I don’t want UK charity – I want reparations

If Ireland gets the rumoured €100bn bailout our nearest neighbour will be hit for up to €7bn. A tough break for Britain? Not a chance. They’re getting off cheap.

By Robert Carry

A delegation from the IMF and European Central Bank is due to fly into Ireland today in what many believe is about doing the groundwork ahead of a bailout for Irish banks.

With the decision looking a lot like it has already been made, the question now rests on who will pick up the tab. In all likelihood, it will fall at the door of our European partners rather than the IMF. This means that it will be primarily the Germans, with assistance from the larger economies in the Eurozone, who will be handing over the cash via the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility.

However, despite previously not participating in European Union-wide assistance, George Osborne, the British Chancellor, has puffed up his chest, stepped forward and declare that “Britain stands ready to support Ireland.”

While this looks to some degree like a neighbourly, selfless act, the British offer is very much about protecting its own interests. For a start, the British chancellor is fully aware of the fact that the exposure of British financial institutions to Irish banks is in the region of £140bn. This figure throws the British pledge to toss us €7bn for our banking sector into context.

Contingent

Further, while the offer might appear to be a case of the British suddenly deciding to don the red cape and swoop in to do us a favour, any aid we do receive will most probably come through the €60bn European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, guaranteed by all EU members, that Britain signed itself up to quite some time ago. This isn’t cash out of George Osborne and by extension the British taxpayer’s next budget – it’s a contingent liability.

So if the British were already obliged to make payments through the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism and the Irish and other European governments were aware of this, what was the point of George Osbourne’s grandstanding in the House of Commons? When you are aware of the fact that all the British are doing is moving to protect their own £140bn by paying €7bn, and you also know that they are paying via a fund they already signed up to, Osbourne’s big speech doesn’t look quite so valiant. In fact, it looks the opposite.

Surely every British minister capable of pointing out Ireland on a map knows too what it means for an Irish person to have to listen to their warm-hearted pledge of an arm around the shoulder and a promise of help for their awkward, dysfunctional little cousin next door.

I know we’re not supposed to mention it in these enlightened times, but Britain and its various other incarnations spent 800 years behaving rather badly on our shores.

Just last month, Germany handed over the final $94 million payment of a bill it was lumbered with as part of the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of World War I. Germany had to issue foreign bonds during the inter-war period to raise funds to pay the reparations the Allies reckoned they were due.

So, Britain was entitled, right up until last month, to claim money from Germany as a way of negating British suffering during the Great War. Hmm. Makes you wonder.

Rather than gingerly holding out the begging bowl as Britain makes a big show of being a hero and making us look like a pathetic charity case, maybe we should be telling them they owe us reparations? It might seem like an excuse to dig up old grievances, but if the Germans were still paying off their World War I debt in October 2011 then there obviously isn’t an expiry date on these things.

Enlightened

I know we’re not supposed to mention it in these enlightened times, but Britain and its various other incarnations spent 800 years behaving rather badly on our shores. The damage would be hard to quantify in monetary terms, but surely they owe us a few quid.

They can maybe start by paying us back the money they made on the 300,000 Irish people they captured and then sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England between 1641 to 1652.

Once that’s been paid off, they can shell out for the millions of tons of livestock, grain and other foodstuffs exported from the most famine-stricken corners of Ireland during the 1840s. After they’ve handed that over, we’ll send them the bill for the repair work needed after the entire centre of Cork City was burned to embers by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence.

We’re not interested in your fake attempts at charity, George. Old buddy. Old pal. Just pay us what you owe.