It seems that every day brings another reminder of past events that resonate into the present. All the talk here is of how we have been returned to the bad end of the ’80s – cutting back and cutting off and frightened for tomorrow, never mind the future.
Other anniversaries broaden the scope. It is, for example, 70 years since Europe went to war. That alone, and recollection of the terrible cost of that war, should be enough for us to recognise the fantastic achievement that the EU represents in ending that kind of conflict and bringing Europe into an era of peace and, damaged though it might be in these days of days, prosperity. But more of that anon.
It’s also forty years since America’s youth gave us a new kind of music festival, for good (Woodstock) and ill (Altamont).
Earlier that summer Ted Kennedy drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick with Mary Jo Kopechne beside him in his car. What exactly happened then is still murky. What is not disputed is that she died, and he fled the scene. It was the latest, though as things transpired not the last, in a series of tragedies to befall the Kennedys.
Hers was the third death to scar the life of Edward Kennedy, following on the assassinations of his brothers John and Robert. He took to the drink. But he also committed himself to the hard end of politics.
That he was celebrated so generously on his death is a tribute to the zeal with which he set about this task. Even his enemies saluted his political commitment, graft and wile.
In his eulogy to Kennedy, Barack Obama called him “a champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party and the lion of the US Senate.” The U.S. President also observed that Senator Kennedy had “experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.”
Striking a note with some resonance for Ireland today, Obama also quoted Kennedy as saying that “individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give-in, and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.”
In the coverage of his death there were frequent references to his speech to the 1980 Democratic convention in which he conceded the nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter (who went on to lose to Ronald Reagan).
Much of that speech could have been written of Ireland today. It was made at a time when economies were being ‘restructured’ and unemployment was on the rise. Unlike today, inflation was high and so were interest rates. Traditional monetarist policies were on the rise both in the US and Europe.
History shows that they won out and that Reagan’s election marked the point where the de-regulated free market capitalist model took off. That’s right, the same one that has just failed so dramatically…
In that speech Kennedy called on the Democrats to pledge ‘that we will never misuse unemployment, high interest rates, and human misery as false weapons against inflation’ and that ‘employment will be the first priority of our economic policy’.
He also asked that they pledge ‘that there will be security for all those who are now at work and…that there will be jobs for all who are out of work; and we will not compromise on the issue of jobs’.
In terms that are directly pertinent to our current situation he had the following to say: “The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. Some say that government is always bad and that spending for basic social programs is the root of our economic evils. But we reply: the present inflation and recession cost our economy $200 billion a year. We reply: inflation and unemployment are the biggest spenders of all.”
He ended with the throat-catching statement that “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
It is generally cited as the greatest of his speeches, a masterpiece of American rhetoric, a battle-cry of freedom and liberalism. It is difficult to think of a modern Irish politician who would be spoken of in the same terms; or, whom either could, or would, make a speech of such enduring power.
That’s not to say we don’t have fixers and legislators who can do the wheeling and dealing that Kennedy also did. We’ve had plenty. And we have had great orators too, people who could rouse the dead.
No, it’s the sense of responding to cares, the idea of a social cause embodied in a party, the sense of hope that seems so transcendently American, and stands in such contrast to Irish pessimism; and, especially, it’s the line “and the dream shall never die.”
You can find that speech on the web and listen to it yourself.
You’ll find the hairs rise on the back of your neck. You’ll ask the inevitable questions, one of which is: why is there generally such a dearth of intellectual quality in Irish politics? And there are others that follow. What is our hope? What is our dream? And where are those who might help us to give them shape.
I mean where is the hope for our society as opposed to our economy. We have more than enough managers, all not knowing what to do, or seemingly bereft of ideas. No, the task now is for rhetoricians and philosophers and poets and others who believe passionately in the idea of an egalitarian society to come to the fore and teach the managers something about vision.
It’s time to start singing.