Getting Things Done
Mark Thomas is a political activist, protestor, campaigner, agitator, investigative journalist, social commentator, and public practical joker. He's written two books, one about the Arms Trade ("As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela"), and one about Coca Cola ("Belching Out The Devil"). He also happens to be a stand-up comedian, one who performed at Dublin's Laughter Lounge on Wednesday, although you'd be forgiven for thinking that the stand-up element of what he does is the least important part of his ouevre.
You'd be wrong. Thomas is a very skilled operator, and he is funny. His performance mixes energy with control; he's not shy of occupying a moral high-ground, while at the same time being disarmingly self-deprecating; and he spits out his routine at enormous speed, word-perfect, the sort of thing that you can only pull off if you're really comfortable with your material. If a lot of what he says seems like an instinctive broadbrush socialism, his occasional references to the minutae of the law let you know that this is someone who thoroughly understands his subjects. We're not talking Michael Moore here.
Thomas' latest show focuses on his more irreverent work. It's called the Manifesto, in which he invites the audience to come up with policies. This being Dublin, almost of all them were smart-arsed, if funny; hanging Bono by his scrotum end up winning, edging out dusting every thirteenth copy of the Daily Mail with anthrax, replacing the Irish national anthem with Eye of the Tiger, and having the weather report replaced with an old guy sitting in a pub muttering "shite"*. Some of the previous policies were more serious, such as Belfast's choice to have the British 1967 Abortion Act applied to Norn Iron (which, when Thomas mentioned it, was answered by a puzzled silence as everyone in the room thought "what, you mean it doesn't?" Apparently not). Thomas pledged to try and put the winning policy into effect, although I think he'd struggle with the Bono variant.
On the surface, the last bit seems the problematic part. Thomas's protests are often extremely silly and funny, albeit silly with a point. He had stories about kidnapping the bay tree of Margaret Moran MP (she's the MP for Luton who claimed a second home in Southampton, for no good reason at all), holding it to ransom, and sending her a leaf and a photo every week. The funniest was probably the demonstration outside the Bank of England after quantitative easing began, where they campaigned to get it renamed "The Pound Shop". Still, the thought that he could actually get the law changed? Come on now, don't be silly.
And yet, Mark Thomas has made a real difference, and has got the law changed more once. The UK intend to repeal the law where protests within a designated area of London require police permission, for example, as a result of Thomas (and friends) applying for permission for over 2,500 very silly one-man protests. You can no longer avoid paying inheritance tax if you make art, homes or lands available for public viewing, thanks largely to Thomas pursuing anyone who took advantage of the practice and trouping hundreds of people through the houses in question; his work on the Arms Trade was commended by a parliament select committee. In other words, Mark Thomas isn't an angry man, he's a driven one who believes in the possible. He does things. Being in his company just makes you feel incredibly positive; demos look fun, protests seem important, the people seem powerful. He doesn't complain that the establishment don't change anything, he agitates for them to make changes. And, perhaps surprisingly, it can work.
This is relevant now, more than ever. Right now, after the Murphy report, everyone is angry. But then, they were angry after the Ryan Report; a few weeks later the dust settled, everything looked the same. We now have another shitstorm of horror, exclamations of hatred about Them Fecking Baxtards, and how we need to strip all their assets and kick put six-foot high neon banners saying "paedophile" onto every priest's back.
If that anger is understandable, it's just plain wrong. It's partly because this anger is cheap, unearned, and hypocritical; we did this, not just the church. We didn't believe the victimsm initially; we elected the officials who did nothing; we let industrial schools exist, in spite of the regime being an open secret. We have failed to prosecute any of the people involved, for fuck's sake. It gets tiring when people with no concept of their own guilt go on the offensive, time after time after time.
(There are honourable exceptions, of course; here's one.)
And there's the other key point; being angry achieves nothing.
The previous post here wasn't intended to be the standard rage-article at the church, even if it may have come across that way. I highlighted schools partly because of the obvious... irony, if that isn't too light a word. But the real reason I highlighted it was that it's a change that's actually possible**. It wouldn't require a huge amount of funding or management on behalf of the state, and it could be achieved by simple, non-violent direct action. It's not about rage, or inflicting punishment. It's about rationally remedying a situation that was always absurd, and is now grotesque and untenable.
Mark Thomas' gloriously immature protests are, in that sense, tremendously adult. Whereas here, we express our outrage in the Letters page of the Irish Times for a few weeks, then leave it at that, consciences untouched. This society - that's us, the onlookers of a century's crimes - actually has two duties. We should think of ways to remedy the situation as we go into the future, and we should say sorry. This is, ultimately, about children; it's ironic how, with our cartoonish fury and moral outrage, we're reacting in the most childish way possible.
*One of those was mine. If you can guess which one, you win fuck all.
** To that end, I've emailed both National Parents' Councils, and Barnardos Ireland, asking them to consider mounting it as a campaign. It's not exactly world-changing and God knows what response I'll get to that one, but it would be nice if you'd consider doing the same. Or something even more useful, if you know exactly how to do That Sort Of Thing.
You'd be wrong. Thomas is a very skilled operator, and he is funny. His performance mixes energy with control; he's not shy of occupying a moral high-ground, while at the same time being disarmingly self-deprecating; and he spits out his routine at enormous speed, word-perfect, the sort of thing that you can only pull off if you're really comfortable with your material. If a lot of what he says seems like an instinctive broadbrush socialism, his occasional references to the minutae of the law let you know that this is someone who thoroughly understands his subjects. We're not talking Michael Moore here.
Thomas' latest show focuses on his more irreverent work. It's called the Manifesto, in which he invites the audience to come up with policies. This being Dublin, almost of all them were smart-arsed, if funny; hanging Bono by his scrotum end up winning, edging out dusting every thirteenth copy of the Daily Mail with anthrax, replacing the Irish national anthem with Eye of the Tiger, and having the weather report replaced with an old guy sitting in a pub muttering "shite"*. Some of the previous policies were more serious, such as Belfast's choice to have the British 1967 Abortion Act applied to Norn Iron (which, when Thomas mentioned it, was answered by a puzzled silence as everyone in the room thought "what, you mean it doesn't?" Apparently not). Thomas pledged to try and put the winning policy into effect, although I think he'd struggle with the Bono variant.
On the surface, the last bit seems the problematic part. Thomas's protests are often extremely silly and funny, albeit silly with a point. He had stories about kidnapping the bay tree of Margaret Moran MP (she's the MP for Luton who claimed a second home in Southampton, for no good reason at all), holding it to ransom, and sending her a leaf and a photo every week. The funniest was probably the demonstration outside the Bank of England after quantitative easing began, where they campaigned to get it renamed "The Pound Shop". Still, the thought that he could actually get the law changed? Come on now, don't be silly.
And yet, Mark Thomas has made a real difference, and has got the law changed more once. The UK intend to repeal the law where protests within a designated area of London require police permission, for example, as a result of Thomas (and friends) applying for permission for over 2,500 very silly one-man protests. You can no longer avoid paying inheritance tax if you make art, homes or lands available for public viewing, thanks largely to Thomas pursuing anyone who took advantage of the practice and trouping hundreds of people through the houses in question; his work on the Arms Trade was commended by a parliament select committee. In other words, Mark Thomas isn't an angry man, he's a driven one who believes in the possible. He does things. Being in his company just makes you feel incredibly positive; demos look fun, protests seem important, the people seem powerful. He doesn't complain that the establishment don't change anything, he agitates for them to make changes. And, perhaps surprisingly, it can work.
This is relevant now, more than ever. Right now, after the Murphy report, everyone is angry. But then, they were angry after the Ryan Report; a few weeks later the dust settled, everything looked the same. We now have another shitstorm of horror, exclamations of hatred about Them Fecking Baxtards, and how we need to strip all their assets and kick put six-foot high neon banners saying "paedophile" onto every priest's back.
If that anger is understandable, it's just plain wrong. It's partly because this anger is cheap, unearned, and hypocritical; we did this, not just the church. We didn't believe the victimsm initially; we elected the officials who did nothing; we let industrial schools exist, in spite of the regime being an open secret. We have failed to prosecute any of the people involved, for fuck's sake. It gets tiring when people with no concept of their own guilt go on the offensive, time after time after time.
(There are honourable exceptions, of course; here's one.)
And there's the other key point; being angry achieves nothing.
The previous post here wasn't intended to be the standard rage-article at the church, even if it may have come across that way. I highlighted schools partly because of the obvious... irony, if that isn't too light a word. But the real reason I highlighted it was that it's a change that's actually possible**. It wouldn't require a huge amount of funding or management on behalf of the state, and it could be achieved by simple, non-violent direct action. It's not about rage, or inflicting punishment. It's about rationally remedying a situation that was always absurd, and is now grotesque and untenable.
Mark Thomas' gloriously immature protests are, in that sense, tremendously adult. Whereas here, we express our outrage in the Letters page of the Irish Times for a few weeks, then leave it at that, consciences untouched. This society - that's us, the onlookers of a century's crimes - actually has two duties. We should think of ways to remedy the situation as we go into the future, and we should say sorry. This is, ultimately, about children; it's ironic how, with our cartoonish fury and moral outrage, we're reacting in the most childish way possible.
*One of those was mine. If you can guess which one, you win fuck all.
** To that end, I've emailed both National Parents' Councils, and Barnardos Ireland, asking them to consider mounting it as a campaign. It's not exactly world-changing and God knows what response I'll get to that one, but it would be nice if you'd consider doing the same. Or something even more useful, if you know exactly how to do That Sort Of Thing.
posted by Nyder O'Leary at
18:15
3 Comments:
Sure, my response on these threads was one of furious anger, and perhaps a bit unreasonable and sweary. One of the most frustrating things about Ireland is a cultural inability to apply any criteria evenly, or follow through on any law all the way to the higher-ups. We just seem to lose our nerve at high altitude. Why do we demand accountability and justice from our own bishops, but allow fudge from Rome?
It's not anti-clericism on my part - big institutions have always promised self-regulation, protected their own, and avoided blame - whether it's NASA or the banks or just about any police force.
The editorial in todays IT is a rare thing in that I agree virtually word for word.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1201/1224259802984.html
Still angry.
See, there's a key part of that editorial that I don't agree with. I don't think the buck stops with Rome; I think it stops with us.
Obstructing the investigation was a horrible thing to do. But in terms of allowing it to happen, we've got to put our hands up. We can't change the Vatican; we can change our own country, if we want to.
I'm willing to concede the point after reading this from the Irish times today:
'In the Dáil yesterday, during a debate on the Dublin report, Taoiseach Brian Cowen described the failure of Church authorities to put children first and act decisively against priests who sexually abused children as “immoral, shameful and scandalous”.
But, under questioning from Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, he said it was a matter for the Church authorities and not for the State to deal with bishops implicated in the report.
The Taoiseach also defended the Vatican’s dealings with the Dublin Commission. He contended that the Holy See had acted in good faith by insisting that, as the Commission was a body set up by Government, all communications to the Vatican State should have been routed through diplomatic channels in accordance with international law and customs. “It is not unreasonable to assume the Holy See was open to responding to a further approach through formal diplomatic channels,” he said.'
Now it appears the Taoiseach himself has thrown your words into sharp relief. We either change it or we become it.
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