Cause and effect

Frankly, I think Bono was silly to take it – to be bothered at all. He should’ve sent them a very nice courteous letter saying that he was glad they were aware of his work. That would’ve been sufficient. Ah, for God’s sake, why was he bothered? That kind of thing is daft, anyway.”
It’s hardly a major surprise that Michael D. Higgins doesn’t particularly approve of Paul Hewson’s acceptance of a knighthood from the Queen of England. Dáil Éireann’s only intellectual – not to mention football club chairman, a role he fulfils for Galway United – has always been resolutely republican.
“I’m anti-imperialist – both old empires and new ones,” he states. “And emerging ones, frankly.”
Although there’s an election looming, we’re meeting in Galway’s Westwood Hotel to discuss his recently published book Causes For Concern rather than national politics or affairs. But Causes For Concern is political in its essence, to the extent that it is impossible not to stray into the currency of the here and now.
As long-time Labour TD for Galway West and two-time City Mayor, he’s easily the most recognisable face in the room, the wild electrical strands of silver hair orbiting his smooth cranium seeming to act as a welcoming beacon to just about anyone and everyone. There are friendly smiles and respectful nods coming from all directions. Even the Polish barman greets him with a cheerful, “Hello Michael!”
Already the author of three well-received poetry collections, this is Higgins’ first volume of collected prose. Gathering together a selection from 30 years’ worth of essays, speeches, poems, polemics and journalism (including a number of columns written for this magazine), the book offers his trenchant and well-informed opinions on everything from the war in Iraq and the impasse in Palestine to the dangers of globalisation and the culture of gombeenism infecting political life in Ireland.
It’s neither a light not an easy read, but it’s certainly an illuminating one. If there’s a central theme to the book, it’s to do with the importance of living consciously – and of refusing to be lulled into forgetting the lessons of history.
What has been happening in Iraq is a case in point. Reasonably well travelled in Iraq, while Higgins never met Saddam Hussein in person, he’s still appalled at the public manner of his execution.
“Back in 1981, I raised what Saddam was doing with western assistance – both against his own people and against the Kurds,” he says. “The western governments actually supplied chemical capacity to both Iran and Iraq, and one of the difficulties about the Kurdish massacre was whose mustard gas was it? Saddam committed appalling crimes and he should have been tried.
“However, his hanging was an outrageous throwback. Years ago, they stopped public hangings because people used to go and they’d place bets to see if the person being hanged would wet him himself and so forth. And because it was becoming a matter of potential riot, with gambling and drunkenness and so on, the gallows was moved behind a wall. Well, this was an outrageous reversion to the use of the hanging as a public spectacle. There was something appalling about it.”
Needless to say, as an avowed anti-imperialist, he’s even more outraged at what he describes as, “the disastrous pit that Iraq has been reduced to by those who’ve invaded.”

On occasion, Higgins may come across as a rather fastidious type, but appearances can be deceptive. He’s actually more of a warrior than a worrier. While he spent years in academia (lecturing in Sociology and Political Science in UCG), he certainly hasn’t spent his life and times in an ivory tower. In fact, from the early 1980s onwards, he was far more likely to be found in an Ivory Coast tower block.
His book includes accounts of his travels to trouble spots in Lebanon, Iraq, Nicaragua, Chile, Cambodia, Ethiopia, East Timor and Somalia, amongst other places. Think PJ O’Rourke’s Holidays In Hell, but with a social conscience. Michael D is known to be earnest, but he’s also a realist.
In recognition of his work for peace and justice in many parts of the globe, he became the first recipient of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize of the International Peace Bureau in Helsinki in 1992. His acceptance speech is republished in the book (The Challenge Of Building The Mind Of Peace), and he considers it one of the better pieces. “I’m quite proud of that one,” he tells me. “I had time to work on it and it says exactly what I wanted it to.”
Causes For Concern opens with a potted and poetic account of his childhood. Born in Limerick 64 years ago (he’ll qualify for a free bus pass next April), he was reared by his aunt and uncle on a small farm in Newmarket-on-Fergus, due to his father’s ill-health. Although he describes his relatives’ home as “a one-room-slated, two-room thatched house with no toilet and no running water,” he had a relatively happy childhood, and stayed living on the farm until he was 19.
However, while he touches on his ‘peasant upbringing’, he doesn’t see the book as a fully-fledged memoir. “It is in part a memoir, but it isn’t consciously so. The pieces in it that are taken from Hot Press were ones that were the closest to diaries written at the time, and there’s nothing changed in them. They were the ones where I accepted the discipline of actually writing as I was in the situation. They’re not reconstructions – except for the piece on Ethiopia.
“There will be an autobiography at some point. Or at least there’ll be another book. We had more than 50 pieces in the first draft of this one. Right now, though, I’m pushing on with questions, rather than seeking to recover material.”
He admits that he’s changed his mind on a few of the issues touched on within the book, but maintains that it’d be “a distortion” to change anything.
“I’m interested in the function of memory and the use of memory at both a personal and a social level,” he says. “I think, at a personal level, it’s very important to address the issue as to why you were using memories in a particular way. But equally at a social level – or even at a national or political level – most forms of hegemony that are trying to establish themselves attempt to control versions of memory.
“For example, the most striking example of recent times is Iraq. I was very impressed by Richard Downes’ book on Iraq because it’s highly informed – he really goes into the long memory of the people, their civilisation and their culture. Compare that to the violence of a phrase like ‘we are bringing democracy to people whose culture is thousands of years old’.
“There are certain kinds of concepts that I’m testing,” he continues. “What is the point of memory? How should one remember? Why should one remember? What is the function of it?”
Although there are touches of the absent-minded professor about him, Higgins' own capacity for memory is still good. “My longer-term memory is very good. My short-term memory is reflective of my age. I’m going to be 65 in April and I’m quite capable of forgetting things (laughs).”
Having said that, his experience is so vast that he could probably forget half of what he knows and still be far better informed than your average TD. He travelled a bit as a student in his twenties, but it wasn’t until after he’d entered politics in 1981 that he really began to clock-up the air miles. The only Labour TD elected in Galway since 1923, he has spent much of his political career highlighting injustices both at home and abroad. Could he have become a journalist if things had gone differently?
“Journalism is something I would’ve been interested in, yes,” he admits. “I actually edited the student newspaper Unity when I was a student in Galway. It was actually briefly banned during my editorship. But this is something Sir Anthony ‘Dr.’ O’Reilly would appreciate – I turned it into profit in my few issues.
“But I came unstuck over something we printed over a religious order. They were going to fire me so I shifted my position from being editor to being assistant editor. And the rules of the college only allowed actions against the editor. So they could do nothing!”

Ultimately, he figured he’d achieve more in politics than academia or media. Having said that, he has rarely been out of print in some form or other throughout his career. He remains an occasional contributor to Hot Press, most recently writing about his return to Palestine in 2005.
“That was a most depressing experience,” he recalls. “25 years after first visiting there, everything was worse. The levels of poverty were worse, the water supply was worse, the feelings of hopelessness were worse.”
He also takes partial credit for Charlie Haughey’s disastrous (from his perspective) 1981 interview with John Waters in this magazine. “I think PJ Mara and co saw that I was writing for Hot Press and decided to try and get in on the act,” he chuckles. “They obviously figured I was doing it for votes – you know, the youth vote. There was war when it first appeared. Mara sent someone else in to explain it to Charlie.”
How well did he know Haughey?
“I knew him fairly well. He had a couple of encounters with me. He was quite fascinated by the fact that I appeared to want nothing. He asked me once or twice, ‘What do you want out of politics?’ – and I said better housing, better health services and so on. And he said dismissively, ‘Oh, beyond all that sort of stuff!’
“But I liked him at a certain level. He was always very courteous to me. I don’t necessarily think he was a great visionary. He liked to surround himself with ideas people. He also knew a good phrase and how to steal one.”
He doesn’t particularly want to get into electioneering today, but says that he’s optimistic about Labour’s prospects in the forthcoming election.
“My hope is that, over the next six months, pressure will come on to engage on a policy basis, rather than the basis of everything is grand the way we are. Everything is not grand the way we are. We’ve had very significant growth, phased over a long period. Without going into all the enormous detail of it, we’re the wealthiest or the second-wealthiest country in the world with the second-lowest social protection in Europe. Is this the way we’re going to continue?
“It’s very important in my view to get the PD influence out of government. I think it would be very healthy if you had a combination of two or three parties – Labour, Fine Gael and the Greens – to provide an alternative to the present government, which is jaded, tired and not offering anything by way of a vision. But I do think as well that there are many decent people within Fianna Fail – and I’ve been in a Fianna Fail government before, remember, and I had no difficulties.”
He served as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in the two coalition governments between 1992 and 1997, and is widely acknowledged as having been the best such minister ever. Amongst other notable achievements, he launched Teilifis na Gaeilge (now TG4), moved the Chester Beatty Library from Ballsbridge to Dublin Castle, restored Collins Barracks to the National Museum, and, in abolishing Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, allowed everybody to hear what Gerry Adams voice actually sounded like.
He diplomatically declines to pass comment on how John O’Donaghue is performing as Arts Minister, but obviously isn’t too impressed.
“I feel that the destruction of my own department was an appalling act of vandalism. The word ‘culture’ has been taken out of the department. It doesn’t exist any more.”
As an artist himself, he certainly had a far greater affinity with the people most directly affected by that department’s decisions. Amongst the many writers, artists and actors he encountered as Arts Minister, he has particularly fond memories of meeting the late Marlon Brando.
“I met Brando about three times. I met him in Cork, obviously, when the film Divine Rapture – which I had thankfully not certified – fell apart. I went down to see him. I was prepared to be disappointed because I’d always admired Brando as a great actor, but I’d heard rumours about his decline. But he was a very intelligent person.
“I remember the press had just run photographs taken through a window of him in his underwear, so there was a very heavy security presence. But there was a young man from the Cork Examiner, as it was at the time, soaked to the skin at the gate. He told me he was still waiting for a photo. So I told Brando this when I arrived, and Brando asked the security men to let him in so he could get his photo and go home.
“I remember, as well, a waitress serving chocolates after a meal. I think it was in Ballymaloe. He asked her which one she thought were the nicest. And she picked out three in particular and he took them out and put them in her hand. He was very kind and charming like that.”
While Higgins has a few ambitions outside of politics (writing fiction being just one of them), he’s still preparing to fight tooth and nail in the upcoming election. “I’m not ready to give up just yet!” he laughs. “You know, I don’t think you can have an ethical afterthought in relation to the process of globalisation. I believe that who controls the State is still important. I believe that if you have right wing people running the State, you will get right wing policies that will oppress poor people and that will hold us all back historically.
“We produce conditions and they’re not just ones of economic inequality but ones of educational inequality, social inequality, housing, cultural participation. And that’s the reason why there is such a thing as the Left. And why there must be a Left.”
Causes For Concern: Irish Politics, Culture and Society is published by Liberties Press, €14.99.