About Nick Cohen’s Book and Stephen Fry’s Predicament

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censorship, ireland, Nick Cohen, Religion, Stephen Fry

Just as I was composing this post about Nick Cohen’s book (‘You Can’t Read this Book‘), which addresses the psychology of religiously-motivated censorship, I read about Stephen Fry reportedly being investigated by Irish police under blasphemy laws. Since the existence of such law, in 2017(!), would be as retarded as Fry’s understanding of theology, I was initially a bit skeptical. Unfortunately it’s true. According to Independent.ie, the complainant, one member of the public, believed that Fry’s remarks were criminal under the Defamation Act 2009. The Act has an entire section (36) on blasphemy, and it’s extremely subjective in its wording. Hard to believe, isn’t it, that such a backward piece of legislation exists in Ireland and in the United Kingdom?

Onto Nick Cohen’s Book: There are three sections, dealing with religion, money and the state, and there is a fourth section suggesting solutions that are more abstract than practical. Here I’ll cover the first and add some of my own thoughts. Not because of the religious angle, per se, but because it’s where we find the most lucid descriptions of how the supposition of our collective liberalism and tolerance is pretty difficult to justify sometimes.

It seems fitting to quote the extract from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

‘Be it enacted by the General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities‘.

Here Jefferson demanded no less than the right of anyone to express their religion in the public sphere and the right of anyone to criticise a religion. It does not imply that expressions of religion should be banned from the public arena, or that one should keep his/her religious beliefs private – legislating that would be state censorship, essentially, for what is religion but a system of ideas?
Jefferson is essentially trusting in the individuals’ ability to reason for themselves, to defend their opinions and beliefs through argument, and to follow their consciences. Christianity is no less a valid basis for morality than what the secular world ultimately bases its ideals on, if most of us believe in the principles of fundamental rights, human dignity and the sanctity of life. We have the intellect to resolve the more challenging questions of applying these principles in the real world.

This freedom is important, because human rights violations, oppression and injustice do indeed happen, they should be exposed and they should be openly discussed. Sometimes they aren’t: Overall Cohen’s book is about how our desire to openly discuss the issues is often outweighed by the fear of retribution, the fear of being sued, the fear of how it would impact our careers, the fear of something consequential. He made the case for this far better than I ever could.
Cohen argued that mainstream ‘liberals’, maybe for fear of causing outrage among religious zealots, cannot be objective and consistent in criticising oppressive ideology, and there are real-world examples provided of established liberals turning on those who criticise the oppressors – the Salman Rushdie drama being just one case in point. This is perhaps why we see only outrage against trivial instances of ‘oppression’ within our Western culture, instead of solidarity with victims of real oppression in other nations where Islam is dominant. And this is only a facet of the underlying problem – ultimately the same kind of fear prevented employees of global banks warning us of the impending economic crash of 2008, and forces the press to consider the risks of being sued when holding those with financial power to account.

The Liberator

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catholic, daniel, emancipation, geoghegan, ireland, liberator, liberty, o'connell

Not many people today have heard of Daniel O’Connell, but it is said he’s the father of the civil rights movement, someone commonly compared by historians to Ghandi and Martin Luther King, and a celebrity across Europe during his time. He made quite an impression on Charles Dickens (and the novel Martin Chuzzlewit).
O’Connell was, at one point, crowned ‘King of Ireland’ in front of roughly 750,000 people at the hill of Tara. More recently, his name found its way into the speeches of Elizabeth Windsor and President Obama.

I wondered, as a strong believer (less a campaigner these days) in civil rights myself, who exactly was this man? More to the point, how did he warrant the title of ‘The Liberator’?
To answer these questions, I swiped a biography by Patrick Geoghegan. King Dan: The Rise and Fall of Daniel O’Connell is fairly dense, meticulously researched and based around O’Connell’s own journal entries. In all, I think it was excellently authored.

Early Life and Personality
Daniel O’Connell is, before anything, most commonly credited with leading one of the very first mass civil rights movements, and was certainly not a revolutionary. In his early years, he witnessed first-hand the aftermath of the French Revolution, and was a target himself, being an aristocrat and with an uncle being a general serving Louis XVI. His loyalties lay with the establishment until his final years. And O’Connell had the foresight to understand that revolutions almost invariably result in more bloodshed, brutality and oppression.

As for personality, O’Connell had a couple of traits that are instantly recognisable: According to those who met him, he was very warm, humourous, compassionate and generous – quite a generic statement that could apply to anyone, but his generosity appears a main reason he was heavily in debt most his life. In the courtrooms and among other politicians, he easily deployed sarcasm, wit, insolence, colourful insults, inventive ways of exposing untruths and comedy with great effect.

O’Connell would stick to his principles and wouldn’t back down under pressure. It was his way or the highway. When everyone around him believed concessions and negotiation was the only route to equality for Irish Catholics, O’Connell remained insistent on fighting for a full and immediate repeal of the Acts of Union.

He was also absolute in his advocacy of libertarianism, calling out the hypocrisy of slavery in America and joining the protestant evangelists in the anti-slavery cause – something Geoghegan’s other book might cover in more detail. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot about whether O’Connell did much to extend the fight to the working classes, as Young Ireland and the Chartists did.

The Politics
Sadly Geoghegan’s book also doesn’t give enough attention to the people who weren’t among the politicians and aristocrats, so it’s hard to tell just from this book how many Catholics genuinely saw hope in O’Connell’s ideas. Was he fighting to end a situation in which many Irish people were prepared to earn citizenship in America through years of back-breaking servitude? Did he think Catholic emancipation would ultimately be critical in fighting poverty?

Religion did play a major part, because the law was rigged in favour of the Protestants, there just happened to be a geographic division, and because O’Connell used the network of churches to mobilise supporters outside the small circle of people he associated with. Ultimately it was a political thing, centred around the Acts of Union that abolished the Irish parliament.

There were several other people leading the Catholic emancipation movement, which was already growing by the time O’Connell became involved. There were committee meetings, board meetings and more committee meetings, until disagreements led to O’Connell forming a Catholic Association. There wasn’t a coherent direction up until that point.

The Catholic Association
Which brings us to the legendary Catholic Association and the Order of Liberators that O’Connell is best remembered for.

Right up until 1823, the talks of Catholic emancipation were between O’Connell’s peers, a handful of politicians, lawyers, judges, etc. etc. It wasn’t until then, when O’Connell was around 48 years of age, and already a celebrity lawyer, that he reached out to the wider population for support.

What he did next was to use the network of Catholic churches in Ireland to build support and funding. At one point the Catholic Association also operated a kind of welfare system off the books, to undermine the power landlords had over the tenants.

There’s a lot more to be said about the Catholic Association, but here Geoghegan’s biography ends, with the later events covered in another book.
My current understanding is O’Connell’s fame and following grew over the years. A series of ‘monster meetings’ were held around Ireland, culminating in the 750,000-strong rally near the hill at Tara in 1843. Here O’Connell was crowned ‘King of Ireland’, which I suspect was staged by O’Connell himself to provoke the establishment.

And that was that. The Tara rally scared The Powers That Be enough to mobilise regiments and warships, and threaten to massacre anyone who attended the next ‘monster meeting’. O’Connell backed down, but was still jailed for sedition.
By the time he was released, the movement was demoralised, but a few Young Irelanders continued fighting a related class struggle.

I think it was Frederick Engels who wrote of O’Connell in 1843:
‘The cunning old fox is going from town to town, always accompanied by a bodyguard such as no king ever had – two hundred thousand people always surround him! How muh could have been done if a sensible man possessed O’Connell’s popularity or if O’Connell had a little more understanding, and a little less egoism and vanity!’

And I agree. Had the movement been leaderless and self-organising, as it could easily have become, things would have turned out very differently. The impoverished could have introduced demands that improved their own quality of life, people would have gained the confidence to continue where O’Connell left off. There was a radical faction within O’Connell’s movement, calling themselves Young Ireland, who did precisely that, seeing a class conflict at play.