Sixty-five years ago, the Belgrade summit marked the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, the largest political grouping of countries in the world after the United Nations. At the height of national liberation struggles in the post-World War II world, a vision of “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony” brought leaders of the so-called Third World to Belgrade for the first in a series of summits of the growing family of newly liberated countries.
Mila Turajlić’s documentary film about the Belgrade conference, Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels (2022), has already been screened twice in Dublin this year. The most recent screening event, organised by the Saints and Scholars collective and the Students Neutrality Front in Trinity College, also featured a discussion connecting the origins of the Non-Aligned Movement with the principles of Irish neutrality, and the perilous historical moment Ireland and the world face today, with everyday news of galloping militarisation, open aggression, ruthless economic blockades, and genocidal annihilation. The people of Ireland overwhelmingly support Irish neutrality, and the role Ireland can play in bringing peace to the world – in stark opposition to the government rushing to bring it as an offering to imperial powers surrounding Ireland: Britain, the United States, and the European Union.
Watching the scenes of international solidarities from seven decades ago in Turajlić’s film, many viewers asked the same question: where was Ireland when anti-colonial non-alignment was forged? Well, 1961 is the year when Ireland first applied to join the European Communities; in 1962, Taoiseach Seán Lemass authorised searches of Cuban aeroplanes flying through Shannon. In the Dáil, he exclaimed: “We think the existence of NATO is necessary for the preservation of peace and for the defence of the countries of Western Europe, including this country. Although we are not members of NATO, we are in full agreement with its aims.”
In the years to come, one by one, neutral European countries decided to attend the meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement as guests. Finland, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland all went to Colombo and Havana for the conferences, while the Dublin government firmly sat on its hands and repeatedly anchored its foreign policy to American interests, with UN votes in favour of the US imperial order more consistent than the voting records of some NATO members at the time. Irish anti-colonial past (as if it could be neatly confined to the past, with a raging war in the occupied Six Counties) was already a commodified novelty item for Irish foreign policy, devoid of a concrete and principled stance on imperialism.
Turajlić’s film prominently features Algeria. Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia announced recognition of the new revolutionary Algerian state at the opening of the Belgrade conference of the Non-Aligned Movement. Years before, Yugoslavia sent cameraman Stevan Labudović, the protagonist of Turajlić’s film, to Algeria to film the war of independence as a part of the National Liberation Front, and to create propaganda material in response to French dominance in media space. It is almost bizarre, and most certainly cynical, to find Ireland, a few decades later, in the company of France in the “Like-Minded Group”, a perverse European grouping claiming to move into the space of a third bloc, and speaking of building bridges with the Third World. This is the company Ireland chose to bring its past and present colonial relations into, offering lip service strongly contrasted to meaningful action, and a vision of charity strongly contrasted to a vision of solidarity. As Ireland nailed its “like-minded” colours to the mast with France on the treatment of Africa and other colonised lands, the Taoiseach of the day, Charlie Haughey, spoke in the Dáil of how “neutrality or non-alignment is incompatible with our membership of the European Community, and with our interests and our ideals.”
The language of the political class always has one confusing feature – it is never clear to whom the possessive pronoun “our” refers. The ideals of the people of Ireland have been clear then as they are now, polled again and again, displayed time after time: neutrality, non-alignment, peace. Given what we see every day from the European Union, Haughey is at least partially right: our membership there is at odds with our interests and our ideals.
