Gregory Goebbels

Lee Casey
ÓSF An Lorgain

On the 10th of May 1933 the Nazi minister for information Josef Goebbels organized the burning of over 20,000 books that the Nazi regime considered ‘un-German’. The books were mostly penned by Jewish authors or contained subjects or themes, for example homosexuality, that the Nazi’s believed went against their warped ideology. Seventy-five years on the new minister for culture arts and leisure in the six county executive is the DUP’s Gregory Campbell. Edwin Poots got his ministerial P45 and Gregory has been installed to the Ministry for culture, arts and leisure. This portfolio covers everything from sport to drama, from languages to the many diverse forms of art.

Gregory Campbell could hardly be considered a cultural heavyweight. He’s head of the British parliaments Glasgow Rangers supporters club and has raised on the floor of the British House of Commons issues regarding the antics of the Glasgow Celtic Goalkeeper Arthur Boruc aka. the ‘holy goalie’. In the aftermath of Celtic beating Rangers by three goals to two, the polish Goalkeeper revealed a t-shirt he had been wearing under his jersey with the words ‘God bless the pope’ on it.

In the subsequent statement released by Gregory Campbell he stated ‘I think the team should have taken steps to prevent him wearing it’. Campbell’s loathing of the ‘holy goalie’ is not simply based on him being a rangers fan, it is also a desperate bid to obtain the admiration of unionist rangers fans who find themselves disillusioned or uninterested in the DUP. It is sheer populism.

However it is not the East Derry MPs loathing of Arthur Boruc that alarms republicans the most. Campbell, his party and the UUP aren’t simply opposed to the Irish language, they detest it. The UUP’s David McNarry tabled a motion at Stormont to ban the Irish language from the chamber. Campbell’s hatred of the native tongue was exemplified when he was quoted as saying 'Cori my yogi Bear, a can coca colya', making a racist mockery of a language that is one of the world’s most beautiful and ancient. The DUP have consistently blocked the implementation of the Irish language Act, a key issue dealt with within the legal framework of the St Andrews agreement.

Elevating Campbell to this position would, in any other decent democracy, be unthinkable. It’s equivocal to Jean-Marie le pen being in charge of French race relations. Let us hope that Gregory Campbell realises that his position must be representative of all cultural sections of society, not simply his own and that the DUP’s desire to destroy the Irish Language is a deep source of offense to many people, including Irish Republicans.

As Thomas Davis said ‘a nation should guard its language more than it’s territories, tis a surer barrier and more important frontier than a fortress or river’.