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okay I get
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welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gatri one
of the greatest of all Irish men Oscar
wild responded to the charge that he was
in the gutter with the famous repost we
are all in the gutter but some of us are
looking up at the stars Our Guest on the
Sputnik today could never be accused of
being in the gutter but he has joined
the firmament of trailblazing Pioneers
who have been prepared to sacrifice to
move everyone else forward like Oscar
wild
himself Senator David Norris joined the
Senate when Ireland was a more
conservative country than it is now the
church was yet to begin its spectacular
Fall From Grace and an openly gay men in
the corridors of power caused many a
splutter of the arish breakfast as well
as changing the law which jailed Oscar
wild and fighting for gay marriage
equality Senator Norris never forgot
that the Good Samaritan never passes by
on the other side of the road however
far away those suffering are his speech
in the Irish Senate as Gaza burned in
the summer of 2014 has to be seen and
heard to be believed its power and
eloquence positively Oscar wild alike
after a buildup like that you'll be glad
to know he's here on the show on board
the Sputnik Senator thank you so much
for uh joining us your a personal hero
of both of us it's an honor to have you
here and I I don't often say that and if
I do I very rarely mean it but I mean it
today well it's an honor and a pleasure
to be here with both you and gatri thank
you so much senator now the uh centinary
of the uh first blow to the Empire the
rising of Easter
1916 and the GPO uh and uh the heroes of
what became the Irish Republic is almost
upon us so we thought we'd take an early
look at that centinary how would you
summarize the gains the Ireland has made
through the independent struggle what
have the 100 Years of Irish Freedom
actually
produced well I'm glad that we have an
independent Parliament and I think that
Mr deera as tiak or prime minister of
Ireland was very wise to keep Ireland
out of the second world war although
very positively uh engaged toward
towards Britain uh about the rising I
have more mixed feelings because so many
of the people involved were of English
origin uh people like porri Pierce who
had an English Protestant father and who
wrote in extremely racially abusive
terms in oncl solish I mean I've read a
lot of the writings of these people I
admire Connelly uh but the rising itself
was deeply unpopular in the island of
that time it was only after the British
shot the leaders that sympathy turned
around and if you look at what the
immediate aftermath of the rising was it
was a brutal and BR bit bitter Civil War
uh and the uh division of the island so
I think there are all kinds of questions
about it I don't think we should look on
it uncritically I remember the 50th
Anniversary uh and it was an exclusively
Catholic Republican heterosexual white
affair and if you didn't fit into those
categories you were out on your ear
um so like the T offensive in Vietnam it
was a military failure but a political
success a strategic success yes it was
and and the people involved in it there
were largely School teachers Trade union
they were dreamers and they dreamed uh
this thing but if you look at it home
rule had already been passed it was
shelled for the first World War uh and
they attacked uh the state uh when it
was in very difficult circumstances in
the uh first world war and people forget
that one of the ideas was to put a
branch of the hor Zin family onto the
Throne of AR I don't think that would
have been such a wonderful idea so I
take a rather mixed uh view of it and if
you look for example at ctis
marovich um she was a son of of of an
english-based uh landed
family um uh uh uh The Other Woman Who
Yates was so M gone uh she was
completely English and she first saw
Ireland from the inside of the Cara camp
where her father was a a a a colonel in
the British army so whereas I can
understand the energy and the resolve
and the Zeal for Independence and
freedom of these people uh I very much
regret the kind of the racial the
anti-english aspect of the thing was
inevitable though with a with an
overbearing near neighbor occupying you
seeking to obliterate your culture your
language uh and to entirely dominate
your economic and strategic uh future
and as you rightly say if the British
had not responded to the Easter rising
in the brutal bloody way that they did I
myself was brought up with a tearful
grandfather telling me how they tied
James Connelly to a chair and to execute
him uh and they gave him medical
attention so' be well enough
to but I feel more sympathy with the
young people many of them Irish many of
them 16 years old who are shot at dawn
because they were shell shocked and in
their shell shocked condition they had
neglected to take their cap off in the
presence of an officer that to my mind
was the real blasphemy but the first
world war in my opinion was a huge
mistake yes inde if I'd been around I
would have fought for uh France ysph
because well I'd have fought for all of
them to uh to turn their guns on their
officer class and March to their own
capitals and overthrow their ruling
classes but as the Russian people did
but that's another uh another matter A
Century of Independence though uh how
different is Ireland today to what it
would have been had it remained under
British
rule well I think we probably would have
still been to a certain extent
subservient it it it's a matter of
debate as to how much Freedom we'd have
got under the home rule Bill uh because
the British Parliament were concerned at
looking after the interests of the ster
unionists and so on so forth um I think
we would have been fairly independent
and have developed uh Dominion status
rather like Canada and so on but have
kept the crown and I have to say the
royal family are very popular uh in IR
the Queen's visit was a huge Marc took
tea with her majesty in bakam Palace
wearing a white tie and absolutely and
of course the queen uh is a lot more
Irish than some of the revolutionaries
because she's a descendant direct
descendant three times over of Brian Buu
one of the last High Kings of Ireland
who defeated the Danes at kanta in 1014
and once she's a director sener of Hugh
O'Neal the rebel Earl of Tyrone my
goodness I didn't know that I didn't
expect to you see we're all so mixed up
we're two small islands and there's been
constant interchange since really
prehistoric ties between the people so
that's why I deprecate any kind of
racially based tension I think it is a
real pity the same as I feel it with uh
religion I think it's such a shame that
two Christian denomination should be so
antagonistic towards each other
historically speaking now Connelly
predicted that partition would lead to a
carnival of reaction in the north and it
did on both Sur did and we saw it
actually this week with the unionist uh
last ditch stand against gay rights for
example yes ay supported the background
by the Roman Catholic hierarchy which I
thought was rather an irony of these two
forces coming together but on the other
hand um something near uh 70% of people
in Northern Ireland said in a survey
released last night that um uh they
would not be troubled by a close member
of their family uh engaging in a samesex
marriage now that's rather interesting
and the assembly passed a resolution
about gay marriage uh for the first time
uh in Belfast and that was scuppered by
the introduction of a particular device
by the Democratic unionist party totally
undemocratic what this tends to suggest
is that the people north and south are
no longer uh following the instruction
uh of the hierarchy on either side of
that religious device that the
Democratic unist party of win election
uh but their reactionary views are not
supported by any means by all Protestant
people in the North and the Roman
Catholic Church as uh gatri said in the
introduction has had quite a spectacular
Fall From Grace in Ireland when when I
used to go to Ireland as a child the
Catholic church was all powerful
absolutely all powerful well in fact in
the 1950s as I remember quite well uh
cab unfortunately I'm talking about the
19 well cabinet documents and policy was
sent for review and for the imperat of
the Roman Catholic hierarchy and if then
they said no it just didn't pass that
has completely gone now and that's a
very good thing so no Pope hanging in
the family's living rooms anymore oh I
think they do yes and um I have to say
especially this pop he wor listening to
he is don't you agree Pope Francis I
think he's I think he's abic I'm an
Anglican but he is uh so human uh the
previous two were unspeakably
arrogant we're on the same page on many
things now the uh fact of Independence
meant that you had an independent
Parliament and means you have a an
independent Senate something we could do
with here you're in luckily because the
Prime Minister tried to abolish it
really which prime minister uh and Kenny
the present prime minister oh about two
years ago and I was in hospital with a
cancer operation and uh this had started
off and I'd called a meeting but two of
my colleagues uh took the issue and
fought everybody else off and I thought
well all right as long as they win but
they weren't winning and I got out of
the hospital with two weeks to go and I
said get off the stage other people have
to get involved in this now and
professor John Crown Dr sha Barrett and
myself in 10 days we reversed figures
and made it a 60/40 victory for the
Senate now you have been a senator
almost 30 years what impact did having
Ireland's first out gay political
representative political leader what
impact did that have at the time well I
wasn't aware of it but apparently the
paint on the ceiling in the members
dining room nearly came off with all the
comments they were making about me and
they were all saying backs to the wall
as he goes past they fancy themselves I
wouldn't look sideways one of them you
know it's amazing thing about
heterosexual men of middle Ag and
corpulence they think every gay person
is trying to jump
at but there was some difficulties but I
was treated with Amusement I remember
one day when I just left the Senate one
of my colleagues Willie farell said uh
describe me as a pervert and the next
day they tried to make him apologize and
withdraw and I said oh come on stop
torturing poor Willie I wasn't the
slightest bit insulted you can only be
insulted by somebody for whom you have
respect and willly knows perfect will I
have no respect for him at all very
that's the spirit more of this after the
break welcome back to Sputnik they say
never meet your Heroes gatri and I have
as one of our heroes Senator David
Norris who's with us today and so far
it's going really well she said earlier
that his famous speech in the Senate as
Gaza burned in the the summer of 2014
has to be seen and heard to be believed
she's right about that here's a clip I'm
not anti-israeli I'm not
anti-semitic uh I support the state of
Israel but in the 40 years I've known
the state of Israel and sometimes had a
home there I've seen it completely
change it changed from a left-wing
socially directed uh country to an
extreme rightwing regime that is
behaving in the most criminal fashion
and defying the world and using
unscrupulously using the Holocaust to
justify what they're doing and it's time
that rag was torn away from them Senator
I know a thing or two about oratory and
that's one of the most wonderful pieces
of oratory I have ever seen in any
Parliament tell us the circumstances
that lay behind it well you're you're
very kind uh what happened was that I
wrote to the kahil at the chairman of
the Senate asking for the Senate to be
recalled because I was so horrified by
what was happening in Gaza and to my
amazement they agreed to recall the
senate in the middle of the summer and
so it was that on my 70th birthday I
spent the day in the centers just out of
hospital and that's why I'm kind of
leaning up against the back of the I
thought it was just a chilian pose
actually no but it came you could hardly
stand up in fact well it came really
from the heart because I know that part
of the country I've been to Israel I had
an apartment in Israel we had
Palestinian friends I've been in Gaza uh
I've seen the circumstance which those
unfortunate people are forced to live
and I have to say uh uh that the
operations of the Israeli government are
a blasphemy against the ethos of Judaism
sure and you made that
that's it's so important that there are
people like my friend Ezra Nai who's
Jewish and Israeli and for those people
for Israeli Jews to stand up confront
and challenge the iniquitous behavior of
the government is so powerful indeed
they are and uh he and and Professor
Elan Pape Professor Norman finlin and so
on such people and their activities
their words are more powerful even than
any that you or I absolutely could uh uh
summon and even they are denounced as
being
anti-semitic ason alth how one could be
Jewish and anti-semitic has always been
beyond me but the the the the Senators
around you are sometimes used to happen
to me in the British House of Commons
looked a bit shellshocked they looked a
bit uh um speechless how did they
respond to your magnificent speech they
responded very well and almost all of
them uh took a similar line some a
little bit gentler and you see the thing
is many many people in Ireland uh looked
to Israel and supported Israel
particularly after the catastrophe of
the Holocaust but it gradually dawned on
people that the Palestinians were being
made to pay for the crime of the
Europeans with which they had nothing
whatever to do and so I've seen over the
last 40 or 50 years a real turn around
in Irish attitudes because we tend to go
with the underdog and the Palestinians
are so now so clearly uh the underdog uh
and some of the Israelis have said to me
how could you possibly support these
people um look at the way they treat gay
people uh but that doesn't really catch
with me uh at all it is a question of
fundamental human rights and you have to
stick with the human rights even of
people who don't believe in human rights
even they have human rights and I've
always thought if you look around the
Mediterranean Basin at so many countries
where there's been the popular election
of an Islamic government and the West
always undermines and subverts it
they've never been given it the chance
uh in any of these countries in Egypt in
Algeria uh in in Palestine I mean the
Hamas won a victory I don't like them
particularly I doubt if they would like
me but they won a victory they should be
allowed to make their mistakes that's
what democracy is about and the West has
consistently subverted democracy all
over the Middle East you see I'm
wondering if this attitude and it seems
to me to be quite widely shared in
Ireland uh towards the issues of Human
Rights is itself a product of having
once been an occupied country a subject
uh country because there are
proportionately far more supporters
active supporters of the Palestinian
cause in Ireland than there are in in
Britain uh there's a generally
Progressive attitude towards certainly
issues of occupation and issues of
suppression of Human Rights would you
agree with that yes I would absolutely
absolutely 100% and although I take a
complex view of the Revolution and the
post-revolutionary period if I look up
in the north and I see the still
devastating trouble from a plantation
that's over 400 years ago then I look at
the Middle East and I think to myself
you is this going to last for 400 years
as well and then the Irish people have
the memory of the famine when so many
people millions of people died or had to
leave the country uh and then there
these terrible terrible scenes of
evictions uh landlords evicting Ordinary
Decent Irish hardworking people and rack
renting every time a tenant farmer
improved their land the rent was put up
so they had no chance of getting out of
misery uh and poverty and I think that
left left a memory uh in people well you
see you you touched on the six counties
there and there is another parallel this
is the centinary the eve of the
centinary of the Irish Rising but very
soon uh there will be the centinary of
the balfor Declaration yes one of the
pieces of Correspondence going between
balur and Lord Rothchild talked of the
implantation Plantation implantation of
a a little Jewish oler for Britain yeah
in the Middle East it was in a sense the
same Imperial motivation and impulse the
plantation was so that Britain could
place if you like a a cat spa or a
dagger at the heart of any nent Irish
nationalism and the plantation
implantation of the state of Israel was
for the same Imperial reasons I mean
Britain gave away Palestine before it
even possessed it yes as an Imperial uh
uh possession and it's the only case
where uh on behalf of one people balur
promised to a second people the land
that belonged to a third people
perfidious albian or what well there is
a terrible arrogance but it's all
throughout the Middle East after the
Ottoman Empire collapsed I mean if you
look for example uh at uh Kuwait you
have a a border that goes straight up
from the coast takes a right angle
another right angle neatly enclosing the
then known oil reserves so that means
Saddam Hussein was quite right Kuwait
was part of it was indeed it was part of
the wot of bazer Tam dalel longtime
parliamentary colleague his father was
the political secretary to Sir Percy Cox
the British resident in Iraq who was in
the tent when sir Percy Cox drew that
straight line and partitioned Iraq for
British selfish Imperial interests and
the same happened in Ireland yes
absolutely and but if if you look at the
at the situation uh in uh Iraq I
remember protesting vigorously at the
time of the bombing of the kurs at halab
I was in Iraq in Baghdad and I had a
shouting match over human rights with t
aiz to such an extent that our foreign
ministers said to me on the way out I
sincerely hope n would go out of this
place live after what you just said to
him but looking at it the American and
British intervention there was an utter
disaster and what's left there now is a
complete an absolute catastrophe living
under Saddam Hussein and I saw the
country under Saddam Hussein was so much
better it was a secular Western
orientated country yes there were police
there were secret police there was
torture there were all kinds of
appalling human rights abuses but having
said that it was better than what came
after it which is a sectarian blood bath
you mentioned in your epic speech at
Tony Blair you said he should keep his
face out of the Middle East you place
some of the responsibility for what was
happening in AA upon Him we've just
finished just this week the last word on
our film the killings of Tony Blair
Looking Back
Now what how would you summarize the era
of Tony Blair in the politics of this
region and the politics of the Middle
East region well unspeakable just
appalling and the idea that this man
with his track record is now given an
important position in the Middle East
process is outrageous I mean what would
the the Palestinians think of the
intervention of this man with blood on
his hands with a record of dishonesty on
the issue you know the massaging of uh
MI5 reports and all this kind of stuff
uh the idea that there were weapons of
mass destruction and all this kind of
stuff and then the American voices in
the background saying that they were
going to blow Iraq back into the Stone
Age well that's what they did and it's a
disgrace will Ireland be United in the
lifetime of at least my children well I
don't know I think these issues are
becoming more and more irrelevant I mean
the Border was a very serious thing some
years ago but nowadays you drive up and
down Nobody Knows the slightest bit of
difference or no border posts nothing
there's a good deal of cooperation in
agriculture and tourism and so on so
forth and I think it will happen like
that rather than any kind of shin fan
inspired uh nationalistic thing uh
borders are melting away across across
your Europe and I see it as part of that
process now interesting uh in the last
couple of days there was a survey done
in Northern Ireland and the Republic and
it showed that uh a it was only a
minority of people who actually wanted a
United Island and when you in included
the idea of would you support United
Island if it led to an increase in your
attacks the number of people supporting
on both sides of the board absolutely
plummeted so people have it as a nice
hazy idea it would look nice on a stab
but they're not going to pay any extra
tax money let alone put their lives on
the line for us so I think as long as we
have good
neighborliness and that is increasingly
uh shown I mean to me it was utterly
astonishing that Paisley uh and uh the
shin mcginness could sit down and become
the chuckle Brothers you know that was
astonishing and I don't I didn't like
either of those two parties particularly
uh but it is very good to see them
sitting down but I think they should be
looking at the Grassroots forget about
the Union Jack on Belfast Town Hall
forget about the tricolor get down and
look at Social Services Hospital waiting
lists schools education and cooperate
That's the Way Forward because what
people really want is an improvement in
their living standards not some kind of
abstract notion of flags and emblems and
all the rest of it it has been an
absolutely fascinating interview I hope
the viewers think so to Senator David
Norris pleasure having you on board the
Sputnik thank you so much George and
gatri it's been a sad week for us on
Sputnik with the loss of our esteemed
and much loved colleague Mosen farage he
created the entire look and sound of the
Sputnik so with the closing titles today
we'd ask you to remember him as we do
fondly and forever
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