On March 2nd 1985 THE TIMES of London carried an editorial headed “MURDER IS MURDER” which prompted me to write a strong reply. After telephone conversations between the editor and myself, the following watered-down letter was published by him. He, not I, did the watering-down.
Sir,
Your meandering leader (March 2) following the devastation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Republican Newry touches on thetruth at three points. Murder is murder;words are weapons in this war, and, as Solzhenitsyn says, force is used to support a system of lies.
Your own record, and that of the Government, in the use of verbal weapons should be recapitulated. You have been censured by the Press Council for not correcting an implication in a report you published in May 1981, that almost all violent deaths in the North of Ireland since1969 were inflicted by republicans and suffered by Protestants.
Subsequent to your censure Sir Humphrey Atkins again falsely attributed all such deaths to the IRA in THE DAILY MAIL.
You seem to have learned nothing. You describe the RUC, a force equipped with firearms and practised in their discharge, as civilians. It was said of their RIC predecessors, by Britain’s Secretary for Ireland in 1919, that they were “a semi-military force, and subject in many respects to the same conditions as the Army.” What distinguishes the RUC from the RIC?
You lump the IRA with international terrorists, claiming that they use force as an instrument of first resort, and say that the Soviets would support them, having taken the armed road to power themselves.
You forget that when the Soviets were seizing power, Sinn Fein (1918) won a landslide electoral victory. In Ulster three counties elected no Unionist MPs, a fourth but 1 to Sinn Fein’s 2, a fifth but 1 to Sinn Fein’s 1, and that in none of the other counties did Unionists have a cleansweep. (Outside Ulster Sinn Fein took a clean sweep of most counties.)
In passing you may note that I have eschewed Westminster’s newspeak definition of Ulster.
Irish nationalists have tried various stratagems to turn that moral victory into the kind recognised by powers and princes. Many support the IRA as the last, best hope of their national share of mankind’s rights. Since Mrs Thatcher ruled out the pleas of the Forum politicians it is hard to argue with them:witness Mr John Hume!
A perusal of the Cameron and Scarman reports would dispose of your suggestion that the RUC had no initial idea that there was a war on. On the contrary, they imagined one and replied to it when they were the only armed force in the field. Later, Mr Maudling told the Commons that Britain was at war with the IRA when many peaceably disposed nationalists felt that Britain was at war with them.
I might complement Solzhenitsn’s observation that lies are used to support a system of force, and cap it by sugessting that The Times is a product of the long, incestuous union of the Mother of Parliaments and the Father of Lies.
Do the people who wrote letters to newspapers or online netwworks in support of the IRA ever feel like taking their fan club mentality a stage further by donning wooly masks and overalls, sneak out in the middle of the night and put booby trap bombs under police men’s family cars? Or maybe they harboured the desire to plant bombs in busy streets, creating bloody mayhem, or a latent desire to shoot isolated, off duty security force members who had become the softest of soft targets? And if anyone opposed these ‘wartime’ tactics, then a baseball bat and six pack was always at hand to keep the community at bay, if not a one way trip to the graveyard. Although putting pen to paper to defend someone’s right to put bullet into flesh is a lot handier than doing it yourself. Safer leaving it to the psychopaths of society, then the fan club members can fall in behind, writing about and marvelling over, their wondrous deeds.
I find it odd that someone with the strange name KoppabergCentral woud be critical of men in masks…
My letter was not written in support of the IRA. It was written to challenge a silly Editorial in
THE TIMES. I suspect its Editor,Charles Douglas Home, was under medication at the time for
he died shortly afterwards. He had a bee in his bonnet about Reds under the Bed. The
Soviets did not support the Irish “armed struggle” at the time, nor subsequently and
THE TIMES EDITOR was deluded.
IN 1971 the TIMES EDITOR, Harold Evans was in good health when the paper tried to defend a blatant lie. I used the legal channel of THE PRESS COUNCIL when the paper refused to
correct its story after I wrote it a polite letter. THE PRESS COUNCIL attempted to exhaust me
by defending THE TIMES but I persevered. When it censured the paper the same liie was
published on the same moring in the DAILY EXPRESS, THE DAILY STAR and THE DAILY
MAIL. Almost a year elapsed before the PRESS COUNCIL censured THE DAILY EXPRESS
and THE DAILY STAR. It refused to condemnn THE DAILY MAIL, which published the lie under the name of SIR HUMPHREY ATKINS. Atkins changed his name when he took
a Peerage. The Press Council changed its name to THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION.ATkins became a member of the COMMISSION, a nice little earner.
When, in furtherence of peace in Ireland, Albert Reynolds sought a US Visa for Irish
Passport holder Gerry Adams, former TIMES Editor, Simon Jenkins briefed White House
officials, telling them essentially the same lie for which the paper had been censured, and had the stupidity to boast about it years later. Evans and Jenkins were simultaneously Knighted, and Andrew Marr, in his own study of journalism -“My Trade” placed Evens and
Jenkins at the top of his hall of fame.
I keep the name I was born with and never wear a mask, except, very innocently, on
HALLOWEEN.