OPINION:NOW THAT we're in an economic war zone, I've been thinking about the Economic War. As my family was a direct victim of that conflict, I was reared with a rather one-sided view of the times that went beyond the abstract account in history books, writes SARAH CAREY
My great-grandfather retired from a successful medical career and bought land in Meath which he farmed profitably.
He must have done well because my grandfather was educated privately in England and in a literal manifestation of his position in society there was even a family pew in the upstairs gallery of the rural parish church.
All went well until Éamon de Valera, the most pernicious and malign figure in Irish history, in a fit of ideological insanity implemented a set of policies that cut off our country’s only export market – England – for our only product – food – and thus crippled Ireland’s economy and in the process permanently ruined that class of people to which the now poor Dr Carey belonged.
Impoverished and never able to work themselves out of the debt into which de Valera plunged them, the Land Commission finished off what the war started.
Understocked or unoccupied farms were bought by the State, but in reality seized and paid for in worthless bonds. Landless labourers from the west of Ireland were then brought up and planted on the carved up holdings.
The targeting of farms and the division of the holdings was widely believed to be a purely political matter. The bitter joke was told that the only difference between a meeting of the Land Commission and the local Fianna Fáil cumann was a five minute recess.
Our lot lost just about everything except the pew until one Sunday in 1976 when my heavily pregnant mother refused to climb the stairs. A rebellious Cavan woman completed what de Valera began and we moved downstairs 40 years after our class had been kicked downstairs. Revolution comes in many forms.
Well, that’s how the losers tell the story. A grander narrative might argue that through the Economic War, de Valera succeeded where other post-colonial and post-revolutionary countries failed. He ended the claims of the English to the land they once held here, won back the ports which kept us out of the second World War and, without any violence, he redistributed wealth from the rich to the poor. For a conservative man who embedded property rights into the Constitution, he achieved peacefully what many socialists failed to do violently. Uniquely he also ensured that the losers in our Civil War destroyed the winners.
Politically inspired poverty was an unhappy experience for my relations, but that collateral damage aside, the Economic War brought some long-term benefits for Ireland. There were still big farmers and the professional classes, but we ended up with a relatively equal society in which class distinctions were more about manners and attitudes than income levels. A rising tide would have been preferable to pulling out the plug, but perhaps it was the only way. There was still a gap between the masses and the rich – but “rich” was a relative term. It didn’t take that much to stay ahead.
One dividend was the development of an economically humble political class in which Charles Haughey’s ostentation was an anomaly. The modesty in which Bertie Ahern lived is a testament to the fact that even for those with a loose approach to financial matters, in Irish politics visible personal wealth is a toxic asset.
This relative equality was undone during the Tiger years. Through labourers turned builders to the professional classes and laterally the top layer of the public sector, a new class was born. Inequality made a comeback not because the poor got poorer but because the rich got richer and the number of rich people increased enormously. That development wasn’t confined to Ireland but was particularly visible and intense here.
It’s so early in the process that overstating the case is too easy, but reading about one bankruptcy proceeding after another, I can’t help wondering if the nouveau riche upper class is collapsing in the same way that it did in the 1930s.
Statistics will probably show that in the next three or four years Ireland will be a more equal society than it has been for the last 10. Not because the poor are catching up, but because the wealthy are falling back.
The ironies are many and almost amusing. I don’t think de Valera ever claimed to be a socialist yet with great calculation he ruined a wealthy class of people. Bertie Ahern proclaimed his socialism yet led the policies that enabled the creation of the multimillionaire builder class. Of course, by actively encouraging them to overextend, he has also ensured their destruction. Presumably this was a matter of accident rather than design, unless his cunning went far beyond our imaginations.
The survival instinct is strong and you have to assume that although the new rich are taking a beating they’ll find a way to get through this crisis.
When the dust settles they’ll still be ahead, but there’s no doubt the gap will have narrowed. Ireland will be a more equal society but yet again, through the destruction of wealth rather than its creation.
As the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica said, “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again”. The wheel will turn and a new class will rise and fall. Of course, we’ll still have the poor for whom opportunities are strangled at birth. Maybe next time?