PRO-LISBON RALLY:VOTERS IN next month's Lisbon Treaty referendum should reject the philosophy of "Irish Ayatollahs", "Little Englanders" and others who wish Ireland to return to the past, former president of the European Parliament Pat Cox has said.
Mr Cox suggested that the referendum was partly about “our soul as a nation” and that its outcome would be a signal of Irish people’s “psychological and political sense of who we are and where we belong” at the end of the century’s first decade.
He was speaking before a rally organised by the pro-treaty group Ireland for Europe in Dublin yesterday. Mr Cox is the group’s campaign director.
“We are facing in Ireland a choice which will carry generational consequences,” he said.
“We are facing a choice . . . that will send a very clear signal from Ireland by we, the people of Ireland, about our psychological and political sense of who we are and where we belong at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.”
He said that signal would be heard in every cabinet room and parliament in Europe, as well as “in every boardroom in every country that has invested in this country”.
Referring to some of those advocating a No vote, Mr Cox said there were “many siren voices of Irish Ayatollahs who wish to drag us back to a past for which I have no sense of a paralysing nostalgia”.
“There are now voices coming in of Little Englanders. They speak from Great Britain. They are neither great nor British. They are . . . prejudiced and bigoted English nationalists and they and their fellow travellers are seeking to bring us back to the past.”
Ireland for Europe describes itself as an independent, non-party group and has established branches in 20 towns and cities across the country. Yesterday’s rally in Temple Bar in Dublin, attended by several hundred supporters, was also addressed by former Wexford hurling manager Liam Griffin, television presenter Duncan Stewart, businessman Eddie O’Connor and journalist Eamon Dunphy.
In response to the contention that there would be no adverse consequences for Ireland if it rejected the treaty, the group’s chairperson, Prof Brigid Laffan, argued that a rejection would result in “a well of frustration” on the continent and to the establishment of a “two-tier, two-speed” Europe in which at least nine countries would proceed with further policy co-operation.
“If we vote No, I have no doubt which of those speeds and which of those tiers Ireland would be in. So this is an absolutely vital vote for our future, and the only way we can guarantee our control over our future in the EU is by voting Yes,” Prof Laffan said.
Adding her voice to the Yes campaign, Mary Davis of Special Olympics Europe stressed the importance of the charter of fundamental rights and said the treaty would better equip the EU to deal with the trafficking of women and children.
