Mick Clifford: Does neutrality still protect Ireland? Why it’s time for an honest conversation

Tom Clonan should know better. He is an independent senator, a man who displayed bravery in blowing the whistle on appalling behaviour when he served in the armed forces. He is also a passionate advocate for people with disabilities and it would be safe to say he has made a difference.

On Wednesday, he debated Fergus Finlay on RTE’s Drivetime. The previous day Finlay wrote in his weekly Irish Examiner column under the headline ‘Our precious neutrality is nothing but vanity … we must join the fight’. Finlay has been a public figure for decades, having served as a Labour Party adviser for two governments and latterly as head of the children’s charity Barnardos. He is about as far as one can get from the caricature of a right-wing warmonger. His politics have always been of the left, not the strain of authoritarian left of social media, nor the left that has a sneaking regard for quasi-socialist strongmen, but the left of traditional values.

He posited in his column that, with freedom as known to democracies under attack, we can no longer remain on the sidelines. “We have to stand up now,” he wrote. “Anything we can contribute to the security and defence of Europe is a contribution to freedom everywhere now.” 

You can agree or disagree, but his record suggests that such a shift in outlook didn’t come easy to him and was the result of deep reflection.

Clonan doesn’t agree and they batted back and forth on the radio. Then Tom said this: “What Fergus said in his article is we should join the fight and when he says we he doesn’t mean himself, he means my children and your children and the children of people listening and potentially our grandchildren.

“We used to have a saying as junior officers when I was with the army, these old war horses, retired generals would come in and we used to say once a fighting cock, now a feather duster.”

Finlay retorted that the statement was cheap and unworthy. “I would give my right arm at the drop of a hat to put myself in harm’s way rather than any of my grandchildren, it (the comment) is way beneath you,” he replied. Clonan said that Finlay had never served in the army, inferring that because he has seen the ravages of war he values life more preciously.

By that token, old generals who say we need more war because it’s good for humanity, based on their experience, should have an elevated role in debates like this. Claiming that as demonstrating some moral superiority on one's value for human life infers that unless you have seen the results of war up close you are more likely to send young people off to die. In that respect, Tom sounds as if he’s talking about imperial and class-ridden Britain early in the 20th century, rather than a relatively intimate society and democracy in the 21st.

All of us are susceptible to a lapse in standards now and again and Clonan’s record entitles him to a pass. But the cheap fare that informed his comments is purveyed far and wide, in the public square, and particularly on social media

Did those who lived through fascism in the Second World War have less love or regard for their young folk who went out to fight Hitler? Do the Ukrainians need a lesson in familial love if they support the fight to defend their country from a murderous dictator? And what of the Finns who joined Nato in the wake of Putin’s war in order to better protect themselves? Maybe they too don’t value human life as much as the virtuous voices in this country who claim that any change in response to the new dispensation is tantamount to sacrificing somebody else’s children on some foreign battlefield.

The most immediate issue has been the government’s plan to do away with the requirement for a mandate from the UN to deploy peacekeeping Irish soldiers, the so-called ‘triple lock’. This is being acted on because, as it stands, it requires the nod from Russia, a rogue state under a dictatorship, China, another dictatorship, and the USA, which has Donald Trump.

Those who oppose the move say it dilutes our neutrality. Maybe it does in theory, but that infers that without it our parliament would be more likely to deploy Irish troops not just for peacekeeping duties, but to fight some war. We might as well be told we need Putin to keep us honest and not land us in some violent frolic far from these shores. That might play well on X but has no relationship to the values that are widely espoused in this society.

The pressing issue is the one Finlay referenced in his column. Neutrality in this country was founded on de Valera’s policy during the Second World War. At the time it would have been anathema to allow the British reoccupy the south of the island as part of a war effort. The result was this State, albeit a poor, underdeveloped State, avoided the fight against fascism, which threatened freedom.

Is such positioning feasible today in the context of the European Union in an increasingly hostile world? Sean Lemass, a man who knew more than most about the horrors of warfare, once said: “If Europe is worth joining, it’s worth defending”. There are no easy answers, but in a grown-up political culture, it would be the topic of reasoned, rational debate.

A case can be made that we should stand separate, that whatever threat is faced by members of the EU, it is not our battle, that we are grateful for the benefits of the union and solidarity shown during Brexit, but we have different values. Make that case, by all means. But don’t try to tell those who disagree with you, either on this island or in Europe, that your stance is based on your superior value of human life. On one level that’s offensive, but more to the point it’s just folly.