(The Nationalist, 27 May 2000)
I’ve had enough. I’m putting in a claim for compensation. I’m going to sue the government for giving me a case of “tribunalitis”. The way people talk about tribunals you’d think it was A versus B, A being the big bad politicians with their brown envelopes and B the plain people of Ireland in whose mouths butter would not melt – the devils versus the angels. What a load of rubbish! We get the politicians we deserve. As a people we are as corrupt as the politicians and civil servants we condemn. They represent accurately our values and our lack of them.
Many of the ordinary people of Ireland live by a moral system which has little to do either with the Christian faith or the values of secular humanism. Our morals are those of the cute hoor. We run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. We don’t face issues, we fudge them. Excuses will do, so why bother with remedies? Position yourself to be on the winning side. We know the tricks and we use them. We have developed a mentality and a language of evasion, of grievance and of cultivated irresponsibility to serve our self-interest.
So, for example, we condemn IRA violence in the North out of one side of our mouth and connive at it out of the other. We are not going to inform on “the Boys”, so the Omagh bombers are free. We call that being “ambivalent”, when the truth is that’s it’s dishonest and it costs people their lives. We wouldn’t give a bribe – of course not – but we might offer a gift, something for the children, you understand. We wouldn’t take a brown envelope – perish the thought! – but we have no scruples about putting in exaggerated claims for personal injury, abusing the language of therapy about trauma and stress disorders. We do nixers, claiming social welfare benefits we’re not entitled to. We shoplift. We delay in paying bills or leave them unpaid. We overcharge. We sell shoddy goods to the unwary buyer. We steal from petty cash boxes or stores at work. We don’t do an honest day’s work for our pay. We make dishonest claims for expenses. We make false insurance claims – and we condemn politicians for corruption.
When we each get up to our particular bit of crookery and deviousness we don’t say, ‘I’m stealing or cheating’ we say ‘I’m beating the system.’ We’re all for social responsibility – but not in my back yard: no travellers, refugees, asylum seekers, incinerators, or charges for water or rubbish collection. Can we expect of politicians standards which we do not ourselves follow? If so, then we are just hyping the hypocrisy factor while doing nothing to face the issues.
When are we going to cut out the humbug? If we point an accusing finger, there are three fingers pointing back at ourselves. (Try it and you’ll see.) The bottom line is that we don’t give a hoot about morals. Look at the case of the politician who was thrown out of his party because of questionable financial dealings; he stood as an Independent, and the voters, the ordinary men and women of Ireland, re-elected him. By their choice they said, ‘We don’t give a damn if he’s on the take; he’s our man, the local boy, and that’s what counts’.
We Irish people are not shocked by the corruption of politicians and we shouldn’t pretend we are. We may be envious that we have not got a slice of the corruption cake for ourselves. The land of nod, wink and nudge didn’t start with planning permission. You and I have been part of making it that way for a long time.
There is no point in new legislation against corruption, or even an Anti-Corruption Commission led by a High Court judge. They won’t work unless they have public support. They don’t have such support at present because we all have our fingers in the sticky pie, we’re all on the gravy train, we’re all ready to posture in public, and adopt stances which we hope will win support for our sectional interest against the common good. Watch the TV news any night to see it at work regarding claims outside the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
Look at the way sectional interests in Ireland, made up of the Mr. and Mrs. P. J. Murphys of ordinary Ireland, have learned the art of posturing, adopting the air of the hard-done-by victim, and all we have really done is to destroy credibility and foster cynicism. We each have our personal mess to clean up. Let the hypocrisy and humbug give way to truth.