The energy of anger

Terence Cosgrave writes that a pre-emptive strike may express anger, but it will change absolutely nothing

There is a lot of anger in Ireland at the moment, and as punk rock star John Lydon once noted, ‘Anger is an energy’.
One of the things that angers people the most is that their plans and hopes for the future have been shattered. Not alone have many people lost their jobs, suffered income reductions and have to deal with much lower expectations, they also are angry at the promises they believed about continually rising tides and continually rising boats.
It is hard to accept pay reductions and lowered expectations — it is even harder when you know you’ve been fed a great big lie, and worse, you were naïve enough to believe it.
Times are harder now and going to continue that way for some time. And in the great retrenchment, that anger is hopefully going to become crystallised and focused and will express itself in the proper way. That way is the political way. In a democratic society, political will is expressed by participation in politics and changing society in a consensual and agreed way.
And hopefully in these hard times, pity, sympathy, charity and kindness will also be expressed.
People who are sick, injured and hurt are deserving of our sympathy and of our help and support.
People who took out 40-year, 100 per cent mortgages to flip them for a profit are not. That decison was a choice.
And people who are going to use their political muscle and the vulnerability of sick people to threaten the rest of us are not alone not worthy of our sympathy — they deserve (and I suspect will get) the contempt of Irish society.
A pre-emptive strike to demonstrate political power is about one thing and one thing only — a refusal by certain groups to accept the facts of our economic situation, and to demand from society wages and allowances that we can no longer afford. You can be angry about that fact, but it won’t change it.
Strikes in the healthcare area inevitably hurt patients. And when patients are used in a cynical way to make demands, that is simply unfair.
It may not be what the participants start out to do, but it is the net effect. And for people who have dedicated themselves to the care of the sick, it is not an acceptable course of action.
Society has changed in the last two years. Strikes can only be successful when they command general public support. Those who would put the strike gun to the nation’s head should think twice. The country may take that threat and point it back in the direction from whence it came.