The 'Mary Beard' of recent Manx political history

SAD FOOTNOTES FROM HISTORY - WHO CARES?

Kate Beecroft MHK is rediscovering the past! She is effectively becoming the ‘Mary Beard’ of recent Manx political history.

She is garnering her knowledge from a blog which outlines the goings on surrounding Mount Murray development two decades ago and has moved on to the Sefton and Ferguson Lacey et al.

But what is the point? It’s hardly ‘The Nazis a Lesson From History’! Picking over the bones of this ‘past’ will hardly make a good stew let alone land anyone at the International Criminal Court!

Initially an item highlighted the treatment of the late Roly Drower I can applaud its sentiments but none spoke out at the time especially not politicians, The Celtic League did as did Mec Vannin.

Roly Drower himself was sanguine about the way he was treated almost as if he thought we were a society that knew little better. However he was never malevolent in conversation with me about Gubay and seemed to be almost sad that a man with so much money could come across as so bitter. As for Manx politicians for the most part he regarded them including Ministers as easily led fools. Beecroft an ex Minister who made something of a stir of her brief stint at Health Services should take note!

Most importantly Drower wrote about the here and now he didn’t as a rule pick over the past and let's face it you can find scandal or the history of it thats goes back a century or more. As for his anonymous ‘Manxman Pages’ it was probably the worst kept secret in the Isle of Man that he was the moving force. Gubay didn’t exactly need Inspector Morse to crack that one!

We’ve had Mount Murray. We've had the Sefton. Most of the main players are now bit players either dead, retired, sidelined or ‘gone away’ footnotes in history. So what purpose does raking over this past serve?

It's what's going on now that matters because if history tells us anything something is!

Bernard Moffatt