TOWARDS A NEW CIVIC EUROPE Address by PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON to THE BRITISH ACADEMY ANNUAL DINNER
TOWARDS A NEW CIVIC EUROPE Address by PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON to THE BRITISH ACADEMY ANNUAL DINNER 4 July 1996
The last time I dined in this magnificent dining hall of Middle Temple, I was invited immediately afterwards into an adjoining room for the initiation ceremony of becoming an honorary Bencher. This included the invitation to me: "Master Robinson, you are invited to justify yourself".
Now, this evening, as your guest of honour, I seem to hear the echo of that invitation to justify myself! I am deeply conscious that the British Academy has a special place as a long established centre of excellence and learning in the humanities and social sciences, including law, reflected in the distinguished lecture series and symposia which you organise and which are published in your Proceedings. But I was interested to learn that the real dynamic which inspired those who met together in 1899 was to have a permanent international organisation to represent the humanities.
When the Royal Irish Academy was founded in 1785 it modelled itself to an extent on your older sister, the Royal Society, and since the British Academy was founded in 1901 I know that there are long established connections between scholars in the three bodies. Bearing all this in mind, I have chosen to speak on the theme "Towards a New Civic Europe". It is a theme which is in itself so general and unspecific that it allows me in this short address to put a particular stamp or mould upon it.
I am aware that the concept of European citizenship enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, which is not of course an alternative to national citizenship, is a significant development which has generated conferences, projects and theses which would be relevant to the theme of a developing civic Europe. However, I want to focus on only one aspect. I want to take, if you like, a worm's eye view of the notion of a civic Europe - or a bottom-up approach.
In Ireland we are imbued with a profound sense of the value of the local and the small, the townland and the parish. This sense of the local is captured by Patrick Kavanagh in a poem called "Epic" which begins:
"I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims".
And then having described a neighbour's quarrel, the poem concludes:
"That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance".
It is the local and the small which are at the heart of my sense of a diverse array of civic communities building towards a civic Europe. It has been my privilege over the past five and half years as President of Ireland to see first-hand the powerful continuum of voluntary effort which is so much part of the texture of Irish life. I could make a composite for you of the hundreds of local groups I have visited in inner cities, in small rural areas and in sprawling suburbs. I could describe the striking excellence of the development committees, the co-operatives, the facilitators and supportive structures which I have had the opportunity to observe. I have been in towns where sports halls seem to have gone up overnight - magically. Where children with disabilities have been taught skills and self sufficiencies which reveal their natural independence, where the unemployed train in centres which respect their individuality and worth, where the terminally ill have found care and dignity in their last hours.
It has been a particular privilege to witness the strength of this local self-development and voluntary commitment on visits I have made to Northern Ireland. I have met representatives of a number of voluntary organisations through the umbrella bodies NICVA and NIVT, and I have had the pleasure of launching local projects such as a women's project supported by Barnardos this Spring in Newtownabbey, North Belfast.
It is usual to lay these voluntary efforts at the door of pragmatic necessity: to say that scarce resources make them essential. I believe that this is to under-estimate the importance of the way of doing as well as the particular activity itself. I see these voluntary groups as bringing together within a single vision of action, both strong community values and a distinctively modern organisational structure which is open, enabling and listening. I also believe these efforts form an important element in the initiatives which could be promoted to develop a new civic Europe. They are a factor in the balance between the centre and the periphery, between the individual and the bureaucracy.
For this reason I have been particularly interested to note the development at the European level of voluntary networks, such as the Transnational European Rural Network, the European Women's Lobby, the European Council of Aids Services Organisations, the European Anti-Poverty Network, the European Network for the Unemployed and the variety of European Networks representing those of all our populations with specific disabilities. These names are not abstractions; they are signs for compassion, generosity and problem-solving. And the linkages these networks establish cannot but humanise bureaucracy and create dialogue rather than paperwork, consultation rather than anonymity.
The reality is that interest in volunteering is growing in all European countries. The trend away from State welfarism has meant that most European governments are looking to the voluntary sector and to volunteers to play a larger role in the direct delivery of welfare and other services. There are also common demographic and socio-economic trends which are leading to an upsurge of interest in volunteering. In many countries the ageing population has led to a debate about the role of volunteering in contributing to "active retirement", while the continuing high levels of unemployment throughout the continent have raised the issue of the role of volunteering in providing "skills training" or "useful work" for those outside the labour market.
It is interesting to observe the way that volunteering is playing a part in the rebuilding of democracy in countries of Eastern and Central Europe as a conscious development of a new civic society. What is in effect an infrastructure of the voluntary sector is being created, and volunteers are being looked towards to service the democratic institutions and to help deliver cost effective services. I am glad to see that there are now centres in many countries researching and studying the importance of volunteering, and doing so in a comparative context which brings out the wide variation in the voluntary sector's relationship with different governments.
And to add to this complexity across Europe, the relationship can change over time within a single country, as government and policy change. However, as we ponder on issues such as the growing concern in many European countries about the alienation of voters from their elected representatives, or the debate on the democratic deficit, the energies and enthusiasm of voluntary organisations will, I believe, play an increasing role in developing a new civic Europe. And this Academy is one of the building blocks of that new civic Europe.
I want to finish by considering that thing which this Academy has been so involved with over so many decades. Knowledge itself. Knowledge of cultures, of the remains of cultures. And how to make that accessible. How to make sure that the recording of knowledge is not one and the same thing as the privileged possession of it. I know these are abstract issues and so let me make this as vivid and particular as possible.
On the western edge of Ireland lie the Aran Islands. And on one of them, Inishmaan, you walk up roads flanked by dry stone walls, to find a rock seat which they called John Synge's seat. Under it the waves lash against the cliffs. There are no libraries there, no tools of scholarship, no apparent ways of collecting knowledge. Yet John Millington Synge came to those islands at the start of the century with the single most important tool of knowledge-gathering: his own imagination. He listened to their lives, quite literally. By putting his ear against the floorboards he remembered the cadences of the way they spoke and he brought that knowledge of a marginal culture to the very centre of Irish literature. Their speech lives in his books. Their example is at the heart of his dramatic eloquence. And when the President of Hungary, President Arpad Goncz, came to Ireland last year, despite all the barriers of place and language, he visited the island and reflected on that achievement.
And so John Synge's sense of a culture within a culture spoke across all the impediments of nation and time and speech which so often daunt us.
Today, more than ever, we need to remember John Synge's example. We need to gather in the story of the diversity of Europe by creating an environment which sustains the utmost participation by those who represent that diversity.