We Must be Talking

  The Irish War of Independence and the Truce         Gerry OShea The Irish War of Independence began in Tipperary in January 1919 when two policemen were killed by the local IRA. The war started slowly. Only eighteen people were shot during the whole first year. No wonder that the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, viewed these sporadic attacks by Irish republicans as the actions of “murder gangs” that the police were well-equipped to handle. The police force known as the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was augmented in 1920 by two groups that were recruited for the job in England. First, the Black and Tans were drawn from the disbanded soldiers who fought in the First World War. About 10,000 of these men arrived around March 1920. They were spoken of disparagingly as the Tans, and they were hated by the people because of their abusive and sometimes murderous behavior in dealing with the local population. The second group also sent over t...

  American Democracy in Imminent Danger            Gerry OShea The body politic in the United States has been going through a mind-boggling experience since the people voted for president on November 3 rd last year. American democracy is in a state of crisis.                    Prior to the election, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate and sitting president, declared on a few occasions that there could only be one winner in the contest with Joe Biden. He explained – with no ifs, ands or buts - that in the case of Biden getting more Electoral College votes than himself, the result would be bogus. What about the core value of democratic elections proclaiming that the candidate who gets the most Electoral College votes wins – a system that has been honored in American politics for 250 years? In replying to this obvious question, Mr. Tru...

  It is hard to find anybody who declares that he or she is in favor of abortion. However, the response changes drastically when the question asked deals with an existential situation: should a woman have the right to terminate her pregnancy or be legally compelled to carry it to term? The 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court ruling mandated a right to abortion based on privacy provisions which the judges claimed were implied in the wording of the United States constitution. Most conservative justices and a majority of Republicans favor overturning Roe, and they seem to have a clear majority in the current Supreme Court to do exactly that. If this occurs then each state will have to legislate on the availability of abortion in its own jurisdiction. Some will allow the procedure to continue along present lines while others will criminalize it and, presumably, mandate jail sentences for women and medical personnel who disobey the new law.   Prior to the 2018 referendum which lega...

  Inequality in America                 Gerry OShea Late in 2018 Pope Francis filled St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome with almost 6000 poor people and preached to them in words that Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin would have applauded. He pointed the finger of blame for the evils of poverty at greedy and selfish people “who feast on what in justice belongs to all.” These radical words – fully in line with traditional Catholic social teaching - bring to mind a statement by Pope John Paul 11, who many historians applaud as the main driving force in bringing down the ailing communist system in Russia and its Eastern European satellites. Reflecting, later in his life, on the rampant consumerism engulfing the West with all its attendant poverty and greed, he wrote: “I wonder which of the two systems is better.” America, the richest country in the world, is one of the most unequal in the distribution of its lar...

  Identity Politics in Northern Ireland            Gerry OShea Identity politics was the driving factor when Ireland was partitioned a hundred years ago. A section of the island in the northeast was set apart from the rest of the country strictly on the basis of allowing the people living there to maintain their allegiance to Britain, an entirely legitimate aspiration but one that was bound to lead to trouble because nationalists on the island weren’t even consulted about the division. The 1918 Westminster election ended the power of the Irish Parliamentary Party. They had fought for Home Rule for Ireland, and indeed a bill was passed in 1912 that granted a parliament in Dublin with limited power over the whole island. This was fiercely opposed by unionists in the Belfast area who refused to contemplate any allegiance to an assembly with a majority of Catholics. For them, Home Rule would bring about domination by the Cath...