In John Ford’s docudrama about the courtship rituals of rural Ireland, The Quiet Man, Victor McLaglen who plays Squire "Red" Will Danaher has a weaselly little sidekick whose function is to agree with everything the big man says and does. He represents all that is  craven about colonial peasant Ireland. He’s on the left in the picture. There’s a good chance his head will be on a coin in the next year or so.

Tony Blair can’t walk down a street in the country which he governed. He has to take legal advice before he travels abroad in case he gets arrested as a war criminal. The Dublin government instead of locking him up and sending him to The Hague for a trial shuts down the city centre for a day and a range of well heeled idiots line up to get his signature on a book. One character told a paper he’d left home at 4am to get down for the signing. His job had something to do with computers so there was a fair chance he did not have any other social activity on that Saturday.

Following up on that public relations triumph the city’s mayor is positively thrilled by the prospect of Elizabeth Windsor’s planned trip. Mayor Gerry Breen said that “he expected the Queen to come soon and that he believed she would receive a "warm welcome" chirruping "I think there is a genuine affection there.”

In the spirit of McLaglen’s sidekick the Irish bourgeoisie is happy to host a head of state who maintains a garrison on what they used to call the “national territory” and exerts political control over a large chunk of it in the most unsubtle way possible. Australians used to worry about what they called the “cultural cringe”.  The Irish state is raising subservience to high art, with a very large public subsidy.

It’s not new. Large parts of Maud Gonne’s comments about Victoria’s visit in 1900 in her article “The Famine Queen could be cut and pasted into a piece about Mrs Windsor’s excursion.

‘The Queen’s visit to Ireland is in no way political,’ proclaims the Lord Lieutenant, and the English ministers. ‘The Queen’s visit has no political significance, and the Irish nation must receive her Majesty with the generous hospitality for which it is celebrated,’ hastens to repeat Mr John Redmond, and our servile Irish members whose nationality has been corrupted by a too lengthy sojourn in the enemy’s country.

‘The Queen’s visit to Ireland has nothing at all to do with politics,’ cries the fishmonger, Pile, whose ambitious soul is not satisfied by the position of Lord Mayor and who hankers after an English title.

‘Let us to our knees, and present the keys of the city to her Most Gracious Majesty, and compose an address in her honour.’

‘Nothing political! Nothing political! Let us present an address to this virtuous lady,’ echo 30 town councillors, who when they sought the votes of the Dublin people called themselves Irishmen and Nationalists, but who are overcome by royal glamour. Poor citizens of Dublin! Your thoughtlessness in giving your votes to these miserable creatures will cost you dear. It has already cost the arrests of sixteen good and true men, and many broken heads and bruised limbs from police batons, for you have realised – if somewhat late – the responsibility of Ireland’s capital, and, aghast at the sight of the men elected by you betraying and dishonouring Ireland, you have, with a courage which makes us all proud of you, raised a protest, and cried aloud, ‘The visit of the Queen of England is a political action, and if we accord her a welcome we shall stand shamed before the nations. The world will no longer believe in the sincerity of our demand for National Freedom.’

And in truth, for Victoria, in the decrepitude of her eighty-one years, to have decided after an absence of half-a-century to revisit the country she hates and whose inhabitants are the victims of the criminal policy of her reign, the survivors of sixty years of organised famine, the political necessity must have been terribly strong; for after all she is a woman, and however vile and selfish and pitiless her soul may be, she must sometimes tremble as death approaches when she thinks of the countless Irish mothers who, sheltering under the cloudy Irish sky, watching their starving little ones, have cursed her before they died.

Every eviction during sixty-three years has been carried out in Victoria’s name, and if there is a Justice in Heaven the shame of those poor Irish emigrant girls whose very innocence renders them an easy prey and who have been overcome in the terrible struggle for existence on a foreign shore, will fall on this woman, whose bourgeoise virtue is so boasted and in whose name their homes were destroyed. If she comes to Ireland again before her death to contemplate the ruin she has made it is surely because her ministers and advisors think that England’s situation is dangerous and that her journey will have a deep political importance. England has lived for years on a prestige which has had no solid foundation. She has hypnotised the world with the falsehood of her greatness; she has made great nations and small nations alike believe in her power. It required the dauntless courage and energy of the Boers to destroy forever this illusion and rescue Europe from the fatal enchantment. Today no one fears the British Empire, her prestige has gone down before the rifles of a few thousand heroic peasants.

If the British Empire means to exist she will have to rely on real strength, and real strength she has not got. England is in decadence. She has sacrificed all to getting money, and money cannot create men, nor give courage to her weakly soldiers. The men who formerly made her greatness, the men from the country districts have disappeared; they have been swallowed up by the great black manufacturing cities; they have been flung into the crucible where gold is made. Today the giants of England are the giants of finance and of the Stock Exchange, who have risen to power on the backs of a great struggling mass of pale, exhausted slaves. The storm approaches; the gold which the English have made out of the blood and tears of millions of human beings attracts the covetousness of the world. Who will aid the pirates to keep their spoils? In their terror they turn to Victoria, their Queen. She has succeeded in amassing more gold than any of her subjects; she has always been ready to cover with her royal mantle the crimes and turpitude of her Empire, and now, trembling on the brink of the grave, she rises once more at their call. Soldiers are needed to protect the vampires. The Queen issues an appeal in England, the struggling mass of slaves cry ‘Hurrah’; but there is no blood in their veins, no strength in their arms. Soldiers must be found, so Victoria will go herself to fetch them; she will go over to Ireland – to this people who have despised gold, and who, in spite of
persecutions and threats, have persisted in their dream of Freedom and idealism, and who, though reduced in numbers, have maintained all the beauty and strength and vitality of their race.

Taking the Shamrock in her withered hand she dares to ask Ireland for soldiers – for soldiers to protect the exterminators of their race! And the reply of Ireland comes sadly but proudly, not through the lips of the miserable little politicians who are touched by the English canker but through the lips of the Irish people.

‘Queen, return to your own land; you will find no more Irishmen ready to wear the red shame of your livery. In the past they have done so from ignorance, and because it is hard to die of hunger when one is young and strong and the sun shines, but they shall do so no longer; see! Your recruiting agents return unsuccessful and alone from my green hills and plains, because once more hope has revived, and it will be in the ranks of your enemies that my children will find employment and honour! As to those who today enter your service to help in your criminal wars, I deny them! If they die, if they live, it matters not to me, they are no longer Irishmen.’