In 1953, the satirical writer and novelist Honor Tracy published a book about Ireland called “Mind You – I’ve Said Nothing!” It caused uproar: the Englishwoman had insulted just about every sacred value in Irish life, notably the Catholic Church, Irish nationalism, the Irish language and obsession with partition. But the book was indeed amusing and the late Ms Tracy – who was outspoken about everything, except the fact that she was Seán O Faoiláin’s mistress – touched many nerves. The title itself is telling, and was repeated, in another form by the poet Seamus Heaney, with his caution: “whatever you say, say nothing!”
Honor Tracy’s phrase is still heard in conversation, even if usually employed jocularly. After a long jeremiad against, say, a particular politician, your interlocutor may add the coda, “Mind you, I’ve said nothing!” This is a form of self-protection against any future reprisal. It can also be seen as an early form of “political correctness”. You don’t want to annoy the powers that be, unnecessarily.
I don’t admire, but I do understand, this. Moral courage is admirable, but it may be prudent to pick your battles. Why lose a job or a promotion, or acceptance in a desirable social influential circle, by reckless talk? Why offend needlessly? The example of Kevin Myers has been no end of a lesson. Kevin, a brilliant writer, with a peerless knowledge of military history, was fired by the Sunday Times Ireland for a perceived anti-Semitic allusion. He was subsequently libelled as a Holocaust-denier by RTÉ, the national broadcaster, and won his legal case proving that he is emphatically not. But Myers has been outspoken on a range of subjects, sometimes using savage Swiftian irony, and that has caused discomfort. In the Irish public square, this has led to subsequent silence.
Ireland is a small country: social and kinship interconnections are richly interwoven. Anyone is only six degrees of separation from anyone else. Your name is O’Reilly? You’ll be familiar with my aunt in Ballyjamesduff. You holiday in Clifden? You’ll know my cousins there. This matrix will gradually change with immigration – 20 per cent of those resident in Ireland are now born elsewhere. But at present, the intimate nature of Irish society is embedded. Obituaries published in Irish papers are nearly always glowing tributes: too many people are too inter-related for it to be otherwise.
While sometimes understandable, the mind-you-I’ve-said-nothing reflex nevertheless produces a kind of double-think, a cleavage between what is said in the public realm, and what is really thought privately, which Tracy pinpointed so acutely. People who are “publicly furious” may be “privately amused”, at some controversy. Tracy blamed the Catholic church for – among other matters – exhorting piety and purity in public, while not necessarily meeting those standards in private.
That has always been an element of human nature, as the New Testament confirms. Outward conformity and inward dissent are not unknown elsewhere.
Because Ireland is a close-knit society, the Government can usually enforce a whipped compliance when introducing legislation. The permissive Gender Recognition Act, allowing a person to be regarded as male or female sex according to choice, sailed through the Dáil in 2015, almost unnoticed. Now, a new “Hate Bill” – the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) – was expected to meet with similar easy acceptance this summer. The bill, introduced by the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, intends to criminalise “incitement to violence or hatred” against people of “protected characteristics”, these being “race, colour, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation”.
But while it processed easily through the Dáil, there has been sufficient negative reaction by the public, media comment and a few outspoken Senators in the Upper House, to delay its final passage, perhaps with amendments, until the autumn. Lawyers have shown that the Bill’s definition of “hate” is vague and subjective. Catholic commentators, notably David Quinn of the Iona Institute, have been prominent in criticising it not just for its nebulous definition of “hate”, but for its potential restraints on freedom of speech. It is, say critics, essentially a silencer: designed to influence and inhibit what can and can’t be said.
Hatred against persons because of their origins or orientations is odious. It need hardly be stressed that it is unChristian. But not everything that is wrong or deplorable can be regulated by legislation. Moreover, there are already sufficient laws against intimidation and harrassment, as well as against assault, violence or homicide.
New laws are sometimes cultural signifiers rather than necessary protections: restraints on speech may be more about interdicting those who invite the elite’s disapproval, than tackling criminal offences.
And precisely because Ireland is a small society, where pressures to conform can be great, it needs to guard against the defensive evasion expressed by “Mind you, I’ve said nothing!”
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