Equality means never having to say you’re working class

I see poor Kevin Myers is at it again! By at it, I of course mean he’s venting his spleen at people. Kev as he’s called in working class areas is at his patronising best in today’s column in the Indo! It seems Sommerville & Rosses man in Independent House has put his foot in it again!
Last week’s leaving cert results are Kev’s big moment to take a swipe at people who live in working class estates where he says “Many seem to be almost beyond the control of the State, as ganglords reinforce an autonomous culture that recognises no authority or ethos other than their own -- the ruinous road to an unending cycle of underachievement, crime and jail”.
Kev is right that there are some people like that in our society, but I doubt that there are as many as he thinks living in working class estates. Kev wrongly thinks our society is fair and equal and that working class and middle class all share the same aspiration in our society. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kev is of the view that the morality problem is exclusively one for the working class. Tonight I met a bank employee who expressed concern that there were indeed people reinforcing an autonomous culture that recognises no authority or ethos other than their own. The names she gave me were those of senior management in her own bank. None of them live in working class estates.

I must admit I haven’t the foggiest notion of what Kev is talking about. At the back of it all I’m certain that Kev doesn’t know what he’s talking about either. Wexford Borough contains about 20,000 people and about 8,000 houses. 2,000 households are found in local authority homes that are mostly in working class estates. I think I’m in a better position than Kev to understand working class values.

I don’t know any estate in Wexford where ganglords reinforce any culture, autonomous or otherwise. That’s not to say Wexford has its problems caused by marginalistion, it has! That’s why we have RAPID designation in some parts of town. A few weeks ago I visited one summer camp on their final day and sadly for Kev there were no horses let alone a lift! I did see plenty of happy children, mothers and a really good barbeque that had my taste buds switched on as well as a bouncy castle however that blows the stereotype for Kev!

Kev ponders the meaning of working class life in blissful ignorance and generalisation of what working class means today. It’s not Dublin or indeed northside Dublin, it can be rural or urban, it can be suburban, city centre or farm labourer, it can be skilled labour or unskilled, but what Kev’s biggest mistake is making the typical middle class assumption that all working class people want to aspire to middle class concepts like 3rd level education. It’s an insult to suggest that a pupil would be lynched for wearing any school uniform. Each school in this town has an open admission policy where there are no fees.

Despite this, patterns of attendance are hard to breakdown just as something that Kev ignores, early school leaving. I can answer Kev’s question as to why social mobility and his middle class concept of achievement among working class people doesn’t come up to his high standard and its because working class people have a tradition and different set of values to middle class people. Kev makes the fatal error of assuming that middle class values are identical to the aspirations of working class people and he’s wrong. Blue collar jobs were traditionally well paid and skilled. While these trades are disappearing, the culture of early school leaving remains. As a result those who drop out earlier get lower paid jobs than those who stay in school longer. They progress less in an unfair society. Unless more intervention occurs the disparity increases.
Its easy to dismiss people for being fecless and having achieved little but what does that say about those who've acheived alot?

Myers’ Cromwell defence ignores facts

On Thursday I read a piece by Kevin Myers in the Indo. Living in an estate called Cromwellsfort within sight of where Cromwell's artillery attacked Wexford, I was interested in Kevin’s “subjective” defence of Oliver Cromwell’s Irish Campaign given that he doesn't refers to any sources.

Let’s be objective to start, Cromwell held the crown to account. He was the first commoner to run a major country in Europe. His Puritanism alienated the aristocracy, no bad thing at the time and is effectively the father of English democracy for putting parliament before princes for which Michael Foot rightly credits him. Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland is now the subject of a 2 part TV series that concludes on RTE1 on Tuesday night. I watched last Tuesday’s programme with interest rather than the hysteria suggested by Kevin. During the week I discussed it with a member of the Wexford Historical Society. Where I have difficulty with Myers' article is his critique of the series for following an terrorist's agenda and an apologia for nationalism. Myers starts by attacking the programme makers for exagerating numbers massacred in the 1641 Ulster rebellion. Myers says it” was presented as an accident beyond the ken of Owen Roe O’Neill”. Myers says thousands of English and Scots were massacred by Catholic Irish. James Scott Wheeler, a military historian who defends Cromwell in his 1999 book “Cromwell in Ireland” says Cromwell was not genocidal but was typically anti-Catholic. Scott Wheeler accepts reports of a massacres in 1641 were exaggerated. He puts the total number killed on all sides in the rebellion as 4,000. Hundreds rather than thousand died in massacres. Given the reality that O’Neill didn’t return from Europe to take command of the Irish until the following year, what Myers expected him to do about the previous year’s massacre, he never elaborates.

Myer’s goes on”Most Irish people believe that the people massacred in Wexford and Drogheda were conventional Irish people in the sense that the term “Irish” is understood today. They were not, Irish speakers were not the victims of those urban slaughters”. Nobody ever said the townspeople were Gaelgoirs. Myers completely misses the point of the unique complexion of the Wexford people. What does being Irish today really means? Colm Tobin speaking on the Late Late show last week put it very well, “Wexford is the real Ireland, everyone has passed through here” The imminent local historian Billy Colfer describes in his 2008 book the townspeople as mostly Catholic of old English, Royalists, Normans and Irish extraction. The town was a base for the confederate navy and privateers who threatened trade with England. English was spoken in the town. Scott Wheeler describes how negotiations with Mayor Synnott stalled. A commander called Stafford eventually reached his own deal and allowed the New Model Army take the south end. The citizens of the town were slaughtered. The town’s market centre the Bull Ring was the scene of the worst atrocity. Local Franciscan friars were among hundreds slaughtered here. Discipline broke down. Cromwell’s soldiers ran amok. Townspeople attempting to flee by boat across the Slaney were shot by Cromwell’s men.

The slaughter of the town was a failure of strategy, Cromwell won the town but what remained was incapable of helping him move fast. A potential population base to draw resources from was put to the sword. When October 11^th was over 2,000 soldiers and 1,500 civilians were dead. Cromwell reported no remorse for what had happened to parliament. Cromwell subsequently moved west suffering an initial serious reverse at Clonmel and failing to take Waterford.
Wexford rightly marks the counties role in the 1798 rebellion. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are principles that underscore not just the United Irishmen but also the Labour Movement. These values are commemorated around the county with statues and the liberty tree in Wexford’s Bull Ring. The victims of Cromwell’s stormtroppers are not commemorated and I would hope that that oversight would soon be reversed. Kevin Myers has unwittingly done the people of Wexford a service. Keep it up, Kev!