THUNDERING IN THE TIMES Part 1. – by Donal Kennedy

“It’s never too early to start lessons on spotting fake news” says Libby Purves in a Comment headed ‘THUNDERER’ in THE TIMES (Friday 14th January 2022).

I’ve been spotting fake news and doing my best to combat it for nearly fifty years, inspired by Frank Gallagher, whose memoir “The Four Glorious Years” written under the pen-name “David Hogan” I have treasured since I got an autographed copy on its publication in December 1952 for my 11th birthday. I had read extracts from it in the Sunday Press in the preceding months.

Gallagher, Erskine Childers, Laurence Ginnell, Robert Brennan and other brilliant writers produced the IRISH BULLETIN, the official news sheet of the elected Government of Ireland, whose Director of Publicity was Desmond Fitzgerald, father of Garret. It was produced on a Gestetner type machine five days a week, at the risk of the lives of the writers and the country-wide compilers of the items appearing in it. 

(You might enjoy the Blog – “Manifest Decency – The Life and Work of Robert Brennan” )

An elderly woman found with two issues of it when searched by British militar on a train, was court-martialled and sentenced to two weeks imprisonment or a £20 fine. She chose imprisonment, but to her chagrin, her husband, just back from Australia, where he had been on business insisted on paying the fine.

Through various stratagems the Bulletin was posted to politicians and journalists outside Ireland. 

 Two MPs in particular used information from it to put Government Ministers on the spot by questioning them in the Commons,. Both had distinguished themselves in the Great War. One, CommanderJoseph Kenworthy RN, became the 1st Viscount Strabolgi. The other, William Wedgwood Benn,was highly decorated and had served with Erskine Childers. He was to serve as a Labour Cabinet  Ministerand resumed his fighting role in the Second World War. He became the 1st Viscount  Stansgate, a title  renounced by his son Tony, and since resumed by a later descendant.

Against such brave and honest Englishmen was, for example, Captain Hugh Bertie Pollard, Press Officer for the Royal Irish Constabulary in Dublin Castle. Wikipedia has a long and informative account of this Misinformation scoundrel. And by happenstance a Book Review of “Fake News in “The Irish War of Independence” by Michael B. Barry, published in the current issue of “History Ireland” adds to the dossier I had on him. 

I know that the British had captured the office of the IRISH BULLETIN with its printing machine and address list, without revealing its capture, and that Pollard had organised the publication of a fake copy, with exaggerations and falsehoods in order to discredit the genuine article. I also knew that the Bulletin had a spare printer and a duplicate set of addresses and that it produced the genuine edition  on schedule and that Pollard’s Brainwave was laughed to scorn in the House of Commons.

I knew too, that Pollard arranged with British Pathe to film a fake newsreel of an engagement with the IRA, purported to be near Tralee, on the Atlantic Coast in Ireland’s South West, but that Dublin filmgoers recognised the Vico Road, on Killiney Bay, County Dublin, on the Irish Sea, over 200 miles northeast of Tralee. I also knew that, as an officer in British Intelligence in July 1936 Pollard air-lifted Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco whence that murderous mutineer launched a career of terror lasting 40 years. When Madrid finally fell to Franco, Pollard was installed at the British Embassy there as a diplomatist.

I had not known that Pollard had claimed that in 1917 he had had been the inventor of the story that the Germans were boiling the bodies  of their own soldiers to make animal feed, fertiliser and soap, which had been given wide circulation in Lord Northcliffe’s newspapers and became one of the most celebrated hoaxes of the war. That, and other British hoaxes backfired somewhat in Ireland, My father, who had no sympathy for dictators, disbelieved many true stories of German atrocities in the Second World War until near its end. His Brother-in-Law, Bill O’Connell, (my Godfather) who served in Britain’s Royal Army Medical Corps, was, I believe, the first Doctor from that Corps into Belsen on its liberation in April 1945.

Pollard was only one of the lying propagandists on the British Government’s pay-roll in DublinCastle a Century Ago. “THE ORIGINS  AND ORGANISATION OF BRITISH PROPAGANDA IN
IRELAND, 1920″ by the Historian Rev. Brian Murphy, OSB of Glenstal Abbey, Limerick gives a thorough account of a corps of S.O.Bs which caused misery in many countries, establishing AIMS OF INDUSTRY to attack Trade Unions, creating Blacklists of workers and having them imprisoned on trumped-up charges.Ricky Tomlinson of Liverpool, star of The Royle Family was one such wronged British Worker. He was convicted for intimidation in 1973 and had the conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal in March 2021 – a mere 48 years later.

The Dublin Castle S.O.Bs were also creators of the modern deceitful world of Public Relations.

Fake News, Public Relations, Diplomacy, Spying, Fake Justice are closely interlinked. When Kim Philby decided to defect to Russia he persuaded THE OBSERVER to issue him with a Journalist’s credentials. and the paper, in the belief that he was loyal British Agent, was happy to help. Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene and Ian Fleming were amongst many journalists who worked as British Agents.

 Deceit and News are so intertwined that Libby Purves is right to encourage the spotting of fakes.

I understand her father was a British Diplomatist and believe he was an Ambassador.

And I know that THE TIMES is a THUNDERING LIAR and has been for centuries.

thorough account of a corps of S.O.Bs which caused misery in many countries, establishing AIMS

OF INDUSTRY to attack Trade Unions, creating Blacklists of workers and having them imprisoned

on trumped-up charges.Ricky Tomlinson of Liverpool, star of The Royle Family was one such wronged British Worker. He was convicted for intimidation in 1973 and had the conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal in March 2021 – a mere 48 years later.

The Dublin Castle S.O.Bs were also creators of the modern deceitful world of Public Relations.

Against such brave and honest Englishmen was, for example, Captain Hugh Bertie Pollard, Press

Officer for the Royal Irish Constabulary in Dublin Castle. Wikipedia has a long and informative account of this Misinformation scoundrel. And by happenstance a Book Review of “Fake News

in The Irish War of Independence” by Michael B. Barry, published in the current issue of “History Ireland” adds to the dossier I had on him.