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Bernadette
McAliskey, as regular readers of The Blanket
will already know, was recently excluded from the
USA shortly after her arrival at O'Hare Airport in
New York. I won't go into the details here; they've
already been covered more than adequately in The Blanket
and a few other places (see my weblog
for a fairly complete list). What I want to do instead
is explain why I think this is important, more, why
I see in this event one of those telling moments when
the mist clears and everything stands revealed, when
the real relationship between things is brightly illuminated.
In particular, the case throws a strong light on the
relationship between Ireland and the United States
of America.
The
story didn't so much as fall dead from the press as
never quite make it there in the first place. The
Belfast Telegraph ran two short pieces on it,
the Irish Times one, and RTÉ gave it
a mention. And that was it. No outraged commentaries
from columnists, no grave and measured editorials,
no continuing coverage. Just a mention, a shrug, and
on to other things. And it's not just the mainstream
media in which the story is conspicuous by its absence.
The new Internet phenomenon of "the weblog"
is still dominated by Americans, but there are a few
dozen Irish out there "blogging" away. However,
not one of these Irish webloggers condescended to
mention the matter, save myself, Mick Fealty, Sean
McCann with a very good piece, and a belated brief
mention on "The Plastic Cat", though a few
Irish-Americans did cover it as well. Now, one can't
expect webloggers to cover current affairs if they
don't want to, or indeed write about anything other
than that bad pint they had last night, the latest
pop record they've been listening to, etc., etc. But
surely one could expect that every Irish person with
the time and energy to self-publish on the Web might
spend a wee bit of that same time and energy in consideration
of the fact that an Irish person can now be excluded
from the USA solely on the whim of anonymous US officials?
Well, apparently not.
So,
why be bothered? Well, we're not talking now about
some chancer slipping in without a green card to work
in the "black economy". This is a woman
paying a visit to friends and family. She's not there
as the Bernadette Devlin who was in the Bogside in
'69 and told us that "the tear-gas isn't so bad
once you get used to it", nor as the wee slip
of a girl who gave Reggie Maulding a good slap for
himself in the House of Commons for telling lies about
Bloody Sunday, nor as the H-Block campaigner, nor
as the indefatigable commentator who always tells
it just how she sees it. This is a private citizen
on private business, a surprise visit to see friends
in New York and to attend a christening, another trip
to a country she's been to many times before. And
what could be more natural than to want to fly over
for a week to see the new baby?
This
is not a political issue, in the sense that it's not
about whether you agree with Bernadette McAliskey's
political views and opinions, whether you approve
of her past, whether you think she's right in opposing
the coming war against Iraq, or any of that. It is
simply about an Irish woman being excluded from entering
a country in which she has many friends and relations,
because while at home in Ireland she dared to open
her mouth and express opinions critical of the present
US administration. I can't see how any Irish person,
no matter how apolitical, could stay silent in the
face of that. It's not as though the USA is some obscure
place with which Ireland has no connection. Many if
not most Irish people have relatives in the States;
at the very least, most will know someone who emigrated
there -- I know I do. Clearly, this is a case of,
Bernadette McAliskey today, me or you or yer man down
the road tomorrow.
In
my school days, a common experience was being hoisting
up by the ear onto one's hind legs in front of the
rest of the class, and berated for one's shortcomings
in the Latin language -- for stumbling while reciting
the declination of "mensa", let's say. That
was an exemplary action on behalf of the Latin teacher,
intended to encourage the rest of us to get the table
of first declension nouns or whatever off by heart.
So too, Bernadette McAliskey's exclusion from the
USA is exemplary: we are all, every one of us, watching
as one of our number is grabbed by the ear and given
a going-over. We are being told: keep your opinions
to yourselves, look the other way when the planes
land at Shannon, what we do in Iraq is nothing to
do with you... in short, "shut up and get with
the program".
So
why the silence across the land? What is it lads?
Is it a case of, "oh, but she's from the North",
and therefore nothing to do with us? Or do ye just
not want to offend the Yanks? A bit of the old "whatever
you say, say nothing"? If so, if the silence
is born of the desire to do nothing that might offend
the government of the USA, then I must say that it
won't have the intended effect of making them nicer
to us. Grovelling and cringing merely makes the strong
despise you. But in any case, I'd thought that the
days of touching the forelock and doffing the cap
with a respectful "soft day tank God sor"
and all the rest of the old "colonial cringe"
repertoire were long gone. Or have we merely exchanged
the old master for a new one? Isn't it time we copped
on to ourselves, and learned to stand up for each
other? Because if Irish people aren't prepared to
stand up and be counted when one of their number is
arbitrarily prevented from visiting a land with which
most of them have ties through blood or friendship,
with which their country has had such a long and close
relationship, when in God's name will they stand up
and be counted?
It's
not that the Irish are silent on all issues. They
seem very anxious about a whole range of things happening
in far-away lands and far-off places to people they
don't know. Isn't it strange, then, that they can't
muster any enthusiasm for one of their own? Paul Mattick
nailed down this mentality when, writing of the new
leftists of the 60s, he noted that,
"They
find their inspiration not in the developmental
processes of their own society but in the heroes
of popular revolution in faraway countries, thereby
revealing that their enthusiasm is not as yet a
real concern for decisive social change."
Such
enthusiasm is rife in Ireland. We're very worried
about all sorts of things, so long as they are happening
far away and we can't really affect them anyway. It's
a childish way of looking at the world.
It's
been used and abused so many times it's become a cliché,
but ... "First they came for the communists...".
An over-reaction? after all, it's just one woman,
it was just a deportation. I think not. I'll grant
that the Americans haven't started putting us in camps
(though it's not so long ago, after all, that their
closest ally did); but this is symptomatic of our
place in America's eyes, and of our place in the world.
If we want to improve that place, we have to stand
up for ourselves. We could make a small start by standing
up for Bernadette McAliskey.
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