Picture by Moochin Photo
The BBC’s task, its founder Lord Reith declared, was to entertain, educate and inform the population. None of the three applied to last night’s programme on BBC Spotlight.
Certainly it wasn’t entertaining: the grim and brutal tale of Caroline Moreland, shot by the IRA as an informer six weeks before the IRA ceasefire. Educate or inform? We heard nothing of significance that we didn’t know already. That the ‘security’ forces recruited informers, that the IRA shot informers, that Freddie Scappaticci led an IRA unit which traced informers within its ranks, that Scappatici himself was an informer working for the British forces. The macabre situation of an IRA unit seeking out and killing informers, led by a man who was an informer himself, we know too well.
What the programme failed to highlight – and which the Nolan show ( which I took part in this morning) failed to highlight – is that there was a qualitative difference between the IRA and the ‘security’ forces. The clue is in the name. The British army and the RUC were the forces of law and order, paid by the taxpayer to make sure we all stayed secure. The IRA was the force of lawlessness, not paid by us. There is a difference, but one which Stephen Nolan and Dara McIntyre seemed deaf to.
On the Nolan show, the question of getting the truth about the past was raised, when Shauna, the daughter of Caroline Moreland, said she wanted the truth. She won’t get it, for the very good reason that members of the paramilitary groupings, republican and loyalist, will not tell the things they’ve done; and the British forces most certainly will not tell what they know, because it would trace back to people in very high places.
The other thing that struck me, in the Spotlight programme and on the Nolan show, was that there was a determined effort to link Martin McGuinness to the killing of Caroline Moreland. I don’t know if he was linked or not, and neither does Dara or Stephen, but I do know he was in the IRA. And I do know that, as in all armies, the IRA killed people. That’s what armies do. They kill or threaten to kill or both. There was a distinct whiff of surprise/horror last night and this morning, that Martin McGuinness might somehow be linked to this killing. There’s no evidence he was. But to appear morally appalled at the thought that he might have been involved in a killing is, frankly, ridiculous. The IRA was an army and in a conflict, armies kill. Martin McGuinness has never made any secret about being a member of the IRA. Is Dara or Stephen suggesting they knew he was in the IRA but didn’t know the IRA was involved in killings?
Overall, both Spotlight and the Nolan show promoted the it-was-the-IRA-wot-done-it narrative. The IRA was indeed a part of the armed conflict, but there were quite a few combatants, not least the British authorities. The focus this morning was on the poignancy of Caroline Moreland’s death. The role of the British army, who recruited her as an informer, and the role of Scappaticci’s handlers, who recruited him, was downplayed to the point of non-existence.
Sometimes dealing in half-truths is more misleading than a straight-forward lie.
In my opinion 90% of news coverage has the “it was all the IRA’s fault” slant to it. However the IRA did not operate in a vacuum. There were atrocities committed by all, sides but when the supposedly forces of law and order involve themselves in random sectarian assasinations or look the other way when one of their informers commits crime( Robin Jackson, Brian Nelson, Scapaticci etc) then one has to question is there a bigger motive here. The British Army “piggy in the middle” theory has been shown to be completely untrue. They were not a buffer between the two factions, they were actively engaged with aiding and abetting one side. How many loyalists were interned? How did the perpetrators of the shooting at Boyles Bar get away so easily when the area was saturated with security forces the day before. Two simple questions that if answered honestly show just how impartial the Army and other forces of law and order were. The enemy of my enemy is my friend
The biggest question for me is how has it taken so long for martin mcguinness to answer a few questions. Year on year gerry Adams has been the bogeyman of the media whilst mcguinness is given cuddly status and is lauded as some sort of statesman? In my opinion he has all the personality of a wet tea bag but that’s another story.
After watching last nights programme what struck me was the lack of compassion with this case. Although I have no sympathy with informers per se, but surely with this being a woman and after recently taking part in a documentary along with her children(of which the IRA would’ve known) it would have been wiser to spare her life as the British would have made hay out of her death? A rocket scientist wouldn’t have been required to work out the propaganda that would have been milked from this case by the British.
Surely even back then the army council would have been well up to speed to the ‘hearts and minds’ war? Surely they knew that killing this woman in particular would turn ‘hearts and minds’ away from the IRA? Alas maybe that’s exactly why she was executed.
I got a photo with Marty at the Derry Marathon 2 weeks ago, lovely friendly fella !
Reporters sometimes appear to be a little confused about the nature of the conflict, although I suspect they are being disingenious a lot of the time. So we have a situation where killings are investigated as though they occurred in peace time, with a proper police force, you know, one that didn`t burn down the offices of an English police `colleague` because he was getting too close to the truth, a police force that did not cover up it`s members roles in sectarian murders. The killings covered by the Spotlight programme occurred during the conflict and were part of that whole violent period. Whether carried out by the state or by the IRA or UDA or whoever is not really important now. We will never get to the truth, especially now we have had the fiasco of the Boston College tapes. We should just make sure we never return to those depressing times.
Well put AJ. I would have to agree with you wholeheartedly.
The only problem with your analysis is Jude is that the IRA were not an army they didn’t sign up to the Geneva Convention didn’t take prisoners and in principle were terrorists.
Define terrorist, neill?
Define an army Jude?
We have had 40 plus years of terrorism if you need me to define what a terrorist is….
How very Irish, neill, to answer a question with another. You’re getting too predictable..
Jude it sounds as though we are in a long term relationship and we complete each others sentences…
Why don’t you just answer the question Neill, its not rocket science, after all…
Freddie Scappatici was a pyschopath in the employ of the British state.
He nor his employers did not save lives they took them.
The British security services held all the aces. To them the North of Ireland was not a war but a war game; a glorious opportunity to put theory into practice.
The lessons learnt from here have already been used in Afghanistan, Iraq and will be used against their own population if needs must.
The killing of Caroline Moreland as Wolfe tone has stated was counter productive and was meant to be so.
As for the ‘Spotlight’ programme last night it just goes to show that the local BBC consistently since its foundation views events through a unionist prism and will not challenge the powers that be or go for the real truth. After all the clue is in the name the “British” Broadcasting Corporation.
Does anyone really know the truth about Scap and what he was up to? Are we really sure we aren’t still in the middle of an intelligence led operation designed in the age old art of disinformation and subterfuge? What I do know is that in the Spotlight programme Darragh McIntyre allegedly talked to a lot of people who allegedly told him an awful lot about what was happening. We were asked to leave our brains at the door and accept, without critique, everything Darragh was allegedly told from the people he allegedly met. Educate and inform indeed.
Malachy O’Doherty claimed this morning that McGuinness was on the army council at the time because “the special branch said so”!The most discredited arm of the most discredited police force in Europe is the basis For Malachy’s assertion and we are all supposed to accept it as fact !
Well it’s not as daft as mcguinnesses claim that he left the IRA in 1974 that’s for sure. How he wormed his way into the Good friday agreement talks would be an even bigger mystery if that were the case.
Enniskillen and coshquin were two other incidents were the army council would have been wise to turn down. A blind man could see how civilians would have been killed in the first case and tying people into a lorry bomb has ‘hearts and minds’ well and truly against you. Two incidents were the reputation of the republican movement could easily predicted to be damaging if carried out. Maybe that’s why they were given the go ahead? Also as a result of these attacks someone on that army council could have gained a reputation of being a bit if a hawk? Mmmmm
Two incidents out of an estimated 19,000 by the IRA?
Read A.R. Oppenheimer’s “IRA The Bombs And The Bullets: A History of Deadly Ingenuity”.
Quite the eye opener.
There used to be a thingy called U and non-U in England, Esteemed Blogmeister, in which differences between U for Upper Class types and the non-U or aspiring middle class types.were, erm, spotlighted.
It normally referred to the choice of words in the English language, oddly enough, as used by both sides of the class divide. Whereas the Upper Class felt sufficiently easy in their skin (can’t beat a bit of the old hereditary blueblood, old chap) to use such plain words as false teeth, graveyard and what? the less secure Non-U’s felt the need to appear more ‘refined’ and so tended to opt for the fancier word such as dentures, cemetery and pardon?
(The delightfully insightful Dolly Parton put it in her own distinctive way on a topic not totally unrelated: ‘Ah’m jest about rich enough now, suh, to dress like I was still durned poor’)..
In Norneverland however U and Non U have a different resonance. In this case the U stands for Ubermensch which means ‘Superior Type’ in the original German.
This is only as it ought to be for that cohort of the society who, for reasons best known to themselves, still have a hankering to wave their hankies at the passing cavalcade of minor German royalty, such as the Saxe-Coburg-Goths.
Little surprise therefore that they tend to vote for any party which has a U in its title. Okay, okay, there’s a party called the RNU – ‘Republican Network for Unity’ . Perkie, pleads:
-D;Hondt go there, please, at this moment in t., going forward.
This essentially moral superiority of the U’s is sourced in their inherited toffee-nosed opinion of themselves as operating on a higher moral plane entirely than the six-fingered Fenians who will insist on using the non U term ‘six counties’ where the U-term Ulster is the only term in town.
Small wonder the leprechaun for an Orangeman is Fear Bui / Yellowman. The dulse, one might say, is in their very pulse.
The same applies down here south of the Black Sow’s Dyke. And nowhere with more stridency than in the august pages of The Unionist Times. On a recent RTE programme (the broadcasting wing of the broadsheet) a roving reporter of TUT, one Peter Murtagh, fresh from a recent harrowing gallop in Gallipoli, opined as follows on the Easter Rising whatsit next year:
-I would like to emphasise that the most often quoted phrase in the 1916 Proclamation – ‘to cherish all of the children of the nation equally’ – has been misinterpreted for far too long.
Hardly a coincidence that Murtagh rhymes with Gorta, such was the palpable hunger for inclusivity to be detected in the catch in this TUT throat. To repeat in a summarised form what Pete meant : the children here refers not to kids in short pants and/or pinafores and pigtails but to our (gulp) Separated Breds in Norneverland.
(You know, the culturally superior Ubermencsh, the high, erm, light of whose annual cultural celebrations is the tossing of petrol-doused tricolours on to the orange flames of their Twalfth of Never bonfires).
This is the same strident party line of all of the kept media in the Free Southern Stateen and which is just getting into its stride in the run up to the 1916 Celebration next year, aka, the Bashful Bash.
Hmmm.
Perkie’s admittedly sieve-like live and let live memory cannot recall too many morally superior Ubemensch on the business end of the Stonebreakers’ Yard in the Kilmainham Correctional Facility in 1916.
Perhaps, one might describe this TUT-sponsored and purchased party line as: ‘having your stones and breaking them’.
But then The Unionist Times are nothing if not, erm, nuanced in their narratives. (They do have a thing about n-words).
The nuancy boys and girls had a real feel-good day and days during the build up to the recent Referendum. That would be the one which had as its theme pome: ‘Sarong of the Wandering Anus’.
(W.B., although normally associated with the Wild Atlantic Way on the West Coast, specifically that part known as Yeats County, nonetheless had a penchant for the Orient. Noh plays, and such like).
Take an article on Roger Casement which appeared on April 8 in TUT. (Go on, do take it, and impale it on the Necessary Room Nail). Entitled ‘What to make of a gay 1916 Icon?’ this line appeared before one could even sprinkle the salt on one’s porridge:
-If you’ve never heard of Roger Casement the reason is as simple as it is sad:he was homosexual. For that reason he was ignored when he was not been written out of our revolutionary history’.
Eh?
Whatever happened to Casement Aerodrome in West Dublin or Casement Park / Paric Mhic Easmainn in West Belfast, then?
Perhaps, the scribe called Cahir O’Doherty should get out more. And speaking of things being ignored or wrtten out of the, erm, nuanced narrative, while there are umpteen menches of the g-word, g for gay there is nary a dickey bird about Ruairi Mac Easmainn’s pash for the other g word, G for Gaelic.
Thus, ladies and g’s, please be upstanding and put your hands together for: The Unionist Times, the paper of record.
(Remember where you read it first).
The British state was FAR from a neutral force here, as the MRF and FRU alone clearly showed, not counting the murders of Catholics by the British Army. The UVF/UDA were so infiltrated by British security forces that they were basically run by the British state. If the Brits were a “neutral” force the UDA/UVF would’ve been shut down within a week and hundreds of innocent people would still be alive today. The amount of collusion and murder allowed/committed by the British Government of its own citizens was truly horrific and the likes of David Cameron is doing all in his power to make sure the truth never gets out or gets out when the people in high places responsible for it all are long dead from old age. That seems to be the plan when it comes to the soldiers responsible for Bloody Sunday who the PSNI were just days away from questioning until the investigation just suddenly ran out of money and funding. I’m sure it was just a coincidence….
The likes of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams may have a few questions to answer but they are not the only ones. Unionists like Peter Robinson, Gregory Campbell, etc also should be asked a few questions about the likes of Ulster Resistance, Third Force, etc Did they have any links to Loyalist paramilitaries? Defending Loyalist murders as “counter terrorism” and carrying UDA leaders coffins does tend to ring some alarm bells within peoples minds but journalists like Nolan don’t seem interested in asking about these events.
The British Government is the one with the most questions to answer….
I would have thought that a journalist would have checked all his facts on the basis of available evidence given the sensitive contents of the programme and out of respect for Caroline Moreland, ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. In the programme, Darragh parked his car in an isolated area to play a recording he claimed he had never heard before? His comments sounded unconvincing to say the least.
During the programme, there were a number of clips which illustrated indicators of deprivation and poverty. The British government used a military response to deal with major social and economic deprivation endemic in parts of the north of Ireland. The programme confirmed that the guardians of law and order failed to promote and protect civil and human rights.
Wolfe Tone,your conspiracy theories suggest you have been seconded from McIntyre’s “pensive quill”.Is “Dixie” on vacation or will he be taking over later on when you change shifts?
Michael c, you sound like those years ago who dismissed republicans allegations of collusion etc. Back then nobody wanted to believe that either.
Some would even dismiss as a conspiracy theory that Sinn Fein are actually administering rule for London but that’s another story lol.
If it walks like a pig and grunts like a pig then it probably is a pig……..and mcguinness has done some grunting over the years.
P.s your reference to pensive quill and Dixie whatever shows how fond you are of conspiracies lol. Jesus wept.
Michael c, just whilst I have the attention of the Sinn Fein spokesperson on this site, could you explain to me why cllr mc callion from Derry and her supporters,find it offensive to be called sf/IRA? Is there some shame to be had with being associated with the IRA? Or did she not really mean it but is all part of the master plan to fool the unionist community?lol. I have said before, but me thinks the unionst community would respect honesty even if they didn’t like the content of that honesty. Or maybe perhaps she did mean what she said as even the dogs in the street bark at the type of shinner they see these days. Sackcloth and ashes anyone?
I think Jude there is much substance to what you say. After 40+ years of established media pounding the British line that the troubles were all the fault of violent Republicans some of that warped thinking has leached through even to Republicans.
Anyone named as a IRA member in the past by the media was always sub texted with comments such as “who intelligence sources have said was linked to the murders of X” or “who was one of those implicated in the ———— incident” or “who was alleged to be part of the unit which carried out the ———- atrocity”, it goes on and on.
The same news media when dealing with a member of the British Security Forces didn’t bother with sub texting any negative inferences such as Corporal Y, who is a member of the ——-regiment which was involved the shooting dead of a man last year who was alleged to have failed to stop at a checkpoint.
Subconsciously one faction of combatants was automatically linked to everything that organisation undertook while the combatants from the other side were generally not shouldered with responsibility for the damaging operations carried out by the parent organisation!
Simple really.
I don’t personally believe that the British Government would have signed up to the Good Friday agreement if they didn’t believe that they had a good chance of winning the long term publicity war with the general opinion being that it was “all Republican’s fault”.
But we all know that British State have a very bad track record of convincing those populations whom they oppressed that it was all for their own good!
To get back to Nolan,his show as well as appealing to the lowest common denominator,it is also a magnet for Walter Mitty types.People who have a vague recollection of things they heard on the news during the troubles imagine they or their families were there and are egged on by Nolan to delude both the listeners and themselves.One such caller recently managed to place herself and several relatives at a series of catastrophes in a relatively small area which must have made them one of the unluckiest families in Derry.Nolan did’nt raise an eyebrow at the absurdity of it all which says a lot about himself ,his programme and the BBC locally.