It is good that they do otherwise everyone would be stuck in a rut, confirming what Mohammed Ali said about people at 50 still holding the same opinions as they did at 20 - thirty years of their lives wasted.
John Maynard Keynes illuminated the point:
Nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but people also change not in accordance with new events, facts, information or persuasion. Their change of heart might be down to an opportunity which they then have to explain away in terms that are plausibility-challenged. It might also be down to fatigue, or deference to the anonymous pressure of the group. There are a multitude of reasons, not always wholesome, why people change their positions.
John Maynard Keynes illuminated the point:
When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?
Orwell once quipped that nine times out of ten revolutionaries are social climbers with bombs. Which helps explain why many former revolutionaries are often to be found leading the posse that has the task of ferreting out those who for whatever reason continue to believe what was said on the revolutionary tin.
It is not my intention to second guess the former leader of republican prisoners in the H Blocks, Sean Lynch, whose perspective has altered substantially. Last week a piece featured on this blog dissecting an interview given by him about the Good Friday Agreement. In the exchange Sean Lynch essentially tried to put a republican shine on a partitionist turd, seeking to spin the failure of the IRA campaign into some sort of success.
In the prison I got on quite well with Sean Lynch, finding him very personable and always friendly to me, even if we didn't share a common outlook on prison politics or the shape of things to come. I had a number of discussions with him, some of it politics, some of it simply chewing the fat. My only bad memory of our exchanges was not a fault on his part but was a result of him shouting over to me from the adjacent wing that Sean Bateson had just died in H7 from a heart attack at the age of 34, a few weeks short of his first parole.
Most people are unfortunate to end up in prison. In Sean Lynch's case he was fortunate ever to make it there having sustained serious injuries when the SAS tried to kill him. His fellow volunteer Seamus McElwain lost his life in the ambush, being given the coup d'grace by his captors as he lay wounded.
While I think the Robert Emmet 1916 Society Lisnaskea picked Sean Lynch up wrong when listening to his interview. the general thrust of their critique had much going for it. Whereas the Society claimed that the former Long Kesh IRA leader said during his interview that the IRA didn't get anything it wanted, to my ear he said it didn't get everything it wanted.
Even if I heard him right, it would still be more reasonable to claim that the IRA got everything it didn't want: which was a British declaration of intent to stay in Ireland until such times as a majority in the North consented to them withdrawing. Sean Lynch might flag up the border poll as an achievement but the border poll was not an objective of the IRA campaign, otherwise Gerry Kelly would not have bombed London on the very day the last border poll was held in 1973.
At the heel of the hunt the British state got its victory and the IRA its defeat. The primary objective of the British state was not to remain in Ireland forever and a day, but to leave Ireland on its own terms and not those of the IRA. Bringing the IRA to a position whereby its leaders both within Sinn Fein and without accepted, sans ambiguity, the British position of unity only by consent was an unmitigated success for the British and an unmitigated failure for the IRA.
Neither Sean Lynch nor anybody else who fought in the Provisional IRA will live to see a united Ireland. That is hardly a good return on a war that saw around three and a half thousand people killed, the bulk of them by the IRA. The real winners in this conflict on the republican side were those in the careerist cartel who surfed along the political career track on many tricolour covered coffins. Now in order to protect their political careers they agree to the volunteers who fought the war to be arrested by British police, tried in a non-jury British court and dispatched to the bowels of the British penal system.
I am happy Sean Lynch is living a long life which I hope continues for quite a while. But he is also living a wrong life where he feels the need to dress up the wrong outcome as the right one.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
Excellent description- "careerist cartel".
ReplyDelete"I am happy Sean Lynch is living a long life which I hope continues for quite a while. But he is also living a wrong life where he feels the need to dress up the wrong outcome as the right one."
ReplyDeleteI agree with all that.
Lipstick and pigs, come to mind.
(I also listened to the interview on YouTube and concur with AM's appraisal; To my imperfect hearing, he did say the 'IRA did not get everything'. The Society's take is both mischievous and puerile).
I think it was just a genuine mistake on the part of the listener rather than mischievous. Had it have been mischief they wouldn't have asked for the video to be included in the body of the article.
DeleteTrue that is possible AM. My take is equally plausible though. It is also possible that Lynch's words were deliberately misrepresented to create a straw man.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so because it is too easy found out.
Delete