The first recorded example of a two-fingered signal being used as an insult came in 1901, when a worker outside Parkgate Ironworks in Rotherham made the gesture to indicate his displeasure at being filmed.
One hundred and twenty four years later, this week’s turmoil in the Dáil was summed up for many by the image from the chamber of Michael Lowry making the same gesture – possibly for the same reason – towards his fellow TD, Paul Murphy, who was pointing a camera phone at him. Both politicians were guilty of juvenile behaviour. But Lowry’s action was a propaganda gift to an Opposition eager to keep him at the centre of the speaking rights controversy.
At first, the North Tipperary TD claimed the two fingers simply meant “come here”. It would be interesting to see him test that theory in rush hour traffic or a busy pub.
In truth, the gesture has fallen into such disuse that it might be met with a blank stare. Its most frequent appearance now is in repeats of Father Ted, which, even when it first came out 30 years ago, was satirising a disappearing Ireland. Fans of the show will recall the industrial quantities of V-signs exchanged between its titular hero and his nemesis, Father Dick Byrne.
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The attractive theory that the gesture, which is largely unknown outside Britain and Ireland, was first used by longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt has not a shred of evidence to support it. In his 1979 book, Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, anthropologist Desmond Morris concluded it was impossible to determine its source.
Until this week, its most famous appearance on a newspaper front page came in 1990, when the Sun, irate at the president of the European Commission, published it alongside the unsubtle headline “Up Yours Delors”.
The two-fingered salute has been eclipsed by the more aggressive single-finger variant beloved of bellicose motorists. Perhaps a better justification for this week’s unparliamentary behaviour would be that Michael Lowry was simply preserving a small part of our vanishing cultural heritage.
