What's the Point?

national | consumer issues | opinion/analysis Thursday April 14, 2005 16:37 by Sean Crudden sean_crudden at hotmail dot com Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Why are The Progressive Democrats Trying to Exploit Republican Imagery?

The Progressive Democrats Annual Conference held in The Silver Springs Hotel was dominated visually by a large wall-painting of the tricolour unfurled used as a backdrop for the platform and the speakers' stage.

Sean Crudden reading The Argus

When I was travelling down to Greenore (to play golf) around lunchtime on Easter Monday as the only passenger in my son Sean Og’s car I asked him

"Would you call yourself a republican?"

Without any hesitation he replied

"No."

I remarked

"Neither would I."

What I meant was that I would not call myself a republican either.

"That’s funny,"

I continued

"Because I heard Mary Banotti and Micheál McDowell both describe themselves as republicans on RTE Radio 1 this morning."

At The Progressive Democrats’ Annual Conference in The Silver Springs Hotel, Tivoli, Cork, on Saturday last I heard McDowell, speaking in front of a large wall-painting of the tricolour unfurled, describe himself again as a republican. Last year after that year’s conference in Killarney when the same device was used I pointed out on indymedia that I considered that it was wrong to exploit the country’s flag for flagrantly party political purposes.

To my simple mind there seems to be an inherent contradiction in McDowell’s stance. On the one hand he berates Sinn Féin talking about criminality and "sleepers" in the community and other republican crime faciloitators posing as "pillars of society." His mob-oratory was as well received as it is, in my humble opinion, dangerous. The audience rose almost as one man to welcome his tub-thumping speech last Saturday morning. On the other hand he wishes to describe himself as "republican." Does he envy the mantle of Martin McGuinness? Does he wish to usurp the classification of republican for himself - I really don’t think many of the members of his own political party (and mine) are particularly worried about this kind of semantics.

The phrase used by Dessie O’Malley twenty years ago "I stand by the republic" was re-echoed in McDowell’s speech. I think that what O’Malley was driving at then was that autocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship was the order of the day in Fianna Fáil under Charles J Haughey. My own opinion is that Charlie was less of an autocrat than O’Malley proved himself later to be as leader of The Progressive Democrats. Indeed, the case could be easily made that oligarchy is more a feature of O’Malley’s party than it is of Fianna Fáil.

Reading this morning in Ladywell Day-Care Centre "Cicero - Selected Works" (Penguin Classics) I noted a description of the republicans of Cicero’s time as aristocratic and conservative. Perhaps this is the sub-text of O’Malley’s speech long ago and of McDowell’s more recent rantings.

To my mind, in conformity with my upbringing and education, it is better to be poor, honest, open-minded, forgiving and democratic.