16 of the frontline warriors making a difference today
Meet the Irish Army
All over Ireland, people who once reserved their energy for bland lifestyle choices are swotting up on the rights and wrongs of war in Iraq. Generation Apathy has become Generation Activist. In this newly politicised era, nothing is more damning than indifference. As a response to this new age, The Dubliner profiles 30 men and women who have been around the block before you. They have very different methods, and some of them oppose each other. All challenge the status quo in some way and some have changed the world already. Who better to introduce them than that scourge of the Left, Brendan O'Connor?
The Left's Awake. I don't think I've ever seen more hippies and peaceniks and dropouts. And that's just in my own social circle. Some people are talking breathlessly about the dawning of a new Age of Aquarius, the long predicted paradigm shift from Western Cartesian values towards a holistic, feminine, Eastern worldview. There is talk of building a new Vietnam on Jerusalem's Green and Unpleasant land. And, so the story goes, if we could ignore the disaffected up to now, we can ignore them no longer after F15, a date that is rapidly becoming as significant a rallying flag for peaceniks as 9/11 was for others. In Ireland, over 100,000 marched against war. That's just two-and-a-half percent of the population and the cause they marched for "against war" was sufficiently vague to draw in a rainbow coalition of the disillusioned, the anti-this and the anti-that. We haven't seen any significant numbers on subsequent protests.On the other hand it was an extraordinary turn out, a reflection of the extraordinary times we live in. The roots of the current counter-culture are diverse. It owes something to the coming-of-age of the ecstasy generation. The politics of ecstasy, when there were politics, tied in loosely with an empathic, feminine, left-wing, anti-establishment worldview. Rebellion was also provoked by the vulgar excesses of capitalism. What sensitive soul, battered by a culture of unashamed ostentation summed up in the nouveau society depicted in VIP would not look for an alternative system of values? But this new left is curiously bourgeois. Their concerns are the price of a semi-d, commuting time, taxes, the cost of third level education and, of course, the war in Iraq. It's hardly burn-your-bra stuff now is it? Indeed you could argue that those temporarily getting into bed with the new Left, of whom a huge component are students or former students, merely demonstrates the unerring ability of humans to adapt to circumstances and make a virtue of a necessity. Good jobs for graduates aren't as plentiful as they were, share options aren't worth what they were and so graduates and computer programmers have decided to rebel against a system of values that has let them down.
Nonetheless, one can't deny that these are extraordinary times and that Iraq has proved an extraordinary force in politicising a whole generation. Indeed you could reasonably argue that this war has been the most politically divisive issue in recent history. Neither abortion nor divorce nor the North saw this level of mobilising of public opinion. Suddenly practically everyone you meet has trenchant opinions on US foreign policy, on the Middle East and on Ireland's neutrality. Never before have so many felt so out of step with their Government. Everybody has an opinion on this war. Indeed at times it has seemed as if the only ones who hadn't a real opinion were our politicians, who hid for months behind the notion of the UN. For real people, the UN didn't matter and gut moral reaction to this war became the defining issue of a generation. Indeed one older friend of mine says he's having difficulty getting laid because of his support for this war. He says it's ageing him. The moral questions are complex, involving as they do questions of democracy versus totalitarianism, but also issues of capitalism, alleged American imperialism and talk of a New World Order. For some it is as simple as Iraqi babies dying for oil, while others claim that in putting pressure on governments not to fight this war, the Left are offering succour to a vicious dictator. In this country the war has even led to a real discussion on that hoary and vague old chestnut that is our neutrality. It is interesting that our neutrality has become a focal point for the anti-establishment. It says something about the convictions of the anti-establishment that their greatest clamour has been for us to be neutral on this, to sit on the fence. In a war where you really have to take a personal stance, where a huge number of British Labour MPs, for example, started voting against the party whip and with their consciences, the anti-establishment's greatest demand is that we should remain neutral. My own experiences over the past month or two have left me concerned for the anti-establishment. In fleeing the worst excesses of the right, I have often come up against an even more frightening and inhumane proposition, which is the worst excesses of the Left. In attempting to debate the certainties of those who are behind the anti-war movement in this country, I have come up against nothing but intolerance, a refusal to debate and a level of bullying which belies the notion that the Left have the moral high ground. At a recent protest in Shannon I met a good few ordinary people who were keen to articulate their concerns about this war and engage in adult debate. The more hardcore elements, the people who see themselves as the vanguard of the new anti-establishment, were a different story. Members of the Grassroots Network Against War bullied and harassed me as I tried to cover their protest. While I may not have agreed with them, I was, when it came down to it, a worker trying to do his job, yet I was subjected to bullying by a mob of lefties. Odd, I think you'll agree. At their rally one official of the Irish Anti War Movement made an implicit threat of kneecapping to me. It was not the first threat of violence I had heard from the peace movement against those who dare to disagree with them. Of course it is easier to get passionate about the reasonably abstract notion of a million Iraqi babies than it is to show a bit of tolerance and humanity in your own life.
Most anti-establishment people are more mild, preferring to pillory opposing points of view with personal insults and accusations of bias, but rarely wishing, it has to be said, to engage in any debate that might challenge their certainties. Then again there is mindless certainty on the other side too.
Witnessing the frightening demagoguery of Richard Boyd Barrett (who features on these pages) and the harassment and offensiveness I suffered from people buoyed up by his ranting, I realised something very important. Many have questioned why the hard left seem to have taken an anti-democratic and a pro totalitarian stance in this war, why they have reserved most of their criticism in the last few months for a democratic leader as against a tyrant. I believe it is because the hard left is philosophically more sympathetic to totalitarianism than it is to any kind of pluralism. I had a moment of epiphany recently when driving out of the Brown Thomas car park. There was a middle aged woman there, extensively surgeried and expensively dressed. A fundamentally ugly woman, she had plastered herself in a veneer of money, Louis Vuitton, the whole uniform, and she was braying into the machine at the exit to the car park. Suddenly she became for me a symbol of everything that was wrong with Dublin. No taste, no imagination, no clue. Social diaries no longer satirise what passes for "society" in Dublin. And the only alternative seems to be a new crowd of self-celebrating Mwah-Mwahs who create quirky fashion, acoustic music, a new generation with more stylists than stylish people, where everybody wants to work in media and everybody wants to be famous. But then I saw the other extreme... and it was just as ugly. Some Irish rebels are introduced on the following pages. They are a mixed bunch. I believe at least one of them is a dangerous thug. You've never heard of some of them, some of them have been plugging away for years doing good work and expressing divergent points of view through art and activism. When Emily Hourican asked me to write this introduction, she wrote that the "unsung heroes of our society are those who snub the establishment, who work for somebody other than themselves or try to create art without official sanction. They get no recognition, sometimes we think they're mad. At their worst they are ________, but at their best they are decent, genuine people who realise it's not all about the individual." I can't put it better than that. When I need an alternative to the worst excesses of the Right I will look not to the official anti-establishment but to some of the people here. You can have your televised revolution, I'll take the integrity of a private revolution any day.
Bassbin
DJ Collective
Bassbin started six years ago with two novice DJs. Today this collective has 14 DJs and eight producers hosting 18 hours of local and national radio every week, recording studios and their own record label. But the cheeky sods claim their greatest achievement is "being interviewed by The Dubliner." Any heroes? "Only inspiration." Wedding rings? "No." Children? "2 many 2 mention." Any nuggets of wisdom for the massive? "D1 to the 24, rip roar on the floor sweat out ya pore." Now developing Bassbin Recordings and its sister label Looney Toonz as well as launching two new labels, Breakin and Solas. The biggest challenges in modern Ireland? "Inequality and the price of porter."
Mary Davis
CEO Special Olympics
In June, Ireland hosts the biggest multi-sports event in the world , the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games. Its an unprecedented opportunity to challenge the preconceptions of many so-called "liberals" in Irish society. A PE teacher from Sutton called Mary Davis will be in charge. "To have been involved from the very beginning in the bid for the Games and then to have been successful is a great privilege." Mary's husband, Julian, is a' Director of Fleishman Hillard Saunders together they've campaigned to host the event for many years. Asked what inspires her, Davis quotes Albert Szent-Gyorgi: "discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else, and thinking something different." After the games she plans to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Richard Boyd Barrett
Socialist Worker
At a lunch hosted by The Dubliner, we sat Richard Boyd Barrett beside Colm MacEochaidh. They got on surprisingly well, although MacEochaidh later confessed that he "hates" Boyd Barrett's politics. There is certainly something unfashionable about the views of this die-hard Socialist. But you cannot doubt his conviction. Since September 11th Boyd Barrett has ploughed more and more energy into developing an anti-war movement in Ireland. He says the Irish political establishment is "completely out of touch" with the level of opposition to the war. This Socialist Workers Party activist dreams of "a more democratic world, free from war and poverty and saved from environmental destruction." His favourite author is Joseph Conrad.
Caoimhe Butterley
Human Shield
A peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement, 26-year-old Caoimhe Butterley has been called a "travelling conscience." After stints in Mexico and Guatemala, she went to Hebron with the Christian Peacemaker Team. Concerned by the plight of Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation, she voluntarily entered Yasser Arafat's besieged compound to help with the injured trapped inside after two Red Cross ambulances were denied access. She remained inside the bunker a human shield for those still under siege until the situation improved. Despite being shot and injured in Jenin, Butterley has continued with her humanitarian work. The morning that the US declared war on Iraq, Butterley announced a five-day hunger strike outside the Dail in protest.
Eamonn Crudden
Film-maker
Berlusconi's Mousetrap consists of footage shot over a weekend of riots and street battles in Genoa, at the G8 summit in July 2001. The city drafted in 18,000 armed police to deal with 250,000 Anti-Capitalist protesters. And deal they did, with excessive force amid accusations of orchestrated brutality that ended in the death of a protester, Carlo Giuliani. Eamon Crudden's documentary asks "Was it all a set up? Did the police seek to undermine the demonstration and add to the chaos?" The film was described in Screen Ireland as "entirely unique in current Irish filmmaking, for its ambition and scope." Eamon Crudden and Indymedia certainly provided a shocking account of the events.
Eoin Dubsky
Vandal
The man who spray-painted peace slogans on the side of a US Airforce Hercules plane refuelling at Shannon airport. He also brought a civil action against the State in the High Court, challenging Ireland's participation in the US war on terrorism. "My action helped a little, I think, to force open again a dialogue about Ireland's role as a conduit for the terror of war." Son of environmentalist Karin Dubsky, Eoin has deferred his fourth year at DCU to further campaign for peace. He did take some time off early this year to visit his girlfriend in France, coming back every few weeks, "for court and stuff like that." Next year he wants to do a post-grad in International Law or Peace Studies. "Even if I am found guilty of having committed a crime when I spray-painted that warplane, it will have been quite an accomplishment for a 22-year-old multimedia student, I think."
Colm MacEochaidh
Barrister and politician
He calls himself "a barrister with special interest in planning and the environment," but Colm MacEochaidh is also involved in rebuilding Fine Gael and he hopes to run for local election in the Rathmines Ward next year. It was MacEochaidh and Michael Smith who placed an advertisement in the Irish Times offering a reward for information on corruption in the planning system. That led to the Flood Tribunal. But MacEochaidh isn't resting on his laurels. "It's hard for me to talk about career accomplishment. Disappointments resonate more deeply with me failing to get elected in May 2001 and important cases I have lost." He sees his future in politics and is hopeful that "6000 or so voters in Dublin South East do too." MacEochaidh wants a role in a government that "supports sustainability as its central value." His political hero is Garret FitzGerald. Challenges facing Ireland include "ensuring equality is enjoyed by all and providing for our infrastructure needs without destroying our environment."
BP Fallon
Musician
Everyone knows BP but some of us have trouble connecting the dots. Back in 1976 Phil Lynott told Melody Maker that Fallon "is brilliant, though I'm not sure what he does." Ask the man himself and he says "Rock'n'roll lunatic sage, DJ, photographer, writer." His greatest achievement is "staying alive and continuing to have the time of my life." A few years ago he left RTE and Dublin for New York, where he set up the rather curious Death Disco nights; he left the city just before September 11th, and is still with us. So what's the biggest problems facing Ireland today, BP? "Traffic jams... and the hassle of getting great primo weed."
Sarah Durcan
Artist
Originally from Cork, painter Sarah Durcan (daughter of poet Paul) made a splash while still in college when she gave Molly Malone an unauthorized makeover smothering the statue with fluorescent paint to protest its ugliness. Durcan works in Dublin as an artist and part time teacher at NCAD, where she co-ordinates the MA Fine Art course. Heroes include Sigmar Polke, "because he has a sense of humour," and Manet for his "shadows and quick painting style." Durcan has exhibited in exhibitions all over Europe, is married with one daughter and has another on the way.
Michael Finucane
Human Rights Solicitor
"Many people find the area of human rights law off-putting," says Michael Finucane, "as they are often crouched in very legalistic terms. This is unfortunate, because while the language of human rights is very legalistic in nature, the rights themselves are not. They are the innate entitlements of each of us as human beings." Or rather, they should be. Finucane wants "an international public inquiry into the circumstances of the murder of my father, Patrick Finucane, by the British State. My family and I have fought and struggled for 14 years to secure an inquiry and when that finally happens, I will be able to say that I have accomplished something." There's a steely determination about this quietly spoken Northerner. Don't be surprised if he gets his way.
Mannix Flynn
Writer and Actor
When he was drinking, Gerard Mannix Flynn was a legendary pain in the bollocks ask any Dublin bar-man. Today he's more centred, more ambitious. But still, I presume, anti-establishment? "I'm not anti anything, because that closes doors." Instead he confronts. "I challenge all supposedly statutory and static situations." Certainly he has given both Church and State some uncomfortable moments. His radical cloak of choice is "subversive creativity." Homer's Odyssey is his favourite book and he reads anything about Grace O' Malley, an "extraordinary individual"(not an "extraordinary woman," he finds that patronising). Later this year he'll take James X, his one-man theatre piece, to another level with plans for performance art. There are also plans to release a CD of the play with musical accompaniment, once he convinces EMI to come on board. Then there's the new book to finish and the threatened venture An Evening with Mannix Uncuffed.
Ali Hewson
Muckraker
When the wives of rock stars drop in on 10 Downing Street, they normally secure a wedge of press coverage by wearing glitzy outfits and posing demurely for the cameras. Ali Hewson raised a different kind of storm when she turned up with 1.3 million postcards bearing the message "Tony, look me in the eye and tell me I am safe." That was April last year, on the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Now 42 and a mother of four young children or five, including Bono Hewson was educated at Mount Temple and UCD, where as a mature student she secured an honours degree in Social Science. In between those educations she did everything from working on a famine relief project in Ethiopia to organising the world's biggest charity fashion show. Why does she do it? "I don't want to end my life feeling I've only looked after myself, that everything I did was to protect myself. I want when I die to believe that I've achieved what I was supposed to - this is to help other people in whatever way I can."
Judith Hoad
Herbalist
A lay herbalist for most of her life, Judith Hoad left her career in textiles after 35 years to study Chinese medicine. Her empathy with plant life is motivated by the belief that the "the trees and daisies are my siblings." She no longer practices, but concentrates on teaching and writing. Read Need or Greed to see why Hoad is quite so vital. Nelson Mandela, Stephen Harrod Buhner and the Dalai Lama are heroes. She finds Buddhist books "uplifting" and a favourite is the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness. "The will only is required. Without that it is useless to think of the attempt." She has been working with the spirit of plants for the last seven or eight years and intends to continue on this path to further understand, improve and integrate human and plant life. But right now, she urges people (and plants) to "stand up and tell Mr Bush to take his planes out of Shannon."
Guggi
Artist
Okay, he's Bono's best friend, which is both a privilege no doubt and a handicap, because it's facile to pretend that the friendship is irrelevant when it comes to judging this talented artist's work. Does he care? Not really. In time, says Guggi, "I will be a painter to be reckoned with." In truth, his U2 connection isn't the problem (it's his ten-year obsession with bowls). Fans can't get enough of them: there is a two-and-a-half year waiting list for his work. Guggi admires "the genius of people like Matisse and Caravaggio," but finds real inspiration in "my mates, children and beautiful wife."
Pat Finnegan
Environmental Activist
He's not a bad looking guy. But Pat Finnegan is single: "most women would like to think that they should be the most important thing in their man's life. Unfortunately for me, for quite some time now the most important thing has been my work." He lives in Blackrock and works with GRIAN, a platform for people who want to take action against climate change. Favorite book: The Jane English translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Heroes in his field? Two you've never heard of Karla Schoeters, coordinator of Climate Action Network in Europe and Jan Pronk, the Dutch Minister for the Environment and Kofi Annan's special advisor on the environment. Finnegan predicts a dire future unless we shape up. He says the biggest threat to Irish society is ³finding out the real threat from our relentless, unquestioned and ongoing addiction to the use of fossil fuels fast enough to catch ourselves on and prevent the worst of the trouble we've been storing."
Sister Margaret McCurtain
Quiet Hero
In the right corner, mitre, vestments, cold bitter sinister face, John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin: McQuaid was always in the right. In the left corner, black and white Dominican robes, the Red Revolutionary nun, Sister Benvenuta aka Margaret McCurtain, lecturer in History in UCD, a nun in the Muckross community. Her offence was grave; in the magazine Hibernia, which was running a feature on "Theology in Irish Universities", she wrote that the only University in Ireland which taught Theology was Trinity College; the others taught Religion, having constitutions or charters which ruled out teaching Theology. Dr. McQuaid (no official standing in the University) reacted with a letter to the Dominican Mother General ordering that Sister Benvenuta immediately and in the future submit all her lectures and notes to his scrutiny. Sister Benvenuta refused to accept this infringement of academic freedom. Her gallant Mother General backed her up to the hilt and instructed her not to submit her notes to the Archbishop: curates had been banished to parishes on top of Luggala for less. Sister Benvenuta acquired the first of several black marks on her forehead, visible to those such as her clerical colleagues in UCD, who fraternised no longer. The student revolution of the late 1960s came next. Sister Ben was one of the academics who thought the students' grievances should be listened to. A Star Chamber hearing called in deviant academics supporting students' rights. Professor of Modern Irish History, Dudley Edwards who headed the Commission of Enquiry, insultingly told Sister Ben, "Now don't be afraid. Tell the truth and nothing will happen." Professor of American Literature Denis Donoghue queried her as to what extent was she seditious, (quosque tandem o Catalina?) did she incite the students, how come a photograph in the Irish Times showed her haranguing the students from on top of a table in the Great Hall? She stuck to her guns, telling them firmly that "we" were gravely at fault and that the students had valuable things to say and should be listened to. Not a good career move: her more complaisant contemporaries had outstripped her and were well on the way to Professorship which she would never attain. It didn't worry her. Her Red Revolutionary image was further burnished when she was one of The Nine who occupied the Wood Quay site, in 1978, with Father FX Martin as Head Centre of the cell. Quietness then until 1983 when she was elected Prioress of Sion Hill convent, a post she intended combining with her work as lecturer. It was Their opportunity They being an archiepiscopal faction with under and overtones of Opus Dei. Double jobbing was their cry. Loyal friends apprised her of the plot being hatched: she was to be sacked, and of course would appeal under the Unfair Dismissals procedure. Unfair dismissal would be acknowledged, damages paid, and they would be rid of this turbulent cleric. She fought: she took an action in the High Court: she won. In the process she had to bluff her way into the presence of the President of the College and thrust into his surprised hands the notice of Summons to the High Court. When she won, she won for all of us. The plain moral is that bravery, integrity, honour were not - are not? - qualities admired in Academia or Ecclesia, compared with lick-spittle obedience, and cringing deference. Margaret McCurtain is many people's quiet hero, and mine.
Helen Lucy Burke
Published in the April 2003 edition of The Dubliner magazine
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