Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

The hundred thousand welcomes are in full flow, eh? Dignitaries have been touching down with remarkable regularity this year. I mean, it’s all about Betty and Barry this month, but they’re just the latest. After years in the doldrums, we’re back on the tourist map.

It may be that in her last year President McAleese has activated invites she left abroad. She’s long wanted a State visit by the British monarch to mark the end of the past and the beginning of the future.
As for Barry, a visit to Moneygall will pay an electoral dividend in due course. But others are here for the beer and the skittles.
Much is being said about the historical significance of the Queen’s visit and fair enough. It’s another stage along a path we’ve collectively travelled for a decade-and-a-half. You might say it’s just another State visit by a foreign head of state, and it is, but it’s more too.
The historical animus between Ireland and Britain has defined almost everything about Irish life for far too long. It’s time to put it to bed and the visit is potentially another stage in doing just that.
But some people can’t let go. Curiously for people locked in the past, they seem unable to understand the complexity of the historical record. I mean, the Irish invaded and occupied other parts of this archipelago long before the favour was returned. The Irish Sea is more lake than ocean. We have criss-crossed it for thousands of years in all directions. There is little to distinguish the DNA of those living anywhere around its rim. We are they even more than they are we.
Of course, there’s also patronising prattle from some armchair republicans saying that they don’t approve of monarchy… Yeah? Well, one didn’t hear of any of them protesting against Prince Albert or Queen Beatrix, so why have a problem with Betty? And that’s before we explore the insupportable interactions between Irish republicans and despots like Hitler and Stalin. Monarchs aren’t acceptable but dictators are?
And what about the delicious irony of anti-British protesters who also follow English Premier League teams and wear their colours?!
It’s also before we consider the philosophical implications of how the Irish slotted so sportingly into the role allotted them in the 19th century at the intersection of British imperialist and romantic thought.
The Celts, as they fill the popular imagination, were an invention. They were, supposedly, the misty romantic and feminine side of the British, there to offset the practical, businesslike and manly Anglo-Saxons. Nonsensical as it is, we’ve been more than happy to play the part, and exploit the notion, ever since. The Irish were letting the Gaelic language fade and die before it was revived by the Brits and the Germans.
Put that in yer uilleann pipe and smoke it.
Yeah, the Irish have the longest and moaniest memory of all the peoples of the world, even including their cousins the Basques.
Like, the Americans dropped more explosives on Vietnam than were dropped by all sides in all combat theatres of World War II. But instead of going on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it, the Vietnamese have moved on… and on…
I’m not saying they’ve forgotten it. They’ve just left it behind. Maybe it’s a legacy of Buddhism that they live in the present, not the past. It’s how we should be too. We’re in the second decade of the 21st fucking century for jasus sake.
Forget about it. It’s all about the tourists now and Betty’s beano is a perfect advert, as was that of her predecessor Victoria. And it will be watched much further afield than the UK.
We want the tourists – and we need the money! And if that sounds cynical, well, who cares. It isn’t. But it is pragmatic.
All that said, we need also to keep an eye on the rest of the hundred thousand welcomes. The news that we are to take 100 Libyan refugees is an interesting development. It’s a small but genuine gesture. It adds a minor increment to our international stature and makes a point to others.
One of the fascinating, and deeply worrying, aspects of Europe in 2011 has been the major swing towards populist politicians and right wing parties. Fears about the impact of migration, and especially the potential scale of future inflows arising from climate-related food and water shortages, are a key trigger.
They have already raised the temperature between Italy and France, which closed its borders to trains from Italy because they were carrying refugees from Tunisia.
Which brings me to the French. We love them, of course: their arrogance, flair, fashion, food and wine. And they love us back… It’s not just the shared Jacobin tradition nor the previous with England. It’s the purple taxi… our Celticness! They’ve bought the myth as well!!
But they have a sneaky little snot at their head. For all that we want tourists, President Sarkozy is fucking us around in Europe. Let’s make sure the hundred thousand welcomes are all used up, if that little prat comes calling…