We have many seasons in Ireland. The seasons of the first swallow, of the first cuckoo, of Yule, or the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; but no season is as predictable in its plangent wistfulness as that of letter writing about litter, which is now at its annual height.
Litter-letters are a sign of the end of summer, and are unfailingly of the why-oh-why family of lamentation - which at this stage in our litter-history is rather like complaining about our weather or our bungalow blight. We have litter because we want litter. We are a literate people. It is part of the national character, and the only real justification for complaining is that it might possibly relieve some of the pent-up fury of the letter-writer. It will not change anything. Sadly, as a columnist I know: anything said in newspapers has as much influence as a zephyr emerging from a sparrow's bottom; and that is that.
It comes down to this magical thing called national will - and it really is magic. It is beyond reason or scientific analysis. Moods can settle on people, and they are transformed, abandoning practices they hold dear and ways they have long cherished. The most obvious and startling example of a mood-change occurred in Russia in 1919, when the Orthodox Church, which had had the unswerving loyalty of the vast mass of the Russian people, lost it overnight.
Inexplicable change
The Nazis were the beneficiaries of an inexplicable mood change too; the most law-abiding, literate, and culturally advanced people in Europe within a period of months became the greatest savages in European history. The Nazis did not wreak that change without the assistance of a strange and ungovernable force for change occurring. And it was a comparable but altogether more benign change which occurred in this country almost 10 years ago. For almost a decade before that, we had lived in a debauched political culture of cargo-cult economics, which had brought our country to the door of beggary. We were the laughing stock of banks everywhere, the recidivist loan-junkies whose politicians vied with each other for the privilege of spending the most public money. Budget after budget from 1977 on was a give-away, and the money that was given away was money that was going to be unloaded from the back of C-47s at some indefinable time in the future, our high priests smirking in triumph beside the runway.
But of course those cargo-cult C-47s never arrived; instead, the next tranche of repayment to the banks was accompanied by another loan back from them, and so on, ad infinitum. Until, that is, the Ray McSharry budget, and equally importantly, the Tallaght strategy enunciated by Alan Dukes. In the history of the State, no opposition leader has contributed so much to its well-being as did Alan Dukes - and it must have been all the harder for him, since the government he was in effect supporting from the Opposition benches was led by Charles Haughey, whose compulsive obstructionism in opposition had been almost psychopathological.
Alan Dukes at Tallaght was acting both as leader of and spokesman for a national mood - and, be it added, at a time when the word is seldom used, and even more seldom understood, as a patriot. We were tired of the depraved antics of our politicians doing their runway rain-dances for money. Suddenly we knew: we had to work for our living. The message had been transmitted, through pub and check-out and workplace. The mood change occurred; and the result we can see before our eyes, as our economy soars ahead now even of the Pacific rim countries.
Perfectly predictable
Go back the to Letters pages of ten, 15, 20 years ago, and you will find the same weary plaints about litter in Ireland, started each season by a visitor from Sussex or Hampshire or Oregon who compliments us on our hospitality, on our charming friendliness, on our lovely countryside, etc. etc. etc., but oh the litter!
And so our native litter-letter writers reply, why-oh-whying from Dalkey or Sandycove or Killiney, and wondering what has happened to our national pride. All perfectly predictable. And they are wasting their time - because just as national moods undergo changes as dramatic and sudden as a flock of starlings in flight, so equally politicians can detect those moods; and politicians, for the most part being pusillanimous trimmers, will seldom lead those moods.
For example, it would be perfectly possible for anti-littering to be part of a compulsive national curriculum for all schoolchildren of five upwards; for few things influence the conduct of adults more than does the scolding of infants. But no Minister for Education has felt the need to order that all children will henceforth be taught that the first rudiment of civics is that one doesn't litter; no Minister has felt it necessary that children be taught to howl in indignation when Daddy or Mammy hurls ice-cream wrappers out of the car window - because there has been political requirement to.
What we want
It is this simple. We have litter all over our countryside because we want litter all over our countryside. We have the most atrociously ugly bungalows all over our countryside, litter set in concrete and breeze-block, because that is what we want. That is our will; and in the expression of that will, we are in the process of devastating one of the last unspoiled countrysides in western Europe.
You see, people can be deeply stupid. The Fianna Fail party stupidly wanted the flagrantly vile and corrupt Charles Haughey be its leader; and in doing so almost brought this country to ruin. In communal acts of stupidity, the countryside around Dublin, Galway, Cork, through Connemara and Donegal, is being irremediably destroyed by the construction of monstrously vulgar, wildly inappropriate bungalows. Out of that same stupid, selfish instinct comes littering. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that letter-writers, never mind those poor, harmless drudges called columnists, can do about it. It is simply so.