didn't we all complain when they were bailed out?

      Vacuous slogans are unfortunately the stuff of politics, and as the world has become more complex and inter-dependent, it becomes correspondingly more difficult to engage with all its complexities. It is a great deal easier to opt for whatever populist short-cuts are on offer; this is why parliamentary democracy is a good idea. One elects whichever politician comes nearest to gaining one's confidence, to do the business of politics on one's behalf, leaving one free to get on with the actual business of living!

     However, the actual business of politics in any kind of real democracy cannot be merely a matter of the survival of the fittest, barging on and getting their way regardless of other people and their rights, in the manner of a fascist dictator, anymore than any society worthy of the name can accept it as a pattern for the actual business of living. Real democratic politics are a matter of making the effort to listen to and engage with people on all sides, of genuinely seeking truth and justice for all. The 'on all sides' bit is crucial - not just 'on our side'. Such is the essence of catholicism, as opposed to sectarianism.

     It's not at all easy, and of course 'Catholics' can fail and lapse into sectarianism themselves. Many of us do not even know the meaning of the word 'catholic'. Many of us do vaguely know, but still fail to live it out, which is worse. Nonetheless, a radical kind of openness and kindness is noticeable in cultures fortunate enough to have been shaped by it; indeed the whole European project is so shaped, based upon Catholic social doctrine, set up by a group largely of Catholics and with the crown of Mary, twelve stars, as its emblem. If you don't believe me, ask Mr Farrage. 

      Now regardless of that, by all accounts this Julian Smith, who has just been fired as Secretary for Northern Ireland, is someone who tries to apply such principles, and has thereby earned widespread respect there. Firing him is an extremely bad and ominous signal, as we seem to be getting into the endgame with regard to Brexit. 

     I hope it is not just that he was born in Scotland, but he seems to lack the narrow and arrogant nationalism that is apparently a prerequisite for being a member of Mr Johnson's Government, which seems to be setting on a course of confrontation with Europe over Ireland. It will challenge us very deeply to define more clearly what the EU means to us and how we understand Ireland's relationship with it. As such a challenge, it is to be welcomed, but it won't be easy.

     We have to avoid fighting fire with fire. This is why the prospect of a potentially populist and nationalistic party in Government in Ireland is not appetising. What else is on offer, other than everlasting talk and prevarication? It was partly because I could not answer questions of such a nature, and to immerse myself in the practical dilemmas that were even then beginning to define our times, that I settled to earn my living as a fisherman back in 1970s. The conditions of that game are of themselves therapeutic in this sense; either you catch fish or you don't, and no amount of codswallop will make any difference there. At least I have a pretty good grasp of the realities of fishing as a result, and it does indeed exemplify many of the dilemmas we are facing. 

     The first lesson I learnt, beyond doubt and which I have referred to repeatedly in this blog, is that modern technology and unbridled capitalism are a lethal combination that is destroying our society and our planet. To find another way is indeed imperative, and in this sense I can sympathise with 'the people voting for change'. Probably not that many had this kind of change in mind, but at least the result of our recent election is quite promising in the respect that there is no 'winner'. Dialogue and sharing power is the only way ahead, and admittedly if the Shinners can do it in the North, why shouldn't they do it in the Republic?

     But what other 'steers' are there to be taken aboard from fishing? There are those who seem to think that if we can only get rid of the 'foreign' boats, à la Brexit, our problems will be solved. Of course, they will not. It is after all the 'Continental Shelf' we are talking about, continental fishermen have been working it for hundreds of years, we all depend on the continental market, and the fish themselves do not recognise frontiers. In fact the industry doesn't either, most of the big trawlers being owned by multi-national companies. On the other hand, it is true that these big trawlers have no long-term commitment; when they have one area fished out, they just look around for somewhere else.

The principle of subsidiarity needs to be respected; bigger boats should not be fishing where smaller ones can. Also the 'command and control' approach embodied in the Common Fisheries Policy is not working and never will work effectively in its present form; no matter how much fancy technology is thrown at it. The fact is that fishermen, if they are to survive, will find a way round it if they have to, especially the biggest and most destructive of them. The alternative is to find a way to enable them to 'own' it; it is best when the fishermen themselves own the boats, and learn to husband the resource for the longer term and to own the policy of conservation, which is then in their own interest.

The whole array of the problems of technology and of our economic set-up lies behind the politics of it, and there is no solution to anything that does not involve facing up to them; yet one can make a start in tackling immediate abuses. We have a situation in County Cork where our prime fishing port, Castletownbere, is being overwhelmed with big foreign trawlers, whose gear and supplies come from abroad in the lorries that take the fish way, doing no good to the local economy whatever. They make it difficult for the local boats to operate, and moreover we have a situation in which these can be prevented from fishing by the implementation of quotas, while few such restrictions are apparently imposed on the Spanish ships. These just land into the back of lorries with few checks. This has been going on for years. When Simon Coveney's father, as Minister for Fisheries, tried to do something about it, he was shafted.

The quota system itself is a bad joke. Everyone knows that if it was strictly enforced, the industry would mostly go broke. Box counts may be applied, but ineffectively with regard to what is in the boxes. The big trawlers are likely, for instance, to book monkfish as white pollack; then smaller boats fishing pollack have to book white pollack as black (saithe). Meanwhile Irish boats frequently have to dump species for which they have no quota and cannot get to market, such as dogfish or bluefin tuna.

One knows how the fishermen in France or Spain would react (and indeed have done) on the receiving end of such treatment. Ireland and Europe can and must be bigger. This case of Uefa and Manchester City shows the way to go; as someone said, football needs rules off the pitch as well as on it. City's response of 'scorn, outrage, denial' is classic these days, strongly calling to mind The Ducky and Mr Johnson, and the way we are now seeing his Government react to other European efforts to enforce the rules of law and genuine good management.

Another simple little move in the direction of sanity is the exclusion of boats over 18m from inside the six mile limit which is coming into effect this year. I would like to see it extended to fifty miles for vessels over 20m, while the 6 or 12 mile limit would be for boats under 15m. But the ultimate solution will not merely a matter of such restrictions, but also in the development of fishing methods that do not involve the use of large quatities of oil and the destructive effects of such fishing both on the sea-bed and fish stocks. I still dream of building a modern fishing boat that will fish mainly by jigging or droving, say for mackerel, pollack or tuna, using sails and hydrogen to get around and generate electricity.

Genuine engagement with others, at the same time taking aboard inconvenient truths, respect for nature and for justice; refusing to shut ourselves in silos; these are the kind of thing that will enable a new kind of politics and of living, and wouldn't one think that most people would agree if they had half a chance?

Cow Strand today.

     

Secret Sardinia

It’s good to have a store of sunny memories on an evening like this in Sherkin, as I sit with a whiskey by the stove and a south-westerly gale with rain lashes our island home. Secret Sardinia … My mind goes back to the few happy days that Fiona and I spent in the Anna M around the north of Sardinia and Maddalena Island six years ago, on our way to Rome. But what kind of images does this title of a short film on aljazeera.com conjure up for you? Sparkling emerald blue water, hidden bays, beautiful hills roamed by flocks of sheep and goats and old-world villages?  

     All the more shocking to discover what the film was in fact about, namely the NATO exercise areas in Sardinia and their horrific effects on the local people and animals, with many cancer deaths, deformed babies, lambs and kids, and about the usual official efforts to cover it all up. It is all an horrendous desecration of a most beautiful place, of a piece with so many factors that would make it hard for me to take the kind of innocent pleasure that I used to in cruising.

     Unfortunately it is among many other such desecrations, which if at all possible are kept away from offending the sensibilities of us affluent consumers, who should not be allowed to consider too deeply the costs of our life-style and the gross imbalances it involves, awareness of which might not alone spoil our fun but also be bad for business! At least we Sherkin islanders are far from the small class whose main business in life is to keep the goodies flowing in vast quantities. Unfortunately this seems to somehow involve the supply of those trillions of dollars worth of oil and arms, and to Hell with the consequences. They certainly struck gold with the Ducky, him of the Golden Gates!

     So ‘the economy is doing well’, everyone can afford to fill their fuel tanks and the Ducky is likely to be re-elected. He is so lucky with the tar sands and fracking, which mean America is self-sufficient again in oil and exporting it to Europe. A glance at AIS shows a steady stream of tankers heading in our direction, and I am told that most of the oil in Whitegate (our refinery in Cork) and Millford Haven in Wales now comes from America. Why wouldn’t ‘the economy be doing well’? 

     The ‘War on Terror’ has of course been another bonanza for the arms industry, while failing spectacularly in its alleged purpose. What better way to breed terrorists than to bully, bomb and impoverish whole populations? It is interesting to recall that the standoff with Iran dates back to at least 1953, when Great Britain and the US orchestrated the overthrow of a democratically elected Prime Minister who had the temerity to require the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to open its books to his Government. One thing the many trillions of dollars spent on ‘defence’ since have notably failed to deliver is a safer and more secure world.

     The Ducky came to power promising to bring home the troops and spend money on infrastructure at home. It does not seem to have happened. Spending more money on the health or social welfare of his citizens was of course always too much to ask. In the event he has only provided the icing on the cake for the rich, while in the last four decades, according to Robert Reich, a former American Secretary for Labour,  ‘the median wage has barely budged. But the incomes of the richest 0.1% have soared by more than 300% and the incomes of the top 0.001% (the 2,300 richest Americans), by more than 600%. The net worth of the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans almost equals that of the bottom 90% combined.’ President Trump’s ‘tax cuts, his evisceration of labor laws, his filling his cabinet and sub-cabinet with corporate shills, his rollbacks of health, safety, environmental and financial regulations: all have made the super-rich far richer, at the expense of average Americans.’

     One has to admire the sleight of hand, also exercised in a slightly different way by Prime Minister Johnson and his cronies in Britain. Let us hope that the politicians elected today in Ireland are a little better at delivering their promises, but of course we are feeling the same pressures here; and whats more, we are in danger of finding ourselves in the front line between two opposed camps. The question is, can Europe really offer an alternative? How can all the talk about a ‘Green New Deal’ be made to stand up? For it is by no means clear that our ruling politicians are really that much different to the Tory and Republican ones.

     In Ireland at least the system is not subject to the same tidal waves of money. What’s more it looks as if the establishment parties are going to take a beating. But whatever the good intentions around, the Green New Deal will not happen unless it is taken up not alone at the 'top end' of politics, but also pushed at a grass-roots level as widely as possible, and indeed people are willing to make sacrifices in order to do so. I wonder how that might happen! I'm looking forward to see how the new Government here turns out, though my hopes are far from sky-high. At least, thank God, there are no NATO exercise areas around here, and lets keep it that way!

On the Sherkin ferry.