Madam, – Like John Waters, I spent my early childhood in the West of Ireland towards the end of the de Valera years. Unlike him, I have no nostalgia whatever for the country of my youth. My recollection is of a place of mediocre aspiration, smugness and sanctimony.
Ireland in the de Valera years was steeped in obscurantism and tribalism. To call it a place where people lived “the life that God desires that man should live” only reinforces the abiding memory of a failed Utopia.
Utopianism had a bad history in the 20th century and Ireland got off lightly compared with Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. But de Valera’s Ireland too was an attempt to found an ideal society, devoted in this case to the twin pieties of Irish nationalism and Catholicism. De Valera’s society exported its best and brightest, banned harmless books and films, incarcerated spirited women in Magdalene Laundries, and punished children born outside wedlock or those whose parents lacked means by locking them up in cruel orphanages.
No doubt Mr Waters wants de Valera’s vision “without the bad bits”. Unfortunately, a society defined by God’s desires could only be a closed society with authority vested in those who speak for God. At worst, it could be like Stalin’s USSR, with God’s desires replaced by Marx as interpreted by an elite. My own preference is for an open, secular and democratic society, defined by the pragmatic political approaches of leaders like Sean Lemass and Garret FitzGerald. If we are to escape from the current morass, we need look no farther than those men. – Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE,
Navan,
Co Meath.
Madam, – The language de Valera used in his St Patrick’s Day speech of 1943 was archaic and quaint, even for the 1940s; but once deciphered, it is not, as Prof Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh once put it, “an unworthy vision of social justice for an integrated community”. Or, to quote his colleague, Prof Joe Lee, “it is a vision of an Ireland in which there is a sense of solidarity, in which there is a place for everybody”.
To those who mock Dev’s speech, I ask this; What is so wrong with a society that views material wealth only as a basis for right living? What is so wrong with a land filled with comfortable family homes, where villages have enough small industries to help stem emigration? What is so wrong with a countryside full of strong, healthy children, where youths are engaged in healthy athletic activity? What is so wrong with a country full of happy young women? And what is so wrong with a society that respects the elderly?
De Valera’s speech presents an alternative to an Ireland wrapped up in materialism, greed and selfishness masked as “freedom and individualism”. With its emphasis on collective responsibility, Dev’s vision would be an anathema to many 21st-century Celtic Tiger cubs. – Yours, etc,
PAT BURKE,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.