The Old English (Norman)/Old Irish (Gaelic) Counter-Reformation in Ireland

The general point of demarcation between the Old English and Old Irish emerges obviously from the Cambro-Norman settlement of the mid 12th century & continued more or less unabated up until the Henrician programme of 'surrender & regrant' (1534) which had the effect of diluting in many cases the rigid polarity that existed between both groups. The Old English as a descriptive category is used by historians mainly from the 12th c (more rarely) up to the time of the Williamite Wars after which the distinction becomes less relevant owing to the fact that the Old English had by and large retained their catholicism throughout the Reformation and thus were lumped together (in English eyes at least) as belonging to the main body of Irish. Much to their own chagrin it may be said - see here the constitutional argument's of the barrister Darcy (of Galway OE stock) which reiterated his 'class's loyalty to the Crown in the face of Wentworth's (ie Strafford's) 'thorough' policy while distancing himself in turn from the more separatist and Gaelic inspired Geoffrey Keating (Séamus Ó Ceitinn) - who, like so many at the time, were very conscious that they came from 'mixed stock'.

The two identities (Old English & Old Irish) were thus conflated for all practical purposes during the Cromwellian confiscations and the Williamite settlement - with the more singular identity of Irish catholic beginning to supersede them. On the other hand you also had emerging the Anglican Protestant Ascendency, many of whom certainly began to view themselves in time as unproblematically Irish and the Ulster-Scots 'dissenters' who for long had to settle for second class citizenship within the hegemonic Anglican sphere. It's an important distinction obviously during the turbulent (religious & political) wars of the 17th c as the many alliances which were formed especially during the period of the Kilkenny Catholic Confederacy often unravelled on account of both traditions differing conception of what ends should be pursued. Generally speaking, the Old Irish (epitomised by Owen Ruadh O' Neill) fought for land confiscated after the Nine Years War (1594-1603) while the Old English fought to retain land which the 1641 rising had threatened.

There is plenty of evidence for intermarriage among the higher strata of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman families from the earliest times (c.1150 on) and increasingly I think after the consolidation of Gaelic lordships that came after the Black Death and up to the War of the Roses - the Anglo-Norman world being in retreat during this time. These were classic strategic alliances to shore up support or buttress territory and it's within the aristocratic realm that cultural diffusion became prominent. Likewise, the absence of these incentives (of consolidating land or influence) among the Gaelic population who were not high up in the pecking order of the derbfine meant a continuing isolation from Anglo-Norman influence.

A greater proportion of the Old English would have been city and town dwellers - inhabiting the likes of Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny, Dublin and coastal towns in Galway; all along the traditional confines of the Pale. Fermanagh, for instance, would have been Old Irish and well outside the Queen's writ right up until the Nine Years War where the Maguires were eventually subsumed, along with the rest of the Gaelic chieftains, into the new jurisdictions and baronies established by James I. The new tensions introduced under Henry's surrender and regrant (1534) may have made life uncomfortable at times but the biggest changes only began to occur after the Desmond Rebellion (c.1580) in Munster. From this point on Elizabeth's deputies took a much more aggressive approach demanding ever more exactions and professions of loyalty from the Gaelic lordships.

Maguire's territory stood as a buffer for a long time between the encroaching English forces which were ever moving slowly northward towards the O' Neill stronghold in mid-Ulster. Basically, the writing was on the wall for the Gaelic way of life everywhere unless some unprecedented alliance were to occur - which did happen in a sense when O'Donnell joined arms with Tyrone - they hung out as long as they could twisting and turning in the breeze offering Elizabeth all kinds of protestations of loyalty while they awaited Spanish help. When it arrived it was too little and too late. The war ended in 1603 and after a pardon and much chicanery O' Neill had his lands restored but on the foot of legal machinations by Sir John Davies (now de facto governor of Ulster) himself and the last of the Gaelic chieftains saw no prospect of their being able to retain their lands and title. So off they went as guests to the crestfallen Spanish monarchy.

The great carve up of Fermanagh and the rest of the Ulster territories now began in earnest (c.1607). Under the brehon system land was held and used communally and mixed arable farming was practised along with wide ranging use of pasture. Great herds of cattle known as creaghts would be circuitously driven around the territory of the respective Gaelic lordship; corn, oats, bacon and dairy being your staples. The potato wasn't introduced until after the Confederate Wars (Raleigh had only brought it back from the New World in 16-0- splash) but when it was eventually sown extensively my guess is that it went a long way to stave off social unrest. It yields more calories per acre than any other root vegetable and a tiny plot can keep a family fed on little else. This helped deal with the land use crisis which emerged in areas under plantation; the discontent with which actually provided the trigger for the Ulster uprising in 1641. The question of changing faiths only really entered the equation for those who held significant tracts of land as Penal laws placed restrictions on inheritance, buying more land, making improvements etc.

Even so, comparatively few, even among the largest landowners changed their faith. The numbers are quite accurate for this and I think it amounts to about a 5% conversion rate over the course of the 18th century which is quite small when you consider the amount of land that changed from Old Irish/Old English into new Protestant settler hands. Catholics held something like 85% of the land before the Confederate Wars but barely 10% after the Williamite Settlement. It was simply unheard of for small tenant holdholders (as they had now become - bound to their little plots) to change their faith irrespective of what persuasion their overlord was. The Ulster uprising itself and the subsequent 'massacre' of Protestant and Presbyterian English and Scots settlers, (though the numbers were wildly exaggerated at the time for political purposes), nevertheless attests to the widespread discontent that must have been present under the new arrangements.

Given the trajectory taken by later Irish history, not merely the Repeal and Home Rule Campaigns but the Gaelic Cultural Revival which preceded the War of Independence, it is the common and customary usage in this land to refer to the events of 1641 as an 'uprising' with all the connotations implicit in the term. To use the word 'rebellion' would be to grant retrospective legitimacy to the Jacobean power structures then foisting themselves upon Ulster. Of course, there is an irony in this popular interpretation of events in that the bonafides of the Stuart kingship itself were seldom questioned (at least officially) by the leaders of the uprising/rebellion. Then again, "Séamus an Chaca", ('James the sh*t') was the ignominious epithet later applied by the disgruntled Catholic peasantry on James II after he had left them at the mercy of William of Orange.

The coded use of language, even the contemporary suggestion of what words may be appropriate at what times to describe which events all point to a most interesting contestation of legitimacy. With the Union of the Three Kingdoms Gaelic bards were busily drawing up fantabulous lineages for the (ultimately Norman) 'Stewards' which had them descended from ancient (6th & 7th c) Irish high kings amidst constant speculation that the continental O'Neill's were preparing once again to lay claim to their own ancient titles in Tír Éoghain. There appears no doubt that it was papal and continental influence in the form of Catholic France and Spain which were still harbouring many Gaelic Irish refugees from the Nine Years War which influenced this type of propagandising amongst the scribes. But even if events in Europe and the wider religious conflict of the age prompted a re-examination amongst the exiled Gaelic chieftains and intelligentsia at a popular level there would still exist a fundamental absence of legitimacy particularly among those who were not 'deserving Irish', according to Davies schema, or who belonged to the extended derbfhine of one of the dispossessed Ulster Gaelic lords such as O' Neill or O' Donnell. The (in)famous 1641 depositions are in fact highly charged political documents which had an evident value to contemporary Crown policymakers in generating further anti-Catholic hysteria and raising revenues for more land confiscations and as such should be approached with caution.

Inevitably, to understand the composite identity 'Irish Catholic' which emerged after the Williamite Settlement we will have to consider the great question as to why the Old English failed to get swept up in the Henrician schism as of all the proposals put forward by the Confederate negotiators with Ormond the one issue which all along apeared to be utterly non-negotiable was their adherence to the Catholic faith. This was the crux of the reason why successive agreements broke down with Ormond, even though Charles at times, particularly after the Battle of Naseby in 1646 was willing to offer greater concessions to catholics, anything in fact, that would free up Confederate forces to fight for Royalists armies in England. So why did the Old English retain their catholicism in the face of intense reforming pressures from successive Tudor overlords? I think part of the reason at least resides in the manner by which both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish communities had been co-existing within a single ecclesiastical organisation for hundreds of years.

According to the French mediaeval chronicler Froissart (who spent time in the court of Edward III and Richard II) a meeting was once convened in 1395 by Henry Chrysted with leaders of some of the chief Gaelic dynasties; O' Neill (Ulster), O Conchobhair (Connaught), O' Brian (Munster) and Mac Murchada (Leinster) with the intention of getting them to learn and perhaps adopt some of the manners and mores of English courtly life. At this meeting, Chrysted, deputising for the English king, 'impertinently' dropped a diplomatic clanger by questioning their religious faith to which they replied 'warmly' and in unison that their belief 'in God and the Trinity' was as strong as any Englishman's. It's an episode, whether apocryphal or not, that highlights the divisions that nevertheless then existed between what historians call ecclessia inter Hibernicos and ecclessia inter Anglicos.

The Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) had notoriously banned Gaelic (Old) Irish from holding ecclesiastical office in areas under English administration but in many instances the law had to be overlooked owing to the power of the Gaelic chieftains in dioceses that were only nominally under English control. Throughout the 14th century the Irish church had a fully integrated episcopacy in both Gaelic and English dominated areas organised in the conventional Latin way with chapters, deaneries and parishes. If we take a look at the appointment of bishops during this century we see that just over half of the bishoprics were ruled by Gaelic Irishman. According to J. A. Watt in "Gaelic Polity and Cultural Identity"

- "the province of Tuam (Connaght) with eight dioceses was ruled almost entirely by Gaelic Irish bishops, while of the twelve dioceses of Armagh (Ulster) only a half had any prelates of the other nation. Two of the nine Cashel (Munster) dioceses invariably had Gaelic Irish bishops in the fourteenth century, and in two others the bishop was sometimes Gaelic Irish and sometimes not. No Gaelic Irishman was bishop in the five dioceses of the Dublin (Leinster) province in this period. Thus, of thirty-three dioceses, over half were ruled by Gaelic Irishmen".

Acknowledging the cleavage that existed culturally and poltically between the Gaelic lordships and the areas dominated by the Pale we nevertheless have to subscribe to the view that before the Reformation this common subservience to Rome; inhabiting the same church institutions and canonical laws in practice worked as a type of social cement. At the apex of church organisation some level of co-operation had to exist at the various synods and so on between the Gaelic Irish papal appointees and their English counterparts. Just as the English bishops in Ireland were selected through consultation with the English king so too the Gaelic bishops were appointed in deference to the wishes of the local Gaelic magnates. What distinguished church organisation in the Gaelic regions (inter Hibernicos) was the widespread acceptance of hereditary succession and the existence of ecclesiastical families. Thus Eoin O' Grada who became Archbishop of Tuam was the son of Eoin O Grada, Archbishop of Cashel as well as being the father of Sean O' Grada, bishop of Elphin. But the O' Grady's, as well being fully integrated within the Gaelic world often sent their sons to be educated on the continent or in England; Nicol O' Grada (Archdeacon of Killaloe) and Eoin O Grada (Tuam) were both graduates in canon law from Oxford.

If politically and culturally, the Gaelic and English worlds were irreconcilable, in the religious sphere at least there seems plenty of evidence of greater co-operation. One example of this is the case of John Colton, the English Archbishop of Armagh, who in 1397 had to visit the see of Derry which was deep in the heart of O' Donnell territory to vindicate the theoretical rights which he had over appointing a successor. Accompanied by Gaelic and Anglo-Irish priests (all details of the journey were recorded by a Meath priest Richard Kenmare) he spent five nights with Augustinians where the expenses were shared evenly and five nights hosted by Gaelic erenaghs - the farmers of episcopal mensal lands - who, consistent with their duties, made no distinction of the Archbishop's 'nationality' and provided for the whole retinue in a manner similar to the Gaelic custom of cuid oidhce or 'cuddy'. Again, throughout the journey of these wholly Gaelic dioceses his authority didn't appear to be questioned; he heard matrimonial cases, made an appointment to a rectory, setttled a dispute concerning episcopal property and finally on the Sunday of his visit to Derry was asked to celebrate mass 'for the thousands of people assembled out of respect for him'.

However, this friction free type of relationship between Anglo-Irish appointees to bishoprics within predominantly Gaelic dioceses may have been the exception rather than the rule. When Colton first assumed the post he was initially greeted with sustained opposition by the Derry chapter until his church subordinate (and O' Donnell clansman) Conchobhar Mac Carmaic Ui Domhnaill, bishop of Raphoe, interceded on his behalf to gain the respect of his Gaelic parishoners. Also, in line with this idea that a common faith necessarily healed tensions between the two groups a provincial decree issued by Milo Sweetman, (made Archbishop of Armagh in 1361) urged his fellow ecclesiastics 'to labour to their utmost to bring about and preserve peace between the English and the Irish of our province of Armagh, preaching peace between them ...'.

So, in many ways, the pre-Reformation church in Ireland whose dioceses often encroached and spilled over into both domains was a potentially and oftentimes potent bridge between peoples of the Gaelic lordships and the English administered areas. It may be suggested that the ties which bound them together ecclesiastically where sufficiently strong to survive the convulsions of the Elizabethan plantations and in fact given the increasingly widespread occurence of intermarriage among Gaelic nobles and Old English this religious affinity emerged as a type of indispensable negotiating platform - a commonality both were loathe to jettison amidst the forcible imposition of English laws and administration and the final negation of the Gaelic polity.

Kenneth Nicholls takes the same line with respect to a decline in the pre-Reformation Irish Church (both in its Gaelic and old English dimensions and similarly points to the mendicants as though they were the only functional religious body) but I’m wondering whether this is too harsh a judgement. After all, when we consider the reputed strength of popular opposition to Henry’s reforms - where ‘heretical’ bishops and clerics appointed by the Crown are often being run out of the towns and parishes and the fact that the only support the new Protestant Archbishop Brown can get is from a handful of privy councillors - it all indicates a native resistance perhaps tutored in advance by an effectively active clerical order. But, as he says himself, apart from some work on the organisation of the Church there’s been very little scholarship done on the actual religious life of the people in the later mediaeval period (up to the schism) so it’s difficult to gauge how widespread the discontent was on a popular level as we simply don’t know how deeply implanted were the Roman doctrines.

The multitude of shrines and sites of pilgrimage he dismisses as a type of ‘secular cult’ and a form of worship not integrated in any intelligible way with the teachings of the Roman Church but this is reductive and misleading; imputing in fact a ‘shallowness’ of faith ready to be swept aside by the more rigorous anti-idolatry of the Anglican species of Calvinism. Even an historian of Roy Foster’s calibre allows his protestant heritage to betray himself by regarding Marian devotion as a type of superstition - on a certain level it’s difficult to dispute - but when your attempting an impartial history of a country torn in half by the Counter-Reformation it’s not a terribly helpful characterisation.

In an article co-written with D. B. Quinn (“Ireland 1534”), Nicholls regards the role of hereditary appointment to benefices in the Church inter hibernicos as ‘perhaps a significant factor’ in the failure of the Reformation to take hold in Ireland. The argument is that a cosy system had developed in the Gaelic and Gaelicised regions whereby benefice holders in the higher ecclesiastical offices had need of a papal dispensation to secure office on account of the Church’s position on celibacy. This had led, he argues, to a 'culture of contact' which viewed the Church not as a rapacious collector of tithes or as a vaguely tyrannous and imposing force, as was the case in England, but instead as a benevolent power bestowing much sought for favours - an arrangement which, he also argues, contributed to the ‘laicisation’ of the clergy (a euphemism for corruption and incompetence in this instance).

The trouble with this line of debate is that many (if not most) of the high ecclesiastical offices within the Gaelic lordships weren’t actually held on an hereditary basis and the appointments were quite often of a very high calibre contrary to the impression he conveys. After the Archbishopric of Armagh was roped into the English fold in the 14th century (see John Colton above) the most important ecclesiastical office (viewed from an Old Irish perspective) became that of the Archbishopric of Tuam which had consistently noteworthy Gaelic scholars as incumbents right up until the Act of Supremacy. Muiris O’ Fithcheallaigh for instance was Professor of Philosophy at Padua and had written celebrated commentaries on the works of Duns Scotus before his papal appointment to the seat of Tuam in 1506. Hardly evidence of a Church in decline or one not accustomed to taking itself seriously.

Having said all that, despite their native Gaelic background and their obvious allegiances with the kinship structure into which their born it would be a mistake to view ecclesiastics of O’ Fithcheallaigh’s stamp, once in office, as simply becoming the mouthpiece of whatever Gaelic lordship happened to be dominant given the long standing tensions that existed between canon law and brehon law - not to mention the vaguely concealed contempt found in the various Annals for the seemingly senseless endemic warfare of rival chieftains.

As an example of the strength of the Counter-Refomation in an Old English redoubt a amusing account of the succession of Queen Mary in 1553 by the exasperated (Anglican) Bishop Bale who found that ‘within little more than a month' of her proclamation in London, the citizens of Kilkenny had resumed;

" .. the whole papism without either statute or yet proclamation .... they rung all the bells … they flung up their caps to the battlements of the great temple (St. Canice’s Cathedral), with smilings and laughings most dissolutely … they brought forth their copes, candlesticks, holy water stock, cross and censers, they mustered forth in general procession most gorgeously, all the town over, with Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis and the rest of the Latin litany .. "

One thing is clear about the continental exodus and the burst of seminary activity that followed the Nine Years War is that the ‘formulated strategy’ entailed a self-consciously propagandistic reworking of Gaelic resistance to the Tudor wars of conquest as a spirited defence of Roman Catholicism. This was done not merely to appease the prejudices of their French and Spanish hosts but was in fact the only intelligible strategy left available to them - what better way to recover lands and titles if not by harnessing the resources of the post-Tridentine Habsburg Counter-Reformation. In the imaginations of the exiled Irish Franciscan and Jesuit scribes now ensconced in Louvain the complex thread of alliances (both Old Irish and Old English) which lay behind the Geraldine revolt are eschewed in favour of a focus on Silken Thomas last minute appeal to the papacy; whatever else lay behind the Earl’s grievances, which were a long time brewing and predated the reform; religion can scarcely be said to be one of them.

In the long saga of the Desmond rebellion Gerald Fitzgerald can hardly be said to have given a farthing for anything other than the retention of his lands and the rights to maintain his lordship in the customary Gaelic manner; the opposition here centred solely around the impositions of the new Elizabethan office of Lord President of Munster which attempted to convert The Fitzgerald’s ‘cuddy’ into taxable Crown income which combined with the perennial baiting of his long time rival ‘Black Tom’ Butler threw him into frenzies of revolt. It’s true his kinsman James Fitzmaurice (perhaps ahead of his time) rallied bravely under a crusading banner but once his Spanish intrigues failed to net any tangible support his followers soon flocked back to the distinctly irreligious Fitzgerald - threatening to hang his Spanish priest as they done so. And what of Tadgh O Cianain’s depiction of Hugh O’ Neill as the devoted pilgrim? As Seán Ó Faoláin has put it;

"It is one of the most dismaying falsifications of history that this man, who as a European figure in his intelligent awareness of the large nature of the conflict in which he took part - has been lost to European history, and made part of a merely local piety. Any nation that tries to shelter its history and its heroes from comparisons is merely trying to shelter them in a vacuum, the result of which can only be that blank and vacant Requiescat which, as far as the life of this world is concerned, has for centuries obliterated O’ Neill. Those who, after the fashion of Archbishop Lombard, made a pious patriot of him have denied him the intellectual judgement to which his stature entitled him… he understood that he and they were not merely local pashas fighting for local power but part of a world conflict .. "

Was this true? Was the Tudor conquest and the Confederate Wars part of a "world conflict"? Was it perceived as such by the generality of Irish struggling in the wake of successive plantations? In many respects obviously this case can be argued and no doubt some of the participants were mutually emboldened by religious ties of affinity along with long held clan-based ones which through years of intermarriage soldered together the ancient and familiar Old Irish/Old English dichotomies but recent research has shown that among the aristocratic elements at least other factors were certainly just as influential.

In Micheal O'Siorchu's "Confederate Ireland (1642-49)" which is the most detailed examination yet of the Confederate council and administration the author has abandoned the traditional dichotomy of Old English and Old Irish in favour of a tripartite scheme which sees the Kilkenny factions split off into a 'peace party' 'moderates' and a more radical 'clerical party'. His main justification for this is that both the Old English and Old Irish who had political leverage within the Confederacy were generally derived from a conservative landowning class whose shared aim was to ensure that the rebellion didn't become so chaotic as to threaten their propertied status. The consensus viewpoint at least is that the Old Irish who were attempting to have lands and titles restored from the period of the Elizabethan and Ulster plantations were diplomatically isolated by the 'peace party' during the negotiations with Ormond thus leading to the eventual breakdown of that alliance and the greater susceptibility & weakness of the Confederacy to halt the progress of Cromwell and the Parliamentary Army.

Most, if not all of the general narratives highlight the division but then again none of the analysis hitherto has been specifically focused on the nuts and bolts of the Confederate Supreme Council and General Assembly. (He is partly indebted to Donal Cregan's famed but unpublished Ph.D thesis on the inner workings of the Confederate administration which Theo Moody held under lock and key for thirty odd years) Anyway, I don't think it was Cregan's work that prompted his re-evaluation but just a plain old hankering for a little more conceptual clarity.

What Ó Siochrú found as a researcher is that the traditional dichotomy has its limitations as an analytic tool for the obvious reasons that several of the "Old English" were in the Rinucinni camp (Oliver Plunkett, Lord Louth, Piers Butler etc.) many of the "Old Irish" nobles were in the 'Ormondist' peace camp and others again had backgrounds and lineages which defy any kind of crude categorisation. Richard Butler (Viscount Mountgarret) for instance was the son of Grany Fitzpatrick and her father was Brían Óg Mac Giolla Phádraig before he anglicised and accepted the earldom of Upper Ossory as part of Henry's surrender and regrant. Butler even fought in the Nine Years War on the side of Tyrone along with his father Edmund - they were both pardoned by Elizabeth in 1600 and managed to retain their lands but the Crown always viewed them with suspicion. He even married Hugh O' Neill's daughter (Margaret) in 1596 so his heirs would have had strong claim to the O' Neill title and estates should the Ulster plantation be somehow reversed - which of course it was, partially at least, in 1641. Wentworth in the 1630's intimidated him into ceding portions of his estates to New English protestant settlers and in fact his complaint against these actions wound up as part of (now) Strafford's impeachment by the Long Parliament.

Yet Butler is habitually glossed by Patrick Corish, Aidan Clarke and Roy Foster as the head of the "Old English" Ormondists as though there were nothing unproblematic about this designation. His political position appears to be quintessentially "Old English" with respect to his stance on the Inchiquin truce and Ormond negotiations yet he is clearly straddling 'both worlds' and occupying a type of mental space or cultural dualism which would be much more alien, for example, to the more Anglocentric world-view of some other of his fellow Confederates such as Fleming or Castlehaven.

Then there's Donough O' Callaghan, Daniel O' Brien and Donough MacCarthy (Viscount Muskerry) - all 'Old Irish' yet still included in the 'Old English' group - it's just all very messy conceptually - and Siochrú's intention appears to be just to clean things up a little bit but he's also hinting at other dynamics (such as the land issue) - which is being veiled by imputing possibly spurious divisions. The "Old Irish" generally fell behind the "clerical party" according to O' Siochrú's schema and behind the "nunciosts" according to Foster and Corish yet which "Old Irish" were these if not the Ulster Old Irish who pinned their hopes on O' Neill's demands to have the plantation reversed?

Rinucinni was hellbent on continuing the war at the most difficult of times and in the Ormond negotiations was the most intransigent of opponents offering very little wriggleroom for the Royalists. At times, Charles representatives simply had nothing to hang their hat on - depending on the period in question Rinucinni's demands ranged from full restoration of Catholic rights ie all "the Graces" - dropping of recusancy fines etc .. basically offering a position as co-equals with Anglicans (but nobody could countenance bringing such a proposition back to Charles camp). At one point he even wanted to resume the war in Scotland which was totally unfeasible logistically. But no matter who the papal delegate was they would still have to confront the bitter fallout that lay down the road between Owen O' Neill's Ulster army demands for full restoration of land title and the unwillingness of the more conservative "Old English" landowners (again, I use these descriptors with caution) to seek any alteration to the property status quo. Many of the Confederate Old English in the "peace party" were well established finacially and only sought to achieve minimal concessions on the religious issues.

Despite his early successes, the general level of support from the papacy and the Catholic powers is undermined in a large way by the failure of Rinucini to achieve a broad consensus among the Confederates. Leaving aside the military, political, “clique-based” or interpersonal reasons for that breakdown what I find interesting is Rinucini‘s comments on the faith of the Old English;

“these people are catholics only in name; the ideas they hold are almost the same as those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth”.

It appears that even at this relatively late stage in the Counter-Reformation, when the Roman church had fully mobilised it’s opposition to the schism, that the Old English were still not susceptible to the dictates of the papacy or to the counter-thrust outlined in the post-Tridentine reforms. What does that tell us about the nature of their relationship to the Crown? If, as we know, they failed to be swept up in the Henrician schism, why then didn’t they align themselves more firmly with the efforts of Rome to strengthen the institutions of Catholicism? Aidan Clarke, in his bibliographical supplement to A New History of Ireland III, 1534-1691 provides a short summary of some of the main arguments from academics who have attempted to answer this question and concluded by quoting Karl Bottigheimer who said “the puzzle of why the reformation failed remains an unanswered question”. I find the lack of academic consensus on this point intriguing.

Clearly, there were some Old English who made considerable efforts to advance the cause of Rome, indeed dedicated their lives to the task, as we see from the numbers emigrating to the continental seminaries. But there must be some other impulse which induced non-conformity amongst the Old English population which was frankly unrelated to the question of adhering to the old faith. We are familiar with the ‘colonial nationalism’ that emerged among the Protestant ascendancy in the middle of the 18th century and which reached its apogee during the American war of independence but would we be too wide of the mark to suggest a virulent form of Old English ‘colonial nationalism’, perhaps traceable in the ashes of the Geraldine revolt, which instead provided the spur to resist the Reformation? In fact, I think we can trace Darcy’s Argument and much of the opposition to Wentworth’s administration to this period of Geraldine dominance that followed the realignment of power in Ireland after the War of the Roses. There was, in this view, an Old English colonialist nationalism which sought greater autonomy from the Crown through a strengthened Dublin parliament which, obviously, wasn’t gerrymandered in favour of Protestant New English settlers. Is there a sense in which this parliamentary struggle predominated within the mindset of the Old English to the detriment of their alliances with the Old Irish who may have had different conceptions of kingship?

We can also add that the Old English after the Treaty of Limerick would have been far better poised to milk what advantage they could out of the new Penal Law political dispensation which arose. The laws were applied stiffly at first, selectively afterward (not wholly erased till the 1829 Emancipation and then with some qualification) and the OE would have been better placed to offer itself as a buffer class between the protestant ascendency and the numerous largely dispossessed Gaelic derbfines (extended families). Tough to find concrete sociological indicators on this one but my guess is that the successful merchant and trader class that did arise from the ranks of Irish catholics during the 18th century would have been drawn largely from former well-heeled families of the OE; though excluded from the legal profession, from civic or political office they nevertheless would have had greater 'cultural proximity' to the presiding English administration. This domain was in any case their bread & butter for centuries operating from harbour towns within the Pale in areas like Cork, Limerick, Dublin & Galway.

On the other hand, property was held communally within the Gaelic clan structure and each member of which (down to g.g g/son) would have had very definite ideas of land usage & entitlements accorded to them through the derbfine. So, the Old Irish in contrast were to a great extent still bound to one another socially in a way which the new laws couldn't or in fact never managed to quite penetrate. John Davies, for instance, who oversaw the Ulster plantation was astounded at how many generations back 'a common peasant' could recite his lineage in order to bolster his claims for usage of a particular plot of land. Many of these Gaelic clan derived networks of loyalty stubbornly persisted in the face of their evident social & political demotion and not a few pragmatically broke rank altogether. You can see this splintering process in action in satires like the 17th century Parliamint Chlainne Thómais where 'upwardly mobile' Gaelic speakers are lampooned by the bard for adopting English customs & laws and generally ingratiating themselves with the new colonial administration; teaching their children the tongue of the 'sassanach' and so on.

The whole notion of a 'Hidden Ireland' as advanced by Corkery is pretty easy to fathom under these circumstances; almost as though there were now two parallel worlds in Ireland. The official one which had it's seat of power in Dublin Castle, lorded over by a triumphant Anglican ascendency and to which the former OE reluctantly aligned itself & a subterranean Gaelic one which continued to maintain it's traditions stubbornly in the face of their political isolation. It was from the 'grassroots' of this latter grouping which evidently emerged the many 'secret societies' whose modus operandi eventually morphed into the oath-bound organisational structure of the Fenians after the famine.

Corporate Carnage

Corporations employ a great proportion of the world's inhabitants (workers) who find themselves for the most part engaged in profitable labour whose end-product is thought desirous by another large proportion of the world's inhabitants (consumers). The entire process may be seen as converting raw materials into something generally regarded as useful and beneficial. Corporations have risen in extent and importance over the decades and the laws which previously constrained their development have been relaxed somewhat to allow, particularly in the case of the larger corporate entities, for vertical integration, the consolidation of supply chain linkages and the internationalization of their activities through the promotion of the principles of free trade. What could be inherently wrong with such a seemingly sensible arrangement?

A corporation simply put is just a highly organised and disciplined form of mass labour whose ultimate success rests upon the competence of it's executive, middle management, blue collar components, and to some degree, it's investors. If we hadn't got corporations we would have to think of some other way of organising ourselves into a form of labour that would ultimately produce similarly constructed outfits - differing in name only and all to achieve precisely the same ends - unless we are content to down tools and allow ourselves starve to death. To obtain precious metals from the soil such as gold, platinum, zinc, or copper; specialist machines would still have to be constructed and experts trained. Trucks would still have to be dispatched and workers hired to collect, distribute and refashion the raw material. All of these activities would have still to be recompensed in some fashion - for who could labour for any duration without being provided the means to sustain himself.

Were it not a 'corporation' sustaining and ultimately controlling this network of activities it would have to be something else which perforce would necessarily carry many, if not all, of the corporation's basic characteristics. In addition, of course, corporations require a surplus fund of capital to pay their workers, maintain and enhance operational infrastructure (R&D), and generate and sustain long-term markets for their produce (advertising).

Should we, on top of all this, expect corporations to somehow evolve a 'moral compass' attuned to human rights and the long-terms needs of the global ecology. Obviously not, for the successful avoidance of such concerns is precisely what gives each corporation their all-important marketplace edge. Those who do not fully exploit all the available opportunities for attaining the cheapest form of labour, raw materials and the means of effectively distributing their end-product will inevitably fold into oblivion. This is life led in the raw. It is at once pure, beautiful and true - as it arguably corresponds to our most basic instinct - the innate need to obliterate and destroy, - properly called 'Thanos'.

No-one who has spent anytime meditating the facts of human nature, evolution, and the growth of civilizations can have any doubts as to the general truth of this proposition (surely). Properly cornering the market, trapping one's prey, yielding an outrageous profit, is in a psychological sense indistinguishable to surrounding the enemy, offering desultory terms, pauperising them, then laying waste to their homeland. An act intoxicating to the victor, an obscenity for the victim and one which will exert a macabre attraction on the neutral - who finds himself torn between admiration and disgust amidst the the warring polarities of his own 'Eros' and 'Thanos'.

So this is capitalism pure and simple - the triumph of the martial energies of the death instinct. There are creative components of the psyche deployed in weaving one's way through the marketplace but ultimately here Eros is superseded. And, since Thanos is an innate instinct which cannot be erased or programmed out of our systems we must banish it somewhere and a 'globalized competitive business model' is as good a place as any, for the present - and certainly superior to entrusting it to the military complex - from whence it is only just emerging. In time too, hopefully, as the species evolves and attains greater awareness the 'corporate model' itself will become outmoded, wind itself down and spill Thanos into a thousand benign tributaries, destined to be absorbed by all-encompassing Eros - which begets all the principles of responsible governance.

Institutions once in place cannot be soon unravelled and recommenced. In the West's evolved systems of parliamentary democracy we have found the natural home of 'our' Eros - they offer a counterfoil to the knowing destructiveness of capital - ideally it should tweak its growth, constrain it's energies, and, to a certain extent, reallocate it's surpluses - but 'Capital's 'dynamism' shouldn't be misconstrued to the extent that it is conceived and promoted as 'leading the way' - it should rather be recognised for what it is, a force blind and amoral - true responsibility can only lie in the executive branches of government. The problem with the events of the post-soviet collapse is that Capital, facilitated by the international financial institutions, used this opportunity to extend itself unchecked into the domain of vulnerable emergent economies in addition to creating for itself a globing trading environment governed by rules written by its own officials and almost exclusively geared to promoting it's own interests.

In the short term, this was beneficial for Fortune 500 and their investors but it's insane to think that this fickle whirlwind of investment and retrenchment can be allowed twist and turn unchecked about the globe. A globally mobile unfettered Capital urgently requires a strong international executive - somehow composed of reasonably 'disinterested' characters - Plato's philosophers would be nice - who have preferably eschewed narrow national considerations and are prepared to commit to the larger picture. Is this happening already - are there international arenas with wise counsels deliberating with the confidence of all the globe's governments? - all I hear of are G8s, G77s, BRICS, and divisive security council vetos. Capital has been let loose, and what really are the means available to shackle it?

A Man of Culture

Most of the non-European immigrants we get in Ireland are already "Westernised" in that vague sense that they wish to step aboard the property express and have all the goodies often denied them in their place of origin. I used to work in a refugee center and irrespective of nationality; Cameroonian, Congolese, Iranian, Egyptian, Muslim/Christian or whatever, it's the base economic determinants - the need for a job and a roof over their head which obliterate any differences that arises with respect to the cultural domain, whatever they may be.

I've often heard the attitude expressed (by people who should know better) - "oh, we can't be letting anymore in, look at us now, we've worked so hard to get where we are (pre-bust Celtic tiger) they're taking Irish jobs and blah blah blah". Well, I'm kinda happy to say that the world has shrunken somewhat and allowed us to absorb more diversity. There is a wicked closed-mindedness among all too many here which emerges from time to time - there was scarcely a black man in the entire country fifteen years ago but now we have been forced to accommodate a different viewpoint through the high influx of non-nationals and swallow at times what seemed to me from some quarters an innate racist mentality.

It's important to preserve what is distinct about our own culture and allow that to be fostered as much as we can (Gaelic games, the Irish language, a sense of "Irishness") - and this entails obviously keeping the importance of past struggles for nationhood on the public radar and not allowing ourselves to collapse into some petrified mirro-image of our nearest neighbours. But oftentimes it's hard when attempting to preserve thse atributes which we hold to be distinctly our own to mistake within ourselves another impulse which seeks to absorb from the wider world what may be termed 'a modernising impulse' or simply the collective positive trends of what is transpiring in the international sphere. Along with a sense and even a reverence of nationality comes too an acknowledgement that for the world to work in any practical sense there must be a global collective trend towards displacing our own prejudicial love for locality and embracing all that which can bind us together and bring us forward.

There is always going to be a level of political sovereignty sacrificed within a federalised European system for instance simply because we have ceded control over so many dimensions of an economy which is now more thoroughly integrated within that system. The evidence is undeniable that this integration has helped in the past and continues to do so - we were always net beneficiaries of EU grants, aids and subsidies and up until the recent fiasco were only beginning to wean ourselves off it's enormous teat - notwithstanding the enormous and ongoing CAP subsidies to our farmers.

All of this however is a little tangential to the issue of preserving our "cultural integrity" unless you are of the viewpoint that there is something in the nature of the European project itself which denudes specifically Irish cultural traits. There are no shortage of missives from Brussels which stress the basic integrity of individual member states when it comes to matters of national "cultural" importance - the very insistence of our own MEP's in having the Irish language promoted within its chambers is in fact an instance of this. What goes on in the specifically cultural domain will always be a matter for individual members themselves to hammer out - this guarantee is in fact enshrined in EU law. Come hell or high water though, whether the EU survives in it's present form, whether further integration takes place along political or economic lines or whether it buckles under the strain of the present difficulties and collapses altogether what is specifically unique to Ireland culturally will remain largely unchanged.

What does change of course are people's attitudes and if the integrative claws maximise their grasp a little more you will see a repulsive force developing within the country - but this will emerge I'd suspect more out of a fear for ceding rights in the political or economic domains than any wish to preserve what is distinctively Irish; people look to their pockets and their autonomy before they register any threats in the national cultural domain. Though it is plausible to suggest that any further steps towards integration need to be looked at closely - the appointment of an EU Foreign minister for instance is a step laden with pitfalls for individual countries who wish to maintain an independent line on foreign policy. That to me is an area which demands the greatest scrutiny.

It's also well to reflect on what we're talking about precisely when we bring up the subject of culture and ask ourselves likewise what are the dangers really in allowing a degree of immersion to occur between peoples of differing backgrounds. If you spend any length of time in the company of people from a vastly different background to yourself the very first thing you will notice (after the initial sense of strangeness maybe) is how completely alike they are to you and your own - as most everyone, everywhere (apart from the comparative few) are engaged in the business of survival; they must work, they must rear families, they must put bread on the table, or, if they are not already doing so they will generally aspire to these ends and they will carry out all this in a usually supportive extended network of family and friends; that really is the bedrock of all cultures. And everything else which marks the distinction between cultures - the way we marry, wear our clothes or cook our meals, the language we speak, the way we practice our faith or even the way we don't have a faith, all of these things are but secondary, tributary offshoots of the one fundamental bedrock of commonality that exists among us.

I have to mention a Muslim friend of mine from Niger who this afternoon dropped in to see me on his way back to Cork having spent time back home in Africa. He came to this country several years ago as an asylum seeker, got working, but then got involved in a pretty nasty affair through no fault of his own but was taken by the public prosecutor here to be the principle guilty party - something which I knew to be entirely untrue. Anyway, I met other Muslim friends of his who are staying here and we co-ordinated a response of sorts - visiting him in the detention centre and making sure his lawyer was well briefed as to every particular. The prosecution as I saw it hadn't a leg to stand on and despite my insistence to the investigating detectives that certain other lines should be pursued as opposed to the ones they were then taking - they continued with their brief, which was essentially that of the aggrieved party (they were very serious charges) and the man (my friend) remained in detention for over four months - over the Christmas in fact - where he was roughed up, intimidated and harassed basically into "making a confession".

This scandalous state of affairs was in no way aided by the fact that he was a black Muslim and when we eventually got our day in court the judge saw quite clearly what the truth of the matter was - dropped all charges, had him immediately released and within the month he received his official papers granting him refugee status in this country - where he works to this day. He went back home to Africa two months ago where he saw his family for the first time in several years and having returned dropped in to see me - which he needn't have done as we have been out of contact for some time - told me how he has been getting on, how he has been saving up to start his own small business, showed me pictures of his new born daughter and finally presented me with a handsome native African leopard-striped leather briefcase. We chatted for twenty minutres or so and having given him directions out of the maze of an estate in which he managed to find me - he went on his way.

That, my friends, was a man of culture.

The Judgement of a Higher Morality

What do we normally think about when it comes to making moral decisions? If it is a question of not wishing to be late for work or an appointment then the normative moral axis seems to pivot on the disrespect we do not wish to show to those who would otherwise expect us to be punctual. Yet, perhaps our tardiness bespeaks an altogether different type of morality awaiting to be born. We may be late for such occasions as we are unconsciously striving to be free from the unwanted bonds which such arrangements, persons or institutions are imposing upon us. Therefore the most moral act in this instance would seem to be to make acquaintence with our unconscious stirrings, lay them out in the open and act upon their promptings.

Likewise, it is often the case that continuing working in a dissatisfying environment leads to the erosion of our character; we become depressed and sullen as our real energies are being stifled. We often feel that our earliest imagined notions of what type of person we wish ourselves to be is being daily compromised through association with people whose interests and attitudes towards life act as a continual drain upon the very aspirations we wish to foster.

Let us suppose I am working for a tobacco firm yet I hold it immoral that the company knowingly produces literature which contradicts all the scientific data which confirms the link between lung cancer and passive smoking. I write a circular to the management outlining my concerns and suggest our latest advertising campaign should instead concentrate on informing the public just how grisly a fate it is to have a cancer eat its way through your vital organs. If such a campaign is not commenced forthwith I threaten to quit my quite dispensable and very low-paid job as a cigarette packer. Naturally, I am promptly sacked and as I am handing in the relevant forms to the local unemployment exchange I think how unsympathetic my wife has been during this period of my advanced "moral introspection"; as our four children will all have expectations of entering college someday and clearly social welfare payments aren't going to cover a fraction of these expenses. "Our veins are the smithy of the cosmos, only through steel can it perpetuate itself, or allow itself to be felt", I tell her. She laughs of course and calls you a madman. Nevertheless, I have surely increased my "moral strength" - or have I?

Rarely are moral decisions determined "in vacuo", most of the time we are confronted with a competing necessity and it is our task to weigh up the relative strengths of each opposing claim. Generally speaking, for most of the populace the necessity to provide for one's family and the impetus to give them as best a material life as is feasible trumps any considerations that the occupation one has chosen to do so may be questionable from a moral perspective. The over-riding moral consideration in these instances lies in the fact that one is providing the means whereby the family can thrive and survive - thus "morality" properly speaking, only exists as a value which is selectively endorsed when it is suitable to do so. We now begin to see that there are varying interlapping shades of morality whose spectra combine to give way to what may be called the judgement of a "higher morality", here defined as the solution arrived at through the overriding or negation of now subsidiary moral claims.

In the first instance the budding moralist sadly concludes that his position in the plant is thoroughly expendable; another man could be trained in forty minutes to do the task he performs. Therefore, irrespective of his noble stance, the machinery of industry - against which he rails - will continue to churn out the same rate of cigarettes regardless of who is doing the packing. There will always be someone to fill his shoes and so he will not have affected any real world change outside of any small personal satisfaction he may have had for taking his company to task. Secondly, he concludes he is primarily responsible for the upkeep of his own children. If he should leave this job there are no guarantees that he may be rehired again as employers are generally reluctant to take into their midst a wailing Cassandra apt to blow the whistle on their smallest indiscretions. Thus, his children would be left unprovided for materially and so at this point he rephrases the question and considers that his children will soon be of an age that they will come to understand the moral imperatives which informed his decision to quit.

Perhaps, in fact, he finds that they will respect him for taking a firm stand on his principles and likewise also they may be gifted with such a precocious insight that they willingly foreswear all the creature comforts to which they have been hitherto accustomed; their i-phones, computer games, bikes, trips to McDonalds etc and instead determine to devote themselves like their father to the task of exposing similar examples of corporate dishonesty. They may hit the books and intend to become investigative journalists exposing corruption in public life or trial lawyers working pro bono for the disadvantaged. All's well that ends well, except the wife disagrees profoundly with your analysis and files for divorce citing diminished responsibility. She wins the case as her lawyer demonstrates you have developed a diagnosable mental illness - its principal symptom being the relegation of your family's best interest in favour of a nebulous reasoning which posits the existence of a "higher morality" - and thus gains custody of your children. So, now alone, you have arguably increased your "moral strength" but unfortunately have hit the bottle and wind up on the streets codging sidewalk pennies from Wall Street slicksters.

You shake your head and dismiss this ugly train of events - too hideous to contemplate - so you reconsider your position. Instead, horrified into cowardice, you seek vindication for retaining your job through a series of wilfully deluded abstractions. You research the tobacco industry, for example, and see how beneficial the growth of the crop is for the economies of third world producers. Were you to be successful in your campaign of ensuring "honest" advertising, millions of workers in developing nations could lose their livelihoods due to the downturn in worldwide cigarette demand. You cannot in all fealty have such a mass displacement of workers into the ranks of the unemployed resting on your conscious thus you choose not to press for changes within your company. So, you happily keep your job through a series of rationalisations which you think have informed a stance of a "higher morality" But do the dictats of a "higher morality" in this case compel you to keep your job, your mouth shut and your wife happy or is there another solution to your quandary? Or, to put it another way, does a "higher morality" even exist?

The Lacanian Subject in Marx's Theory of Ideology

It is clear to me from reading Stephen Brookefield's 'The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching' (2005) that modern Marxist theory is in especial need of a robust and pertinent model of subjective ontology if it is to satisfactorily explicate the relationship it insists exists between the repressive social structures produced by the deterritorializing encroachments of late capitalism and the subsequent generation of a false consciousness that blindly colludes in its own disempowerment.

The greatest difficulty in incorporating traditional behavioural and developmental psychology into the radical transformative political agenda of critical theory, as is been done at present, is that the models of the self produced by these disciplines [to invoke just one criticism] are largely synthesised from an apolitical quantitative collation of data. This means that an uncritiqued and ahistoric static model of society with its own in-built, self-evident norms is implicitly present from the onset and it is this construction that becomes the reflecting surface from which their "pathological" deviations are then erroneously charted.

Brookefield, of course, is painfully aware of this yawning abyss and it can be seen most clearly in the almost yearning manner in which he identifies four contemporary forms of criticality whose scholars have for the most part insisted on tracing out divergent paths: the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School, 'analytic philosophy', 'psychoanalysis and psychotherapy' and 'pragmatic constructivism'. In the case of the latter, the exception is of course Habermas whose theory of communicative action is, according to Shalin (1992: 244) an attempt to invigorate critical theory by merging the Continental and Anglo-Saxon traditions and bringing the pragmatist perspective to bear on the project of 'emancipation through reason'.

Brookefield defends Habermas's widely criticised bridge-building between neo-Marxism and pragmatism but he cautions; in adult education, however, it is easy to focus on the pragmatist element of Habermas's thought, particularly the much invoked concept of the ideal speech situation, and interpret these 'in ways that ignore the Marxist underpinnings, and hence the political power, of his critique' (Brookefield, 2001:8) Moreover, the fact that this exercise, in making explicit the complementarity that naturally exists between the ideals of socialism and democracy, needs to occur at all, is testament to the power of the ideologues on both sides of the Cold War. (The deconstructionist school could usefully deploy themselves in shattering the 'metaphysics of presence' that has privileged the signifier 'democracy' in this particular binary hierarchy).

With respect to the realm of the psychosocial and the ability of its varied theoretical persuasions to adapt themselves to critical theory Michele Barrett tells us; 'psychoanalysis [and she is mainly referring to Lacan] is the place one might reasonably start to correct the lamentable lack of attention paid to subjectivity within Marxism's theory of ideology' (Barrett, 1991:118-119).

For Rosalind Coward and John Ellis Lacan's subject is therefore this new subject of dialectical materialism.the emphasis on language; 'provides a route for an elaboration of the subject demanded by dialectical materialism' (Coward and Ellis, 1977:93). Likewise, Mark Bracher concludes that Lacanian theory can provide 'the sort of account of subjectivity that cultural criticism needs' (Bracher, 1993: 12). And finally, Feher-Gurewich states Lacan's psychoanalytic approach is founded on premises that are in sharp contrast to the ones which have 'led to the failure of an alliance between psychoanalysis and social theory' (Feher-Gurewich, 1996:154).

Historical Legacy of the Hamas Charter

Obviously its early days yet but it should be clear to everyone that the US is not the same player it has been traditionally now that we have an Obama administration. What exactly those differences are, whether they are strong enough to actually make a renewed peace process viable, the coming years will decide. Obama's decision, for instance, to make entreaties on the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel to renew diplomatic relations with the Iranians has been viewed by the wider Arab and Muslim world as a positive step that bodes well for any future negotiations.

Also, Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as peace envoy. Being an Arabic- speaking son of a Lebanese immigrant with a good track record of listening' has to be a plus here, along with his role in brokering successful peace talks in Northern Ireland. This, coupled with the fact that he has already headed a commission whose report identified the key difficulty; Israeli settlements in the West Bank. I know it doesn't take a mastermind to figure that one out but how many times has this been explicitly acknowledged and foregrounded on the American side; apart from Carter.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether Hamas are providing any room for dialogue. Is there anything in what they are saying that provides an entry point for mediating parties? We all know about the fiery rhetoric of their Charter and varied translations do little to dampen it - it belongs to a species of polemics that has one foot in this world, one in the next.

But the fact of the matter is that the Hamas leadership has distanced itself more and more from the Charter - without actually abandoning it - particularly since the 06 elections. Its jihadist authors have already been executed by Israel (the paraplegic Yassin blown to smithereens in his wheelchair along with a dozen innocents outside a Gazan mosque 5yrs ago) and new leader Meshal has confirmed repeatedly his readiness to recognise Israel if the 'two-state solution' with pre-67 borders is put on the table.

Neither is this the watered-down two-stater proposed by Ehud Barak with separate Jewish cantons and control over water resources which led to the unravelling of the Camp David Accords. According to Khaled Hroub (author of 'Hamas: Political Thought and Practice') the concept of the two-state solution is now the cornerstone of Hamas' thinking. "I doubt we will see the old Hamas again" he says. Why does he say this? Because Meshal and the other leaders have been saying things like the following for at least the last four years;

"Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political" (07)

"We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice." (06)

"If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders and recognised the rights of the Palestinian people - including the right of those in the diaspora to return to their land and to East Jerusalem and to dismantle the settlements - Hamas can then state its position and possibly give a long-term truce with Israel, as Sheikh Yassin said. This is a position that Hamas could take but only after Israel recognises the right of the Palestinians, to show and confirm its willingness to withdraw to the 1967 borders." (08)

There is more than enough leverage in the above for a dedicated team committed to a workable solution to make real progress. What I see at the moment is the possibility of some sort of renewed alliance between Fatah and Hamas. Egypt are currently hosting talks to try and bring this about and Mahmoud Abbas must be seen to play ball here else he is in danger of being toppled from within. Fatah received a negative backlash from Muslims across the region over their weak responses to the recent Israeli incursion/massacre and will be anxious to clean their bib in the eyes of their peers. He has already been heard recently being critical of last year's accelerated expansion of Israeli settlements - something that he was loathe to do beforehand for fear of being cut from the loop. Many US and European diplomats have already conceded that Hamas will have to be talked to eventually, for instance James Baker, and the recent events in Gaza, in fact, have been a disaster for the Israeli publicity machine.

Even the Council on Foreign Relations concede that the Hamas majority in the elections was secured because of their perceived lack of corruption and greater commitment to funding for social programmes. What is an absurdity is the continual reality negation over Hamas legitimate claims to be representatives of the Palestinians. Simply wishing they didn't win it or that their programme of resistance isn't more popular among ordinary Palestinians than watching what must appear to them to be the fawning obeisance of Fatah preside over the further dismantling of their territory is just the purest self-delusion.

Admittedly, their funders in turn will have to get flexible on Sharia and their claims over East Jerusalem but their position on the Zionist entity's' right to exist' is predicated on Israel's continued presence in the West Bank - an internationally agreed upon illegal occupation - which to Hamas is justification for any and all hostilities. Remove the forces of occupation along with the settlements and they are ready to conduct dialogue. This is their position and Khaled Mashal has repeated it often enough to make you wonder why the assertion continues to be regurgitated that they are unconditionally committed to the destruction of Israel irrespective of what gestures and concessions it makes. This position only suits hawks of every hue and persuasion including those on the Israeli side who don't wish to see any dismantling of West Bank settlements.

So the US need no longer be viewed as an obstacle to progress by the Palestinians. If its policy makers instead of continually referring to an increasingly defunct founding document instead focused on what possibilities exist for dialogue then we may be in a position at last to debate the merits of peacekeepers - they have to have a peace to keep first though.

Dawkins and his God Delusion

In the "God Delusion", Dawkins - himself in the grip of a rationalist fever reminiscent of the parched academia of George Eliot's Dr. Casaubon - maintains that the success and survival of religion requires for him a strictly Darwinian explanation. He expresses his dissatisfaction with several theories which attempt to do this; namely (1) the stress and placebo effect - it provides solace and comfort during trying times such as bereavement (2) it answers our fear of death and mortality and (3) that religion satisfies our innate curiosity about ultimate origins and the nature of the universe. He ultimately rejects all these as he feels they are too weak in and of themselves to explain religion's widespread diffusion and instead plumps for the "by-product" explanation, popularised most notably by the evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould.

In one of his more scathing moments Dawkins says; "religious behaviour in humans is a misfiring, an unfortunate manifestation of an underlying psychological propensity that was once useful". This is in line with Gould's metaphor of the "spandrel" ( a non-utilitarian appendage which just happens to be formed when two arches meet) to explain how religious thought originally emerged. This is typical of the views of the "by-product" camp that see a susceptibility to religious belief as an outgrowth of the brain's complex architecture. Whilst evolving to tackle head-on pragmatic difficulties, the brain has also evolved, quite unfortunately of course, a "god-centre". They have also used theory of mind/folk psychology to explain how the mind can form ideas of "disembodied entities" with their own personalities, wishes and desires.

With Dawkins, the focus is incessantly upon the ultimate truth status of the claim that there is a God. Lately, he seems intent on satisfying his own scruples on the matter by consulting with particle physicists such as Stephen Weinberg on the nature of the big bang and on ultimate origins. He seemed particularly keen to press Weinberg on his ideas of the multiverse - the multiple "big bang" hypothesis. Presumably, this is because he is aware that in "our universe" there are just too many exact ratios; for example the binding strength of an electron to a hydrogen nucleus - which provide grist to the mill of those who wish to argue from the point of view of Intelligent Design - anathema to author of the Blind Watchmaker. What we are seeing here is a man in the grip of a personal crusade intent on stretching the jurisdictional competence of his chosen field - the invention of the meme for instance so he can deliberate on cultural phenomena, mostly of the religious kind, and most often in a derogatory fashion. If an anthropologist were to treat his object of study with the same degree of scorn he would be quickly run out of town.

The difficulty I have with Dawkins is that he views religion almost exclusively through the reductionist prism of Darwinian natural selection. In addition, he seems wholly oblivious that he is in complete opposition to the thoughts and behaviour of 90% of the human race - dismissing them in effect as irrational. In a development studies seminar I was at once we were discussing supernatural beliefs as they were so prevalent in the "underdeveloped" countries and a chap from Ethiopia said, in reference to the Ganges rituals; "Listen, you don't have to ask whether or not these beliefs are true or false, that doesn't matter, the effects of the supernatural are all around you to see for yourselves, thousands upon thousands of people are bathing themselves in the water. It is there, it can be seen, it can be observed and touched.It is a reality". There was, moreover, no judgement of the rightness and wrongness of this behaviour implied in this observation. The best way of looking at this is, I think, to accept that unlike any other species homo sapiens has produced a dazzling array of different types - the majority of whom appear to be happy to entertain notions of a "higher power" and most of them in turn appear equally content to ritually worship a localised version of this deity. Some again appear to get their kicks pouring scorn on such behaviour. All the colours of the rainbow, it seems.

Religion is much more than the declaration that there is a God in the heavens, benevolent or otherwise. It has become for many a social ritual; it has a social dimension that Dawkins appears to be completely unwilling or unable to account for, at least in anything I've read - He views a preacher as the spreader of a meme virus and the church itself as the locus of epidemiology. I mean, most people I know that go to church could not claim any indepth knowledge of scripture but they all have some kind of a conception of a "Creator Being" and it is this which provides sufficient justification to listen to their particular account of it - be it Christian, Judaic or Islamic.

Where Dawkins and the by-product camp have difficulty it seems is in finding an adaptive purpose for religion precisely because of this narrow perspective that they have chosen to view it from. Don't you get the sense that Darwinist principles becomes less and less applicable the more complex societies become? I mean, the structural-functionalists solved this problem seventy years ago by studying an institution simply in terms of what functions it carried out; what purposes it served. Emile Durkheim's long analysis "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" concluded that religion had three major functions; (1) Disciplinary - it enforced ethics and morals, provided guidelines (2) Cohesive; brought people together, strengthened bonds (3) It is vitalizing and euphoric; it contributed to well-being, confidence and gave a boost to the spirits (no pun intended). Is this not enough? Is this not sufficient explanation of it's adaptive capability. The proof, in fact, appears to be in the pudding - religion's very ubiquity demonstrates quite well that it serves many purposes.

Religion has it's origins in the animistic beliefs and practices of archaic homo sapiens and probably emerged in East Africa during the time of the Upper Paleolithic some 50-60,000 years ago. Jared Diamond has speculated that the most common cause of death in these early hunter-gatherer bands was murder and in this world where life was "nasty, brutish and short" it led me to reflect on the Dawkins genotype and what role could have been played there by such a spindly, cerebral character. I cannot easily envisage him holding out long in a life and death struggle with a rival clan, or having the physicality to provide for those around him in an often harsh, brutal, dog-eat-dog environment. On the contrary, I would imagine his genotype would welcome and perhaps be responsible for initiating the institution of a set of beliefs with their accompanying moral edicts and sanctions prohibiting the wanton taking of life, and thereby ensuring the protection of the weak and disadvantaged - snails otherwise crushed underfoot by the brute logic of force.

When I see how easily he takes to the evangelical role of enlightening the world as to the so-called "irrational" propositions of organised religion via reference to the gospel of Darwinist natural selection - I can easily make the mental adjustment required to transport him back into the Palaeolithic and see in him all the characteristics of a proto-priest or shaman; arguing for group cohesion, the ending of senseless murder, of intra-clan conflict - and supporting his arguments by saying his authority derives from the all-encompassing eternal mother-goddess. Why? - because he will feel in his bones that this argument represents the only right path for the group and his outrage over the wanton malevolence of the clan's more brutish unthinking genotypes will stir his blood to such a degree that he will be wont to attribute his mental and bodily paroxysms - caused by the inlayering and sedimentation of a lifetime's violent sensory impressions - as being sacredly derived from an ancestral spiritual dimension. A thousand times this outrageous reverie, this dance of possession, may have occurred and a thousand times an axe head guided by the hand of the nearest brute force alpha male may have reigned down on the head of this demented and spiritualised imposter.

But, here and there, there were other dynamics, other groups who were prepared to listen, and were rapidly developing the capacity to do so - perhaps women themselves played a role, tired of being endlessly set upon in a world that knew no law - others who were prepared to engage empathically with the arguments and rationale of this new form of cerebral organisation that offered glimpses of peace of mind and security. It is not often remarked upon, but as the neocortex was expanding along with the front, temporal and parietal lobes (areas concerned with language and the executive functions; ie the type of judgement that informs morality), the gross physical strength of the homo erectus and other precursor hominid forms was likewise being gradually replaced by a much physically weaker homo sapiens.

Dawkins is entitled to deploy Darwinian principles in explaining group adaptation during this era but his barely disguised loathing for religion is colouring his perceptions of what those mechanics may have been - viewing the matter simply from the vantage point of what good can possibly be gained by positing the existence of things "which are patently untrue" is to ignore the living breathing complexities of a fully enculturated Paleolithic man, which is why the best insights for appreciating what is happening here are usually found coming from the sociologists and anthropologists - not experts in biological evolution.

The Freudian Unconscious and Ours

If anything identifies Freud as an innovative thinker it is his claim that there is an 'unconscious' mind which importantly can be observed and understood using scientific methods - of which, more later. Many other thinkers such as William James had already used the term but had made only passing reference to it - in discussions of sleepwalking, hypnotic suggestion and so on - as though it were one of those inscrutable facts of nature, which, whilst an interesting and fundamental component of the human psyche would remain forever shrouded in mystery.

Freud changed all this by elevating the concept into the realm of scientific enquiry by proposing the technique of free association as a means to uncover the unconscious thoughts which lay behind certain recurring preoccupations of 'neurotic' patients; however, it's validity was quickly demonstrated to be of universal application. The empirical data gathered by Freud consisted of the myriad analyses of patients which when combined, collated and viewed at length suggested to him certain universal features of this unconscious; the Oedipus Complex, the family of psychoneuroses and so on. In the main, the disputes among various schools of pscychoanalysis (Kleinian, Jungian, Lacanian, Adlerian etc.) centre around the manner in which the case material (ie. the evidence derived from the patient's speech) from analysis should be interpreted. Jung, for example, saw in the same material the evidence for archetypal components of the psyche and deplored the reductivity which seemed to crystallise the Oedipal relations.

It should also be noted that many analytical schools have refined and developed Freud's insights, particularly the Oedipus conflict. Deleuze and Gauttari's famous assault on the 'daddy-mommy-me' triangle (Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia) for instance, is scathing in its rebuttal of this fundamental postulate of classical Freudianism yet neither author would for a second refute the reality of the unconscious or their indebtedness to Freud's research. So, what all these divergent schools agreed upon was that there was such a thing as the unconscious mind; a domain which is largely inaccesible to us and which plays a significant, if not a dominating role, in determining our conscious behaviour. Again, the emphasis on just how determining this unconscious is and what implications should be drawn from this fundamental insight differ widely from one school to the next; the debate has never been properly resolved within psychoanalysis, nor is it likely to be.

Lacan once entitled one of his lectures; 'The Freudian unconscious and ours" indicating the necessity for psychoanalysis to re-establish its scientific credentials by examining some of the peculiarities within Freud's own psyche which led him to ascribe certain 'universal' properties to unconscious functioning. So, there was always a debate within psychoanalysis as to the ultimate truth status of Freud's observations since the findings which he had interpreted were being done (inevitably) through the prism of his own unique subjectivity. However, whilst this debate occurred, it is fair to say that the majority viewpoint, particularly within the British school, where the Kleinians were even pushing for recognition of pre-oedipal unconscious phantasies, there emerged a general consensus on the validity of a universal oedipal 'entanglement'.

In France, Lacan vociferously opposed this malaise and dogmatism. This necessitated a breach of sorts within the French psychoanalytic tradition and 'Lacanianism' is now synonymous with the attempt to fuse Roman Jakobson's linguistic researches into what he regarded as the structuring poles of language - metaphor and metonymy - as exemplary instances of the dream mechanisms identified by Freud, that of condensation and displacement. In the process, Lacan, quite correctly in my view, 'sublated' traditional Freudian Oedipal triangulation thereby giving the central concept of the phallus a more mobile and fluid range of interpretation - not everything was now reducible to this alleged universal dynamic or to the supposed formative crucible of the 'primal scene' (a postulated original 'traumatic' structuring event whose uncovering was held crucial to therapeutic progress).

Back to Freud - the 'royal road' to uncovering what meanings lay behind our conscious thoughts and actions is the dream since this was the unalloyed manifestation of the unconscious in action free from the interfering sensations and impressions of waking life. Freud studied thousands of dreams (of his patients and of himself) and determined that there were discernible mechanisms in action in the unconscious which could be understood and studied scientifically; namely condensation and displacement. It was in fact through empirical investigations which led to the discovery of these mechanisms in the first place.

Now, this to me is the root of the Freudian discovery - if condensation and displacement do not take place in every dream then indeed the project of psychoanalysis may be labelled a fraud - but this is not the case, they are both empirically demonstrable and are in fact deceptively simple concepts to understand irrespective of what convenient straw man version of psychoanalysis critics such as Karl Popper have reputedly demolished through the falsification criteria - itself handsomely critiqued by Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

A Topological Approach to Psychotic Structure

In her essay on the psychoanalytic use of topological structures Nathalie Charraud writes;

'For Lacan, the structure of the subject of the unconscious as subject of the signifier is, in fact, the Mobius strip; a surface of inscription where front and back are but one continuous side. It is this structure that offers a solution to the problem of double inscription that so vexed Freud''.

The essential properties of the Mobius strip that help us understand the Lacanian structuralist analysis of psychosis are (a) it is infinitely cyclical and so its repetition echoes the return of the repressed and (b) a traversal may be conceived of as a signifying inscription.



Lacan locates the possibility of the foreclosure of primordial signifiers and therefore the emergence of structure to at least the immediate post-natal period; "reality is at the outset marked by symbolic nihilation", "day and night are signifying codes, not experiences" and "it's structurally necessary to admit a primitive stage in which the world of signifiers as such appears". I interpret these central chapters in Lacan's 1953 seminar on the psychoses as an attempt to demonstrate the existence of binary variables predicated on the presence or absence of core qualities such as pleasure and unpleasure. These may be measured in economic terms via the quota of affect where the yield is drawn in relation to such notions as response (time) to demand, internal/external 'rhythms', the closing of the day and so on. But they are actually inscribed in terms of perceptions or 'wahrnehmungszeichen' in the mnemic systems of the Freudian reflex apparatus. Lacan, in fact, unhesitantly declares them to be (primordial) signifiers.

Let us say that successive cyclical traversals of the Moebius strip inscribes the early signifying patterns in a fashion that distinguishes quite markedly the normal subject from that of the foreclosed. The propensity to foreclose appears to be a constitutional factor indicated by Lacan's early remarks that "the great secret of psychoanalysis is that there is no psychogenesis". His double insertion of the African myth of the fox who ate the primal placenta thereby introducing a primordial dissymmetry and his remarks on the "judgement of existence" in relation to an affective response that is repudiating likewise reinforce this impression. These structural binaries of course mirror the basic dualities that underpin all languages and the relationship between them lies at the heart of Lacan's dictum that "the unconscious is structured like a language".

This first layer of 'symbolisation' is depicted by Lacan, though not explicitly in these terms, in his addendum to the 'Seminar on the Purloined Letter'. Lacan generates the basic elements ('+' or '- ') of what will become a self-evolving syntax through the random tossing of a coin. He superimposes two matrices atop this original 'system', the second of which, 'the Greek letter matrix' is, I suspect, meant to jocularly depict 'the detestable Danoi' as they usurped the ancient matriarchal civilizations of the Aegean thereby marking the birth of the 'Logos' in a phylogenetic recapitulation of the three times of the Oedipal subject.

We are at the chronological juncture now (circa 18 months; Fort/Da, specular captation, etc) where the arguments for structural factors in pathology have been well-rehearsed. The construction of the imaginary phallus through the particular form taken by the dialectic of desire in the maternal dyad is played out against a Symbolic order that is already announcing itself as a structuring presence. Lacan thus conceives of an imaginary ternate dominated by a dyadic phallus eventually giving way, via the mother's castration, to a Symbolic ternate with the paternal metaphor acting as a structurally necessary reconfiguring phallus.



With regard to schema R (above), Lacan recommends a cut in the Real defined by the quadrilateral miMI to produce a Moebius strip. We will immediately perform a double transverse cut on this Mobius producing two rectangular strips; one pertaining to the Imaginary, the other to the Symbolic ternate. It is also important to bear in mind that though Lacan is hesitant in assigning a particular genetic moment to this primordial exclusion it clearly predates Freud's Oedipus.

We have been concerned with the use of a Moebius strip to further our appreciation of structurally significant events in the formation of the unconscious of the 'prelinguistic subject of pure need'; that is to say, the infant prior to immersion in the specular captations and illusory Gestalts that will define the moi as frustration in essence, and prior to the decentering Spaltung of the 'I' caught in the defiles of the signifier. Leaving aside the 'cross-currents', topographical regressions and other numerous factors that tend to conflate the essential disparity of the structural determinants pertaining to each of these moments of the Oedipal movement what we are presented with in essence in the Lacanian study of the psychoses' are three distinct modes of interrelated foreclosure. Our three Moebius strips can now be sewn side by side producing the four-dimensional 'impossible' object known as the asphere or Klein bottle.

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The 'hole' in this topological object whose inside and outside is continuous can be enlarged according to the severity of the primacy of the primary process in the psychic life of the foreclosed subject.

We must however refrain from applying the properties of the Moebius to elucidate mechanisms of the imaginary dialectic such as 'projection' and 'identification'. Here we are following a forgotten rule of prioritisation first sounded by Lacan himself;

"The subject's constitution in imaginary allusion is the problem on which we need to make progress..... Until now people have been satisfied with this.... People have discovered all the material, all the elements, of the unconscious in it. They seem never to have wondered what was significant from the economic point of view about the fact that by itself this allusion has no power to resolve anything...... ","

Yet another forgotten register it seems.

From the Looking-Glass of an Eternal Eye

Abortion is a horrible business whatever way you look at it and most women who decide to have one rarely take the decision lightly. There is nothing terribly ennobling about terminating the life of a prospective human being at any stage, let alone as late as four or five months which unfortunately is the case in many instances.

I think the fetus is sensate and can experience pain at a much earlier stage; perhaps as early as 6-8 weeks and this should weigh in people's considerations. But the choice here is ultimately for the woman to make; it is her body at the end of the day, in addition to which, and if statistics are anything to go by, the child, if born, is more likely to remain in her care.

I have some sympathy with the (Catholic) church's position on this; ie that the sanctity of life must be preserved, that a new soul has been created through the consummation of sperm and egg and that a termination at any point after this constitutes a 'sinful' and unnecessary vanquishing of human life. It has, at least, the merit of placing a distinctive value on each and every human life.

Pro-life activists, while I don't wish to generalise, invariably approach the matter from a religious perspective wherein the value of life is seen from a spiritual as opposed to a reductive biological vantage point. Those who bemoan the often extreme vehemence of pro-life objections to abortion would do well to remember the equally extreme biological reductionist viewpoint as illustrated in Nazi eugenics programmes or in the more extreme theories of Social Darwinism.

The human race has ably demonstrated it's capacity in the past to slip off the scale of acceptable norms and blithely transgress the rights of the individual for the supposed long term benefit of the species. The example may seem extreme and unjustified but underlying arguments concerning both eugenics and abortion lie varied conceptions concerning the worth of an individual life. There is evidently scope for a crass dehumanisation to enter into the process of abortion, trivializing it, making it wholesale and commonplace and ,I for one, welcome at least the presence of a healthy debate.

The perspective I would like to offer is much like Hegel's thoughts on potentiality; an acorn is not merely a nut that lies on the ground but is the sum total of all it's possibilities for growth - it is only the axis of time which makes it appear to us a thing undeveloped. Were we to see in each and every thing the full potentiality of it's capacity for growth it would restore to us something of how Nature might really look - from the looking glass of an eternal eye perhaps. Within the fertilised egg a busy fusion of life's forces has already taken place yielding into being already a complex dependent life form.

However, you take upon yourself the right to extinguish this life and no court in any land should, in turn, take upon itself the right or be given the ability to stand in judgement over you for doing so.

Shifting Lexicons: The Hidden March of History

A friend of mine was recently assaulted by “the PC brigade” for disciplining his child in a parking lot. His four year old boy had been acting up all day and on the back of several warnings he decided to pick him up and deposit him unceremoniously in the front seat. Apart from eliciting several glares a woman approached him to tell him he was being “too aggressive” He later protested, quite reasonably, that as the child’s father he was entitled to raise him in the way that he believed was right for him and not the “candy ass” way things are done in "present day PC America".

I can appreciate how outside interference (of the nature described) in one's own child rearing practices can be construed as 'politically correct' behaviour run rampant. There has been a palpable volte face with respect to our attitudes towards disciplining children these days with parents nowadays often obliged to restrain themselves from offering a firmer approach due to an apprehension of a shifting climate which is perennially on the look out, it seems, for instances of physical abuse. Is this the result of the aftermath of institutional abuse scandals or of the unearthing of a perceived gritty side to family life which wasn't aired in previous generations or too many episodes of E.R. perhaps? Either way, an awful lot of laundry has been aired and some find themselves cast in the role of self-appointed guardians of the public welfare. Surely, we can be attentive of the possible abuse of minors without becoming 'Nazified' Fifth Columnists springing on the slightest infraction.

Living among African immigrants for a while I encountered what I would call a refeshing antidote to this type of PC-ness. Discipline is enforced not only by the child's parents but by every responsible adult in company. It is perfectly normal and is indeed expected that a child 'will be beaten' (given a few vigorous slaps on the behind) by not only relatives but by neighbours and friends too if they are 'acting up'. It seems to me to pivot on the far greater community cohesion among Africans as opposed to the individualist lifestyles we are accustomed to in Europe and North America. The nuclear family for us is an almost indestructible bond and we carefully safeguard its integrity by monitoring carefully our children's path into the exterior world. Were our neighbour to pick up our child and beat him/her we would immediately head towards the gun cabinet or else file a law suit.

Africans would instead thank you for providing a much needed corrective discipline. There is an element of trust and belief in the sound judgement of the corrector wholly absent from our society but it also tells you that the African's conception of the family and its relation to the wider social whole is fundamentally different; there is a fluidity and porousness between one's own family and the rest of the community. It is of course the living embodiment of 'tribalism'; a word often used pejoratively and thus erased from our lexicons for fear of imputing 'primitiveness' and so recalls another example of PC type behaviour depriving us of age old 'earthy' descriptions.

However, let us not be too quick to disparage because within what you will find described as PC or in that other telling phrase 'overly PC' will be a register of all sorts of shifting attitudes that are slowly but surely changing society. To say somebody is 'politically correct' or to say something was 'politically incorrect' is to announce authority on the prevailing attitude; it is to have 'a feel' for the times - (A good example would be Seinfeld's “Kramer” dropping a clanger recently and having to make all sorts of fulsome apologies to 'the black community'). It is to announce an imminent shift in the chosen 'signifier'; 'handicapped' now becomes "physically challenged" while "African-American" it is felt more properly denotes the status of black Americans.

A changing lexicon to categorise previously marginalised groups always indicates a shifting balance of power. It may seem a moot point and it invites all manner of satire from the likes of Jay Leno and Conan O' Brien who thrive on identifying these transitions precisely because they recognise there is a sensitivity involved. In my own experience in advocacy for 'mental health patients' (read: 'survivors' or alternatively 'experients' or even 'victims of psychiatry') there is sometimes no more heated discussion than that centred on the very words habitually used by the psychiatric profession and the media to describe some of the problems encountered when 'dealing with' or 'treating' "mental illlness". Every phrase is contested and rightly so because behind each 'signifier' lies an entire battery of inherited assumptions which affect enormously how 'the condition' is both treated and perceived. Most interest groups are familiar with this type of lexical struggle and to our own credit and persistence we undoubtedly took the lead in influencing "Schizophrenia Ireland" to eventually change it's name to "Shine", thereby shedding the old moniker’s pejorative accruals.

On a separate tack, Robert Fisk for instance is constantly drawing attention to 'Washington-speak' and each of his articles from the Middle East may be viewed as an attempt to purge what he takes to be a polluting and deliberately misleading choice of lexical determinants - do you refer to the Palestinian lands as 'occupied territories' or 'disputed territories'?; there is a vast gulf of difference. So whereas we might deride the overly PC it should be borne in mind that behind each lexical shift and each tiny nuance of meaning there are often innumerable bloody and hard fought battles. In fact, it's all hard won - despite the cheap laughs from the comedians.

However, the phrase ’politically correct’ has itself become hackneyed through over usage and it may be asked what it can possibly be said to represent anymore. Even if the ideas which it was originally brought into being to promote are still with us the phrase itself has become significantly emptied of content by overuse (the 'worn tessara' syndrome). What has been drained from it is now regurgitated ad nauseum and this perhaps indicates the necessity for a new phrase.

You will notice too that when a 'politically incorrect' infringement does take place on the airwaves a simple frown or change in tone is all that is required to register disapproval much to the often squirming embarrassment of the offender (or, just as often blank incomprehension). The phrase has served its purpose; it has implanted the concept that there are myriad battle grounds within society so effectively that it's very use has now become superfluous.