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![[Image of Tony Dermody]](tony003.gif)
I am 51 years old, and married to Bernie McGivern. We live in Dublin, Ireland, and have four grown-up children. Ours is an English language speaking household, though I also speak Irish well enough, and French poorly.
I work as an executive in Córas Iompair Éireann (commonly known by its acronym CIÉ, which means 'The Transportation Company of Ireland'). I have a degree in Commerce from University College Dublin, and have a particular interest in the economics of transport.
My world view is marxist, and has been for at least half my lifetime. However, my early background is rural and Roman Catholic. My search for emancipation led me first to Dublin in the 1960s, where I got a job and gradually became drawn towards the ferment of political activity which was taking place there, around issues arising from industrial struggles, the Vietnam war, nuclear disarmament, and the like. The contrast between the apparent simplicity of the moral issues at stake in these struggles, and the complexity of the social and philosophical questions which they raised, spurred me to seek understanding. I read much by marxists, social democrats, liberals, and of course Catholic theologians. By the time I was twenty three Marx was winning. By the time I was twenty five the others were out of the game.
When you undergo a blinding conversion you feel a great need to preach the gospel, and thus I had a strongish messianic steak for several years during the 1970s. The simplicities of those times are now in the past, and my marxism and humanism are matured, and indeed leavened with the rich contribution to left wing thought made by feminism. Much in the world of realpolitik has changed too, posing new questions and presenting socialists with difficult theoretical and practical problems to resolve.
Some will undoubtedly say that Marx is dead, communism has been swept away, and socialism is out of date and out of touch with reality. Maybe. But it is history which will finally decide on the status of these movements, and I suspect that they will not go away, but will rise again despite the best efforts of their opponents to bury them. And when they do, it will be in different conditions, and under new forms.
This, it seems to me is the kernel of the problem facing socialists today: to learn from the past, to analyse the developing conditions, and to transform their practice. For what other world view is there, which places humanity at the centre of historical progress? There is none, and the proponents of capitalism cannot rise to it. But there is no guarantee either that socialists will rise to it, unless they begin again from the basics.
As a practical application of the foregoing views I have been for years a member of the Irish Labour Party, taking an active role in its affairs. However, I am also deeply involved with my trade union, the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA). This is a British based union, which organises salaried staff in the travel and transport industries, in Ireland and Britain. I am a member of its executive committee.
On the Irish national question, I am republican and socialist, in the tradition of the Irish socialist James Connolly. The gist of this view is that the peoples of Ireland must be allowed to create the conditions in which they can attain their own national unity and independence. This means that external meddlers (i.e. British state power) must go, and before going, make a solid contribution to the building of the conditions for independence and unity. This does not mean that I approve of the methods of the IRA. I don't; they are counter productive in the long term. Neither does it mean that I am anti-British. I am not. I am an admirer of the achievements of the peoples of Britain, and don't forget that I am a voluntary member of a British trade union. As for the unionist people of Ireland (about one million of them), they can remain as British as they want. But they must see that they have to share a moderate sized island country with around four million others who prefer to be seen as Irish only. These two sets of people will sooner or later have to engage in the common project of building a secular, pluralist Ireland, with space for everyone, and sensitivity towards national feelings. Because of British imperial domination of all of Ireland for centuries, and because of its obstruction and perversion of the decolonisation process in this century, Ireland has had two sectarian states for seventy five years. It is well past the time that unionist fears of 'Rome Rule' and nationalist aspirations for 'a Catholic state for a Catholic people' were set aside. There are currently many good signs that this is happening, and the one major obstacle to the acceleration of this process is the attitude of the British tory government.
Apart from that, I read poetry, I like mathematics, and I spend too much time playing with my computer. I discovered the internet in 1994, and became connected, using my own computer , in June 1995. I also fit in a bit of running and swimmimg.
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Spark is maintained by: Tony Dermody, 8 Laracor Gardens, The Donahies, Dublin 13, Ireland. Telephone: + 353 1 847 6136.
Email: tdermody@iol.ie