PEERING through trembling fingers, we watch in apparent impotence as we import the litigitis and political correctness from America, but not, strangely enough, the taxes or the weather. Political correctness has infected not merely our language, but our attitudes; even to speak your mind about certain problems invites the accusation that you are either "racist" or "hysterical".
Those who declare the indisputable truth that there was more violence in rural Ireland 10 years ago do not as loudly declare from which source most of that violence emanated. Those who loftily urge country people to calm down almost certainly live in Dublin, within a couple of miles of a Garda station, are relatively young, are physically healthy, and know they will never wake up to find a murderous intruder in their bedroom.
Lonely old people are by the nature not inclined to be brave; they are, by their nature, inclined to fear the worst; they are, by their nature, unable to do much about the worst it strikes. To be cavalier about the real dangers and real fears of the isolated old, even though the victims are relatively few in number, is to forget the very virtues of the cavalier.
Random Attacks
What made the violence against the old in the west so truly terrifying was its complete - randomness. No rules applied. You needed to have no money to be a target, to have insulted nobody, nor to have abandoned the safety of your home. Being inoffensive and poor in bed conferred no protection.
And everybody who investigated the crimes knew from which social source the criminals emanated. But to say so was politically unacceptable; so nothing was said. When the attacks on old people in the west were at their peak 10 years ago, all that gardai would say was that they involved gangs from Dublin. The inference was that these were delinquent working class kids, possibly from the estates on the outskirts of the city.
The attackers were nothing of the kind. They were from the same communities which produced the most recent attackers, which, enjoying the same limited number of names, have been through the revolving door of the courts in recent times.
No doubt some very decent instincts and honourable sensibilities are at work when people are reluctant to name the group from which these people come. That group is already at the margins of Irish life; to mention its delinquent fringe now seems like social bullying, the privileged and the securely housed pouring lofty scorn on the semi illiterate and mendicant semi nomad.
That is all very well; but when one hears an RTE reporter refer to "an English girl" being arrested in connection with these events - as happened last weekend - we know that we are no longer just trading in decent instincts and honourable sensibilities. We are dealing in fully fledged political correctness, which has a series of complex inner values.
Racist Headlines
These values, for example, permit headlines in Irish newspapers which identify a rapist as being English, but denounce as racist headlines in English newspapers which identify a rapist as being Irish. No doubt the girl who was arrested - who has since been released - might well have been born in England; but was that the only socially distinctive thing about her? And, if the young lady possessed any other socially identifying feature, why was it, too, not mentioned?
We know why. Everybody in Ireland knows why, and knows what that feature is. When journalists conceal the truth, when they parade politically correct semi falsehoods through news reports, they fool nobody. Worse, the public knows it is receiving PC filtered news. That concealment does not mislead, and it certainly does not placate.
Events of the past few weeks have pushed us that much closer to the baying lynch mob burning caravans. Travellers' children are already experiencing quite monstrous intimidation and abuse - and no doubt worse - at school. Until we discuss the reality of the relationships between the settled an the traveller we will never achieve a modus vivendi.
Pious flapdoodle, of the kind you find in any American newspaper, is offered instead. American newspaper readers, who are used to political correctness and to insane litigitis, would be at home with the kind of headline we got in Ireland the other day about the award to eight daughters and one grandchild of £35,000 against the North Western Health Board because of the suicide of a 58 year old Sligo farmer who had been released from hospital.
I do not make light of their tragedy; theirs must be an unbearable cross to carry. But what is any health board to do with potential suicides? Is there a medically assured time when these unfortunates will not do away with themselves? Are health boards always financially to compensate children and grandchildren when they make an error of judgment in such matters? Or is the solution to keep such unhappy people in the custody of the State for all time? Even then, is the health board safe from litigation over denial of the liberty of a loved one?
Compensation Fever
No doubt the judge was absolutely within the law in his award. No doubt there were sound reasons why the little grand daughter of the deceased man was given £3,500 in damages. But unless we overhaul the laws concerning compensation we are assuredly heading to that place where America has already gone - in which any accident, any disorder, any deed can be actionably attributable to somebody else.
You doubt that we are going the same way? The Department of Justice recently paid out £25,000 to a prison warder who was hit on the head by a football in Cork prison, and £10,000 to a warder in Portlaoise who tripped in the prison, to be paid for out of that bottomless purse, of course, the public Exchequer. You know, I wouldn't mind a bit if we got American taxes and weather in exchange. But, guess what . . .