Greeks face the same problems as the Irish – but they know the enemy lies within
IN MAY 2002 a Reclaim the Streets celebration in Dublin went horribly wrong. Its political undertones provoked inappropriate reaction from unmarked gardaí wielding batons. Protests, and reactions of this kind, are rare in Ireland. In Athens, it’s the norm, but it’s the police who are trying to reclaim the streets, in the face of frequent protests that are overtly political in character. It’s astonishing (to a non-Greek) to see how quickly a home-made petrol bomb can come into play, how frequently protesters will take to the streets, and the riot police to their batons.
But there the differences between Ireland and Greece begin to merge. Politicians lacking credibility; financial instability; citizens alienated from authority; clientelism and jobs for the boys; graft; poor employment prospects for graduates; inadequate hospital facilities; immigrants causing social unrest; a lack of any sense of direction in society – does it sound familiar?
Well, we have all those here in Greece, too.
Corfu is different, culturally, from most of Greece, and looks down on Athens, which was a mere village when cosmopolitan Corfu was the capital of the United States of the Ionian Islands. We don’t have riots here. Well, the police station was smashed up a bit recently, but all in good faith. The disquiet is more evident in the countryside than in the town of Corfu, as people with a traditional, subsistence-style way of life are confronted with rising commodity prices, and labourers have no prospect of work either repairing the local roads or in the now dormant building industry. And that disquiet is expressed more in despair than in anger.
At the time of writing, little has yet been done to raise taxes on “the old reliables”: a bottle of Stoli or gin was still only €11.50; 20 cigarettes increased in January from €3.20 to €3.60; a good bottle of wine is around €2.50. Taxing these any further would cause a greater riot than all the wage cuts put together. And a huge increase in the cost of supplying batons and riot shields to the police.
I have come to realise that it is possible to survive in – and indeed co-exist with – a society that is venal, mendacious, hypocritical and financially out of control. So you may well ask, why did I leave Ireland, when all of that was available on my old doorstep? Why do I bother to live here, so far from my family and most of my friends, from the country where I spent 40 largely happy years? I used to love Ireland. I grew up there. I told the lies for RTÉ. If all of Ireland were Connemara, I might still be there.
Ireland has ceased to have any discernible sense of purpose. It is hardly a real country at all. In 1986 an editorial in the Sunday Tribuneexpressed frustration with a debate on Irish identity. "Many people seem to be of the view that if we could sort out our identity, things would be a great deal better," the editorial observed. But it went on to argue: "a large number of people think that this obsession with establishing our identity, defining it, analysing it, explaining it, and refining it, is a foolish and indulgent diversion from what we should be about." Drawing attention to the issues of poverty, the threat of national bankruptcy, and citizens' alienation from the institutions of state (this was 1986, remember), the writer asserted that "at best the issue of identity has only a tangential relationship with any of these problems – no navel gazing is required."
It’s a long time since I saw my navel, but I can recognise myself as someone who is clearly not right-thinking when it comes to the job of living. I think too much about it. I let life pass me by, all the time imagining that I am defining, analysing, explaining and refining my own sense of identity and of my place in the world, instead of getting on with the business of living.
Nearly 25 years after the Sunday Tribuneurged us to look outward rather than inward, the issues raised – poverty, national bankruptcy, alienation – have not gone away, nor have they been resolved, nor are they likely to be.
Ireland has ceased to debate these issues with any sense of identity. But Greece hasn’t lost that capacity for self-reflection, for a debate about “who we are,” and maybe the present crisis is to be welcomed for that. Greece as a country is in fact far too real. Public pronouncements are full of self-criticism, not least because it’s impossible to identify “the enemy,” to lay the blame on anyone, not even the Teutonic tortoise, Angela Merkel, who would dearly like to send Greece down the tubes.
The enemy is within, at the core of society, and Greeks, unlike the Irish, it seems, are willing not only to acknowledge that, but to debate it. It may not solve the world’s ills, it may not make politicians or civil servants any more honest, but it feels good. Apart from the occasional riot, that is.
Richard Pine lives in Corfu.
John Waters is on leave