Postcards from the Edge

Ireland may not like Britain’s decision to leave the EU but it, too, once clamoured to win back its sovereignty, says Mary Kenny

It’s sad to observe that Brexit seems to have made British-irish relations rather snappy. There’s an unpleasant revival of Anglophobic attitudes in Ireland, which had in recent decades receded. Ireland’s best-known public intellectual, Fintan O’toole, pens excoriating articles in the Dublin and London press about the stupidity of the Brits in voting for Brexit, and it’s evident that feelings run high on social media about British ‘madness’ in detaching from the EU.

This frustration with Brexit is understandable, considering the complexities of the border with Northern Ireland, the strong trading relationship, and the role of geography in forming a unit once known as ‘the British Isles’.

And yet it is seldom mentioned that Ireland’s long bid for independence was eerily similar to the language of Brexit. Patrick Pearse demanded ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies’. Irish nationalists, notes the historian Roy Foster, had a deep preoccupation with ‘sovereignty’ as well as ‘freedom from foreign rule’.

In his magisterial study The Age of Decadence, Simon Heffer writes that the British political class just couldn’t understand why Irish nationalists would choose independence if it might mean a lower standard of living. Balfour ‘could not see the Irish determination to govern themselves, irrespective of the economic consequences’.

‘Sovereignty’ was an historic Irish aspiration, but now the Irish consider the idea demented in the context of Brexit.

There’s a discreetly placed statue of Prince Albert in Dublin, behind some railings in Merrion Square. Recently there was a petition to pull down this last symbol of British rule. The request was rejected – for now – by the authorities: it’s considered a fine piece of sculpture. And it was said, in Albert’s defence, that he was a German, and therefore a worthy European figure who would never have been a Brexiteer!

President Macron is apparently in favour of ‘single European stamps’ – postage stamps that could be used in any EU country. It’s not such a daft idea. How often have we acquired pretty postcards on hols and then scrambled around to purchase a local stamp? But I foresee similar difficulties like the ones with the euro notes: there will be endless arguments about what image to put on the said stamps. The French will want Victor Hugo, the Germans Beethoven and the Italians da Vinci; and so they’ll fall back on something uninspiring such as imaginary bridges, which will bring no joy whatsoever to philatelists.

The smoking ban has gradually crept across almost all European societies, but Austria is still holding out against prohibiting cigarettes in public places. Ed Steen, the former Sunday Telegraph journalist who now lives in Vienna (being half-austrian, half-northern Irish), says it’s a hot topic, daily debated in the media. Doctors and the government want a smoking ban, but there’s been a vivid public reaction, led by the right-wing Freedom Party insisting on the individual’s right to smoke. And up to thirty per cent of Austrians smoke (fags being about a fiver for twenty). In the famed cafés and restaurants of Vienna, smokers are still allowed their ciggies (albeit in a partitioned area), which has made Austria either a ‘smokers’ paradise’ or ‘Europe’s ashtray’. In the end, the health lobby will win out, Ed believes, but, for now, Vienna is still fag-friendly.

Ciggies are terribly bad for us but, my, they were pleasurable, and added friendliness and fellowship to café and pub society. Such mixed feelings!

Is a man in his eighties too old to be head of state? The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, is 77 this April and due to step down in November. Proposals to retain him for a second seven-year term have raised the question of his age. In a pro-monarchist turnaround, supporters have pointed admiringly to the steady stewardship of the Queen in her early nineties.

And since I made his match – I introduced Michael D to his wife, Sabina Coyne, in 1970, at a boozy party in my Dublin flat – I feel I should show some loyalty and cheer him on. As a Labour politician, Michael D sometimes seemed dippily Corbynista – he was a fan of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel in Cuba, and he’d rant against the evils of capitalism. Yet as a president, he’s been dignified, measured and judicious – a real example of the mellowing wisdom of age – and Sabina, an unaffected Galway woman, has been a sweetie. He’s also a poet, which is a nice sideline for a head of state.

I’ve personally known three recent Irish presidents – Mary Robinson, Mary Mcaleese and Michael D – yet I’ve never seen the inside of Áras an Uachtaráin (the presidential residence, formerly the Viceregal Lodge) nor been invited to break bread with any of them. Ah well. That’s the big cheeses for you.