Come Again, Chum?

It's something I've heard many times ... I expect most of my readers have, as well.  In fact ... I wonder if they actually teach it in schools.  Or perhaps they used to but, since it seems to be so self-evident, maybe they no longer bother.  I'm talking (rubbish) about the idea that 'History repeats itself'.  I believe there's an American Indian saying, "Only an idiot does the same foolish thing a second time hoping for a different outcome!"  It says much the same thing, I think.

What's prompted this philosophical line of thought?  I may have mentioned before an e-book that I'm reading called "Cat and Mouse" by Tim Vicary.  It's set in the early months of 1914 ... a significant point in our history for many reasons.  I continue to marvel at the ingenious way this author has planted his principle male characters into the two main concerns of the day (viz. the Suffragettes and their fight for votes for women, and the Irish home-rule crisis), and then linked them by their marriage to two sisters.  I need give away no more of the plot than that to make my point ... it's a good read!

These two 'problems' had divided the people of our great nation.  No matter where one looked, it seems, there would be some who supported women getting the vote, and many others who opposed it vigorously.  Perhaps less on this island, but certainly on the other, there would have been a similar division of opinion regarding setting up a parliament in Dublin to govern the affairs of what geographically might be 'Lesser Britain' as opposed to 'Great Britain' (although I've never seen the former name in print).

And today, just over a century later, there are once more two great concerns in our land.  There are many - a growing number, we are told - who would like to see the end of the present electoral system, with its 'winner-takes-all' principle that worked when there were only Whigs and Tories, but so often results nowadays in a disproportionate outcome when compared to the way people voted, and its replacement by a proportional system such as operates in most other countries, and in the devolved institutions here.  The second current divider of our land goes by the name of 'Brexit' and is so often in the news that it needs no further expansion here.

In many ways the situation today reflects that of 1914.  One contention concerns the governing of the country while the other is about the means of conducting elections; both have large swathes of the population in favour and against, and both campaigns are vociferous in nature and involve occasional localised violence.

In 1914, with the King's reluctant intervention, the Home Rule Bill was passed but its implementation was shelved owing to the brief international crisis that led to the outbreak of war.  There was an ineffective rising in 1916, brutally quashed in the interests of focusing attention on the war, and once that was over, Ireland was torn apart by the War of Independence followed by a brief civil war. 

After the suspension of Suffragette activities during the war, accompanied by thousands of women taking on what had been exclusively men's work to aid the war effort, it was seen afterwards - whether correctly or not - as a 'pay-off' when in 1918 women over 30 and younger ones who were property owners were given the vote.  The remaining women had to wait another ten years.

In 1914, few ordinary people saw the war coming.  A minor headline in June reported an assassination on the other side of the continent, but on August Bank Holiday people were sunning themselves on the beaches as usual.  This week, a solitary District Council has passed a motion to set up a local commission to look at what Brexit will mean 'on the ground' ... just one, out of hundreds!

I can't help wondering at these comparisons ... and I'm praying that history doesn't, in this instance, repeat itself!