Old Man in a Hurry

That went well. Of course our attitudes to the British Royal Family have softened under the influence of Northern power sharing, increased pluralism in Irish society, historical reconciliation and most of all, Hello! magazine.  For the most part the country enjoyed having the Queen over, and rediscovered an affection for the Royals that was taboo for the last one hundred years.  But it was there.  There’s still a Queen’s Terrace in Waterford, and a Kings Terrace, tucked in behind the Garda barracks.  Most of our bigger thoroughfares were renamed after independence in favour of Irish patriots, with Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and Wolf Tone being the main beneficiaries, and my own favourite Michael Davitt not doing too badly.  The rebranding must have run out of steam before the local authorities got the Queens Terrace.  It’s remarkable though that a significant city centre street adjacent to our O’Connell Street retains the name not of a British Royal but a British Prime Minister. A Prime Minister who started his long political career as a High Tory, opposed the catholic emancipation, electoral reform and the abolition of slavery. It seems that Gladstone’s conversion to Free Trade in the 1840’s was the catalyst for a gradual move to Liberalism that would end with giving the vote to the working class, supporting trade union recognition for London dock workers, opposing imperial expansion at the very height of the British Empire and finally walking away from politics over the establishment’s refusal to allow the Irish govern themselves (hence the Waterford street name).  Liberal has become a dirty word for many commentators today, characterized as nothing more than a craven surrender to reaction under the guise of multiculturalism, a middle class combination of irrational distrust for the West and an inexplicable embrace of world music.  The Liberalism of Gladstone was a robust, evangelical and very effective creed.  Imagine winning an election in Britain in 1880 by suggesting that perhaps Zulus and Afghans had as much right to protect their homes from attack as an Englishman had? Suggesting that the solution to the Irish Question was to ask the Irish? While his support of striking London dockers in 1889 (when he was in his late seventies) was greeted with the kind of shock normally reserved for those who broke wind in front of the Queen.  He remained a dedicated Free Trader however and was opposed to the socialism-light tendencies of the new Liberals who revered him.  In a country where the main political parties are (or were until February) the  “Soldiers of Destiny” and the “Family of the Gaels” its hard sometimes to identify the conservatives, monetarists, liberals, and social democrats on the Irish political landscape, but this week we undoubtedly said goodbye to our own Liberal colossus, Garret Fitzgerald.  Gladstone’s Free Trade ideology was alive and well in Garret Fitzgerald’s belief in the European project and there was a Gladstonian sense of fairness at work in his attempts to deVaticanise the country in the face of fierce conservative opposition. Liberalism also informed his attitude to the north, the simple belief that northern unionists couldn’t be ignored, the traditional position of southern nationalists who impotently shouted “united Ireland” from their armchairs for sixty years.  Like Gladstone however he was pragmatic and was prepared to pursue his policy of not ignoring northern unionism by ignoring northern unionism to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  He had his critics and the country’s economic crisis hadn’t improved hugely when his defeat in 1987 seemed to signal the failure of his project.  Like many Liberals from the French Revolution onwards, his battles with conservatism did nothing to endear him to the Left for whom market freedom can be as offensive as social freedom can be to conservatives.  Life is tough in the middle, just ask Nick Clegg.  Gladstone’s growing radicalism in old age earned him the title of an Old Man in a Hurry.  Garret Fitzgerald too was full of enthusiasm for his new projects when I got the chance to meet him in March.  Being in possession of that kind of intellect at the age of 85 must have a hurrying effect.  Anyway, may be rest in peace, and may history show that he had a bigger impact on Irish life than Hello! Magazine.