8 December-January 2014
C
OLM McCarthy, Ireland’s most
unangry man, has stated porten-
tously if unoriginally that “anger
is not a policy”. He likes to reach smugly
for a metaphorical spreadsheet that
emits efficacious public policy to him
alone, at his click. He’s right of course.
Always right! The Roman stoic philoso-
pher Seneca agreed with him: anger was
“worthless even for war”. For Catholics
anger is one of the seven deadly sins.
Aristotle, contrariwise, endorsed a bit
of anger, at least when deployed to pre-
vent injustice. The opposite of anger is
a kind of insensibility, he reckoned. At
the far end of the cultural spectrum (from
Aristot le, not necessarily from McCa rthy)
the Sith Lord Sidious, from ‘Star Wars’,
tells Anakin Skywalker who has meta-
morphosised into evil Darth Vader: “I can
feel your anger. It gives you focus, makes
you stronger!”.
But in Ireland the strength has always
outgunned the focus. Anger as rep-
resented in risings has an honoured
tradition here dating back to Silken
Thomas, the Desmond rebellions and
Hugh O’Neill, in the sixteenth cen-
tury. The State was founded in anger
and indeed blood; and the 1916 Rising
Proclamation refers to six rebellions in
the previous 300 years.
Of course post-colonial revolution
focuses not on separatism but on politics,
not quite so much on by what country as
on by whom and how a country is gov-
erned. The most famous modern protests
internationally were in 1968. Globally,
NEWS
Also in this section:
Charter for Left 11
FTT fibbing 12
RIAI 14
Wasting anger
Channel it away from the minor
water tax to the biggest issue:
equality. By Michael Smith
December-January 2014 9
exposure of the contradictions of capi-
talism has latterly again spawned anger
on the streets, in the polling booths and
in opinion polls: with Occupy and the
Indignados, protests in Egypt and the
rise of hard-right and hard-left poles in
Europe, and of the Tea Party in the US.
Characteristic of the latest wave of
international protest has been the par-
ticipation of ordinary people, not lobbies
with lists of demands. Their mix of rev-
elry and rage condemns the corruption,
inefficiency and arrogance of the 1%,
even if – whatever about protests – solu-
tions are rarely coherent or consensual.
In Ireland after an extraordinarily slow
start a campaign is rallying to threaten
the fundaments of a bondholder-friendly,
unimaginative, regressive and arrogant
government.
The campaign has been a shrewd if
rough-hewn balance of consensus and
sulphur. The problem is it has coalesced
around the wrong issue.
A recent article in the Irish Times was
headlined “Protest works – if it breaks
rules”. Fine. But one rule it must not break
is choosing the right thing to protest over.
Even if doing so gets gratifyingly up the
capacious nose of the establishment.
On its own terms the water-tax cam-
paign has been a resounding success,
consensual, cross-party (opposition par-
ties anyway) good-spirited though with
a hard-nosed edge. There has been some
violence. Joan Burton got ignominiously
imprisoned in her car. A garda was hit
by a stone outside the Dáil; and respect
has gratifyingly disintegrated, taking
the discourse with it. So An Taoiseach
was told he was a c*** at a meeting about
the Easter Rising commemorations, and
feisty new Environment Minister Alan
Kelly told Mattie McGrath TD to fuck off,
because he was annoying him. Sinn Féin
too has been busily registering its con-
tempt at the irascible personage of the
Ceann Comhairle. It sat in in the Dáil with
very little immediate provocation from
the speaker, and has stridently broken
most of the august rules on parliamen-
tary privilege.
The problem is that if revolution, anger
or even contempt were the currency we
would have been rich half a millennium
ago.
But the history of revolution – that
Marxists predicted would replace the
bourgeoisie with the proletariat – instead
dictated that the bourgeoisie was always
replaced with the bourgeoisie, after a
decent break. Not so exciting.
The revolutionary generation in
Ireland took the country through to the
conservative, protectionist, frugal and
religious fifties and sixties. The Civil War
parties delivered nothing but conserv-
atism, albeit sometimes – proving the
point – cynically dressed up as social-
ism. The Labour Party failed to deliver
on exciting manifestos every time it fell
for power. The most hated government
in Ireland’s history was replaced with
a government so close in orientation to
it that it is indistinguishable. It failed
to deliver the anti-bondholder, anti-
corruption, anti-profligacy policies its
component parties had championed at
election time.
Meanwhile rampant, power-thirsty
Sinn Féin which secretly dominated
the December 10 water-charge protest,
seems poised to replicate the mistakes
of Fianna Fáil’s policy-free nationalistic
populism in the South but with a retarda-
tion of 90 years.
In the North Sinn Féin part-fronts
one of the least radical governments in
Europe.
And after a crisis that looks like it has
been almost entirely wasted it is still
possible for Ireland’s best selling news-
paper to feature on its cover Michael
Fitzmaurice, newly elected independent
TD for Leitrim/South-Roscommon, as the
future of change.
Fitzmaurice is chair of the burn-the-
environment turfcutters, a cross of the
earnestness of Peter Mathews and the
gombeenism of Jackie Healy Rae (and
their visual cross to boot). He is a man
without a single coherent idea. He now
plans to establish a party to replicate
this vacuum as a platform and to stand
25 candidates in the general election.
It will be “neither left or right wing but
down the middle”.
The problem is that if you’re not ideo-
logical you’ll split, because your troops
will be annoyed when it turns out they
didn’t get what they marched for – when
they realise they got something else that
only you thought they wanted.
There are unlikely to be any great ide-
ologies waiting to be discovered (though
certainly we all crave new ideas): keep it
Left, Right and maybe Green – and, if you
must, Conservative or Liberal but spare
us ideology-free nationalism, down-the-
centrism or turfcutterism.
After 100 years of independence!
Michael Fitzmaurice is a split waiting
for a movement and a generation, to
squander.
In other words what McCarthy said
is true: anger and the reaction it gener-
ates does not effect social change or even
clever ideas.
Look at how the angry-about-plane-
tary-destruction Green Party failed to
make any significant difference socially,
economically or even environmentally.
Indignation tied to ineptitude took us
nowhere really.
Admittedly some politicians from our
Left, very few, seem so ascetic and pur-
ist that they may not sell out – so long as
they are never co-opted into government.
Their purity is in inverse proportion to
the likelihood, and to be fair, the willing-
ness, to take the compromising reins of
power.
But too many of the oppressed and
too many in the opposition simply want
what the oppressors and the government
have.
Look at Bertie Ahern, a man with no
principles beyond assuaging everyone
in the room: the most popular politician
of our epoch. John O’Donoghue, anyone?
Martin Cullen? Or look forward to Sinn
Féin.
In general we can see from their poli-
cies ex ante that most politicians cannot
be relied on in government. If you spend
your time in opposition or in local poli-
tics doing favours for your neighbours,
getting drains fixed and whingeing for
one-off-housing permissions you won’t
adapt well to any public-interest role in
government since the public interest is
not simply the accumulation of every
private interest indulged. The public
interest needs to be defined by an ideol-
ogy, indeed competing ideologies, that
people can vote for, so they know what
they are getting and don’t risk contradic-
tion and split.
And if in opposition you – on pol-
icy grounds (assuming you have any)
– opposed capital-gains and capital-
acquisition hikes, property taxes and
progressive income tax you are unlikely
to favour wealth-redistribution if you
come to power. Your instincts will tell
you these are the instruments of your
agenda. Any serious Leftist should be
proud to stand for taxes, fair taxes. To
pay for public services. And any Leftist
should favour planning: economic, social
and physical, for planning is a machine
for change.
For Leftists environmentalism should
be a secondary imperative but an impera-
tive nonetheless.
Because environmentalism ensures
In Ireland
after an
extraordinarily
slow start a
campaign is
rallying to
threaten the
fundaments of
a bondholder-
friendly,
unimaginative,
regressive
and arrogant
government
“
10 December-January 2014
be sustainable, or greenhouse gas emis-
sions minimised or maybe committing
the state to using natural resources for
the benefit of all its citizens. If we want a
referendum how about one that changes
property rights to reduce the inoculation
from restraint of lawyers, or consult-
ants, or private pensions or speculators
or the corrupt? Or the daddy of refer-
endums committing governments to
annual improvements in equality, strin-
gently measured by the Gini coefficient
– what nobler purpose for politics? But
prohibiting privatising Irish Water – how
meagre!
Unfortunately what we can see from
the performance of many on the Irish Left
is that they are more Irish than Left. This
is embarrassing parochialism.
For nearly all, the obsession with prop-
erty and indeed with ‘family’ transcends
the imperative to redistribute wealth,
so we’re left with a Left that appears to
understand only income tax.
A wealth tax on the family home? Jayz
– how would people cope? Well they’d
cope as well as families do with income
tax proportionate to their incomes. The
Left should favour equitable redistribu-
tion across a range of taxes to promote
high-quality services and infrastructure
(with the limit being the level at which
productivity starts reducing beyond the
benefit of the redistribution).
Forget protesting about the paltry
water tax. Think big, and don’t waste
energy on campaigns that are incoher-
ent, that pitch left and right together,
that above all are centred on property
rights – the atavistic Irish fetish for not
allowing anyone to interfere with your
land, your legacy, your right to build,
future generations can participate equi-
tably in the fruits of the earth that were
handed down to us from the previous one.
And equity above all else is what should
drive the Left.
This logic does not appeal to the
Irish Left of today. Paul Murphy TD of
the Anti-Austerity Alliance recently
told ‘Morning Ireland’: “Water charges
must be defeated. Any charge for water
whatsoever represents the start of the
commodification of water – charges will
only go in one direction which is up – and
it will lead to privatisation”. Richard Boyd
Barrett has said the latest wide-ranging
concessions on the water charges will
“not assuage public anger against a fun-
damentally regressive and unfair tax”.
Such comments from thoughtful and
articulate leaders of the Left sets back
half a century of political theory that
says imposing charges for the polluter
does not represent commodification and,
because it protects the environment, is
fair.
But whatever about the theory, in
practice in any event the average annual
water bill for the next three years will be
€150 per person. GDP per head is around
€40,000. A campaign that centres on
distribution of one-two-hundred-and
sixty-seventh of the income that is avail-
able to be distributed is selling protestors
short.
Perhaps the nadir of the (anti)-intellec-
tual morass that is the water campaign
has been suggestions, led by the Greens,
of a constitutional referendum to pro-
hibit privatisation, though opinion polls
posit a popular majority in favour. If the
Greens want a referendum how about one
guaranteeing that development should
your water.
Of course this is to simplify.
The property tax is not exemplary, a
wealth tax (of which property was only
a component) would be better; and the
water tax is not progressive and not
environmental. Nevertheless such taxes
conduce to equity (and environmental-
ism). The silly versions applying at the
moment are a start, the establishment of
new principles in taxation, and should be
overhauled not abolished.
A campaign in Ireland centring on
water charges is bound to be more
notable for its popularity than its integ-
rity. Worse it will marshall the fragile
resources and goodwill of the Left, and
the language or radical protest, for an
issue that appeals mostly to right-wing-
ers. Centralising water long-term would
be the death of the Left.
Nevertheless, in 2014 anger that
should have been marshalled to under-
mine the bank guarantee and the bailout,
the serial regressive budgets, the cuts to
the most vulnerable like Travellers, has
at least finally crystallised, in Ireland.
We are seeing people-powered protest
at an intensity finally to turn the heads of
complacent market apologists like Colm
McCarthy and his acolytes in government
and the bureaucracy. This could not be
more welcome.
Because, although it is not sufficient,
anger is necessary for change.
But in 2015 let’s not march for tweaks
to a tiny tax. Let’s march for greater
equality measured by the Gini coefficient
– definitive progress for anyone who is
ethical. For equality, the environment,
quality of life, efficiency, transparency
and honesty. For big, sure change. •
NEWS ANGER
Let’s march
for greater
equality
measured
by the Gini
coefficient,
for the
environment,
quality of life,
efficiency,
transparency
and honesty
“
a platform for something
more worthwhile

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