We learn a certain kind of logic in the playground which part of us never quite loses. It is blame-transference for one's misdemeanours. Did you hit Johnny? Yes, but he started it. Johnny might only have inadvertently nudged you in the queue for assembly, and now there he is, on the ground gushing blood. But he started it.
That is playground culture, and we have seen it triumph in the course of the Ryanair dispute, so much so that I am sure that nothing I say here will change that; but no matter. In the past week I have seen the truth turned upside down or even hidden. And who is to blame? Always, Ryanair. Why? Because they started it. Playground culture.
Let us go over the territory again. Ryanair, like every single large US computer business coming to this country, has a non-union policy. It is the fastest growing native company in Ireland. No doubt some of its problems result from that. Its managers probably do not understand that internal communication must grow even faster than the company. Many who work for a company must have a sense of self within it; they must know that they belong.
Workforce reassurance
Trade unions have traditionally fulfilled that "belonging" function for many workers. In the absence of unions, workers often find comfort in a works committee. Companies which have moved here from the US, where they have more experience of these matters, greatly believe in in-house communications and workforce reassurance.
Ryanair appears to think that its cheery, buccaneering management style could get it through whatever problems came its way. And when it was a small company, that was true. It is no longer small, and it will probably have to revise its internal communications and staff relations. But its deficiencies do not even begin to justify the disgusting and immoral things done by SIPTU members - they did not just happen - to would-be passengers at Dublin last weekend, and which were unreported to a degree I believe quite unprecedented in Irish journalism.
Let us consider again what happened. SIPTU picketed the airport, and buses and taxis going to the airport abandoned their passengers at the picket - acts of unforgivable cowardice. Ryanair employees had to pass hooting, jeering pickets; airline passengers had to tote their luggage for a mile to the airport. These people - old, young, families with babies, bemused and multi-coloured tourists from the US - made this weary journey not knowing that all Aer Lingus flights were grounded. And after hours waiting to discover this, the passengers, plus luggage, had to troop back down to the Belfast-Dublin road.
Why had SIPTU closed the airport down? Because we could only take so much, one SIPTU member told me subsequently. What had they to take? They had to "take" the withdrawal of security passes from 39 striking Ryanair employees, who have not been sacked, or even suspended. All that was done to them was the they lost the right to roam at will in the airport control-zone and conduct their dispute there.
Weekend closure
Only a depraved and self-pitying Johnny-started-it playground culture could translate that "provocation" into the virtual closure of the country's major air terminal for an entire weekend, with vast and immeasurable human misery. Only such a perverse and suicidal Johnny-started-it playground culture could permit Aer Lingus employees to triumphantly close down their own struggling airline by illegal secondary picketing - behaviour which went despicably but predictably uncondemned by our slibhin politicians, whose eyes were solely on the North Dublin by-election. And only a Johnny-started-it-playground culture could hold Ryanair responsible for all the misery and confusion of that weekend.
There is more to the public perception of the dispute - in which Ryanair has of course been the conspicuous loser - than mere Johnny-started-it. Last Monday afternoon, the day after the dispute was suspended, Ryanair announced that it had signed perhaps the biggest ever contract by an independent Irish company, and the biggest order in Irish aviation history: £2 billion worth of Boeing aircraft. It was a mighty day in the company's history, and reason to believe that the airline could expect a welcome change in news headlines.
Michael Cawley, Ryanair's chief finance officer, gave RTE television news an interview that afternoon. He was asked about the dispute, and spoke about that, and then he spoke about the enormous order, which could make Ryanair the largest airline in Ireland.
That night the RTE television news bulletins at 6 p.m. and at 9 p.m. carried only reports on the weekend's dispute. Excerpts from the interview which dealt with that were transmitted. But no mention was made of the biggest aeroplane order in Irish history; none at all, not even in introductory comments.
24 hours late
Why? Was it because the interview with Michael Cawley was not good enough? Hardly - because after complaints from Ryanair's PR company about what actually amounted to censorship, RTE News ran the story the next night, 24 hours late, and long after it appeared in this and other newspapers. Or was it because it didn't seem appropriate to run an up-beat Ryanair story?
Ryanair is the greatest thing to happen to air transport in this country. Ryanair introduced cheap fares to London while Aer Lingus, with its score of unions, was hammering us, and it thereby helped trigger our economic boom. No, I have never had a free flight from Ryanair, though I have had a couple from Aer Lingus, and I have never met any of the Ryanair management, other than Tony Ryan - once.
Finally: my anger at what has been happening at Dublin Airport unhinged my arithmetic the other day when talking about Team Aer Lingus compensation: it is in fact about one tenth of the £250,000 figure I mentioned. I was wrong, and I admit it. Anyone else care to do the same?