The papers here are full of stories about the Irish bailout and the fact that some toff in England is marrying a poor person. Although to judge by the house her parents stood in front of when they were on the news, I’d have to guess that the Brits have a different view of what poor means to the rest of the world.
Ireland is certainly poor at the moment if the media is anything to go by. But then again I also read that it’s still the third richest country in Europe. Which I guess just goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and everything the Irish Government has said for the last three years.
At least Ireland can be proud of its diaspora (with the exception of myself and the disproportionate amount of us who end up in jail in the countries we choose to live in). I recently visited two museums hoping to find some reference to the Irish in Victoria. One thing I noticed when I arrived in this fine state is that there is no obvious Irish part of town. The Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Indian communities all have their areas, mostly built around food. Needless to say the Irish are unlikely to build up a reputation in the culinary department but it does disappoint me that the only obvious influence we have here is the amount of Irish pubs in the City.
There are lots of people with Irish names but most of them speak with Aussie accents and upon inquiry it turns out that their nearest Irish relative came here on a wooden boat where the only metal was around their ankles.
The immigration museum was my first stop. It was full of exhibits about “ten pound poms” and brave Vietnamese who spent six months in a leaky boat in the 1970s. The only reference I could find to the Irish was on a small computer screen at the back where you could click on a country and find out how many people from that place ended up in Victoria. It turns out that we mainly came here in the years after the Great Famine to escape hunger and seek fortune on the gold fields. Two hundred thousand arrived then, but we’ve only been coming in dribs and drabs since.
The other museum I visited was in a little place called Port Fairy, famous for a folk festival held every March that is dominated by Irish acts. But it turns out our only influence there was to give the town it’s original name of Belfast, which they sensibly changed after a few years when the realised they were twinned with a place best known for sectarian violence and fried bread for breakfast. Port Fairy sounds much more benign.
But those Irish people who came in the 19th Century have left a great legacy in Australia. Peter Lalor from Laois is my favourite as he is often identified with the birth of democracy here. He led the Eureka rising in 1854, when a thousand minors, most of them from Ireland, formed Victoria’s first trade union and formed a stockade against the tyranny of the government. They were smashed by the army but their deeds became famous and are thought to be the reason why Australians have a healthy disregard for authority and a strong believe in giving everyone a fair go.
They had their own flag, which can be seen on every unionised building site in Melbourne and amongst football supporters when they want to demonstrate a communal feel.
I reckon my homeland could do with a touch of that communal feel at the moment. As an Irishman abroad I’m wavering between embarrassment and relief at the moment. Embarrassment as anyone who hears my accent is quick to point out that my country is a laughing stock. Asking for a bailout is bad enough but when you’ve spent the previous ten years displaying your wealth to the world like a premiership football star, the world tends to take pleasure in laughing at your hubris.
But I lost this embarrassment when a Greek person asked me how Ireland got to this position. People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones and it demonstrated to me that the whole world is in a pickle and Ireland is merely the latest cab off the rank.
Relief is my more common emotion because I can now take on the hubris previously shown by my countrymen (I picked it up for a bargain at a recent liquidation sale). I got out just in time in seems and can smugly say; “I told you so”. Except I don’t say this because I’m too sad for all the friends and family I didn’t bring with me.
Before I left, there was a General Election and I tried to convince as many people as possible not to vote for the government. I failed in that respect and that government has now destroyed the country my grandfathers fought to set up. Their latest act of folly is to seek a bailout from the IMF at an interest rate that Tony Soprano would be embarrassed to impose on a late paying drug addict. When I was a young fellow, the IMF went into countries like Argentina and various places in Africa. Ireland is now part of that of that sad club. Although I have to say it’s rich of the IMF to come into a country and lecture them on fiscal restraint when the IMF are part of the global capitalist structure that caused all the problems in the first place.
But there is a risk of course that we’ll do what Irish people have done for centuries and blame everyone else for our woes. It wasn’t the IMF, or the Germans or the Brits who made us buy holiday villas in Romania on 100% credit. It’s tough times ahead for Ireland and I just hope a new leadership emerges. We could do worse than have the ghost of Peter Lalor emerge and return to the land of his birth.
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