Red Ahern?

So ten years after Bertie Ahern’s elevation to the leadership of Fianna Fail in which he promised to do everything he could to bring posterity (sic) to the country and seven years of he and Fatty Harney taking all the credit for the country’s rapid economic growth, he turns around and tells us that he’s actually a socialist.

Bertie’s long had his traditional Working Class Dublin supporters believing that he’s one of them and that it’s those nasty PDs and right-wingers in his own cabinet who make him do stuff like privatising Aer Lingus and giving huge tax breaks to racecourse owners. But Saturday’s interview in the Irish Times was the first that I’ve heard him, after reciting the usual litany of growth statistics, use the S-word to describe himself, hot on the heels of Seamus Brennan, who came out of the closet as a lefty when he was appointed Social Welfare minister.

What next? Will Michael McDowell tell us how he sits up late reading Das Kapital or will Fatty Harney shave off her Thatcheresque quiff and protest in a saffron robe sitting in the lotus position chanting ‘Om’ outside the Chinese embassy? Will Noel O Flynn become chairman of the Irish-Congolese society?

Before they decide that this is the way the zeitgeist is heading, it might be worthwhile to examine what Bertie thinks he’s done to turn this country into a socialist utopia.

Is it the savage social welfare cuts that have saved the money necessary to cut taxes for foreign multibillionaires like Bill Gates? Is it that house prices have escalated so rapidly that many young families can’t afford to buy their own house while property developers buy their own private airplanes? Is it that some wealthy Dublin families import nannies from Mongolia and the Philippines while elderly working class women are denied home help? Is it that we’ve become the most unequal industrialised democracy, unless you’re naive enough to the think the US is still a democracy?

No, apparently it’s that we can all visit the Botanical gardens in the Phoenix Park for free. That’s if we live in Dublin of course, though if we live in Tullamore we’re quite free to examine the weeds that grow between the footpath and the road to our heart’s contents, whether we’re an unemployed single mother or executive managing director of Intel Ireland.

Presumably it’s because we all share privileges like these that we all have to pay an equal amount for things like bin charges or a TV licence, or face prison, as one poor woman found out the hard way. After all, with equal rights come equal responsibilities.

By now you’ll have realised that I think Bertie’s support for the notion that he’s a socialist is a little tenuous. In act, the notion of a commons pre-dates the likes of Marx and Engels by some way, originating in English feudal times. As you probably know, the relationship between lord and peasant was a reciprocal one, peasants paying a tithe in return for protection, which basically meant that they’d have to pay their lord and not one of the lord’s enemies, and there was a common area which they’d be allowed frequent and walkways which were protected by the Magna Carta, though at the end of the day they’d still have to return to their dark damp draughty cottages. Pretty fair deal all round, then.

The idea evolved when that well-known anarcho-syndicalist collective known as Victorian Britain built edifices like Crystal Palace which the hoi-polloi were allowed visit for free, though in these less enlightened times a season ticket for Selhurst Park costs upwards of £400.

The ‘bots’ as Bertie calls them in his loveable North Dublin way are a bequest from our benign imperial overlords, so it’s a bit rich for Bertie to take the credit. So what has this Fianna Fail government done to improve public access?

I’m tempted to use some rude words that might have some shock value, but I’ll just say precious little. While one of the few worthwhile things the New Labour government in Britain has done is to protect ramblers rights, a piece of legislation that the Bertie Bunch have no intention of copying. Though Bord Failte trade heavily on the country’s green image, we actually have less space given over to national parks than most European countries.

We do have lots of Golf courses, though. More per capita than anywhere else in the world, there’s even more of them than there are children’s playgrounds. The lovely Nick Faldo is planning to build one, and if the experience of the Old Head of Kinsale is anything to go by, he can start selling brochures.

This peninsula, which can be seen pretty clearly on a good map of Ireland, was one of the best places in the country for fishing and rock climbing before it was bought by the O’Connor brothers and turned into a golf course, into which members of the public were denied access. When this was challenged legally the Fianna Fail-dominated High Court actually ruled in the O’Connor brothers favour. So anytime a right-of-way protest is organised, our brave boys in blue, who consider many inner city areas no-go areas, will be there in force. The O’Connors can afford their own security, of course, but it’s a nice little earner for the guards all the same.

Of Course, anyone can still walk down to the Old Head, provided, of course, they pay E200 for a round, which is no more than those American millionaires have to pay. So Bertie can look up at the picture of Padraig Pearse or go down to the statue of James Connolly and assure them that their deaths weren’t in vain, as a socialist nirvana has surely been achieved.