David Quinn
Jack Charlton What liberals really lament is that they didn’t have everything their own way in the past, writes David Quinn
Jack Charlton was one of the most loved figures Ireland has seen in decades. It is a rare person who becomes a national hero to the extent that he did. He gave us the same sense of national pride that the moon landings gave America. It was that powerful and electrifying.
But amid all the commentary about the impact Mr Charlton had on the country has been a few digs at the kind of country we were in the 1980s, an attempt almost to turn that decade into the new 1950s, that is, a supposedly monochrome, miserable, repressed time which only Jack Charlton and the Irish soccer team added a splash of colour to.
A case can certainly be made against the 1980s. The economy was in a terrible condition, emigration was high, and the Troubles were still ongoing in the North.
Liberals lament the fact that they were heavily defeated in two referenda in that decade, namely the pro-life referendum of 1983 and the divorce referendum of 1986. But if these are indications of a ‘repressed’ time, then we were repressing ourselves given how we voted.
Strain
What liberals really lament is that they didn’t have everything their own way in that decade. Not to worry, they strained every sinew in their bodies in the years since and used all the mighty tools at their disposal, including RTÉ, to successfully overturn both results. Few peoples have been subjected to more sustained propaganda over a longer period to ensure we would vote the ‘right’ way next time.
I left school in the 1980s and went to Dublin City University (as it became known). The referenda of 1983 and 1986 did come up in conversation, but I don’t remember the arguments being especially bitter. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t as interested in social issues back then as I am now. Certainly, no-one I knew fell out over those referenda.
In addition, you were allowed to have a different view than the prevailing one without being made to feel like a pariah. This is despite the fact that students, even then, were a lot more liberal than the general population.
But maybe being in DCU made a difference. Most of the courses were practically orientated. There was student activism, but it was mainly laughed at by most other students, certainly in my course (business studies).
The lack of bitterness in those two referenda at DCU may also have been down to the fact that most of the students were from the country, not the liberal southside of Dublin like you would get at University College Dublin or Trinity College.
The political disagreements I mainly remember were about Charles Haughey versus Garrett FitzGerald, or about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
We also spoke a lot about the state of the economy and the very high unemployment rate among young people. We wondered if we would get a job after graduation or would be forced to emigrate for a few years.
That’s what I did. I didn’t even try to find a job in Ireland. As soon as I got my degree I headed over to Australia with a fellow graduate and stayed out there for more than six years. My friend is still there. We both married Australians.
We have far more drug abuse than was once the case. We have gangland violence and some really hideous killings. We have more people taking their own lives. We have more anti-social behaviour than we did”
There wasn’t any kind of atmosphere of repression at DCU. We would go out drinking, mainly on a Thursday night, because on a Friday most of the students went home to their families in the country.
The Dublin students might meet again on a Saturday night, or you’d meet your friends from school. Very few felt miserable because they were living in some kind of moral ‘police state’. The main obstacle to them doing whatever they wanted was a lack of money.
That lack of money meant there were few sources of entertainment aside from the pub. There was the odd concert, and Slane Castle began to host huge ones back then with massive acts like Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones.
Painting the 1980s in darkest colours basically suits the narrative of persuading the Irish people that we now live in a far more sunlit country, so to speak, than even in the recent past.
This is certainly true economically speaking, but on other fronts the picture is far more mixed. We have far more drug abuse than was once the case. We have gangland violence and some really hideous killings. We have more people taking their own lives. We have more anti-social behaviour than we did (on public transport, for example).
An awful lot of children now grow up without a father, or else they see their parents split up. Last year, 6,666 unborn children were aborted in Ireland.
Anxiety
Levels of anxiety and depression, especially among young people, seem to be increasing all the time, especially since the advent of smart phones and social media.
The growing campaign for compulsory consent classes in universities shows that not all is well in the supposed sexual Garden of Eden we’ve created for ourselves.
So, is today better than the 1980s in every way? Economically, yes (despite the coronavirus-inspired downturn), but in other respects the picture is very, very mixed. We’re better in some ways and worse than others.
Let’s simply allow that Jack Charlton brought huge happiness and joy to the nation and not use him to point-score about the years he led the Irish football team. He’d have made us happy in any era.