Peacefully Radical

There may or may not be lessons to be taken from history.  First and foremost, I like the stories and the weirder the better.  One of my favourites is the Siege of Munster (German Munster, not our Munster) during the early stages of the Reformation.  Growing up in a country with such Catholic baggage and where Protestantism had been the religion of the ruling establishment, I think we tend not to fully understand the excitement of the reformation, its iconoclasm, its radicalism, its individualism.  In an age where belief in God was deeply held and unquestioned and where that God could only be communicated with through a monolithic church, Martin Luther’s idea that your own personal faith in God alone will decide your destiny must have been thrilling for those (usually artisans and shop-keepers) willing to embrace it.  The new protestant theologians found that no one had exclusive ownership of the bible and its meanings. In this teaching we have the beginnings of individual liberty, freedom of expression and, paradoxically, secularism and atheism.  Quite how thrilling this could be was revealed in the religious-political mania that took hold in Munster in 1534. A group of radical Anabaptists took control of the city and declared a second Jerusalem.  They were generally artisans, bakers and tailors and the like.  They instituted adult baptism sparking a powerful revivalist movement amongst the population (in a time of high infant mortality though, early baptisms were a big selling point for the Catholic Church).  The expelled Bishop began to besiege the city and Anabaptist leader Jan Matthys, believing himself to be a second Gideon, led thirty men to attack the Bishop’s army. It didn’t go well.  Tailor John Bockelson took over the rebel city and things got really interesting.  He introduced communal living – which meant confiscation of all goods for his own use – and polygamy, promptly taking sixteen wives for himself.  Execution and torture became commonplace and a proto-secret police was developed. He anticipated 1970's British stand-up comedy by publically beheading one of his wives. The city was retaken and Bockelson was subjected to a pretty gruesome execution himself.  Not surprisingly Munster gave radical Protestantism a bad name and as a consequence pacifism became a cornerstone of many protestant groups thereafter.  An intense devotion to the bible and rejection of any interlocutor priesthood between the individual and God was politically unacceptable in the 16^th and 17^th centuries and successor groups to the Anabaptists, like the Mennonites, the Amish or the Dunkers could only insulate themselves from the full rigours of religious persecution by insisting on a quiet, peaceful existence.  This Friday WLR FM will broadcast the first of my two-part documentary on the Waterford Quakers, a religious group whose famous pacifism came from a similar political expediency.  The Quakers emerged from a revolutionary period in English history.  The political could not be separated from the religious during the English Civil War which ended with the execution of a King – an extraordinary event in 17^th Century Europe.  Lest the chopping off of the King’s Head might encourage too much revolution, the Cromwellian government was keen to keep a lid on groups like the Levellers, and the Quakers were regarded with suspicion, hence their attachment to peace.  However unlike other pacifist religious groups, the Quakers believed in a full engagement with the economic life of their environment.  This practical aspect of the religion sets it apart from protestant fundamentalism.  Clearly the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is an anathema to Quakers, but so too is some of the theology of protestant groups, particularly the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination.  Pre-destination basically dictates that God has already chosen those who will ascend to heaven before the creation of the world, before you or anyone else was born.  The doctrine removes all notions of individual responsibility and morality and is profoundly stupid.  The Quakers believed that we are put on this earth to make use of the talents God gave us, an individual relationship with God and bible is important, but it’s only a starting point.  The Quakers in Waterford were very useful; they started Jacob’s biscuits, Waterford Crystal, the Portlaw Cotton Mill, and the Neptune Shipyard.  They traded throughout the Atlantic seaboard and were responsible for a third of the trade in Waterford with no more than 2% of the population. They also saved the Irish language in Waterford through their intervention in Ring during the Famine.  In fact, you can be an athiest and still approve of Quakerism which may explain why athiest pin-up Christopher Hitchens sends his children to a Quaker school. Their contribution to Waterford is remarkable; I hope the programme does it justice.  Lessons from history?  Well, when the Malcomson family got fed up paying exorbitant fees to export their cotton from Portlaw, they decided to build their own ships in Waterford.  There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Pride of Place

There are few political creeds more enduring, powerful and ugly than nationalism.  That an accident of birth should instill someone with such misplaced pride and inform the political decision making process is plainly irrational. Yet despite being thoroughly discredited in two world wars, nationalism retains a powerful hold on modern political debate, eschewing universal principles in favour of chauvinism and creating unities amongst groups who really ought not to have that much in common.  In 2002, Gerhard Schroeder - Germany’s own “Tony Blair” - having failed to make much reformist headway in four years as Chancellor, fought the Federal Elections on anti-Iraq war, kind-of anti-American ticket and won himself another three years of ineffective rule.  George Bush wore a stars and stripes collar pin while cutting taxes for a relatively small section of the wealthiest Americans and got himself re-elected with the support of most of the poorest states in the union.  In Ireland we had nationalism real bad.  So pleased were we with winning independence from the British that we spent most of the first forty years or so of self-rule ignoring the socio-economic progress that was being made elsewhere in western Europe, so pleased with being a republic our political leaders had no difficulty allowing a foreign monarchy vet social legislation as long as it wasn’t the British.  Even when I was a kid, Charles Haughey was flogging nationalism every chance he could get to gain advantage over the liberal Garret Fitzgerald.  Historians continue to debate the relative merits of his premiership, but there’s no doubt that one of his main political planks was that he kind-of didn’t like the British , a policy which did exactly nothing for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed in the country who lived an impoverished lifestyle that his corruption had insulated him against.  He didn’t like the British and sometimes wore a fisherman’s hat; therefore he was a man of the people.  Nationalism says we are all of one tribe, we are all the same and in its ugliest form insists we all should think and act the same with any breaking of the ranks suspect at best, treasonous at worst. It’s simply not rational to invest pride, honour and meaning in the place you happen to be born in.  But then, if reason defines us humans, so too does our sometimes endearing, sometimes terrifying ability to abjure it.  Georges Clemenceau said a patriot loves his country, while a nationalist hates everyone else’s (to be fair Clemenceau spent most of his career hating the Germans). I think political nationalism with its flags, marches, drums and demagogues is often predicated on hating another place, but love of locality is much more of a simple fondness for home, less heralded but ultimately more keenly felt.  Loving your home town comes down to the mundane and banal everyday of life; the way people speak, the way people work, the way people insult.  It doesn’t depend on being the biggest or most beautiful place, just that it should have something unique only you truly recognize.  That uniqueness is usually formed by a combination of shared history and humour, and, from time to time, shared pain.  So when this everyday place you live in pulls off something extraordinary, when it does a good job, the most satisfying aspect is the opportunity to feel proud of something you take for granted a little bit too much.  To indulge in some of that more strident nationalistic pride in the place you love in a much quieter way every other day.  Waterford put on a great party last weekend, the oldest city in Ireland looked youthful, happy and optimistic, and all our visitors agreed - to which I always think “and they haven’t even seen the county yet!” It’s not important for me believe that Waterford is the greatest place on earth: you know, I’ve heard New York is pretty cool.  It just has to be the most Waterford place on earth but the weekend showed us just how great that can be.  I leave with the words of the great Kirk Douglas in Spartacus.  As the gladiators, resplendent in their homo-erotic shortened togas, and even more homo-erotic Brooklyn accents, debate where the best wine in the world comes from, Kirk interrupts and tells them that they’re all wrong: “the best wine in the world is from home, wherever home is!” The group then break into hearty laughing and back slapping, which is what Waterford should now do.