The Lisbon rerun: democracy or Consensus?

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues – Thomas Hobbes.

Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood – John Redmond

…I say it represents such a broad measure of liberty for the Irish People and it acknowledges such a large proportion of its rights, you are not entitled to reject it without being able to show that you have a reasonable prospect of achieving more. – Kevin O’Higgins on the 1921 treaty

… wild men screaming through the keyhole… – Kevin O’Higgins on opponents of the treaty

The Consensus
With shocking but not surprising audacity, university presidents, civil servants, local and global media, celebrities, business leaders who may tomorrow be sacking their workers – all these, and more, have dominated the airways, refusing to engage in debate involving facts, attacking their opponents, and launching threats and blackmail at the voters. They have threatend economic ruin should there be a No vote. Warnings of Ireland’s exclusion from the EU (“EU can leave Ireland behind”) have been made several times, while the EU still threatens a “crisis” should vote No, although it has been said that in the event of a No vote, the EU will continue under the Nice treaty. However, the Irish Examiner warned on 1 October 2009 that under a No vote, Ireland could no longer expect support from other EU countries.

The Yes campaign posters have involved a very sophisticated and expensive degree of psychological warfare. Nice people vote Yes. Liars vote No. A no vote involves ruin. The lack of certainty, the fear of many voters has been noted and huge amounts of money have been spent to exploit this weakness to the ultimate, counting on them to be cowed and bewildered enough to do as they are told. The illegal aspects of the yes campaign have been so glaring that even the media, who have not even made a pretence of even-handedness, have had to acknowledge it: European Commission propaganda in the national newspapers, the employment of the Commission of people to work with the Yes campaign, the failure of the Referendum Commission to explain the issues, the illegal and unconstitutional use of government funds to promote the treaty. Media and government sources have lined up to excoriate Declan Ganley, but refuse to investigate the multitude of shady organisations on the Yes side, including Ireland for Europe, run by Pat Cox, who is a lobbyist and special advisor to many multinationals, and Generation Yes, who used a doctored photo as a component of their attack on No campaigners.

The Madmen
In the media, there have been open threats. In the Irish Times, Tony Kinsella compared No campaigners to the Lockerbie bombers. Patsy McGarry essentially termed the people insane for voting No. We are bombarded daily with claims from interest groups that a Yes vote is “vital for jobs and workers“. RTE has been detailing the horrors of hypothetical exclusion from the EU in recent documentaries, while “the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, used what was supposed to be a commemoration of the First Dáil last January to promote the Lisbon Treaty and to attack its opponents. Not only that, he even said that the First Dáil had no international relevance, nor did any subsequent Dáil, until Ireland joined the EU. That is an outrageous thing for a Taoiseach to say in light of the international achievements of the nation from 1919 on, but it also leaves him open to the charge of disparaging the sovereignty of the state. As the more bumbling and obvious PD leader, Ciaran Cannon, put it, “real freedom means” the attaining of a “position of influence”, which involves “pooling sovereignty””. The Irish Examiner again promotes this agenda, saying that the EU “allowed us escape our impoverished and subjugated past as a struggling, insular, agrarian society utterly dependent on a dominant neighbour.”

In its editorial yesterday the Irish Times suggested that only a madman would vote No to the Lisbon Treaty. Are we out of our collective minds, it cried, for contemplating rejection? And then it told us why we should vote Yes: Lisbon will make Europe more efficient. The Irish Times was echoing the standard cry of the Yes campaigners: only loolahs, malcontents, hard-core lefties and religious loons would consider kicking Europe in the teeth, and they’ve all been anti-Europe from the very beginning. And it continued, too, the inherent contradictions of the campaign: the treaty is just a bit of administrative tidying up, but if we say No the sky will fall on our heads. – Alan Ruddock, Irish Independent

This is not a free vote: it is the country voting with a gun to its head, a conspiracy which has had the full collaboration of its government. We are being told we can vote any way we want, as long as it is Yes. As I have written elsewhere: “… de Valera’s detestable Constitution prevented the government pushing Lisbon through in the same way as the British managed to implement the Anglo-Irish treaty. (Much as the media might portray the Free State as democratically endorsed, the population never voted to approve the 1921 treaty.)” (The 1922 Constitution was implemented by a sleight-of-hand by the Provisional Government and never voted on by the electorate.). “As today, people were threatened with military action should they oppose it, and faced a united front of the church and the usual right-wing interests. Opposition was much more wide-spread than those who would like to put it all on de Valera’s shoulders would have us believe.” It is to be hoped that the country rejects the engendered fear, so similar to that which the British attempted to inspire from 1919 until 1922. The EU threats, similarly, are based on a complete reversal of truth. Ireland would not be weaker, but stronger, with a No vote. We would have the support of millions of Europeans who are without a voice or a vote. Hopefully, the country will remember the words read 90 years ago by Cathal Brugha at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann:

Whereas the Irish people is by right a free people:…

And Whereas English rule in this country is, and always has been, based upon force and fraud and maintained by military occupation against the declared will of the people;

And whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Republican Army acting on behalf of the Irish people…

Now, therefore, we, the elected Representatives of the ancient Irish people in National Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the Irish nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effective by every means at our command….

The means at our command is a No vote.