Inside File Bucks, but no votes

By Ray O’Hanlon

"IF" is rolling over at this stage. Most Irish voters weren’t bothered voting one way or another on the Nice Treaty and now the government is only mortified in the face of all the opprobrium that is being heaped upon the old sod in various European capitals. Well, if voters get the government they deserve, governments get the non-voters they deserve.

"IF" was wondering if there were any regrets at all in government circles over the fact that the 1997 promise in the Fianna Fáil election manifesto to grant voting rights to Irish citizens overseas was never followed through. Presumably, all those diasporites living in European cities, Nice included, would probably have been inclined to vote "yes.’" Ditto many diasporites in the U.S. who are well used to the kind of diversity that seems to be frightening the bejaysus out of some of the more nativist Irish voters.

The ultimate irony is yet to be, though. The Irish government is considering new laws limiting the amount of money from other countries that can be injected into the Irish political process. One expected restriction is that political donations will be allowed only from Irish citizens living abroad. OK, so we’ll take your money but don’t get so big for your boots that you think you’ll be able to vote as well. Now that’s really rich.

Barrie for Belgium

It’s a good thing that the new Irish ambassador to Brussels, that cockpit of pan-Europeanism, is an erudite and skillful diplomat who is well capable of holding the Irish line in the face of critical comment. This will be particularly the case in the aftermath of the Irish electorate’s vote on the Nice Treaty, a message that carried echoes of Gerald Ford: Ireland to EU, drop dead!

The diplomat in question is none other than Barrie Robinson, Dublin’s current consul general in New York and a man who has demonstrated a consistent mastery of the bon mot, or two.

Robinson, of course, will be plenipotentiary to Belgium, but given the town that’s in it, it will be impossible to escape the powerful presence in that country’s capital of not just the EU, but also NATO, another international body that has been given a kick in the transom by a suspicious Irish electorate. Robinson will not be traveling to Belgium for a few weeks yet. Perhaps the debacle of Nice will have been forgotten by then. Naah!

A good man’s reputation

Limerick native William Geary fought the good fight to a finish recently when he finally cleared his name after being drummed out of the Irish police in 1928 for alleged IRA connections. Geary is now into his second century and when you reach that stage in life there are not too many of the old pals left around to pat you on the back.

In Geary’s case, however, there are more than a few fans and admirers, not least Kevin Moffitt, who lives in Oregon, a part of the world that is about as far from Geary’s adopted home of Queens, N.Y., as Queens is from Limerick. Anyway, Kevin, a mere slip of a lad at 79, wanted to pay tribute to Geary’s perseverance down all the years and chose to do so by sending "IF" Robert Emmet’s speech from the dock after he was found guilty of treasonous rebellion.

Emmet, like Geary, rejected totally the view that he was guilty of any wrongdoing with words such as these: "I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. . . . I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present buffeted."

Keough remembered

A landmark anniversary in the coming days is the 125th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a pivotal event in U.S. history that was fought out on the rolling bluffs and hills of eastern Montana on June 25 and 26, 1876.

As readers familiar with the story well know, General George Armstrong Custer charged into his very own valley of death with not a few Irishmen in his wake. More than 30 Irish-born 7th Cavalry troopers as well as a number of first- and second-generation Irish-American soldiers were to perish at the hands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who had lost count of the number of generations they were living on soil soon to be U.S., regardless of their immediate victory.

Among the Irish dead in the main clash, fought on the 25th, was Captain Myles Keough, the County Carlow-born veteran of the Papal Armies who was commander of Company I, the unit that fought to its death a few yards to the southeast of Custer’s group, made up mostly of Company F troopers, who met their fate on Last Stand Hill. Unlike most of the fallen cavalrymen, Keough was not mutilated in the aftermath of the battle. The apparent reason for this was the large papal medal he was wearing around his neck, a gift from Pope Pius IX, which was possibly seen by Sitting Bull’s warriors as an especially holy symbol, powerful medicine and something not to mess with.

Pius, of course, is not a popular figure with some latter day Irish Americans because of his excommunication of the Fenians a few years before Little Bighorn. Keough, buried in upstate New York, would likely be a little easier on the man.

They said

€ The poster child of European integration is an ingrate. That was the reaction across much of Europe last week . . . " Editorial in the New York Times on the "No" vote in Ireland to the Nice Treaty.

€ "Over the last few decades, Ireland has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the increasingly powerful European Union . . . the Irish seemed reluctant to extend the same generosity to others." Front page report on Nice Treaty vote in the New York Times.

€ Sinn Féin’s goal is a united Ireland. For some to insinuate that this somehow threatens the agreement is nonsense." Rita O’Hare, Sinn Féin U.S. representative, in a letter to the New York Times.