Is there any way of preventing the remorseless growth of political orthodoxy through our non-political organisations? The latest is An Post financially and organisationally joining the campaign to close Sellafield. What next? Bord na Móna backing the campaign to free the Three Columbian Birdwatchers? The GAA coming out against oil exploration in the Alaskan National Park? The National Tree Council condemning China's single-child policy? For good-causery is embarked upon its mission-creep, pursuing f
Instead, one of its organisational goals now appears to be to close Sellafield down: and that is some ambitious project. To achieve this, it is subsidising "Shut Sellafield Postcards" to be sent to Tony Blair, Norman Askew head of British Nuclear Fuels, and Prince Charles. (He, of course, has nothing else on his mind at the moment.)
Reflex response
Sellafield. Like child abuse and devouring the pre-dead old, the very term produces a reflex response, as if the issue was simply open and shut. It's perhaps time that we in Ireland put that place in perspective, for virtually all our talk about it suggests that it is on a small island just off our coast, and thousands of miles away from Britain.
In fact, tens of millions of Britons live as close as - or closer than - Dubliners do to Sellafield. North Wales, all of the English midlands and north country, from Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds up to Newcastle, and the entire lowlands of Scotland, including Edinburgh and Glasgow, are within the same radius that encloses Dublin.
Thus, if Sellafield blows, not merely will Gordon Brown and Tony Blair lose their constituencies rather more comprehensively than politicians might usually expect, but most of industrial England will be turned into a glowing Gobi. And all that will remain of Scotland will be a few million ewes, baying lustily for their shepherds.
If your radius is Cork, then all of Britain is included, apart from the Orkneys; and I imagine they could do with the excitement of going orange and seeing their limbs drop off. So it's not just as simple as the brutal Brits and their vile power station, poisoning the powerless Paddies.
Moreover, we cannot uninvent nuclear power; and we also know that we have to cut down on greenhouse emissions. Somewhere in the world had to process nuclear waste. Which African country would you prefer? Not Africa? In the Pacific, say? Nice idea; but plutonium can be dealt with only by highly trained experts, of whom Polynesia has but few.
And anyway: who are we to lecture anyone on waste management? And no, I don't like nuclear fall-out any more than anybody else. I don't want to wake up inhaling nuclear waste for breakfast, and find myself growing antlers or flippers or turning into a hermaphrodite toad by lunch. There are limits to the personal sacrifice I'm prepared to make for the reduction of greenhouse gases, thank you. But that doesn't mean I want An Post to be campaigning on issues it was not constitutionally and organisationally intended for.
Policy directives
An Post is not an environmentalist group, any more than Greenpeace delivers mail, or Aer Lingus protects coral reefs. So why is our State-owned postal company creating and implementing international policy directives outside its lawful remit? And if it feels free to use its monopoly to drive policy on nuclear processing, is there any area which is free from its intrusions?
What is An Post's position on whaling, on violence against women, on the future of Kashmir, on David Beckham's thong, on the partition of Cyprus? And better still, what is it going to do about these pressing issues? Put it another way. Not so long ago, it actually was the law of this country that anyone who murdered a British soldier, using a handgun, for the sake of creating a united Ireland, would have been pursuing a constitutional imperative, and could not therefore be extradited. Thus, alleged killers, against whom there was compelling prima-facie evidence, were actually freed by Irish courts on these grounds, without a trial of that evidence ever taking place.
Political agenda
How would this country have felt if the Royal Mail had used its monopoly in the UK to encourage a bombardment of postcards to influential people to force Ireland to change its policies on this, no matter the rightness of the demand? Actually, it very well might not have been legal for the Royal Mail so to have acted; is it legal for An Post to use public money to pursue a political agenda against a foreign country?
Just because it's Government policy that Sellafield should close doesn't mean that every arm of Government should be set about that purpose. Do people really want Aer Lingus to precede its in-the-highly-unlikely-event warnings to passengers with a close-Sellafield mantra? And what, we might ask, are the ESB, Bord na Móna and Bord Fáilte doing about it? Nothing, I hope. So why is An Post allowed to abuse its State-protected monopoly in this way?
And what next? Where does An Post stand on Scottish Home Rule, on the vexed question of the Whitby Bay kipper, on the Channel Tunnel, on the Falklands War, on the Cornish pasty? We need to know, now. For why else do we buy stamps but to enable An Post executives to strike politically correct poses in public?