Stand clear: quality Irish journalism at work

You might say they're warming up for taking on a post-O'Reilly Indo,  but today's Irish Times had an article bludgeoning the Lord Mayor of Belfast,  the TD for Louth and the Deputy First Minister at Stormont. The fact that all three happen to be Shinners might lead you to think that the writer had something against Sinn Féin but not necessarily so. He may just be following the mainstream media consensus in Ireland.  Because as I'm sure you've noticed, op-ed pieces north and south either avoid the topic of Shinners or use the occasion to sink the boot into the Shinners. If you take a contrary view, I  have a crisp £10 note for the first person who can show me an article from either of the two main newspapers in the south or from any of the three main papers in the north, written over the last six months, which is  positive in its tone about Sinn Féin. And that wasn't written by a Shinner. All submissions by this time tomorrow, please.

Anyway, back to today's article in the Paper of Record.  The Lord Mayor of Belfast is criticised for bowing out a week early and not meeting QE2 should she come to the north,  the TD for Louth, aka Gerry Adams, is criticised for referring to the cuts in the south as "Thatcherite," and the Deputy First Minister, aka Martin McGuinness, is mocked for considering shaking hands with QE2 should she grace our shores with her hard-working presence.

Oh dear. Where do you begin? The possibility that the young Mayor of Belfast has a right NOT to shake QE2's hand isn't given an instant's consideration. The possibility that his bowing out a week early is a plus, leaving the field clear for those who won't wash their hand for a week after shaking the royal appendage - that's dismissed as hogwash. The Lord Mayor has done a Bad Thing.

Gerry Adams has done a  Bad Thing too by talking about the cuts in the south being Thatcherite. He should have said neo-liberal, apparently, because Thatcherite is so twentieth-century. Me, I'm not so sure. Ask yourself this: which of the two terms - Thatcherite or neo-liberal -  conjures up the clearer image of full-throttle capitalism and the devil take the hindmost? I think we can safely rest with that dear lady who began her Downing Street residency by quoting a prayer of St Francis  about healing and harmony.

Martin McGuinness hasn't done a Bad Thing, but he's sort of thinking  a Bad Thing. He's hanging back and being vague about wringing the royal hand, as if  he might "spontaneously combust when his republican flesh brushes the royal sleeve."

So the Mayor is criticised for not doing the handshake with the royal digits, the Deputy Minister is criticised even though he's said he may well do the hand thing, and Adams is criticised because he thinks the term "Thatcherite" might have some resonance with the Irish people.

 We can only hope the 21% of the people in the south who expressed a favourable view on Sinn Féin in the recent poll will now see the error of their ways and write a letter to the Times  telling them the inspiration they are and how sorry they are for saying Yes about those Bad People.

Tub-thumping

Well, pulpit-thumping priests may be less usual these days but there’s no shortage of finger-pointing columnists and editorial writers. Back in the day, the PP mounted his pulpit and told the rest of us what was right and what wrong and God pity us if we thought differently.  Why we were so pliant back then? I’ve heard people ask.  Why did nobody ever question the moral authority of the man in the pulpit on things great and small? Could we not think about right and wrong for ourselves at all? Some of the loudest voices condemning the stranglehold of Catholic clergy back then are columnists and editorial writers in Ireland today. “Scandalous!” they cry. “The Catholic Church, so smug in its moral authority!”  Oddly, these same op-ed writers today have no problem laying down the law, in print or on air, pronouncing on right and wrong for their own secular congregations.

Two recent examples.  The first relates to Colum Eastwood of the SDLP in Derry. Mr Eastwood attended a paramilitary-style funeral for Seamus Coyle, a former member of the Official IRA and of the INLA, and helped carry the dead man’s coffin. Eastwood said he disagreed with Coyle on many things but that he attended the funeral and carried the coffin as a tribute to a close friend. ‘What scandalously poor judgement!” the scribblers cried. “How wrong of Eastwood to do such a thing! This is to endorse paramilitarism!”  Mr Eastwood, in other words, is a secular sinner.

I mean, come ON. Colum Eastwood attended the funeral of a close friend. If that’s what he chose to do, and to carry his friend’s coffin, so what? There are people whose political views we think stink but who have admirable personal qualities that make us glad to know them.  And were they to die, we’d feel duty and friendship bound to attend their funeral and maybe, if asked, carry their coffin. That wouldn’t mean we’d adopted the political stance of the deceased. Gerry Adams didn’t convert to the PUP when he visited the wake-house of David Ervine and hugged his widow. But none of that stops the jackanapes scribblers from telling Mr Eastwood how he should conduct himself, and how sinful he is if he doesn’t.

The second example relates to Belfast mayor Niall O Donnghaile, who apparently will depart his post a week early and so avoid the possibility (and it is only a possibility) that he might be faced with meeting and greeting  the queen. “Shameful!” the scribblers yell. “He should serve his full term and meet his monarch!”

Remember Mary Robinson? And how she quit the Irish presidency several months before the end of her term of office, to  take up an even-higher-profile post with the UN? The scribblers produced no moral thunderbolts against her early leaving. Not a squeak.  But O Donnghaile – ah, that’s different.  Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.  When he didn’t distrubute a Duke of Edinburgh award, he was condemned, and more than one secular pulpit-thumper said he should have delegated the task to his deputy mayor and so avoided giving offence. Now here he is, stepping aside to remove any possible offence and what happens? The secular pulpit-thumpers yell outrage at his sin of avoidance.  Martin McGuinness, these pulpit-thumpers declare, has said he’d meet the British queen, so why doesn’t the Lord Mayor do likewise?  One obvious answer might be that young Mr O Donnghaile isn’t Mr  McGuinness. Another might be that, had he agreed to meet the queen (if she comes)  because Mr McGuinness had said he might meet her (if she comes ),  the same  modern moralists would have been scribbling about the Stalinist nature of the Sinn Féin party and how it forces all its members to sing from the same hymn sheet. 

Give us a break, guys. Take time off from laying down the moral law and look in the mirror. See any resemblance between yourself and some crusty old PP, circa 1949? 

Five things about Martin Ingram

So Jim Allister and Mike Nesbitt are calling on Martin McGuinness to own up to his part in the murder of two senior police officers in 1989.

Five points:

1.    Calling the killing of the two police officers  ‘murder’ means that you believe every deliberate killing during the conflict was murder. Carry on the logic of that and Harry Truman murdered  around 300,000 people (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon murdered between them roughly a  million Vietnamese. If you’re consistent, using ‘murder’ makes sense. If you’re not consistent, it doesn’t.

2.   When you are told something, it’s always a good idea to ask “Sez who?”  In this case, Martin Ingram sez, and he is a former British army intelligence officer who has made a range of statements over the years, some of them very odd. He claims, for example, to be a republican while at the same time maintaining “I would have no problem with 99% of FRU’s activities”. So if Martin Ingram tells you it’s a nice day, you might need to look out your window.

3.   Martin McGuinness was in the IRA, one of the parties to the violent conflict here.  Killing is what happens in violent conflict – people on one side plan ways of and engage in the killing of  people on the other side.  It’s ghastly. It’s  primitive. But that’s what combatants do.

4.    From incidents such as Bloody Sunday, we know that British authorities will use any black propaganda they believe will work. In other words, they’ll lie and lie and lie again. Is there some reason we’ve not been told why Martin Ingram, a British intelligence officer,  should be considered the exception?

5.    Martin McGuinness is, in the polled views of unionists,  the most popular republican leader. They may not like him but they know he’s a strong man who is their best guarantee against growth among the ranks of the dissidents. That’s why  most unionists, who are not stupid, don’t want Ingram’s claims, true or false,  to be blown up into some sort of political crisis.

Sorry, Mr Ingram.  Your day is gone. Here’s your hat.

About last night...

Some game last night, eh?  Barcelona buzzing around the Chelsea goal-mouth the entire game,  Chelsea tackling with every inch of their anatomy, then, on about three occasions lumping the ball upfield and, as in the first game, scoring. I felt about twenty years younger watching it.  Jack Charlton lives. Remember how Jack used to “put them undah pressah” – the “them” being the team playing the Republic of Ireland. As a result, Ireland enjoyed one of its most successful periods in international football.  Everybody, it seemed, loved it – except Eamon Dunphy. Ever the rebel, he pointed out that it was ugly, ugly football. And by and large he was right. It was godawful. But it was effective – it won or drew vital games and the Irish people worshipped Jack. If they could have bought him a lake and given it to him to fish in, they would.

I doubt if Roberto di Matteo will ever reach those heights with Chelsea, but he’s certainly done what few would have thought possible – beaten Barcelona, and last night with only ten men. Ah yes – step forward John Terry. Or JT, as I believe he prefers to be known. The man famous for his alleged sexual goings-on with the former girl-friend of an England colleague and even more famous for allegedly racist abuse of an opponent. For some he epitomises the bull-dog spirit of England – a sort of Churchill in football shorts. To others he’s a vicious London thug with exaggerated notions of his own talent.

So am I glad Chelsea have got to the final? Well yes, especially as Terry will have to watch it from the sidelines, thanks to his knee-in-the-back of a Barcelona player. I admire Chelsea’s never-say-die spirit: if the Republic of Ireland had put on a similar display, we’d say they were every man a hero. But I can’t help thinking that it’s bad for football. Other managers and young players will have watched and will conclude that when it comes to Beauty and the Beast on the football field, the Beauty gets hammered by a sufficiently committed Beast.  Stand by for a resurgence of the bulky centre-forward, the Route One philosophy and the re-emergence of Tommy Smith (remember him?) as a footballing consultant. Oh dear. Looks like the butterfly is going to be broken on the wheel all over again.  

Maggie, the mighty defender of RTÉ

Ah, how we’ve missed you, Maggie! And how good it is to know your voice will soon echo again around the near-empty chamber of the House of Commons.  Dear Maggie Ritchie, erstwhile leader of the SDLP, has tabled a Commons motion in the hope of getting support from other MPs. She clearly means business.

About what? Why, about RTÉ plans to close its London office once the Olympics are over.  That office, she says, has “an illustrious record of service” and has kept Irish viewers informed about British economic, political and cultural life. AND it’s contributed to the peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. AND it is “vital to fulfil the vision of future British-Irish relations”/

EH? Here, pull the other one, Maggie. Every time I see Brian O’Connell with his suitably-Anglicized end-consonants coming on-screen, I reach for the remote. But let’s be fair here. Unbeknownst to herself, Maggie has in fact raised an important issue.

Why do we  need Irish reports on things happening elsewhere in the world? The question presents itself particularly on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh.  There’ll have been a polished, professional report done by the London BBC on some major story; then RU/RU  will insist on contacting somebody from Newtownards who lives within fifty miles of the event and ask them what they experienced. Why? What has the Newtownards native added to our understanding of the tsunami, or the airplane crash, or the political crisis?

The fact is, we get as much information about what’s going on in Britain as we need from the BBC and ITV  and Channel 4 in London.  If Maggie thinks that except we get an RTÉ angle on things, we’re missing out, she’d want to visit Specsavers. RTÉ’s take on events across the water invariably takes the same line as the British TV networks. An Irish take on events would be another thing entirely. If RTÉ were to report matters from a truly Irish perspective, pointing up the difference between British interests and Irish interests, focusing on the true implications of events for Ireland, then indeed I’d rally to Maggie’s side and urge her on. Unfortunately, neither BBC Northern Ireland nor RTÉ seems capable of thinking for themselves; what we get is a watered-down, more amateurish version of the British report. There is indeed a need for Irish audiences to have an Irish take on British events. But it ain’t going to come through the present RTÉ office in London and it certainly ain’t gonna come from the ‘r’ –softening Brian O’Connell.

Put on the red jacket and go for a walk in one of the Royal Parks instead, Maggie. 

John Waters and the Catholic Church

John Waters is that rare thing, an original thinker. He proved it again the other day when he wrote a piece  in the Irish Times. In it he expressed admiration for Pope Benedict, was critical of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland, and had some tough words for those people who call for greater democracy in the Catholic Church.

“Last week, on the publication of an opinion poll on behalf of the Association of Catholic Priests, commentators who had never written a sentence indicating genuine interest in, or affection for, Catholicism – who never miss an opportunity to attack the Church and its leadership – struck up demands for 'democracy', purportedly on behalf of what they depict as the downtrodden and ignored 'faithful'.  Why? Why do they care whether the Catholic Church is democratic or not? What is it to them?”

I don’t agree with all that Waters says in the article, but I’m completely with him in much of it. I don’t believe Pope Benedict is deserving of uncritical admiration:  his response to a number of matters, including his reception of married Church of England clergy and their flocks into the Catholic Church, and his attitude to women priests, is up the left. Or up the right, in his case. And  the Catholic Church could do with a health-giving infusion of democracy. And there are quite a few Catholic priests who think we're still living in the 1950s.

But Waters nails it exactly when he questions  criticism of the Catholic Church  by many commentators.  It should be obvious to even a short-sighted man on a galloping horse that a wide and deep strain of hostility to the Catholic Church runs through the Irish media, north and south. As Waters says, these commentators have no commitment of any kind to the Catholic Church, yet they lose no opportunity to express their outrage at rulings in the Catholic Church, and strain to indicate that anyone who follows such rulings must have a weakness in the head or be a lick-spittle lackey of the Catholic clergy.  And as Waters also says, why do these commentators care? If you don’t play golf and have no interest in it,  wouldn’t it  look odd if you repeatedly wrote articles about its rules, its organization, its worth? Except, of course, you  were contemptuous of the game and those who played it.

The Irish media, by and large, is relentlessly “liberal” in its assumptions, and works hard at impressing those assumptions on the rest of us. Part of this is Catholic-Church bashing, resoundingly and at regular intervals. We should be glad there are people like Waters. Very glad.

Westminster Abbey - home of the brave?

John Kelly is angry. His brother Michael was killed on Bloody Sunday in Derry and he’s now heard that a commemorative stone is to be erected in Westminster Abbey to the late Ted Heath, prime minister at the time.  Kelly says “I personally hold Ted Heath – the political master of the British armed forces in 1972 – among those ultimately responsible for the murder of my brother on Bloody Sunday. To memorialize him in any way is both sickening and contemptible”.

You can understand Kelly’s outrage. Think of a family member of your own. Now think of someone  deliberately shooting them dead, and then imagine the person ultimately responsible for the killing being honoured as a national hero. You’d be angry too.

But that’s what Westminster Abbey does – it puts up statues and memorials to those it considers great in British terms. You won’t find Oliver Cromwell there – they originally buried him in the Abbey, but when the monarchy was restored they dug him up, hung his remains from a nearby gibbet and left it there until the  head fell off.  So no Cromwell but lots of others, many of them responsible for massive suffering in Ireland.  Kings and queens like Elizabeth 1 and William III. Military commanders like Lord Nelson.  Prime ministers like Winston Churchill.  So really, a commemorative stone to Heath would fit right in. 

The two key words in John Kelly’s statement that no British government wants to hear is “ultimately responsible”.  When the good people of Derry were doing handstands in the Guildhall Square the day David Cameron apologised for Bloody Sunday, the British prime minister acknowledged that “ultimate responsibility” for the events of that day lay with the government ; but he hurried on to point out that he was in short trousers at the time and that  anyway there was no premeditation or plan about  what happened.  The note he struck was one of regret – a pity, really, all that suffering, but look, we’re sorry it happened and we would wish some things had been otherwise.

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because you tuned in to the speech delivered by Queen Elizabeth II  in Dublin last year:  “To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”

When he was alive, Ted Heath submitted written evidence to the Saville Inquiry.  In it he denied government involvement in Bloody Sunday: “The tragic deaths outraged the Catholic community, increased support for the IRA and destroyed the prospect of a political initiative. It is therefore absurd to suggest that Her Majesty’s Government intended or was prepared to risk the events which occurred”. What’s more, he hadn’t leaned on Widgery to produce his famous whitewash report a short time after that terrible day.  Nice one, Ted - superficially impressive but, given a moment’s thought, cock-eyed claptrap. Of course the British government, via its armed forces, wouldn’t want to increase support for the IRA. But it did. By its actions, time and again through history  -  think about the aftermath of 1916  - it did so . What Heath doesn’t mention is that Bloody Sunday might well have occurred with the sanction of a British government – his government -  who were hoping for a different outcome. Who codded themselves that, faced with the fire-power of the Parachute Regiment, the IRA and the Irish people would back off and lie low.  That’s at least as reasonable a conclusion to draw as the one  drawn by Heath. 

But if John Kelly thinks any of that will make a difference, he’s sadly mistaken. The British government, the British monarchy has done its bit. It’s apologised, it’s stood in the Garden of Remembrance with bowed head. What more could any Irish person want - justice? You cannot be serious. 

PS And if you want to learn more, watch and listen to my old (and brilliant) classmate, Eamonn McCann at   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x83lt5zDRbg