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| Bill Burns thumbing nose, Richard Martin holding reins |
I was looking up the history of legislation against cruelty to animals, and I stumbled upon somebody I'd never heard of: Humanity Dick Martin (a.k.a., Hairtrigger Richard Martin), an Irish member of the British Parliament who was popularly credited with pushing through Martin's Act of 1822 against the ill treatment of cattle.
In the celebrated "Trial of Bill Burns," the first prosecution under the Martin Act, Martin dragged into court the donkey abused by the Cockney costermonger Bill Burns. He sounds like he'd make a good subject for a biopic, although modern audiences might not be able to bear watching the abuses of animals that he campaigned against.
From Wikipedia:
Colonel Richard Martin (15 January 1754 – 6 January 1834), was an Irish politician and campaigner against cruelty to animals. He was commonly known as "Humanity Dick", a nickname bestowed on him by King George IV. He succeeded in getting the pioneering Act of Parliament "Martin's Act" passed.
Martin was born at Ballynahinch Castle, County Galway, the only son of Robert Martin Fitz Anthony of Birch Hall, County Galway, and the Hon. Bridget Barnwall, a daughter of Robert Barnewall, 12th Baron Trimlestown. ...
His father's family were Jacobites and one of "The Tribes of Galway", fourteen merchant families who ruled Galway from the 14th to 17th centuries. The Barnwalls were an ennobled family of Norman descent ... Though both of his parents were born to Catholics, Richard Martin was raised a Protestant and educated in England. ...
Warning: The various kinds of Irish aristocrats over the last 800 years are pretty baffling to outsiders. That said, the Tribes of Galway were largely medieval Normans who stayed Catholic despite the Reformation in England. Families included D'Arcy, Joyce, and ffrench. Edmund Burke was another descendant of Ireland's Old English aristocracy. The Old English in Ireland were distinct from Ireland's New English or Anglo-Irish upper class, such as Swift, Berkeley, Wellington, Yeats, Wilde, Shaw, and Daniel Day-Lewis, whose ancestors typically arrived in Ireland in the 17th Century.
Whether Old or New, many of these aristocrats, while retaining their English high culture and privileges were raised by indigenous Irish Catholic servants, so they tended to strike English English as wild Irishmen. Richard Martin sounds like the wildest Irishman of them all:
He continued to represent County Galway in Westminster [i.e., Parliament] ... In the House of Commons he was known for his interruptions and humorous speeches. He continued his work towards Irish Catholic Emancipation till 1826, when he had to flee to France. Emancipation was finally granted in 1829, much to his delight.
Martin is now best known for his work against animal cruelty, especially against bear baiting and dog fighting. His actions resulted eventually in Martin's Act of 1822, entitled "Ill Treatment of Cattle Bill". He also tried to spread his ideas in the streets of London, becoming the target of jokes and political cartoons that depicted him with ears of a donkey. He also sometimes paid fines of minor offenders.
On 16 June 1824, Martin was present when the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was founded in a London coffee shop "Old Slaughter's". He denied being the initiator of the society.
Martin also had a very eventful life. ... He survived two shipwrecks. He fought over a hundred duels with sword and pistol and earned the nickname "Hairtrigger Dick". He travelled extensively in Europe and the Americas during the 1770s and was in New England when the American Revolutionary War began. He initiated Galway's first theatre in 1783. He employed as tutor to his younger half-brothers Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had an affair with Martin's wife. Martin was in Paris when the French Revolution began during 1789.
Martin was on a first-name basis with many of the famous names of his age, including King George IV (who gave him the nickname "Humanity Dick"), Henry Flood, Henry Grattan, William Pitt, Queen Caroline, and Daniel O'Connell.
After the election of 1826, Martin was deprived of his parliamentary seat because of a petition which accused him of illegal intimidation during the election. He had to flee into hasty exile to Boulogne, France, because he could no longer enjoy a parliamentary immunity to arrest for debt. ...
Following the revelation of [his wife's] affair with a Mr. Petrie in Paris, Martin sued Petrie for criminal conversation in 1791 and was awarded £10,000. He had this distributed to the poor by throwing it out the windows of his coach on the long journey back from London to Galway.
That seems pretty cinematic. Michael Fassbender, you aren't getting any younger looking - this is the guy you were born to play.
Update: Now that I look it up, I see that the the Martin Act passed when Martin was 68, so quite a few actors could play Martin in a film concentrating on this (likely) manic depressive wild man's last hurrah: Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, or, as a commenter suggests, Mel Gibson.
Update: Now that I look it up, I see that the the Martin Act passed when Martin was 68, so quite a few actors could play Martin in a film concentrating on this (likely) manic depressive wild man's last hurrah: Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, or, as a commenter suggests, Mel Gibson.
"The various kinds of Irish aristocrats over the last 800 years are pretty baffling to outsiders"
ReplyDeleteWhat's baffling about them ? There's the native Irish, the "Old English" (dating from before the Tudor [re]conquest) who remained Catholic and the "New English" = the Protestant Ascendancy = "Anglo-Irish".
He also invented the Cincinnati Bow-tie.
ReplyDeleteMore reasons why the American Revolution was necessary. An end to dog fighting that would have been on the list of intolerable acts.
ReplyDeleteMel Gibson was born for the role. (Leo can play the young guy in the flashbacks, or the II sequel.)
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThat seems pretty cinematic.
Fact is, under the guise of fighting cruelty to animals, militant extremists oppose this, which clearly causes no suffering, pain or distress for the animal.
What could be more anti-Semitic?
Of course, I would not the least be surprised if a gentile Hollywood studio endorsed that bigoted and vicious posture.
The man was forced to flee England for fear of debt peonage. Then he maneuvers a 10,000 pound settlement for his "grief", but literally throws it all away in a grand romantic gesture. The Irish just don'g get capitalism. There must be some distant connection between the Irish and Russians.
ReplyDeleteHairtrigger Dick Martin was a true Alpha Male.
ReplyDelete- Nickname: Humanity Dick...try living with that!
- Provides aid and comfort to humble jackasses, yet kills over 100 rivals with pistol and sword
- A guy screws his wife, don't get mad, get even... wins lawsuit against the guy and distributes proceeds to the poor by tossing money from a moving carriage
"Mel Gibson was born for the role."
ReplyDeleteYup. The good news is that there's no shortage of semi-Irish leading men, such Daniel Day-Lewis and Michael Fassbender. But, now that I look it up, Martin was 68 when he got this bill passed, so, yeah Mel as a late middle-aged manic-depressive Irish wild man ...
Whether Old or New, many of these aristocrats, while retaining their English high culture
ReplyDeleteIf "Old" then they never had any English culture of any sort, they were culturally Norman when they showed up in Ireland and culturally Irish thereafter.
It's a bit eye-rolling that the Normans who spent a thousand years in England are taken to be English, and the Normans who spent a thousand years in Ireland are assumed to be English as well, even though their far, far distant ancestors probably spent only a few years in newly-conquered England at most.
If "Venables" is English, then "Fitzgerald" is certainly Irish.
What's baffling about them ? There's the native Irish, the "Old English" (dating from before the Tudor [re]conquest) who remained Catholic and the "New English" = the Protestant Ascendancy = "Anglo-Irish".
ReplyDeleteIt's rather more complicated than that. The "Old English" were never English and never spoke it, until the last couple of hundred years. Their languages would have been French (the language of the "English" court and European nobility in general) and Irish. It's a modern idea to refer to them as the "Old English" but they did not call themselves that and were not called that by either the medieval English or the "Old Irish" - to coin a term.
Many members of the Anglo-Irish "Protestant Ascendancy" likewise saw themselves as Irish, not English, and they agitated, and often fought, for Irish independence from Britain.
The idea that Gerald FitzGerald and Wolf Tone were English is one I've never seen outside the Stevosphere.
Dick Martin had a duel with George Robert "Fighting" Fitzgerald, the most famous duelist of them all. Like many Irish politicians of his time, Martin often dueled with his political opponents. Here is one anecdote:
ReplyDeleteDick Martin had a seat in the united parliament at Westminster. His election contests were occasionally murky with the smoke of gunpowder. Asked on the eve of a general election who were the likely candidates for Galway, he replied: "There are three of us. Daly, I think, is safe; the other two are Kirwan and myself."
"And which of you two will be the other successful candidate?"
"Why, the survivor, of course."
"The "Old English" were never English..."
ReplyDeleteWell that's why the phrase was in quotes. I might have called them "Hiberno-Normans" or some such. Subjective identity is always complicated.
But does that matter to the point that basically you've got three layers ?
ReplyDeleteA heavily flashback-loaded dual subject biopic might be titled 'Hairtrigger Dick vs. Michael Vick.'
Well that's why the phrase was in quotes. I might have called them "Hiberno-Normans" or some such. Subjective identity is always complicated.
ReplyDeleteNo, Steve is right. Old English is a real term to describe the Norman settlers who settled Ireland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_%28Ireland%29
The Old English are assimilated Irish Catholics now, and aren't called Old English in ordinary discourse. Many names we associate as quintessential Irish names, like Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Burke, etc. are Norman in origin.
The New English Protestants weren't considered native Irish nor did they consider themselves to be native Irish. This is due to their religion, their ties to the dominating imperial country, the fact that Irish identity had already formed, etc.
I appreciate the elucidation, but, like I said, I find the sociology of Irish elites down through history to be pretty baffling.
ReplyDelete- Provides aid and comfort to humble jackasses, yet kills over 100 rivals with pistol and sword
ReplyDeleteDuels did not necessarily result in death.
Duels did not necessarily result in death.
ReplyDeleteYes, it depends on what kind of swordfighting Humanity Dick engaged in.
Duels did not necessarily result in death.
ReplyDeleteYes, and the number is always exaggerated. "Fought over 100 duels" might actually turn out to be a tenth that many. Andrew Jackson is described as having been involved in 100 duels but there is evidence only of around five.
What did they fight duels with? Those tiny little pistols? And how many paces did they take?
ReplyDeleteMark Twain talks about being asked to be a second in a duel in Paris and proposing axes at one pace. That was not well received so he suggested Gatling guns at 15 paces. That was rejected too. The other second proposed derringers at 65 yards:
https://futureboy.us/twain/tramp/tramp08.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_duello#Irish_Code_Duello
ReplyDeleteDueling pistols were of large caliber, but in Martin's day they would have been flintlocks, which are fairly hard to fire accurately, especially under time pressure.
ReplyDeleteA duel was fought to demonstrate one's courage and honor and blood did not have to be shed. After an exchange of shots, both of which missed, a duel might be considered settled. Or, in the event that one party was wounded, it was considered over. It was considered indecent for a duel to involve more than three exchanges of shots.
The number of paces were established by the seconds and in duels over trivial matters they could establish a distance--say, twelve (long) paces--at which hitting your opponent was less likely. The farcical French duels of the late 19th century might have distances of 30 paces, making them less dangerous than a game of touch football.
By the beginning of the 19th century, a fatal duel generally resulted in a murder trial for the survivor, so one was definitely better off inflicting a non-life-threatening wound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toj8nkaPdtA
ReplyDelete"I'm Hairtrigger Dick Martin, you're doin' a porno movie, right?!
"The Old English are assimilated Irish Catholics now, and aren't called Old English in ordinary discourse. Many names we associate as quintessential Irish names, like Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Burke, etc. are Norman in origin."
ReplyDeleteIntegrated? Yes. Interbred? Yes. Assimilated? No.
There is a noticeable ethnic colouring to Irish-people that persists to this day and which is strikingly reflected in Irish politics. Rather than a left-right split we have a split between nationalists on one hand and conservatives and socialist on the other. The nationalist parties Sinn Féin(Castro-ite) and Fianna Fáil(Gaullist, the party I support) draw their support from people who tend to have a more Gaelic back-round than the supporters of the conservatives(Fine Gael) and socialists who attract the decedents of Anglo-Normans. This isn't a conscious thing. No more than the divides between the descendants of the English in North America. But it's there and it's consequences are in my opinion substantial. Given the Anglo-Irish-people's location in the east of the country and in cities, it was they who formed the leadership of the constitutional struggle for independence in the 19th century. It was a movement which reflected the character of a half-breed people. Tame and conservative. The radical elements who would lead the IRB, IRA and Sinn Féin were more Gaelic and less compromising because they were less compromised. This is the dynamic of Irish politics to this day. a conservative anglophile political and economic and social establishment governing over a more insurgent and more Gaelic political movements. In recent years the EU joined Britain as the outside force to whom the Anglo Irish have allegiance but this has not affected the overall political dynamic. I strongly suspect that Ireland's political dynamics are similar to Ukraine and Mexico more than more black and white societies like say... Belgium and Canada.
Here is an academic study details this further.
Thanks. Most informative.
ReplyDeleteIrishman:
ReplyDelete(How) does this play out vis-a-vis immigration policy? IIRC, Sinn Fein is pretty liberal in this regard. I know some like to blame it all on Shatter, but pro-3rdworld immigration sentiment seems to have attracted nearly all Irish elites. Does FF plan on changing this?
BTW, do you really support FF? Why? I've been reading the steve-o-sphere awhile now, and it's pretty clear Irish nationalism is despised round these parts. (Still good policies elucidated here for America though.)
In those days - and in Britain right up to the 1920s and 30s, upper class men were so self-confident of their own moral superiority and role as 'natural leaders' and moral guardians, that it was quite normal for them to berate people of lower classes right in the street, right in public for some real or imagined transgression. It was not snobbery as such, but more in the way of a patronizing paternalism, with the upper class men seeing themselves playing the role of school-masters or even priests, trying to civilze a rabble of 'moral children'.
ReplyDeleteWhen the upper classes stopped doing this, Britain soon descended into chavdom.
"What's baffling about them?"
ReplyDeleteWell, the precise ethnicity- not cultural affinity- can be hard to pin down. Look through the wikipedia pages on the "Old English"/Cambro-Norman Catholic Aristocracy, and it's pretty clear that lots of them married Englishwomen, or daughters of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency (not necessarily aristos, but officer's daughters, etc.) Many also converted to Protestantism, either to keep hold of land or for genuine reasons of faith. And then you have native Gaels like Murragh O'Brien who went Protestant and were pretty harsh towards their own. Lots of back and forth.
But, a good way to think about it is Steve's comments on Mexico. The upper class there gets whiter, because a successful Mexican with visible indigenous ancestry would marry 'up', as would his children. Similar thing happened/happens in Ireland- the upper class gets more and more English. So you have people named O'Brien whose male ancestors had been marrying out for several generations. Anyway, most of the old elite were pro-union, so they all seemed to coalesce towards the end.
IIRC, and I can't remember the source, someone estimated the Irish aristocracy as a whole to be between 7 and 9% native Irish in ancestry.
Agree, begs for film treatment, unfortunately only a few could be trusted with it in Hollyrood, else it'd end up being about Civil Rights and how animals and women were brutally herded into etc.
ReplyDeleteBair baiting/animal fighting once were v popular in england. I think they even held them in the Tower. How appropriate!
Cheers to Colonel Martin for his victories, especially preaching in the street. A rare bird.
The Old English were English in the sense of being descended from an army of Normans, Welshmen and Flemings.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, some of the Welshmen might have been descendants of the Irish who colonised parts of Wales in the Late Roman and Dark Ages periods. And the "Normans" who conquered England were an army of Normans, Bretons, and Flemings, principally. Bretons, of course, are descended from the Britons who fled to Brittany when the Romano-Britons were under assault from Germans and Irishmen, the Normans were Danish-Gaullish crossbreeds, and the Flemings were, I assume, descendants of the Riparian Franks.
ReplyDeleteThat's the fuller sense in which this mob were "Old English".
Or were Flemings Salian Franks? God, secondary school seems a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteProvides aid and comfort to humble jackasses, yet kills over 100 rivals with pistol and sword
ReplyDeleteFighting a duel and winning doesnt automatically mean killing. He might not have killed anyone at all though that seems unlikely.
IIRC, and I can't remember the source, someone estimated the Irish aristocracy as a whole to be between 7 and 9% native Irish in ancestry.
ReplyDeleteThat's just about the number of Irish that can speak their national tongue.
Anyone know if Martin is referenced or mentioned by Pierce Egan?
ReplyDeleteGiven the Anglo-Irish-people's location in the east of the country and in cities, it was they who formed the leadership of the constitutional struggle for independence in the 19th century. It was a movement which reflected the character of a half-breed people. Tame and conservative. The radical elements who would lead the IRB, IRA and Sinn Féin were more Gaelic and less compromising because they were less compromised.
ReplyDeleteYou need to study your Irish history, "irishman". Prominent in the peaceful struggle for independence was the Gaelic Daniel O'Connell, while the list of "Anglo-Irish" who died fighting for independence includes Roger Casement, Patrick Pearse, and Wolfe Tone.
The Old English in Ireland, like their fellows in England, all spoke English by the mid-14th century at the latest.
ReplyDeleteThere is a noticeable ethnic colouring to Irish-people that persists to this day and which is strikingly reflected in Irish politics. Rather than a left-right split we have a split between nationalists on one hand and conservatives and socialist on the other. The nationalist parties Sinn Féin(Castro-ite) and Fianna Fáil(Gaullist, the party I support) draw their support from people who tend to have a more Gaelic back-round than the supporters of the conservatives(Fine Gael) and socialists who attract the decedents of Anglo-Normans
ReplyDeleteTrying to hammer the people of countries outside of America into American political categories is always a losing proposition. Sinn Fein is both nationalist and socialist. As strange as that combination may seem to modern Americans it used to be the norm even here. The modern Fianna Fáil is rather like the American GOP - it gives lip service to nationalism and conservatism, but little more than that.
Old English is a real term to describe the Norman settlers who settled Ireland
ReplyDelete1) It's a term which was made up very recently. (2) If you read your own link, the Irish did not refer to them as the "Old English", but - much more accurately - as the "old foreigners".(3) It's a term which is laughably inaccurate. The "Old English" were not English in any way, shape, or form. They were Normans. That is, they were the people who conquered both Ireland and England.
The New English Protestants weren't considered native Irish nor did they consider themselves to be native Irish.
Plenty of "New English Protestants" claimed to be Irish, thought of themselves as Irish, were regarded by the English as Irish, and died fighting for Ireland against England. Try reading some of Yeat's poetry and get back to me on how he did not consider himself to be "native Irish".
It's rather like insisting that Francis Scott Key, Betsy Ross, Andrew Jackson, Orville Wright, and Thomas Edison were not American, dammit, they were English.
If some of the iSteve readership had been around when Paul Revere galloped by shouting "The British are coming!" I can picture them giving him lectures on identity.
"Look here, Paul, you are British, I'm British, we're all British! You should say instead something like "The loyalists are coming" or "The Kings men are coming"."
I remember running across Martin and his father and grandfather while doing some general reading on Co. Galway history. As if his other exploits weren't wild enough, Martin's family were also quite notorious for having supported themselves largely through smuggling, illegally bringing in tax-free goods along the Connemara coastline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Máirtín_Mór_Ó_Máille.
ReplyDeleteEven today, with GPS units and modern boat engines, the western coast of Ireland is a dangerous and difficult place to navigate. In the age of sail, it was a death trap to anyone who didn't know the waters from long experience (most of the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 actually took place as they were sailing past Ireland, trying to escape back to Spain). In 1800, it can't have been very hard to evade the Navy and avoid paying customs duties. Heck, it's practically the exact same place the drug dealers in The Guard were dropping off their cargo.
Fighting a duel and winning doesnt automatically mean killing. He might not have killed anyone at all though that seems unlikely.
ReplyDeleteRight. The subject of this post fought a duel with someone of a similar background who went by the name Fighting Fitzgerald. During their duel, which was indirectly related to Fitzgerald killing an animal, both men were injured but it was then discovered that Fitzgerald was wearing a protective plate under his coat. Both men survived but Hairtrigger refused a re-match due to Fitzgerald's dishonourable act. Indeed despite being a renowned thug it was only after the duel that Fitzgerald became a social pariah.
According to Michael McConville in his book Ascendancy to Oblivion Hairtrigger Martin never evicted a single tenant despite owning a third of Co. Galway and land in Co.Mayo and Co.Roscommon. He often forgave tenants' rents too but he insisted on the arrest and trial of anyone on his estate involved in animal cruelty even though it was perfectly legal. If the convicted couldn't pay the fine Martin himself rowed them out to an island castle he converted to a prison where they were detained as punishment for several days.
ReplyDeleteMcConville also says the Norman-Irish Martin family arrived in Connacht with the de Burgos, whom I believe were Edmund Burke's ancestors, then later intermarried with the Gaelic Irish.
Say what you want about them the old Irish elite were a hell of a lot more interesting than the present day elites of Ireland, England, and the US.
" Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteIrishman:
(How) does this play out vis-a-vis immigration policy? IIRC, Sinn Fein is pretty liberal in this regard. I know some like to blame it all on Shatter, but pro-3rdworld immigration sentiment seems to have attracted nearly all Irish elites. Does FF plan on changing this?
BTW, do you really support FF? Why? I've been reading the steve-o-sphere awhile now, and it's pretty clear Irish nationalism is despised round these parts. (Still good policies elucidated here for America though.)
4/23/14, 11:46 PM"
All the Irish parties are useless on immigration, but useless in different ways. The labour party or standard issue public sector liberals, Fine Gael support immigration because they are pro-business.
When I describe Sinn Féin as a nationalist party it is of a particular sort. They are most like anti-colonial parties in the third world like the ANC of Fidel Castro(both of whom they have links with), as well as Batasuna in the Basque country. These kind of parties speak in Marxist language but are essentially nationalist parties. But maintaining this anti-colonial type of politics means they are useless on issues like immigration.
Fianna Fáil are in a state of becoming better on immigration. They very quietly cracked down on non-EU immigration from 2008 onwards but quite frankly this was after the horse had bolted. Non EU immigration to Ireland was something I think we just stumbled into in the 2000s their wasn't much deviousness to it. In government FF went to some lengths to enforce immigration laws and close loopholes like birth-right citizenship.
As to why I support them... I used to be member but havn't been active since 2011 election shortly after which I moved. I support them because for all their faults FF have been the only party able to provide Ireland with an effective and competent government since independence. The alternative is conservatives in government with socialists. Even leaving aside "the national question" these governments tend to be hopelessly dysfunctional because their internal contradictions. FF governments are strong and stable.
Speaking of Irish movies or movies about Irish topics. It occurred to me that the recent hub bub about '12 years a slave' is disproportionate.
ReplyDeleteKidnapping free men in a modern nation only seems to have happened that one time to the black Solomon Northup. In general committing the crime of kidnapping as a means of acquiring a field hand seems odd. Slavery at that time was legal. If the incident was as reported rather than a 'Skin Game' con man scheme, it was rare.
But kidnapping Irish for slavery was common and practiced for decades. Thousands or Irish children were kidnapped into sex slavery rather like the thousands of Eastern European women who are still being enslaved today for the sex trade.
Cromwell sent thousands of Irish children to the West Indies as slave. Somehow that escaped the notice of the screenwriters of the Richard Harris film.
Blacks as a people have had relatively little experience at being slaves. But you wouldn't know that from the American cinema.
Albertosaurus
Cromwell sent thousands of Irish children to the West Indies as slave. Somehow that escaped the notice of the screenwriters of the Richard Harris film.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember that film (Cromwell I assume) was mostly about the Civil War so I don't think it would've added much to the story.
Plenty of "New English Protestants" claimed to be Irish, thought of themselves as Irish, were regarded by the English as Irish, and died fighting for Ireland against England. Try reading some of Yeat's poetry and get back to me on how he did not consider himself to be "native Irish".
ReplyDeleteIt's rather like insisting that Francis Scott Key, Betsy Ross, Andrew Jackson, Orville Wright, and Thomas Edison were not American, dammit, they were English.
Yeats was Anglo-Irish.
The Anglo-Irish, New English Protestants, etc. certainly did not consider themselves to be identical in identity to the native Catholic Irish or as indigenous Irishmen, regardless of what they called themselves or what Englishmen called them. And the native Catholic Irish certainly didn't consider them to be native Irishmen.
This is why the Catholic-Protestant was so intense in Ireland. It was a proxy for real Irishman vs recent invader and interloper.
Yeats, by the way, was anti-Catholic and had second thoughts about Irish nationalism after it became clear that the real native Irish would come to dominate Ireland.
The analogy is more like insisting that Francis Scott Key, Betsy Ross, Andrew Jackson, Orville Wright, and Thomas Edison were not American, but were American Indians.
"FF governments are strong and stable."
ReplyDeleteTotal bollocks.
Yours,
Another Irish iSteve lurker
@Irishman,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. I always appreciate your comments. I remember Gerry McGeough set up a pretty rightwing party (Faith, Family, Fatherland type stuff), but he's not fully there. That's all I've hear of immigration restrictionism mixing with militant republicanism. That, and some RDE neocon drivel complaining that SF supporters were all closet fascists wanting to deport them all, but that was baloney. Would you think about setting up an blog? If you do, let us know.
Old Odd Jobs said...
ReplyDelete"Total bollocks."
Well they're still better than the God-awful blueshirts!
"Thanks for the reply. I always appreciate your comments. I remember Gerry McGeough set up a pretty rightwing party (Faith, Family, Fatherland type stuff), but he's not fully there. That's all I've hear of immigration restrictionism mixing with militant republicanism. That, and some RDE neocon drivel complaining that SF supporters were all closet fascists wanting to deport them all, but that was baloney. Would you think about setting up an blog? If you do, let us know."
There is a new party The "national independent party" which seems to be two men and a dog which is trying to emulate UKIP but beyond that there is nothing in the way of immigration restrictionist parties.
As for Gerry McGeough; the whole catholic party thing has been tried many times before and has never gotten anywhere. I don't see that changing.
Thank you for your compliments. But I'm a critic not an artist.
ReplyDeleteThe analogy is more like insisting that Francis Scott Key, Betsy Ross, Andrew Jackson, Orville Wright, and Thomas Edison were not American, but were American Indians.
Oh, give it a rest. It's frankly embarrassing to see the way the Anglo-phile commenters here twist themselves into pretzels to try to claim as "English" any people they want to - and then turn around and use completely different rules in other situations.
Is Prince William English? Is the Queen of England? Their family line, the House of Saxe-Coburg, was imported from Germany in 1840 - that's hardly ancient history, but apparently it's sufficiently long enough to make them thoroughly "English". Yet the same people who think the Queen is English will conjure up fantastically convoluted arguments for why Edmund Burke or some other person with roots in Ireland going back several hundred years is not Irish. The intellectual consistency involved isn't even nil, it's in negative territory.
As I say, it's a sorry spectacle.
"Look here, Paul, you are British, I'm British, we're all British! You should say instead something like "The loyalists are coming" or "The Kings men are coming"."
ReplyDeleteHe did. He warned that the Redcoats were coming.
Here's the paper Steve...
ReplyDeletehttp://webpages.dcu.ie/~omalle/Politics%20with%20Hidden%20bases%20BJPIR.pdf
"The research presented here uses a novel method to show that contemporary party systems may originate much further back than is usually assumed or might be expected – in reality many centuries. Using data on Ireland, a country with a political system that poses signifi- cant challenges to the universality of many political science theories, by identifying the ancestry of current party elites we find ethnic bases for the Irish party system arising from population movements that took place from the 12th Century. Extensive Irish genealogical knowledge allows us to use surnames as a proxy for ethnic origin. Recent genetic analyses of Irish surnames corroborate Irish genealogical information. The results are particularly com- pelling given that Ireland is an extremely homogenous society and therefore provides a tough case for our approach."