The voice of the future

It’s been a big barrel of laughs around here over the past fortnight. The major political event in the Republic was the abortion referendum. Hotpress made its position clear in the run-up to that particular farce, but the polls were telling us that it was going to be a Yes vote. In the context, the day of reckoning was approached with a sense of trepidation. Could we seize the day? I wasn’t sure at all.

As the countdown intensified, a lot of people described to me the feelings of anger they were experiencing, about what – potentially – was being foisted on the Irish people. This was positive. If those feelings could be harnessed, then we might just achieve the necessary momentum to turn the tide.

On polling night, I was encouraged. It is impossible to tell how someone might vote just by looking at them, of course, but the bodies in my local polling booth seemed young on average, and I had the majority of them down as likely No voters. One unfamiliar young woman approached me, with a knowing grin. “So how do you stand on this?” she asked. “No, all the way,” I said. “I voted No too,” she told me. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

The day of the count was a pleasant kind of torture. It didn’t take long for pundits to begin forecasting that the amendment would be defeated. But I had a nagging sense that all this was desperately premature – that the very fact that it was being predicted might put a hex on it. There was nothing to do but wait.

By the time it came to the final count in Galway West, the line had been drawn – but no curse had been cast. Mathematically, it was possible that the Yes vote might make up the lost ground – but given that every single urban constituency had already voted No, and that only 34,000 people had gone to the polls in the area, it was scarcely conceivable that Galway city and points west would fall the other way, by the majority of about eleven thousand that was needed.

Still I couldn’t celebrate. The last thing I felt like was any messy, coitus interruptus vibe. I would only believe it, when the final tally was done and the result was absolutely certain.

In the end, the margin of victory for the No campaign was not much in excess of 10,000 – but who cares? The feeling on the night was wonderful. A tawdry attempt to bamboozle the people into passing a hopelessly compromised and thoroughly reactionary measure had been defeated.

There was a certain piquant pleasure to be gained from the fact that, on the bare figures, it was the head-bangers on the so called “Pro-Life” side – who opposed the amendment on the basis that it might allow abortion after conception but before implantation – that made all the difference.

In truth, any realistic assessment of the result confirms that for the most part it was the young urban voter who carried the day. Michael Noonan of Fine Gael had a point when he said that it was a generational thing. In Donegal, the county that has traditionally been the most conservative and committed to the anti-abortion theme, the amendment was carried by a massive margin of 70 to 30. This is the bailiwick of the born-again anti-abortion campaigner Dana, and she had canvassed fiercely for a No vote. Clearly, even her own people had not been impressed.

In contrast, the cities were screaming No. This was a young, liberal vote. This was the voice of the future. This was the perspective of an electorate, which would not countenance the thought of women being criminalised – and running the risk of a 12-year jail sentence – for having an abortion.

It is hard to call how the result will affect the upcoming general election, which is scheduled for May. There may be a backlash against the PDs, who reneged on their liberal principles as a matter of political expediency – and who now look very silly as a result. The amendment was drafted by Michael McDowell – whose skin must have crawled even as he constructed what by general agreement was a hopelessly clumsy instrument. It is not a role that will endear him to the denizens of his constituency in Dublin South East, come election time.

In a similar vein, Liz O’Donnell had the opportunity to make a name for herself by going against the government grain. You might be forgiven for suspecting that she voted No. But in lying low during the campaign, she failed an important test. Her constituency voted No, overwhelmingly and, as a result, Liz has been decidedly diminished among the people who supported her – especially among women.

And then there was the strange case of Mary Harney. It wasn’t hard to find quotes in her back pages, in which she committed herself to the view that it would be wrong to force a woman who had conceived a child as a result of rape or incest to carry that pregnancy through to birth. Again you might have been forgiven for assuming that her views hadn’t changed at all, and that this was the PDs playing politics with women’s reproductive rights just to stay in government. But support the amendment she did.

The impact of this result mightn’t be reflected in the opinion polls, but there is a distinct possibility that it will hit individual PD candidates hard in the election itself. All of them are vulnerable to one degree or another. Bobby Molloy, Mary Harney and Liz O’Donnell are under real pressure. Their decision to go along with the amendment, and the humiliation that is its direct result, may yet cost them dearly in their constituencies.

Bertie Ahern, on the other hand, seems capable of riding it out. Remarkable.

The decision in the referendum had barely been ratified when the Ulster Unionist leader and Northern Ireland First Minister, David Trimble, appeared to lose the run of himself. In his annual speech to the ruling council of the UUP, he called for a referendum in the North on the issue of a united Ireland.

That was a bizarre enough development in itself. But it was accompanied by what observers have described as a blistering attack on the Republic as a “pathetic, sectarian, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural state.”

The television pictures of Trimble arriving at the meeting gave a hint of what was to come. Trimble looked extremely ill-at-ease and agitated. He was like a guy who had done a line or three of speed. Every inch, he was not the statesman.

It isn’t that there is no truth whatsoever in what he had to say. There have been occasions in the past when Hotpress too has felt it necessary to describe the Republic as a pathetic little sectarian state, and we’re not going to rewrite the history books today. But it surely was bad timing that the speech was made within a couple of days of a referendum result which confirmed just how far the Republic has come over the past twenty years in the campaign to free the country of the once domineering influence of the Catholic clergy and bishops. The speech may have been written on the assumption that the Amendment would be passed – and seemed like too good an idea to dump, just because of the inconvenience of the result!

In any event, it was the most risible imaginable example of the pot calling the kettle black. Northern Ireland is – and has always been – deeply riven with sectarianism. And the sectarianism is so thoroughly ingrained that it is very difficult to imagine how it might ever be eradicated. There is sectarianism in the south. But it exists to the power of ten in the North and any attempt on David Trimble’s part to suggest otherwise is merely farcical.

And as for the Republic being mono-ethnic and mono-cultural – that claim suggests that Mr. Trimble hasn’t had any meaningful contact with what has been going on here over the past ten years, and more. The notion that anyone in the North might sneer at the Republic in this respect is doubly laughable. It has often struck me that what the North really needs is a huge influx of Nigerians, Romanians, Palestinians, Jamaicans, Chinese and Afro-Americans in general – just for starters.

As far as I am concerned any of these nationalities are more than welcome to these shores, whether they want to set up shop in Cork, Derry or Dublin. But would it not be a productive notion, from the point of view of social engineering, to arrange for say 200,000 of people of mixed ethnic origin to arrive in the North, preferably with a shitload of Rastas with a fondness for ganja among them?

The objective would be (a) to completely subvert the fundamentally sectarian and divisive idea that there are ‘two communities’ in the North; and (b) to sedate as many of the hard-liners and thugs as possible with the ‘erb.

I don’t know. I really think we might be onto something here. Bertie? Tony?

Mr.Trimble?