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In
the room where I am now writing on the window sill
there sits a piece of heavy glass upon which my son
Gaelan has written in gold ink a quotation from Thomas
Davis. The quotation is as follows:
'Freedom
comes from God's right hand and needs a Godly brain,
and righteous men shall make our land a nation once
again'.
Gaelan
copied this down from one of my books when he was
quite young, not yet a teenager, but the truth or
sentiments within this quotation had obviously captured
the purity and idealism of a young boy. Sadly that
truth and idealism is now missing from many who claim
to be Irish republicans. Of course the culture of
lies and deceit is not restricted to the republican
community for it also permeates the Dublin political
establishment, the SDLP, and certain cliques in the
hierarchy of the Catholic Church and of course the
nationalist media.It is also worldwide!
Considering
the thought of Davis and indeed that of Patrick Pearse
who wrote of the importance of truth in our hearts
as a necessary ingredient in the armoury of those
pursuing the republican cause perhaps the latter patriots
were of a kind who were far removed from the world
of real men and women. But whatever their position
I admit that in my weakness as a human being I long
for the truth of Davis and Pearse. And in this longing
I try to be truthful with my fellow humans and because
of this principle I feel I must oppose the lie which
exists especially when an account of an experience
which I shared or in some way been associated with
is not in accord with what really happened.
Which
is why I had to oppose the culture of lies and deceit
which has been brought into the Captain Kelly campaign
not by the family but by others associated with it.
The taint of lies has appeared in the press and on
the internet and I would draw the readers attention
to the duplicitous nature of the internet forum Stormont
Watch which champions the Kelly campaign. As well
as its usual segment who have not the courage to state
their own true identity and who are experts at personal
assassination behind pseudonyms, a situation of personal
abuse which its administration claims not to tolerate,
there is the less than honest behaviour of the sites
administrator. For example, a recent copy of The
Blanket has yet to appear on the Stormont Watch
site inspite of the fact that in relation to a query
relating to censorship the sites administrator declares
that there is no censorship on the site. Of course
the missing Blanket issue contains an article
relating to the Kelly Campaign written by myself.
The
most recent lie of course is that the administrator
of the site was a delegate from Derry at an IRA Convention
in the nineteen sixties. This is not true for if he
was then he has the gift of bi-location, that is being
capable of being in two or more places at one and
the same time. For on the week end of that convention
the person who states that he was in attendance was
in Letterkenny in Co. Donegal being responsible for
getting a few dozen republicans ejected from where
they were based because he earlier had distributed
leaflets calling upon Irish Army personnel to desert.
I am privy to this because upon my return from the
aforementioned IRA Convention I could not gain entrance
to our original base and met the ejected republicans
including the Stormont Watch administrator in a new
base - a large barn just on the verge of Letterkenny...
As
to the question of plagiarism which has raised its
head recently I was always of the opinion that to
plagiarize one had to copy word for word what someone
else had written. For example to copy this piece entitled
'The Culture Of Lies And Deceit' word for word condemned
one as a plagiarist. But apparently this is a very
basic definition for thought and ideas is also a part
of that defined as plagiarism. Based upon this position
there would be very few of us if indeed any who are
not guilty of some form of plagiarism in the verbal
arts. For example if one uses a quotation used by
another writer ( not his own) in a piece dealing with
a similar topic is that plagiarism? I doubt it based
upon the first definition of the subject within a
verbatim context. If one reads a contribution from
another scribe or letter writer and one is inspired
by the thought of the latter writer to write something
relating to the same subject is that plagiarism? I
doubt it. In fact although I am open to learn and
be corrected I believe that to keep within the area
of safety a verbatim definition of plagiarism is acceptable
otherwise we could enter the world of the bizarre.
To stretch it did Einstein and Darwin start from a
clean sheet and ignore the ideas and thoughts and
writings of earlier thinkers. A close look at their
works will show otherwise even to the extent of the
more complexed definition of plagiarism. Equally were
Engels and Mark original or did some of their thought
just happen to coincide with some other left thinkers
including Thompson of Cork. There is also the complicated
area background of the relationship between language
and thought and what comes first. And of course the
debated complexed philosophical question of what is
originality.
The
latter subject however is one where deceit and untruths
can survive but how much of this deceit and lies is
conditioned by the media consciously or unconsciously
(and this is a fact of life) and of course our wounded
human nature which can prevent us from attaining some
grasp of that which is noble?
My
son is a young man now steeped in the language and
culture of his Nation as well as the culture of Europe
and the world. I have never spoken to him about the
quotation of Thomas Davis on the piece of heavy glass
but I believe that it is still an element of his thought.
Alas many republicans have lost this innocence of
truth and perhaps we all need to regain it if we are
sincerely committed to helping Robert Emmet write
his epitaph.
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