I CONSIDER myself to be both British and Irish and over the past week or two I’ve been very proud of members from both sides. Darren Clarke, who I’m guessing straddles the same bicultural fence as myself, kicked it off when he won his first major golf championship – the British Open no less – at the ripe old age of 42. I watched enthralled as Darren ambled about the fairways of Royal St George’s, pausing occasionally to light a cigarette, on his way to beating the best golfers in the world.
I must confess, for most of the tournament I half-expected Darren’s game to suddenly fall apart. Thankfully, the only time he came close to choking was during a pre-presentation interview, when asked about his late wife, Heather. And even then he managed to hold it together, which was more than I could do by that stage.
Darren’s victory means that inside 13 months three golfers from Northern Ireland (Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy being the other two, of course) have won a major. Any more of this and, on the strength of my accent alone, I’ll be offering golf lessons at a reasonable rate.
It's nice to be reminded, as in Darren's case, that occasionally people get what they deserve. According to Irish Independentcolumnist Kevin Myers, the starving millions in Somalia and across the Horn of Africa deserve no more than they are getting at the moment.
I disagree with him profoundly, as does Mary Robinson, the best president (just shading the incumbent) that Ireland has ever had. Although not normally given to public emoting, last week Robinson could barely hold back the tears during a visit to a refugee camp in southern Somalia. Voice breaking, she recalled the last time she was in Somalia, during the 1992 famine.
“I have never been able to get Somalia out of my system . . .” she said, before lamenting how little things had changed over the intervening years.
It hasn’t been through any want of trying on Mary’s part that things haven’t changed. Throughout her adult life, and particularly since vacating the presidency, she has campaigned relentlessly against injustice and championed the interests of the poor, the oppressed and the hard-done-by. I haven’t agreed with her on everything, but by God I’ve always been immensely proud of her, and never more so than last week.
I am proud too of the British public’s response to the Horn of Africa disaster. Despite their own economic woes, they contributed more than £30 million (€34 million). And the UK government has given more than any other country, £90 million, to the Horn of Africa.
Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s international development secretary, is particularly impressive. He is that rarest of creatures: an international development minister who genuinely cares (without being a pushover), has intimate knowledge of the subject matter, and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
Castigating the developed world he said the response from many countries had been “derisory and dangerously inadequate”. My old friend, John O’Shea of Goal, has also been speaking his mind on Somalia, demanding to know why the UN is allowing terrorists to dictate whether aid workers can go into the country to tend to the needs of four million starving people.
Thankfully, in O’Shea we have another dedicated Irish humanitarian not afraid to ask hard questions.
Finally, Enda Kenny rose in the Dáil last week to courageously declare an Irish Republic in line with that imagined by the United Irishmen, and still imagined by a tiny anti-sectarian few, who can rightfully claim to be the United Irishmen’s heirs. Who with a drop of Irish blood in their veins, irrespective of personal political convictions, did not feel their hearts rise in concert with the righteous anger of Enda “The Decent”?
Well, Kevin Myers, for one.
In an astonishing display of contorted logic or bad memory, he managed to equate Enda’s declaration with the anti-Catholic ranting of a yesteryear Ian Paisley. As a Northern Protestant who grew up with Paisley’s roar as a background constant, I was affronted that someone should try to shoehorn Enda Kenny into the same category.
It is one thing for Myers to be a contrarian (and usually it’s a good thing) but it’s quite another to totally misrepresent the most courageous and uplifting speech made by any taoiseach in living memory – and in so doing give succour to those who would operate by different laws to everyone else, and whose allegiances are to a sovereign entity other than their own.
Considering the above-mentioned – along with Alan Shatter and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin (and other Catholic clergy and laity who spoke out for Jesus and against the masqueraders who disgrace His name) – the past fortnight hasn’t been a bad time to be British and Irish.