DOC TAYROC'S [UNSOLICITED] BOOK RECOMMENDATION - TAX HAVEN IRELAND by Brian O'Boyle and Kieran Allen

In a previous post I touched on the odd character that is Irish identity. Indeed, recently I was talking to a colleague about how one of my least favourite geographic groupings is 'Sub-Saharan Africa', as it covers roughly three-quarters of one of the largest continents, and seems to be based entirely on the 19th century racialised concept of 'Black Africa' versus 'Arabic Africa'. An idea I'll return to in a later post. I said that I noticed that a similarly problematic grouping, 'western Europe' often includes Germany, formerly of 'central Europe' a grouping we've since largely retired, but often omits the Iberian peninsula and/or Ireland. Ireland itself unique amongst geographically western European countries as it is the only one that is 'post-colonial' in history and politics, owing to the lengthy colonial occupation by neighbouring Britain, who, as covered previously, used Ireland as a sort of 'prototype' colony before moving on to bigger and further away projects.

Like most post-colonial states there does come an inevitable and uncomfortable question: who exactly has independence benefited?

No, this isn't my soft pitch to reunify Ireland under the union-flag. But it is my reminder that the Irish War for Independence was called that, and not the Irish Revolution, and frankly the American 'Revolution' also wasn't revolutionary, not even as revolutionary as the later French one would be, but we'll get back to that later. For those not familiar with 20th century Irish history, and in my experience, outside of Ireland few people are, after the initial independence of Ireland in 1922, a brief period of peace was followed by a collapse into civil war. Not between the Protestants and the Catholics, not yet, but between the 'pro-treaty' and 'anti-treaty' factions. The treaty in question was the one with the British that would have Ireland remain in the Commonwealth as a 'dominion' like Canada or Australia, that is with the crown as the head, and would cede the northern counties to remain in Britain itself. Without going through the whole civil war, as that is a bit beyond the scope of this review, let's just remember that by the time the Germans got a little too big for their britches and decided they wanted a Poland, the northern counties belonged to Britain, the south was a republic, and Ireland had left the Commonwealth. Considering all the fighting, and some other things we'll get back to, the Republic of Ireland, Éire, decides to sit out the Second World War, although several Irish folk decide they really don't like this Hitler fellow, and so join the British or American armed forces to fight off the Nazis.

So why wasn't post-independence revolutionary? Well, it goes back to Gayathri Spivak and Vivek Chibber, because all knowledge is circular and cumulative. If you remember my post about Chibber, you might remember that a question that Marxists and subalternists alike make is 'for the average Indian/Irish person, is there much of a difference if the flag overhead is the union flag or the local tri-colour'? And so here is the question for post-independence Ireland, can a bourgeois 'revolution' ever really benefit the masses? Considering that the Irish economy was one of the hardest hit in the 2007/08 financial crisis and subsequent Eurozone crises, the answer is a resounding no.

That's where today's book comes into play, Tax Haven Ireland argues that the leaders of the post-independence republic were conservative elites themselves. They fought for Irish independence and equality with the British not to benefit their countrymen, but to give themselves an equal opportunity to exploit their Irish brothers and sisters alongside the British bankers and landlords. This is less 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' and more 'nothing has really changed, just instead of Smith robbing you, it's O'Connor'. Although, O'Boyle and Allen argue, the above proverbial O'Connor is also paying sums to Smith and now Mueller as well. This is largely because in the aftermath of independence, Dublin became a different kind of satellite to London, or more specifically to one specific London borough, 'the city'.

A good companion peace to go with this book is *Butler to the World* by Oliver Bullough. Butler to the World outlines how 'the city' gradually took over post-war Britain politically and economically. Of course, being the epitome of Britishness, 'the city' also sought to take over the rest of the world. Tax Haven Ireland expands to show how 'the city' took over Dublin, in order to aid in tax laundering.

'The City', confusingly known as 'The City of London' is now only one square mile within the borders of modern London, it isn't even where Parliament meets, that being in the neighbouring borough of Westminster, or where the Church of England or the former London County Council meet, that being Lambeth across the river, or even where the modern Greater London Authority meets and the Mayor keeps his office, that being considerably further down the river in the borough of Newham, a fact I had to look up despite being a Londoner, as the GLA only recently moved there, largely due to rent and the cost of land, largely thanks to 'the city'. A couple of posts ago I talked about how neo-liberal/classical economists love the Magna Carta because of its role in enshrining property rights in Britain, thus making us into patient zero in the global plague that is capitalism. Bankers, on the other hand, have another reason to love the Magna Carta, namely it began a long history of exempting merchants in City of London from several of the taxes the Crown and/or Parliament could levy. A tradition, that like monarchy, Britain has held on to long past the point of it being of any practical use. Hence the modern square-mile, which has the lowest population density in London, despite being in the centre, whilst also having the highest office density as well as its own private police service, independent from the larger, more famous London Metropolitan Police (also known as 'Scotland Yard', 'The Met', 'the nameless useless coppers that were constantly shown up by Holmes and Poirot').

After Brexit, papers that have rightly been accused of being the idle mouth pieces of British bankers like The Economist and The Financial Times lamented the temporary impact on the neo-liberal order by attempting to predict which city on the continent could out-London London to become the next centre for European banking, with heavy bets placed on Paris and Frankfurt. There are, of course, many critiques to be made of neo-liberal Germany or slightly less but still decidedly neo-liberal France, but in truth neither Frankfurt nor Paris ever stood a chance at out Londoning London. London had a multi-century head-start, a tax haven status, and institutional inertia on its side. Rather than seek safe harbour on the continent, the City worked with Parliament to ensure that the costs of Brexit were borne out only by the poor, the universities, and the people.

Part of this, of course, is the fact that the 'City' benefits from centuries of broader British imperialism. O'Boyle and Allen deftly outline the ways in which post-independence Dublin was still dominated by London, and after Ireland adopted the Euro, which Britain famously never did, 'the City' used Dublin to get their hands on Euros that should have otherwise stayed in the Eurozone. The result is Burger King being an Irish corporation, at least for tax purposes. Indeed, judging by the sheer number of corporations that call Ireland their European home, you would think the Irish economy dominates the EU, truly, and finally, the era of Pax Hibernia!

Of course, instead of dominating the EU, Ireland rather infamously makes up one of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, the worst performing economies in the Eurozone). Further the 'Celtic Tiger' was swiftly euthanised by its German, French, British, and American captors in the aftermath of the 2007/08 Financial Crisis. When Brexit happened, concerns over the future of the contested land border between Éire and the UK was handled by British and German diplomats, further insuring Ireland's ongoing status as a colony, and like most post-colonial states, it's a colony to be shared by multiple international interests. Ireland as tax haven is beneficial to the Irish ruling class, now made up of equal parts British and Irish bourgeois, at the cost of the typical Irish person, a tale familiar to citizens of India, Nigeria, and Kenya. The tax breaks for the rich came with EU style austerity for the rest, and a general decline in the Irish state's capacity to react to any kind of crisis, fiscal or otherwise, as seen in the aftermath of the 2007/08 crash and the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, Brexit was a particular concern for Ireland as the lack of domestic infrastructure has left Ireland, itself an island nation with copious amounts of coast, reliant on British deep sea ports to do international trade, as at the time of Brexit, Éire only had one deep sea port.

Of course, even if Éire finally gave itself a responsible tax, 'the City' would move on, as it is wont to do. Nearly every single British Overseas Territory, including nearby Gibraltar is listed as a known tax haven. As much as the problem rests in Dublin, it also rests in London, Brussels, Washington, and Beijing.

Good God I'm depressed.