Mope, Moping and Mopery…
MOPE is an acronym that derives from the title of an essay written by Professor Liam Kennedy a few years back. It comes with the sub title: THE HISTORICAL SYNDROME OF THE MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVER. As a notional ‘syndrome’, it affects the capacity of otherwise rational individuals to see Northern Ireland’s problems in context with other global (and much more traumatic) events. It is rooted in the feeling that Ireland’s trauma is not like anyone else’s: it is deep and unto itself. As Kennedy explains in the opening paragraph, it betokens a strong feeling that “Ireland’s past is not a foreign country.”:
For the plain people, unionist as well as nationalist, it is familiar, static and reassuring. It sometimes seems, as Theodore Hoppen says, “as if time itself has lost the power to separate the centuries”. For unionists and protestants, even at the end of the 20th century, images of massacre, of siege, of insecure victory still carry a powerful charge. For catholics and nationalists, there are the 700 years of oppression at the hands of the English and, for some, the unfinished business of the British presence in Ireland. For all the emphasis by historians on complexities and discontinuities, there is a popular sense of deep continuities, of enduring patterns which stand outside of historical time.
Although the essay was written some years ago, the syndrome continues to this day: with each side prone to advertise its own suffering to the exclusion of all others. And indeed that of those in other places, such as Srebrenica, Darfur, East Timor, Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.
And it is prone to affect more than just the extremes. As Kennedy remarks of Parnell:
Reports of the “Bulgarian Atrocities” in the later 1870s had excited and troubled the sensibilities of liberal Britain. Throwing this concern back in the face of Gladstone and his fellow liberals, the emerging leader of the Home Rule movement pronounced that Ireland had suffered much more at the hands of the English than the Bulgarians at the hands of the Turks.
Inevitably is it is a regular feature of discussion on Slugger still, and is likely to remain so until some kind of stable democratic settlement kicks in, and, much as they have in the Republic, our politicians final have license to take decisions of the things that actually matter to people on the ground.
Mick
You’ll have to advise me which of my comments were out of order. I thought my reaction to being asked to ‘fuck away off’ was rather restrained.
Or would I garner such ‘respect’ and ‘evenhandness’ if I just allowed the bile to rise and suggested you do the same? No, I didn’t think so…
bog, I disagree.
My point is that nationalist politicans REPEATEDLY used this tactic, and Unionist politicans always found themeselves having to defend against this non truth.
The ‘equality agenda’ is the best example.
The only thing you could say about Unionists would be we wanted and still want justice for the murder of hundreds by so few.
mick, its friday, and I am enjoying mesel…
“dream on Brian.
There are countless cases of the rep harbouring murdering IRA scum.”
We have an independent judiciary and they decide who gets extradited not me. PIRA membership is still illegal in the Republic and the jails were full of them during the Troubles.
“As for Charlie and the rest of his buddies, dont try and turn it into a debate on internment.
Everyone knows the rep armed the IRA in the early seventies.”
Prove it. I don’t accept what you are saying. We never armed the Provos. I accept that around the time of partition, that Collins armed the Northern IRA in the 20′s because Catholics were being pogromed out of their homes by Loyalist mobs. But I reject totally the assertion that in the recent Troubles we armed the Provisionals. We did not and unless you have evidence you should withdraw your accusation.
“You should apologise to yourself in the mirror everyday for being a stupid boy.”
LOL who is that comment addressed to? Are you looking in the mirror right now?
The goodness in this discussion ended about 37 posts ago. Probably 38 by the time i post this.
Stephen
Unionist politicians/commentators have used the “mope tactic” in the past and will continue to do so when it suits.
As to the equality agenda surely if implemented equality legislation should guarantee rights for all citizens regardless of their religion politics, ethnicity etc.? Or have i picked you up wrong on this? What is it exactly about the equality agenda that makes it the best example of Nationalist mopery?
“Brian. You haven’t addressed why I, or Tony Blair, should apologise to you for someting that didn’t happen to you and that neither I nor Tony Blair did. You are (presumably) a prosperous person living in a (certainly) prosperous country.”
Well I’m not really calling on ordinary British people to apologise. It’s the govt I am calling for an apology from on behalf of their institution which has had a life of many centuries. It is constant even if the personalities involved are not.
But what has the British Government done to you personally Brian? I can understand the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday, or collusion, deserving an apology, but you?
In the winter of 1069-1070 William the Conqueror laid waste to the North of England. It was depopulatied and some say it never really recovered. The vibrant cultural centre which produced Bede and Cuthbert was ruined.
So, should the people of Yorkshire and Northumbria be looking for an apology from the English Govt too?
Martin, I think that the 11th century may be going back rather far. A difference here is that the state of Normandy no longer exists so it’s not as if you can ask the Duke of Normandy for an apology.
The 17th century is far more recent. The Famine was in 1846-51. The attrocities after the Easter Rising are far more more recent. I think the Irish have a special case to ask for apologies – as do the victims of the Nazi-style state that was the British empire.
I think the Irish have a special case to ask for apologies – as do the victims of the Nazi-style state that was the British empire.
OK, how is that not saying that they are the most oppressed people ever?
Another similar syndrome is WECH – ‘Wildly Exaggerated Contribution to History’.
Reference Nationalism’s ‘heroes of 1916′ (terrorists who stabbed brave Irishmen of all traditions away fighting a war on all our behalves in the back) or Unionism’s ‘saving the world from Nazi-ism’ (people of NI’s contribution to WW2 could be more accurately described as ‘disgracefully inept’ and, where that contribution was positive, it was often not ‘Unionist’).
Mind, at least we can manage WECH on a cross-community basis too… ‘George Best Airport’ indeed…
IJP,
I’ve noticed a number of people calling the 1916 people terrorists. By what definition? i don’t think they were trying to terrorise people into giving them what they wanted.
And how was WWI fought on all our behalves? A war so unpopular with Irish people that the government was too frightened to introduce conscription. Although I will agree with you on participation rates in WWII. In both world wars, recruitment rates in what is now NI were below similar areas in Britain.
At least George Best scored great goals. Which is more than you can say about John Lennon airport in liverpool.
Rubbish Brian. William I was King of England as well as Duke of Normandy. The Crown of England still exists. The British Government represents it. So why no apology for the North of England?
The 11th century may be further off than the 17th but they both have in common the fact that there is no-one left alive who remembers any of it. You would even be hard pressed to find anyone with a meaningful recollection of 1916. To us, the 11th.
As for your comparison of the British Empire to the Nazi State, I refer you to my 12.51 post as a refutation. India, Pakistan, South Africa, Malaysia and many other countries accross mark their former membership of the Empire by being in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth may mean very very little in a meaningful sense these days but I don’t see Germany and occupied Europe getting together every 4 years for some athletic events and a chinwag. Your Nazi comparison is therefore demonstrably false and based on Anglophobia than any objective historical awareness the world outside Ireland.
The bottom line is, Brian, you weren’t there, so you don’t deserve and apology and I will vote against any government that even considers offering one. If everyone descended from someone who had something nasty happen to them the world would never stop demanding apologies from one another.
The Irish are about as deserving in that respect as the Serbs deserve an apology from the Turks, or the Bosnians from the Serbs, or the Poles from the Russians, or the Armenians etc etc etc. Your post backs up the point I made in my 2.34 post perfect ally.
BB: “I think the Irish have a special case to ask for apologies – as do the victims of the Nazi-style state that was the British empire. ”
TAFKABO: “OK, how is that not saying that they are the most oppressed people ever?”
Simple… its SMOPE — SECOND Most Oppressed people ever. It keeps the primacy of the Holocause, therefore, it can’t be MOPE, since it alludes to a more oppressed people.
I, personally, try not to go past the Civil Rights Movement — there are sufficient parallels (attacks on rights marchers, bullying police, gerrymandered votind districts, etc.) that it fits without getting into the level of insult that comes with insinuations of death camps.
Dread – Nationalists in the North alive today deserve an apology. What has happened up there in living memory is shocking. People from Wexford, on the other hand, whose state has received grants from the British Government via the EU that have helped keep them in comfortable prosperity for over a decade, do not.
Martin,
It’s not about who deserves an apology but about whether it would be good for the state of whatever passes for a soul in a collective consciousness like the British state.
Just as it was good that certain elements in loyalism have expressed regret at the hurt done to people, as have Adams and other for wrongs committed by republicans.
We can all see the damage done to themselves by unionists when they persist in their denials of what happened in their nasty little attempt at a police state, just as the Catholic church is having to face up to the damage done by it’s attempt at setting up a confessional state in the South.
Far better to admit the wrongs we have all done each other now but it will happen eventually. History won’t be denied forever.
Lob2016, a rememberance or an act of contrition I can live with, an apology to living people to whom we have done nothing I can’t.
I have never denied that the wrongs to which Brian Boru refers occured. It is his laughable insitence on an apology to people in the 26 Counties alive today that I object to.
Shouldthe British Govt. also be apologising to a bronzed Australian enjoying a beer on a sundrenched beach in New South Wales for sending his ancestor there as a convict? Should he be apologising to the discriminated against a teenaged aborigine who finds himself in prison for the umpteenth time or should the British Government? The chain of causation between them and me is long broken…
I always took MOPERY to mean the practice of using some imagined or relatively minor grievance to excuse savage violence, a more general version of WHATABOUTERY.
Martin: “Nationalists in the North alive today deserve an apology. What has happened up there in living memory is shocking. People from Wexford, on the other hand, whose state has received grants from the British Government via the EU that have helped keep them in comfortable prosperity for over a decade, do not.”
No arguement from me on the former… not much on the latter — I generally agree with you on this… a near first, but hey, common ground is common ground, with the one reservation: that so much of history gets marched past folks doors every summer that almost nothing gets to fade into the background, so to speak. So much of history’s dark side has been retain as “culture” that nothing goes away or let go of.
Ireland has recovered from English mismanagement and that’s a good thing. As you say, an apology now would have only symbolic value at best. As you say, a generalized rememberance or some such.
right on dread. they should bring back hanging too.
Oh, and another hunger strike would be nice…..
bb
> Prove it. I don’t accept what you are saying. We never armed the Provos.
You obviously missed the whole Arms Trial business..
Or the role senior southern pols had in the creation of the provos…
Or the fact the the provos had no problem hiding tons of arms in dumps in border areas, in areas were a farmer even in the backend of nowhere could not keep a dog without a dog license without the local guards knowing about it, yet tons of arms, ammunition and explosives seemed to be very easy to hide…
“You obviously missed the whole Arms Trial business..”
Jack Lynch made it clear in the Dail that the guns relevant to the Arms Trial never actually reached NI. The charges were not of smuggling guns to NI, but rather of attempting to do so.
“Or the role senior southern pols had in the creation of the provos…”
What role? Hearsay. Old wives’ tales!
“Or the fact the the provos had no problem hiding tons of arms in dumps in border areas, in areas were a farmer even in the backend of nowhere could not keep a dog without a dog license without the local guards knowing about it, yet tons of arms, ammunition and explosives seemed to be very easy to hide…”
Some of these arms dumps are quite elaborate from what I have heard in the media.
what gives the right for a tup’enny hap’enny food scientist as in the case of (laughs) prof liam kennedy to diagnose a whole culture with a syndrome? surely this is not his remit. thats like freud trying to diagnose the whole of austria with guilt complex because of hitler. i got my doctorate by bullshittin and i’m proud of it. only difference is i dont try and be political for a few quid soundbite on radio or in the unionist papers
Brian,
The fact that the arms dealer ripped off the representatives buying arms doesn’t change the fact that senior southern politicians were involved in helping the provos get up and running. Unless of course everyone from captain kelly to john kelly the ex-mla to others who say they were approached to journalists and historians like justin o’brien are all spinning the same wives tales for completely different agendas.
Bag,
I’m not sure why you’re describing Liam as a food scientist. He used to keep a check of royalties from a book on his door for 86p. I don’t think he does what he does for the money.
garibaldy
his degree was in food science then he moved into new fields scuse the pun. i dont care if he did it for the money but i do know he did it for the unionist backslaps. as we all know if people read your pseudo intellectual ramblings then there must be a book on the way. i cant wait for it to be given away free in the news letter this week. i’ve ran out of tiolet paper!
Bag,
Didn’t know about the food science thing. I think Liam does what he does because that’s what his principles dictate to him.
Do you not think the MOPE thing accurately diagnosed a mindset amongst some Irish people, which refuses to acknowledge that Irish suffering is not unique? I remember a debate here a while back about the famine where some people were dangerously close to suggesting that no people had ever suffered like the Irish. I have a lot more time for Liam Kennedy than I do for many cultural commentators on Ireland, particularly those who try to fit it into some kind of postcolonial framework.
garibaldy
irish suffering is not unique nor is any kind of suffering. i am a gobshite by practise in theory i am a psychologist. i do for wages what everybody does for fun in a bar. we watch and have our own independant thought on the subject in view. i know people have suffered worse deaths than i or you could imagine.for example the hu’tu and tutsi massacres, while the UN watched.
but when blame is passed and then at the same time deny culpability. the only truth is death. bodies on the ground never lie. i am a bullshitter by trade not my job to tell delia smith how to cook an eeg
scuse the above typo watchin star trek. egg
garibaldy:
you seem to me to be a very astute and intelligent person, i was recently informed about this site from a post grad that i was banging so i have no point in reference to previous statements made about the quote “famine”. ahmm there was no irish famine it was a halocaust a final solution to a problem.
ireland is green and surrounded on all sides by sea. but when your hungry and have to feed a family and a soupy is under the realm of his prod master and blocks off all access to the sea from his masters land with a flintlock and the good grazing land is for the prods in the north only,! who have armed militia guarding them from the papist hordes. 2 million irish catholics had no option but to starve. but they forgot about cholera which took man woman child regardless of age religion and wealth
Bag,
wish I had your luck with the postgrads!
Garibaldy as you know there was already an IRA it just split into provisional and official wings in 1967. How do you propose the Southern govt was involved in that?
On James Kelly, may I remind you that what he was charged with was attempting to import arms, not actually importing them and he was cleared. I don’t think you can see the wood for the trees.
Brian,
While there were divisions, there was no split until 1969, at which point elements of FF encouraged the formation of a new and explicitly catholic nationalist organisation.
As I said, the fact they were too incompetent to successfully import arms doesn’t change the fact they tried. The reason I raised all those people was that you said any stories of the southern government being involved were old wives’ tales with no evidence. I’d say there’s enough evidence that something was happening
bb
> What role? Hearsay. Old wives’ tales!
It always nice to be corrected by someone really in the know – who seems to be living in some boreen in Wexford…
Like a reading list, I’d start some of Martin Dillions books..
My main source of ‘hearsay’ was someone who knew most of the main participants and who thought the whole sorry episode was actually a good idea…
As you seem to be so well informed about how politics really works in the South here is a question. What is the connection between a certain circuit court judge who committed perjury in a murder trial a few years ago and the collapse of the Arms Trial? And where exactly was the quid pro quo? Extra points for explaining exactly why he was not impeached and remained a judge and is still doing the circuit down in your neck of the woods?
Answers in a brown envelope please…
There are of course myths and mopes and then there is a reality…unionists are the only white christian majority in the Western World deemed by the British/Irish and US GovtS to be unfit for normal majority rule democracy…why?…cos of shinner mopery…dont think so…any unionist care to enlighten as to why thats the case.
divil, It isnt the case, – what crap you write son.
The only people who dont think Unionists should not rule are bitter and twisted republicans.
All the governemnts you cite are all in favour of power sharing with a Unionist first minister. duh…
The main reason for allowing a minority to have a say in the running of a UK devolved region, of which they strive to destroy, is a deal between the british government and sfira for no more bombs on the precious mainland, in return for the sordid appeasement, er, sorry, I think it was called the Belfast Agreement.
Of course, nationalists will not accept majority rule, or DEMOCTRACY’, cos that what it is, isnt it?
Nationalists wont accept democracy ie majority rule…why?
The British/Irish and US Govts agree…why?
Simple questions really…
No wonder Henry ford said “History is bunkum to me.”
garibaldy:
postgrads fecks sake i’ve had professors undergrads post grads teachers interns doctors surgeons the list goes on. im bangin a teacher at the minute. i’ve also had women with kids no job, with job and kids ,no job no kids. and i’m an ugly bastard. the secret is carpe diem!..believe in that and you will succeed in everything. but there is more to life than women, there is money! and i love money more than i love myself.
Who said romance was dead. I like your style.
It seems to me that to accuse Republicans (or other descendants of victims of oppression) of MOPEry would be like something akin to going up to a grieving mother at the funeral of her children who have been blown to bits by a pipe bomb and sneering in her face, wailing sarcastically and saying “Oh boo-hoo Love, do you think you’re the only mother whose children have fallen victim to sectarian violence since all this shite started”? i.e. it’s a pretty weak argument.
Oh and by the way Lads, Tony Blair actually DID issue an apology to the Irish people, it was one of the first things he did after winning the 1997 election and the apology was read out at a Famine Commemoration Concert. I don’t remember much about it other than that at the time some people felt the apology didn’t go far enough, others were outraged that he’d even considered an apology at all..plus ca change…