The New Conservatism

The Irish Times published a photograph last week of two men in masks. Not thieves or brigands, nor indeed bottle-throwing Nordies or Iraqi protesters, but Dr. Joe Barry, president of the Irish Medical Organisation and David Begg, president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Not sinister at all, but two pillars of Irish society, indeed two of the country’s great and good.

And what, pray tell, were they doing in their masks? Not trying to hide their faces surely?
Far from it. They hid behind their masks in order to be seen. In order that the snappers would shoot them and the photo-editors would choose them and their message would be promulgated in the mass media.
And it worked. One has no opinion on their appearance otherwise, but masked their faces made for a more choosable photo than unmasked.
So what was afoot that warranted this intrigue, this façade, this…masquerade?
It was to do with the forthcoming ban on smoking in the workplace. ICTU was throwing its considerable weight behind the change. It described the arguments for compromise as ‘weak’’ and ‘pathetic’ and claimed that 150 Irish pub workers died annually from the effects of ‘second-hand smoke’.
Oh, and it also disputed that it would lead to significant job losses.
How do they know? On the basis of probably biased analysis and reports from a very limited American experience. It may be right and it may be wrong, but the evidence on one side isn’t any more conclusive than that on the other. Yes, pub owners are trying to defend their industry and their livelihoods. But that doesn’t make their predictions less trustworthy than those of public health or trade union officials.
We just don’t know. We’re taking a leap into the dark. And coupled with changes introduced by the Minister for Justice regarding access to pubs, while the great and good may argue that we are legislating for a healthier society, in fact we are doing the opposite.
The probability is that people will smoke and drink at home and in shebeen-type arrangements. In rural areas they may tacitly ignore the rules on wet and windy nights, stoking up the turf fire and agreeing with the Gardaí that they’ll let them know if they’re coming.
The new measures introduced by McDowell will certainly damage traditional music because, like it or not, the pub is the central vortex in the preservation and transmission of the tradition. Sure, other factors are also in play, family and local traditions for example. But for generations youngsters have been in pubs listening to great musicians. And they haven’t been drinking alcopops.
Recently I heard a young girl play her melodeon with a group of much older musicians in a pub in Clare. Already destined to be a fine musician, she was clearly learning from the others. It was the most natural thing in the world, relaxed, interactive, intuitive. You might learn the techniques in a lesson or a conservatory setting, but you couldn’t learn the tricks, the intuitions or the brilliant off-the-cuff grace-notes that make the good great.
Which brings me to ‘our young people’ about whom the great and good wring their hands and wonder. They’ll be even farther from reach (and sight) now, learning to drink and smoke and shag in lanes and fields behind deserted schools at night.
That’s already the case to a large degree, but it will be even more so in the future. And this is one of the paradoxes of the hard-line approach to public order and public health. The more the officials try to control behaviour, the more uncontrolled behaviour becomes.
I have said before that as the old Church dies, a new Church is born. Its bishops are public health officials and its moral custodians are newspaper editors and columnists. Its missionaries and proselytisers are the spin-doctors and its foot-soldiers are journalists. And where priests once thundered against sexual activity, now it is the press and public health officials who thunder, but this time against alcohol and rowdy behaviour…
So, it was easy for two bishops of the new moral order like Messrs Barry and Begg to get favourable exposure for their message. Theirs is understood to be a ‘moral’ and ‘health-promoting’ message. It’s for our own good. So, insofar as it is seen to be political, this is taken to be a necessary part of the control system that governs our lives and body politic.
In all this, one cannot but notice the ironies and, yes, as with the old Church, contradictions and hypocrisies. For example, Irish Times columnist Cathy Sheridan wrote a scathing article on smokers, singling out Martin Cullen in the process.
She noted the association between smoking and ‘cool’ and derided the pretensions of people who thought they might look cool by smoking, adding that the tobacco advertisers had them sussed long ago, and knew how to appeal to their insecurities and vanities.
Some days later the Irish Times published a photo of Nick Cave, leaning on a wall and smoking a cigarette. Did he look cool? Did he what! Of course he did. It wasn’t an ad for smoking, but it sure made it look good.
But there you are – while the bishops of the New Church play to one audience, backslapping those who show ‘responsibility’ and ‘moral leadership’, their streetwise colleagues play to another demographic.
Well, as another well-known trade unionist once put it, ‘there’s no point being at the circus if you can’t ride two horses at one time’…
Amen brethren.