Daily Archives: March 17, 2005

The end of the IRA?

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Great piece by Robin Wilson on Open Democracy.

For thirty years the leadership of the IRA has managed to withstand everything – from internment without trial to Bloody Sunday to the blandishments of Tony Blair – the British state has thrown at it. Now, a vigorous campaign for justice by a group of five women from a tiny Catholic ghetto in east Belfast, Robert McCartney’s sisters, has the seven men of the IRA army council running around like headless chickens. In a second wonderful irony, their leading member Paula McCartney is a women’s studies student.

In a metaphorical sense, it is like the falling of the Berlin wall, when all the old political strategies became redundant overnight and the exponents of “newspeak” start to look shabby and discredited. Yet Blair (something of an expert in newspeak himself) continues to engage with Adams and McGuinness, via his private emissary Jonathan Powell, as if nothing had happened.

The government in Dublin, especially the justice minister Michael McDowell, has adopted a much stiffer, don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you, stance. The Republican leaders, previously feted as peacemakers and statesmen, are finding doors slamming in their faces in Washington, even amidst the St Patrick’s Day schmaltz and shamrockry. The hitherto Sinn Féin-friendly Guardian has scuttled sharply away from its fellow-travelling op-ed pages; the Boston Globe has compared the IRA to the Mafia; and the Republicans’ strongest Congressional supporters, Peter King and Edward Kennedy, have advocated the IRA’s disbandment. In a third spectacular irony, it is the McCartney sisters (Paula, Catherine, Gemma, Claire and Donna), as well as Robert McCartney’s fiancée Bridgeen Hagans who are being welcomed to the White House while Adams is frozen out.

Defining childhood

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One of the books that shaped my thinking about media was the late, great Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood in which he argued that ‘childhood’ — viewed as a protected period in a human being’s life before s/he was deemed fit to play a full role in society — was a social artefact rather than a fact of life. Postman argued that childhood was effectively extended by the invention of printing, because it took longer to get kids to the point where they could fully participate in a print-based society, whereas in an oral society full competence could be achieved by about the age of seven. (Which, incidentally, is probably why the medieval church defined the ‘age of reason’ as seven. When I was growing up, this was the age at which one made one’s First Communion.) His book was mainly about the social impact of broadcast television, which he argued was pushing down the age of competence to lower than medieval values. In a memorable passage, he claimed that American children had become ‘competent’ television viewers by the age of three (which was why one never saw remedial classes offered in television viewing!)

What brought this to mind today was an interesting review by Joyce Carol Oates in the Times Literary Supplement of HUCK’s RAFT: A history of American childhood by Steven Mintz (Harvard University Press). If I didn’t already have a pile of books-waiting-to-be-read a yard high, I might even buy it.

Top of the mornin’ to ye all!

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Er, it’s St Patrick’s Day. More importantly, Sinn Fein have not been invited to the White House and the McCartney family have. And of course it’s Cheltenham week. Sue and I used to go every year with a group of friends. We had a rule that if anyone had a winner in a race, they had to buy a bottle of champagne at the end of the race. On one unforgettable day we had six bottles. Ah, those were the days… (dozes off into daydream about the time when marmalade was thicker and 640k of RAM was enough for anyone.)

What? (Shakes himself abruptly) Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember. People are always attributing to Bill Gates the quote that “640k should be enough for anyone”. But Gates has vehemently denied that he said it. And, for once, I believe him.