300,002 reasons why I'm voting Yes to Lisbon
Sunday September 20 2009
The Editor hinted it would be no harm to say why I am voting Yes. This produced a panic attack for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to write the horror of Kerry's Tommy Walsh, 6ft 4ins, a hyena with the height of a giraffe, hovering at the edge of the Cork square in Croke Park today. Second, I never needed a reason to vote Yes to Lisbon before. But here goes.
Like marriage, the EU is not a product but a process and Lisbon is just another reality check in the relationship. In marriage, you commit yourself to stay the course. And even if you are finally forced to break up, you should praise the good times.
But if the marriage is going well -- and our EU relationship is sound -- why would you suddenly head for the hills on a whim? Or do an Othello and smother your European wife just because some Sinn Fein Iago says she is a whore? Or take the advice of a fanatic with fiery eyes who sees abortion clinics around every corner?
Most people will not debate the pros and cons of Lisbon: they will listen to their hearts. My heart tells me that Europe has been a good spouse: supportive when we were poor, stoical when we were spendthrifts, and still willing to dig into her purse, aka European Central Bank.
But if you insist on reasons of the head, I can think of 300,002. The first 300,000 are the Irish jobs provided by American investors who value the EU link. The remaining two reasons are more complex. Call them hate and love.
I hate the politics of the extremists in the No camp. I hate the politics of Sinn Fein. I hate the reactionary religious politics of the right-wingers who cluster around Coir. I hate the repressed racism that runs like a dark thread through the Little Englanders linking up with Little Irelanders to say No to Lisbon.
I hate the strident isolationism of the Murdoch and Associated Press organs who bray that Lisbon is a conspiracy of unelected bureaucrats. Like the historian Timothy Garton Ash, I ask why would it be more democratic to have an EU whose shape is dictated by a conspiracy of unelected British newspaper proprietors?
Above all, I hate the smelly politics of the yellow poster. I refer to the weasel words on the lurid poster which the Friends of
Palestine Against Lisbon stuck up outside the Israeli Embassy: "Israel killed over 300 Palestinian children in January. Yet the EU will not impose sanctions. EU policy facilitates Israeli genocide. Vote No to Lisbon." Thank God it has been taken down.
Given the thousands of Irish jobs at stake, given the gutter politics of some of the No groups, you might think the ICTU would look for a Lisbon Yes vote and be careful of the company it keeps. Not so. In the past few weeks, the ICTU has been as interested in boycotting Israeli goods as in getting a Yes for Lisbon.
On August 27, as the Lisbon campaigns lifted into top gear, Sally Anne Kinahan, the assistant general secretary of ICTU, sent a letter to all affiliated unions headed: "Levy for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign". She was looking for "a levy in the form of a flat fee of 300 per union and a fee per member of 0.07".
Let me make three points to Sally Ann Kinahan. Firstly, none of the unions she asks to pay the boycott levy have consulted their members, by ballot or otherwise, or asked them to support a boycott. Secondly, the European Trade Union Confederation, to which the ICTU is affiliated, does not support a boycott. Thirdly, the Irish Government and opposition parties -- with the significant exception of Sinn Fein -- do not support a boycott.
Let me add two more. Ms Kinahan refers to an "official Congress delegation" which went on a "fact-finding" visit in 2007. Some, but not all, were members of either a Palestinian solidarity group or of Sinn Fein. They spent only a short time in Israel and their "findings" merely confirmed the positions some of them held on arrival. Finally, the ICTU has never called for a boycott -- or even condemned publicly -- the repressive policies of Islamist states such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or grim groups like Hamas in Gaza, all of whom imprison trade unionists and oppress women in all walks of life. These states and groups would lock up, torture and murder a woman trade unionist like Sally Ann Kinhan. Go figure.
So what do I love about Lisbon? I love it like an advance of affection in a good marriage. I love it as another step in the epic European project that has brought peace and prosperity to countries oppressed by conflict and poverty. Like Ireland. Emmet's epitaph has been etched in Europe even more extensively than the United
States of America. The idea of an evolving Europe of democratic nation states can still inspire. It is an idea that inches out inclusively to Turkey and the wider Muslim world beyond. It is a project that in time will help the workers and women of the Middle East. Like it helped Irish workers and Irish women.
Irish women are one of the main reasons I support Lisbon. Why? Because Irish women did better from the EU than almost any other group except farmers. So it was baffling that so many women voted No.
Lest we have to take another step like Lisbon, let me make a suggestion: Hold a national competition to find the face of Molly Bloom. To that face add Molly's immortal words to her Dublin Jewish lover, Leopold Bloom. Words that link the Europe of Moorish Spain to Africa and the Middle East. Words that cherish Christian, Muslim and Jew alike: ". . . yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used to wear or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
A final worried word on the Cork-Kerry clash. Last Friday, on Lunchtime with Keane, I heard Cork legend Dinny Allen and Kerry icon Paidi O Se, like two honourable eighteenth-century officers, exchange civilities about which of them did the most damage when marking each other.
Dinny conceded that Paidi was so hard there were times he wished "he was in a concrete box". Paidi matched him in gallantry, remarking that while he liked his roast beef on Sunday, Dinny's close marking had left him without the wherewithal to grind his beef.
Think a country which produces warriors like them will retreat before a recession and go down to dust? Think again. Tune into Croke Park today. Say yes, I will Yes.
