Auxiliary troops stop and search civilians during the War of Independence
“The keynote to the economic revival must be … that the people have steady work, at just remuneration, and their own share of control. ”
– Michael Collins 1922
Michael Collins grew up in an Ireland plagued by mass unemployment and mass immigration. There was famine in the year of his birth, 1890; and its spectre of starvation continued to haunt everyday life.
As a young banking professional in London, a “glass ceiling” kept himself and other Irish hopefuls in the relatively menial clerical sector. There was no hope of advancement: due to unwritten British policy that the Irish were not to be considered for management positions.
How ironic that this young man, passed over as unfit for management, would go on to manage a nation so effectively; much to London’s cost.
What parallels might be found today in Ireland, and in the rest of the world? Are we not surrounded by general unemployment, poverty, hunger, and desperate mass immigration for survival?
Have we not seen, in our own lifetimes, how multitudes, once excluded from employment, from management, from professional and government positions, have suddenly broken down socio/political barriers which confined them to menial work and poverty wages?
People of color, and women of all nations, have proven themselves again and again, in fields so recently barred to them. This writer remembers well the day when it was seriously debated in scholarly circles whether women were biologically incapable of discharging the duties of a government official. When it was generally believed that women could never be police. When chaos and mayhem were seriously posited as the results which must be expected if people of African descent were allowed to attend the same schools as those of a lighter complexion, or to follow the same articled professions.
Surely, all things considered, we must ask ourselves whether the immigrating, jobless Irish of today, might manage things well enough, given equal opportunity. And could desperate millions, now herded into camps, separated from schools, jobs, homes, all hope of building a life, do their own jobs well enough … if only those in responsible positions did theirs?
Can we not do better? Is mass extreme poverty, unemployment, and refugee-ism so unavoidable?
#WWMCD : What would Michael Collins do?
“…to stop the national hemorrhage of emigration for the whole of the year. There you have the practical politics of our new day.”
– Michael Collins 1922
Read more
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”
by S M Sigerson
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The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened At Béal na mBláth? 