Sir Roger Casement, before he was hanged for trying to free his country from British rule, achieved international renown for his humanitarian exposés of the impact of imperialism in Africa and the Amazon. Once he asked an African guard working for the despicable Belgian rulers of the Congo why he was willing to volunteer to track down and kill his fellow Africans, burning villages and chopping off limbs along the way. The guard responded honestly, to the effect that: “They do the same in my village and I would rather be with the hunters than the hunted.”
Under capitalism, every imperial enterprise ultimately ends in disaster for the whole population. But there is, too, always some section of the local population which benefits – or, at least, for whom the blow is softened – by collaborating with the colonisers. While they remain, the imperialists re-shape the country’s entire economy to their needs, usually in the extraction of natural resources, raw materials or even, enforced labour.
And when the colonisers are forced to leave, for whatever reason, they often attempt to leave the economic relationship with the imperial centre unchanged as far as possible. There is, too, a section of the population – the hunters, if you like – whose well-being depends on reforming the inherited economy and accompanying society as little as possible.
As the veteran socialist Tony Benn recently remarked, the struggle for Irish freedom is part of the great anti-colonial movement begun in the last century. But the British Empire was only just beginning its long descent when the Irish rebellion took place and the outcome was very much on its terms. It is this historical fact which shapes the contours of Irish society to the present day, and is the evolutionary starting point of the current economic crisis.
Today there are currently very few growth industries in the Irish economy. But one of them is the cottage industry in books that claim to explain the causes of the current crisis. I’m sorry to say, but this upsurge in activity has probably provided more of a marginal boost to the paper industry in Finland than it has to any greater understanding of the origins of the Irish economic slump.
Generally, these works ascribe the crisis to the immorality of Irish bankers, the recklessness of property speculators and the venality, even corruption, of its political establishment (none of which are untrue, but are hardly unique to Ireland). If they stray into the realm of politics at all, it is to bemoan the two-and-a-half party system (where the Irish Labour Party is the half, an appendage of the ruthlessly rightist Fine Gael party). This is nearly always followed by a wish for a more “grown-up” polity such as exists in Europe or even in Britain.
Conor McCabe’s great contribution to this debate represents an important break from this kind of thinking, widespread in a commentariat who were overwhelmingly boosters for the failed Irish model during the boom.
These included Britain’s own George Osborne, writing in The Times in 2006, less than two years before the greatest economic crisis in the history of the southern state.
Rather than reformulate the new received wisdom of this same body of opinion, Sins of the Fathers sets out with forensic precision the history of key policies since the state was founded via partition of the country in 1922.
Those policies are represented by four broad categories: housing, agriculture, industry and banking and some of the important links between them are revealed here.
The picture that emerges is of a series of policies that had a profound impact on southern Irish society.
These policies were always in the interests of a narrow elite – fiercely reactionary at home and entirely subservient on the world stage. Sins of the Fathers is essential reading for any student of Irish society and its specific colonial legacy.
