In the LINE of FIRE

I’m dandering down the Strand Road the other night wondering whether Jacky is on in Mullen’s and, if he is, whether the chances of him advancing me another sub to see me through to the weekend are good, bad or indifferent to the circumstances I find myself in following the inexplicable failure of Queen’s Consul to do the business at Southwell, when who do I encounter but three citizens by the names of Robbo Terry, Barricade Joe and Rosemount Tom and all of them with expressions upon their faces suggesting that they are anticipating this very evening an occasion of passionate joy.

“Are ye coming with us,” enquired Robbo Terry, flush of ample cheek, “for the crack?”

“Jaysus, do,” encouraged Barricade Joe, adding that “Sure it’ll only be mighty.” It was at this point that I noticed the brown paper parcel under Rosemount Tom’s impressive left oxter.

What the fuck, I asked mildly, is in the brown paper parcel, keeping the cease-fire in mind?

“Them’s his boots,” elaborated Barricade Joe, “pure leather”, going on to explain that they’d cost Rosemount Tom even more money than I’d have had in my pocket that very minute if Queen’s Consul hadn’t run like a clothes horse.

“Spurs on them and all,” continued Robbo Terry, admiringly.

“You should come,” upspake Rosemount Tom at last. “Them two just watch. I’ll even lend you the pure leather boots with the spurs on them and all.”

I indicated to them by means of direct speech that it wasn’t pure leather boots with spurs or without I was in need of right then but the price of openers for Jacky’s after which I’d be OK, and then dangerously sought further elucidation of their mysterious line of chat.

“We’re for the line-dancing at the Waterloo,” beamed Barricade Joe, the words coming trippingly, as if ’twere the most natural thing in the world, as if line-dancing weren’t the least cool activity ever stamped rudely into this piece of earth with the possible exception of the set-dancing imported by the British Army of occupation and now passed off on Irish Times readers as part of what we are whereas, in truth, it is merely part of what they are. But I digress.

It is surely all up for decency, decorum and cultural sensitivity when citizens such as Robbo Terry, Barricade Joe and Rosemount Tom, with proven records for doughty defence of socialist ideas, progressive values and the territorial integrity of the Creggan Estate, have crumpled before the blandishments of Garth Brooks stompalikes and taken shamelessly to . . . line dancing at the Waterloo.

What is becoming of our little country at all? Not to mention Queen’s Consul.

Let us salve ourselves with the thought that one at least of the heretofore citizens has since been saved from himself as a result of Buncrana Phyllis finding his pure leather boots with the spurs on them and all hidden under the jumpers at the bottom of the wardrobe, and immediately thereupon outlining the options available to him. There’s hope.

But holy fuck. Line dancing.

F F F F F F

There’s been a massive swing to the Right in the US, say all of the pundits. And as with America today, so with the world tomorrow.

So there’s lessons in this, maybe, for the likes of Tony Blair in Britain, and for anyone who still sees Labour or the Democratic Left as a vehicle for social change here.

Key Republican strategist Bill Kristol’s euphoric announcement of “The Russian Revolution in reverse” was widely quoted as the new Republican majority swept into Washington to take over the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 4th. A little light gloating was only to be expected: this was the first time the “Grand Old Party” had controlled both Houses since 1954.

The sheer scale of the triumph seemed sufficient, on the face of it, to snatch the breath away. Not a single Republican Senator, Representative or State Governor lost his or her position in the poll last November. The contrast on the other side was stark. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tom Foley, was drummed out in Washington State – the first Speaker to lose his seat since 1862 – and eleven Democratic Governors, including Mario Cuomo of New York, were driven ignominiously from office.

For many, the one bright spot amid the encircling gloom was the failure of the perjurer and crook Oliver North to unseat Charles Robb in the Senate race in Virginia, despite Robb’s richly-deserved unpopularity.

There were other indications of a new mood of arch-conservatism, of which the most depressing was the passing by three votes to two of Proposition 187 in California. This will deny illegal immigrants and their children access to welfare services, public schooling and non-emergency medical treatment. Literally within hours of the vote being confirmed, Governor Pete Wilson ordered that pregnant women without valid residency papers should be expelled from all pre-natal care courses and that children without proper documentation should not be allowed to return to school for the term just starting.

Opponents of abortion and of gay rights are now in a majority in both Houses.

Almost everywhere, these changes have been interpreted not just as a return to Reaganism but, as it were, to full-blown Reaganism. “Clinton liberalism has had its day, and then some” was Jeremy Paxman’s encapsulation on Newsnight. And, of course, that’s one way of looking at it. But it’s not the only, or the most sensible way.

US voters didn’t choose hard-Right over soft-Left ideas. In fact, most of them indicated “a pox on the lot of you”: more than six out of ten didn’t bother to vote at all. And exit-polls suggest that a majority of those who did make the effort were disgusted by the betrayals of Clinton rather than excited by the prospect of Republicans in office.

Asked why they believed the Republicans had done so well, only one in eight voters plumped for “support for Republican programmes.” More than half cited “disapproval of Clinton’s job as president.”

Faced with a lean, mean and well-organised Republican assault, Clinton had not been standing up for the people who elected him in 1992 but, instead, had been running away. The Republicans wanted to cut women and children off welfare after two years and to end any government support for unmarried mothers under 18 who insisted on keeping their babies. In response, Clinton agreed to make two years the cut-off point for welfare, and argued against the proposal in relation to under-18 mothers solely on the basis of cost. On this issue, which figured very prominently in the campaign, there was no distinction in principle between the parties.

Similarly with law ’n’ order. Having won in 1992 arguing clearly enough that social deprivation was the main cause of crime, Clinton, by 1994, had back-tracked to the extent of introducing a crime bill providing for a 600 percent increase in spending – on prisons.

Clinton promised health care for all, then compromised all along the line before publishing a bill so long and complex and studded with opt-outs and exceptions that nobody could explain what its 1,000-plus pages of text would mean if ever put into practice. When the measure, the single most important item in his election campaign, was defeated in the House in the summer, campaigners for a decent health system weren’t certain whether to weep or to cheer.

Clinton had promised to repeal anti-union laws, to increase access to abortion, to secure rights for gays in the armed services and to raise the minimum wage. He reneged on all of these pledges.

The result has been the generalised cynicism reflected in the November turn-out. In a Times Mirror poll just before the election two-thirds of respondents said that they couldn’t think of a single US politician they admired.

Of course cynicism in politics can be immediately adjacent to anger. And it’s here we find hope.

Proposition 187 was passed in California. But the campaign around it also produced the biggest and most radical demonstrations the West Coast has seen in a generation. A multi-ethnic mass, 125,000-strong, marched through down-town Los Angeles. On polling day 15,000 high-school students walked out of 40 schools in protest. On the following day, city officials ordered the close-down of the entire school system in one city district, out of fear of riots. Textile factories where many Latinos work were closed by strikes and the truck-drivers’ union organised a blockade of the city’s port.

More generally, unionisation is slowly advancing in the US again: last year, for the first time in two decades, more workers joined a union than left one. In Flint, Michigan, a strike by 11,500 workers forced General Motors to re-hire 800 workers: anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning movie about Flint, Roger And Me, will appreciate the enormous significance of that.

In a tentative way, campaigners for abortion and gay rights are taking to the streets again, no longer relying solely on life-stylists and lobbyists within the system.

These, too, are among the lessons of the Clinton catastrophe. Not that the Right is irresistible, but that you can’t fight the Right by relying on unprincipled anti-ideologues like Clinton – or Blair, or Spring, or De Rossa – but only by relying on ourselves and on our limitless capacity for self-organisation.

Maybe it’s so that as with the US today, so with the whole world tomorrow. In which case, people get ready.

BEEF JERKY

I came over all funny with excitement the other week when just for a paragraph or two it looked like somebody else was going to say in print that Liam Hamilton’s Beef Tribunal Report was a bucket of whitewash poured over Fianna Fail and over Albert Reynolds in particular and that the appointment by Albert Reynold’s Fianna Fail-led Government of Hamilton as Chief Justice shortly after the publication of the Report deserved far closer scrutiny than any aspect of the appointment of Harry Whelehan to the presidency of the High Court, but no. The scaredy-cat columnist finked out. As they all have. So it’s still the case that there are important facts about Irish politics which can be expressed straight out only in Hot Press.

Should we feel buoyed up or ground down by this realisation?

Dunno. But in the meantime, once more, con brio:

THE HAMILTON REPORT WAS A WHITEWASH.