Rejoining the Commonwealth

Marc Coleman (now writing for Independent Newspapers, by the way), wrote on Sunday July 29 2007about this.

Apparently, the UK's Minister for European Affairs, Kevin Murphy, recently hinted in Parliament at an invitation to the Republic to re-join. MC agrees with me that this should be ignored, but we don't agree on the reasons. For him,

... I'm a Jacobite (we haven't gone away, you know). My problem starts not with Britain, but with the nature of its monarchy. Being the central binding force of the Commonwealth, that same monarchy and what it stands for is crucial. The principle on which the current British monarchy is founded - the Act of Settlement - should be unacceptable to any modern pluralist democracy.

That 1704 act bars any Catholic from ascending to the throne of England and bars any British monarch from marrying a Catholic..

But perhaps the most problematic issue for Ireland joining the Commonwealth is a statue that still stands outside the Houses of Parliament: the statue of Oliver Cromwell.

As any objective historian agrees, Cromwell engaged in the systematic depopulation of Ireland, wiping out over one-fifth of the native population. Not content with that, he sent letters to parliament rejoicing in the slaughter of what he called the "barbarous wretches".

His confiscation of land from the native Irish laid conditions for a sequence of famines from which this country is only beginning to recover.

For some this is ancient history. Sorry, but no matter how long ago it occurred, genocide must never be forgotten or forgiven. The deeds of Hitler must always be remembered, lest they are repeated. Likewise those of Cromwell. Cromwell was a racist and a mass murderer who plunged England into its darkest period of intolerance and bigotry.

A Jacobite I am not - I believe that they are in fact long-gone from everywhere except Independent House - but otherwise, that's all fair enough. I also agree with him that "modern Britons are amongst the most decent and tolerant people on earth" but emphatically do not concur when he says ". ... I hope that some day Ireland will rejoin the Commonwealth".

For me, it is as simple as this: we have grown out of it, just as children grow out of living at home.

Conundrum

"An Irish Solution to an Irish Problem" is commonly used in Ireland as a derogatory expression. This has always puzzled me: does it indicate a continuing national inferiority complex ? Are we supposed to think that, say, an English solution to Irish problems is more appropriate ?

Now, I do remember that this usage derives from Charlie Haughey's description of a particular step in the slow legalisation of contraception, but this does not seem to me to adequately explain the phenomenon.

Church & State magazine says (at page 4):

It is often said that the freedom of the press is required to preserve democracy, but in Ireland the press is undermining democracy. It is not conducted to support a democratic political culture, but to demoralise the public and leave the State vulnerable to manipulation by globalist interests.

There is some evidence for this, and not just in Ireland.