FROM THE ARCHIVES:Physics professor and future president of UCC Alfred O'Rahilly set out his ideas for the country, including a rural idyll and a hint of Italian fascism, at a Muintir na Tíre conference in 1940.
‘WE have got to get rid of metropolitan “gangsterism,” ’ said Professor O’Rahilly. “We have got to get back some of the faith and fire that we had in Volunteer days. We have to stop counting heads. There is not as much in one head as another.” He described the City Guilds [urban branches of Muintir na Tíre] as temporary and auxiliary things, merely backing the idea of Muintir na Tíre. He then called attention to the similarity between the craft guilds of six centuries ago and trade unions, and described the Parish Guilds of which, he said, there were thousands in England as long ago as the 13th century. They in Muintir na Tíre were trying to go back to the Middle Ages, when the guilds were both religious and social. Those guilds failed ultimately, for various reasons, but, firstly because religion failed. When the gospel of money and greed came in, such things died out.
In Muintir na Tíre they were trying to revive the old system. They wanted to get back local responsibility. People nowadays voted in a political way, and had no responsibility over their own trades.
After risking their lives for freedom, they in Ireland had failed to produce a system of their own and were like a second-rate county in England – that was the spirit they had got to get rid of. There was a tremendous lot that they could produce in a parish. They need not have any civil servant bureaucracy. There was no need for an elaborate paper constitution. The organisation that suited one parish might not suit another. The main thing was to get together. As much work as possible that could be done locally should be done locally. [...] He went on to deal with some of the work that the parishes could do, and mentioned the maintenance of schools, the owning of parish halls, looking after local roads and the providing of work for labour.
Why would not local unemployed, he asked, drain the farmers’ land, the farmer to pay the difference between the “dole” and the men’s wages? They were paying a subsidy in the form of a tariff to nearly every firm in the country, so why should they not pay a subsidy to the farmer? Agriculture was more than a vocation. It was a way of life, and the small towns were a part of the life of rural Ireland. Their council should represent rural Ireland and be free from sectional interests. They had got to try to bring functional democracy back to Ireland. They were not counting heads, but paying attention to what was inside them. They were not anti-Parliamentarians, but they could do things that Parliament could not do. Professor O’Rahilly spoke of Mussolini’s volunteers lining up for “the battle of the harvest,” and said that when that spirit came to this country he would have hope.