Peter Costello
Jacob Rees-Mogg TheWorld of Books by the books editor
There is a striking phrase quoted in Dr Ian d’Alton’s review across the page. The author of the book in question takes on those who criticize Redmond for not holding to what Ronan Fanning characterized as ‘the nationalist delusion that the partition of Ireland was avoidable’.
Meleady considers the situation of O’Connell, Gladstone and Parnell, the great leaders of the 19th Century. O’Connell had to face a Protestant establishment, but at the date of his active life Belfast had not emerged as a great industrial city to rival Manchester or Glasgow.
It was this industrial power, supposedly derived from the “protestant work ethic”, that lead to the emergence of a new kind of Protestant Ulster leader from the 1870s onward as Belfast grew in influence through its ship building and other industries, unrivalled in the South.
Fuelled by wealth and inspired by imperial ambition, Ulster said “No”. And in 1922 that was enough. The Irish question passed for a time out of English politics, or rather out of Conservative politics. All the problems of the past seemed to be assuaged by the Good Friday Agreement.
But the Brexit revolution has brought them back again. The “Irish question” has returned with a vengeance.
Ignorant
What has been surprising is that the British Conservative and Unionist Parity which Mrs May leads seems so appallingly ignorant of history to which it looks for justification
Take Jacob Rees-Mogg [pictured], who is what the British press call a “Roman Catholic”. Of course his religious persuasion has led many here to admire him, as they seem to admire any right wing Catholic who has a chance of power anywhere.
But his comments over the last months that Mr Rees-Mogg is totally ignorant of Ireland, or (which may really be the case) intentionally misleading to his even more ill-informed English audience. But how could he be otherwise he was only born in 1969, the year the recent Troubles began?
“The nationalist delusion” over the Border is not now an Irish delusion, but an English one. The campaigners for Brexit have had decades to work on the ways and means by which they repute the plan could be carried out.
It is astonishing to see how what is very clearly a menacing furore is being manipulated not in the best inertest of anyone or anything, except personal advancement. This is true of Rees-Mogg. But even truer of Boris Johnson. Irish people may see him as sort of clown; a Tory of Turkish descent who has managed with an Eton education to advance himself into the heart of British politics opposing migration.
But long term readers of the press with good memories will recall that having been fired from The Times (where he got a job through the influence of his father, a former editor) for the serious journalistic sin of inventing a quotation, which he attributed to his own god-father.
Brussels
He was sent to Brussels by the Daily Telegraph. There he is said to have invented another great lie, the ever useful myth that the bureaucrats there were going to impose on Europe “straight cucumbers”, making illegal the twisted ones enjoyed by the English. This was an example of bureaucratic Europe. But it was still a lie, but a lasting one, for which he did not get fired.
He has seen in the Brexit adventure his means of getting into Downing Street. He too is happy to misrepresent the Border situation, indeed the long established facts of Irish history, for his own end.
But these men are all Oxford graduates, men who are proud of being able not merely to read a book (which as Dr Leavis taught us is not an easy thing). They are men who appeal to history, but only when it can be manipulated. For them all the eminent and energetic historians who have re-explored Irish/British history have laboured in vain.
I mentioned Dr Leavis above. But I suspect that a book closer to the heart of Rees-Mogg, Johnson and other Brexiters, might be a classic book which we may yet see adopted as a new “statesman’s manual”, William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity.