A chara, - It is perhaps apt that an active supporter of an 18th century organisation - The Orange Order - should choose to champion the views of an 18th century British political philosopher - Edmund Burke. David Trimble's uncritical endorsement of Burke's views, in his Oslo speech, bore the hallmark of the undergraduate essayist anxious to show that he had read the books, but yet lacking a status for the expression of his own views and values. Mr Trimble's whole demeanour and his use of language, recalled the opening lines of Macneice's poem "Belfast": The hard cold fire of the northerner/Frozen into his blood from the fire in his basalt/Glares from behind the mica of his eyes/And the salt carrion water brings him wealth. By contrast to Mr Hume, who regularly admits to worshipping a dead American Civil Rights leader whose greatest rallying call was "I have a dream", in Mr Trimble's presentation there was little to suggest that the person accepting the award was a man of blood and bone, caring and charitable, or self-confident, or self-confident enough to express his inner personality. In his urge to decry political dreamers and visionaries, he projected the hard-edged thoughts of an 18th century political philosopher and economist, to whom sentiment and feeling was anathema, and precision in expression, like Mr Trimble, highly prized.
In this context, his choice of political hero was indeed apt, although Mr Trimble took care not to mention Burke's dubious moral principles, as exemplified in the matter of dealing with famine and food shortages. Indeed, Burke's rationale, as expressed in his "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity", along with the later work of Rev Malthus on population, could be said to have provided an economic rationale and intellectual respectability for the crass neglect of Irish hunger, a half a century later. What other interpretation could one apply to a comment such as ".. . we, the people, ought to be made sensible that it is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to place our hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any calamity under which we suffer, or which hangs over us"?
Mr Trimble's speech was an implicit attack on the hopes and expectations of Nationalist Ireland, through attacking its leading articulator, Mr Hume. In his choice of political role model, no less than in his deliberate geographic slander on the Nationalist people of this island, Mr Trimble is unlikely to help bind up old sores, or to turn swords into ploughshares. It seems more a declaration of "Back to the Hill, Boys". - Is mise, Liam O Geibheannaigh,
Ath an Ghainimh, Co Atha Cliath.