History and humanity

When you look at the world through the eyes of a writer, you often have to admit defeat and accept that most of what happens is too bizarre to be included in a novel.

Only a month ago, who would have predicted that Germany would emerge from its long Word War Two shadow because a Jewish leader in Ukraine needed military weapons?

Dear reader, that scenario would be risible in a work of fiction.

The largest country in Europe, like my small island, is a prisoner of geography.

Ukraine is next door to a large predatory neighbour who has a president that thinks Ukraine has no right to an independent existence.

We Irish share an archipelago with an island that became the base for the first global imperium.

It was never going to end well for us.

At the height of that empire, we were a net food exporter, more than able to feed ourselves and others, yet one million of us perished of starvation as British soldiers guarded grain shipments to the Irish ports.

Here are some such incidents from my father’s county.

It was no natural disaster; rather, An Gorta Mór was a British engineered catastrophe.

This is a genocidal crime that they find rather amusing at Ibrox, and evoking that racist mindset in a novel would be challenging.

Even today, I find that the universe has a mocking sense of irony.

This week the Ibrox klanbase will decant to the capital of Serbia.

It just so happens that the Belgrade Irish Festival will be in full swing.

Now, dear reader, imagine if your humble correspondent had put that in a novel.

It would be considered to be a work experience contrivance.

The Ibrox klanbase must be almost unique within the global village in the way that any expression of Irishness triggers them.

Although I have tried to block out the noise level to go into my writer’s headspace, the world knocks on the door and quite rightly demands my attention.

If you want to know what a functioning Fourth Estate looks like, then go no further than the Channel 4 News team in Ukraine.

The German-born Matt Frei is clearly at home with the many nuances of the European story, and the fearless Lindsey Hilsum constantly goes towards the danger to get to the truth.

It is little wonder that this crew regularly clean up for media awards.

However, in my opinion, it is one of our own who has been able to brilliantly encapsulate the human tragedy of this war by following a twelve-year-old girl and her grandmother.

Paraic O’Brien has been recording the wartime journey of Yeva Skaletskaya, 12, and her grandmother Irina Skaletskaya.

The child, forced to be mature beyond her years by the invasion, was writing down her own reality in a journal.

The child had told Paraic that she wanted to go to the UK.

However, I think that the red tape barricades that the Brits had erected scuppered that plan.

Thankfully, Yeva and her grandmother are now safe in Ireland, which is the featured image of this piece.

Unlike our once globally dominant neighbours, our policy is based on three words as Gaeilge:

Céad míle fáilte.

 

We have plenty of room here in Ireland.

In fact, we’re quite short of people, and I know why.

Here are some numbers; in the 1841 census, my island was home to 8,175,124 souls.

Today the entire island of Ireland, both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, has around 6.8 million people.

It’s almost as if we Irish had been subjected to some awful outside force that was determined to reduce the native population to more easily subjugate us.

For the avoidance of doubt, the British Empire made us a nation of refugees over many generations.

Perhaps because of this history, we Irish cannot envisage erecting barriers to people fleeing persecution.

Moreover, it would seem that our entirely human approach to this unfolding tragedy has rather irked the people who once ruled us.

A century after the War of Independence, they still don’t get it.

Quite remarkable.

Of course, this is all very minor stuff next to what is being perpetrated on the people of Ukraine.

Recent reports state that the Russian artillery units are deliberately targeting the food supply of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian authorities are convinced that the invaders will use starvation as a weapon against the civilian population.

That sounds very familiar indeed.

Are Putin’s guy’s just Brits in disguise?

The Russians brought a herrenvolk hatred into the life of Yeva and her grandmother.

There will be a similar toxic consignment arriving in Belgrade this week.