Václav Havel to get unique honour of bust at Irish Parliament
A specially-commissioned bust of the late Czech president Václav Havel is set to be unveiled at Ireland’s parliament, the Dáil, in March next year. The man behind the idea is Bill Shipsey, founder of Art for Amnesty and also one of the initiators of the international Havel’s Place series of memorial spots. On the line to Dublin, I asked Mr. Shipsey where the idea for the bust had come from.
“I’m also on the advisory board of the Václav Havel Library Foundation in the US, and when I saw that the US were going to do it, I felt that the Irish Parliament should do it.”
He was only the fourth non-American to receive that honour at the US Congress in Washington. Are there many statues of non-Irish politicians in the Dáil?
“I don’t believe that there are any. I know that there are some photographs of Nelson Mandela, when he addressed the joint houses of the Oireachtas, our parliament in Ireland.
“But I’m not aware of any other non-national bust in the Irish houses of parliament. So it will be a first.”
The bust should be unveiled by the Irish president, Michael D. Higgins, who is also a writer. I understand that President Higgins is an admirer of Havel’s.
“Yes, indeed. President Higgins was in the past the minister for arts and culture. He is a published poet. He is a very strong advocate of human rights and a great admirer of the late president Havel, not just as a playwright but as a leader in the European Union movement and also as a strong proponent of global human rights.”
“My own interest goes back to when I joined Amnesty International in 1977 and one of the first cases I worked on was the case of prisoner of conscience Václav Havel, who was imprisoned in Czechoslovakia at that time.
“Then in the early 2000s I had the idea to create an award for Ambassadors of Conscience, as we then called them, inspired by a poem by Seamus Heaney for Amnesty International.
“The first recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience award in 2003 was the late president Václav Havel, who came to Dublin that year to receive the award at the hands of the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
“Since that time – President Havel was the first – the award has been conferred on Nelson Mandela, on Aung San Su Kyi and last year on Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani schoolgirl who this year won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
So did you meet Václav Havel then, and what impression did he make on you?
“I also had the honour of spending a couple of days with him when he came in October 2003. They were very special and very memorable days where we drank Guinness, watched U2 sing songs from their new album especially for him in their studio, and generally had a great time with other writers and artists in Dublin.”
