Domestic Strife

Anti-Traveller bigotry is a hate that dares to speak its name.

Politicians and columnists feel free to make rubbish of Travellers in a way they wouldn’t dare in relation to any other group. This attitude was made concrete in the barrier used by Dublin and Fingal councils a couple of weeks back to corral local Travellers into a reservation.
But not all expressions of hatred of Travellers are so obtrusive. Sometimes you have to find the truth in tea-cups. Or even ash-trays.
I took time off from organising a civil rights commemoration in Derry at the beginning of the month to trek deep into the Leitrim badlands to speak of tolerance at a gathering assembled by Republican ex-prisoners. We – Ulster Unionist Roy Garland, DUP man Andrew McIntyre and myself – talked for more than two hours to a packed pub lounge in Ballinamore.
I think we all rather admired ourselves by the end, agreeing over cups of tea and chocolate biscuits that while we might all have different ideas about how to combat intolerance, we were warmly at one that tolerance is the key to justice and peace.
The only frisson of anxiety which shimmied across the room had come when my old friend Peter Cosgrove intervened to match a quote of mine from Matthew with one of his own: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (7:3).
“Some of you will remember the fire in the Cavan orphanage in the late ‘40s. The nuns burned numerous children to death. They did this by illegally bolting and barring the fire exits. The Free State inquiry into this tragedy was, of course, a whitewash. Church and State stood shoulder to shoulder in the cover-up....England was a handy dumping ground for the survivors of orphanages. Many are still to be found in the jails and mental institutions over there.
“Recently we have had to watch the disgusting spectacle of Church and State trying to fob off the survivors with weasel words and an absolute determination to do as little as possible to pay for their crimes against the powerless. Suffer little children indeed!”
There seemed a consensus that Peter had mispitched his remarks. Everyone knew of the past cruelties. But the country had grown up. Nobody defended savagery of that sort any more. Wasn’t this what the meeting was about?
But I thought Peter’s rant such good stuff that I asked him afterwards for his notes. He put his cup down on a ledge to fetch out the crumpled pages. And it was then I saw the line of ash-trays.
No ash in them. Nor stubbed or concertinaed butts. But ash-trays. In a pub. In the Free State. Eh?
“It’s in case the knackers come,” one of the organisers of the meeting explained. At which a flush of shame flickered momentarily on his face. “Or itinerants, as I should call them. Or whatever.”
When the knackers/itinerants/ whatever come to town, all pub doors in Ballinamore are shut instantly against them. They are opened only to admit local settled folk, then speedily closed again. As a result, nobody can dander out onto the pavement for a smoke and dander back in again. So it’s smoke illegally or do without until the coast is clear of knackers/itinerants/whatever. In light of which, the guards have agreed that the smoking ban doesn’t apply in Ballinamore when the knackers/itinerants/whatever are in town.
Hasn’t any outside authority intervened, I wondered? Have not local gardai been called to account?
No. “Sure, it’s the same all over Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo...”
But presumably there’s controversy in the local press? Angry letter-writers to the editor etc?
No. “Sure it’s only common sense. And tell me. Will there ever be tolerance in the North while that Paisley boy is on the go?”

The GAA is coming under pressure again to allow football in Croke Park, now that Bertie has bunged them another zillion of tax-payers’ dosh.
I stood up for the GAA a couple of years back when they were taking a pasting for refusing to play ball with the Northern cops as demanded by the Tory Chris Patten, who, it will be remembered, burst into tears when the Union flag was taken down from the mast in Hong Kong. I wanted the GAA to extend the ban to gardai and Free State Army. Why should a sporting organisation provide camouflage for the repressive arm of any State machine?
But I take a vice versa line on football at Croker. What’s the point of keeping football off the pitch when it’s used mainly for gaelic?
Gaelic is not an Irish game. There are only two authentic Irish games. Hurling is one of them. Gaelic football is just real football ruined in an effort to give it a faux-Irish twist. This is the main reason nobody pays heed to the rules. Gaelic is a traditional Irish game in the sense that the Corrs are a traditional Irish band.
Hurling, on the other hand, is older than pelota. Up there with lacrosse. I’d well believe that seven times seven warriors whiled away autumnal evenings hurling against the backside of Fionn.
The other authentic Irish game is croquet. I have mentioned this before.
Croquet emerged with written rules around 200 years ago, a lifetime before gaelic was invented by priests, alcoholics and hibernians. Its folk roots are lost in the mishts of time. Clive Martin and Simon Williams write in their definitive history: “Ask most people how they thought croquet came to Ireland, they would probably guess that it came with the Regiments and was played in the stately homes of the Ascendancy. In fact the reverse is correct.”
Revered croquet historian Dr. Prior declared in 1872 that, “One thing only is certain: it is from Ireland that croquet came to England.” Up to the early 20th century, the game in England remained dominated by Irish players—-Cyril and Herbert Corbally, Seamus Murphy, Charlie O’Callaghan, Nina Coote, Peter Duff Mathews. It was this golden generation which transformed the game, gripping the mallet in what became known as “the Irish style” and swinging it between the legs instead of outside the feet or across the body.
The Irish founded Wimbledon Croquet and Tennis Club. But croquet was soon discarded as a brash English element opted for tennis, in which women players were let flaunt their ankles. Irish involvement declined as our ancient game was marginalised by the uncultured Saxon. Tim Henman is the result.
These matters came back to mind following a city centre encounter with a gobshite in a GAA shirt just after I’d chaired the aforementioned civil rights rally marking the anniversary of the original October 1968 march. “Ye were ball-licking the fucking Prods,” snarled the gobshite, meaning that I’d declared from the platform that the Protestant people of the Fountain area had a civil right to live without fearing nightly that their windows would be put in by Nationalist gobshites. I wish I’d thought to riposte that Northern Protestants were well-rooted in Ireland more than two hundred years before “gaelic” was ever thought up.
The ground should be renamed Croquet Park, too.