Postcards from a New Republic

The ‘Postcards from the New Republic’ series is a hat tip to British designer, artist, entrepreneur and Socialist William Morris’s News from Nowhere series of articles from 1890 published in the Commonweal, the newspaper of the Socialist League and set in a distant future where Morris’s socialist and romantic utopia has been secured. Our story’s protagonists are Willa Ní Chuairteoir and Lucy Byrne accompanied by their four children James, Afric, Banba and Alroy who together enjoy and endure the equity and exigency of the future’s New Republic. 

To check in with the family visit:  fb.me/PostcardsfromtheNewRepublic

It is a gorgeous summer day. The clan are all together lazing around the back garden. Lucy’s Mum Eileen recently moved in with the family. Strangely enough it has been no adjustment at all. The kids love having their Nana in the house all the time, and their Mammies are eternally grateful for the extra support. 

Eileen was lonely in the city. Before the grandchildren her whole world had been her own kids, and that includes Willa. Lucy and Willa grew up in the same estate and were as thick as thieves from the minute they met. Eileen raised her three kids on her own, but she’ll readily admit she would never have managed were it not for Willa’s parents Terry and Henry. 

Eileen’s boys, Lucy’s brothers, were twins and both had Down’s syndrome. Thankfully Eileen had been ok money wise as her own parents had left her a significant inheritance when they died. It was the practical and emotional support Willa’s Mam and Dad had given the family that had made all the difference. Both worked in the Public Health Service (PHS) and had helped Eileen navigate the supports and services she needed for the boys. 

Ireland’s PHS is held up across Europe as the gold standard of public care, but it hasn’t always been that way. It had taken time to rebuild the island’s health service after the Great Struggle. Of course, the damage had started a long time before this. 

Before unification public health services north and south had suffered from decades of underfunding by the Irish and British governments. Both systems where privatised in part, but perpetual staff cuts and moratoriums, underfunding and fragmentation of services had created a deeply unequal system of care. 

When the first global pandemic of a coronavirus hit it was the elderly and vulnerable who suffered most. Eileen remembers her own parents telling her as a child of how life just shut down overnight. Hundreds of the sick and elderly died. When talking about that time Eileen’s Mammy would shake her head and say, “it was bad then, but we had no idea just how bad things were to get.”

A succession of viruses added to the fire of economic and social breakdown. Despite the Great Recession, Brexit, deepening inequality and a looming climate catastrophe, EU member state governments repeatedly failed to agree the rescue packages needed to rebuild and reimagine an economic framework that could withstand this new threat. 

Old political parties coalesced in a desperate attempt to hold onto power. They stole the clothes of the progressive parties but true to form delivered the same failed policies of the past. These were the roots of the Great Struggle that was to follow years later. 

“A penny for your thoughts Mum”, Lucy calls over to Eileen. “I was just thinking about your brothers love.” Lucy gets up and gives Eileen a kiss on the cheek and says, “Why don’t I get us a nice glass of wine and grab the old photo albums. We haven’t looked at them in ages.”

Willa pulls her sun lounger over beside Eileen and shouts to the two youngest to give their Ma a hand in the kitchen. Their two dotey sun-kissed faces look up with disappointment. “It’s ok Ma”, James shouts over, “I’ll do it”. Banba and Alroy smile at their big brother from the corner of the garden. They’ve been standing guard over their solitary bee home all afternoon waiting for the larvae to hatch, and they’re not ready to give up their post just yet. 

Eileen clasps Willa’s hand and tells her how proud she is of the pair of them. “You and Lucy have devoted your whole lives to equality, you’re just like your Mam and Dad. They fought like tigers for the PHS. They always believed in the politics of equality and Irish unity. Your generation have done my generation proud.” At that moment Lucy plonks down the wine and a tray of treats, wraps her arms around her wife and Eileen and hugs them both tightly. “We stand on the shoulders of giants Mam, and we couldn’t do it without you.”