To the Editor, Belfast Telegraph.
Sir/Madam,
FLAMING JUNE was ushered in on the 1st of this month with a screaming headline in THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH by Laura Abernethy – “Outrage as media commentator
compares Boys Brigade to dissident republicans.”
I’ve listened to BBC Radio all my life, read Dublin newspapers for 65 years and British daily and Sunday papers for over 50 years. Many insults have been offered to Irish
people of nationalist sentiment and Irish Catholics over the years from British media commentators and Ulster “Loyalists” and crimes crying to Heaven for Vengeance
have been inflicted on them by British Government agencies and their collaborators. I may be wrong, but I have never seen a headline in any paper nor heard any broadcast
commentary of Irish Nationalists, Republicans or Catholics being “Outraged.” JIngoist Britons and Ulster Unionists would appear to have a monopoly on being “Outraged.”
It goes back a long, long way, even before 1912 when Unionists were so outraged at Winston Churchill’s intention of speaking in favour of Home Rule in The King’s Hall,
Belfast, that they occupied the premises in advance and he had to get a circus marquee and thousands of troops to defend his life as he adressed orderly Nationalists
in the Falls area.
The same Mr Churchill could be as Flaithiul with fictions as he was economical with the truth. In the 1940s one edition of Raidio Eireann’s popular “Question Time” was broadcast from Belfast through the co-operation of the BBC. A contestant was asked a question, the expected answer for which was “Hans Christian Andersen” the famous teller of fairytales,but the man mischievously answered “Winston Churchill.” Churchill by this time was a hero amongst Unionists, only begetter of the Black and Tans, and midwife and funder of the “A”, “B” and “C” Specials. Loyal Ulster was Outraged.
In 1959, Alan Whicker, who had served with a British Army Film Unit in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War, and had been a reporter in the Korean War, and a TV reporter of genius all around the world, came unstuck in Belfast. He had interviewed dictators and wacky celebrities, letting them unconsciously condemn themselves
out of their own mouths, with diplomacy tact and charm, far removed from the confrontational style of, for instance, John Humphries.
Whicker and his team filmed eight reports, “a broad spectrum of life in the Six Counties.Each was matter of fact and straight down the middle…..we filmed in Belfast and
Armagh and were in a Londonderry hotel on the night the first of our short series was transmitted………..The opener concerned, of all things, betting shops. It was ‘Tonight’s’
usual topical look at an innovation, for they operated legally in Ulster and were just about to appear in the rest of Britain. To start the series I set the Ulster scene briefly with
general shots of the Stormont and City Hall, showed the usual gabble of wallside graffiti -‘No Pope Here’……’Vote Sinn Fein’………’Ulster is Ours’ -mentioned that Northern Ireland, though intensely loyal and the birthplace of Britain’s best generals, had armed police but no conscription.Then we went into the betting shop to show viewers how the imminent addition to the high streets of Britain operated, and to talk to the punters.
When the report ended there was silence in our hotel lounge. The man I had been drinking with turned to me: ‘You can’t say that sort of thing.’ I was baffled. During the previous
year I had reported in exactly the same straight-forward way from 17 countries without being told I could not get away with it.”
Whicker continues –” The Ulster sky then fell on ‘Tonight’, and on me: a bishop and a senator flew to London to complain, Stormont threatened to remove broadcasting from the BBC, and the Corporation’s Northern Ireland Controller replied with a craven statement grovelling at their ‘distress and indignation’. The Chairman of the Tourist Board expressed outrage and a BBC Sportsview team was dragged down from its camera stand and attacked.”
Not one of the “Tonight” Programmes prepared by Whicker and his team was ever screened. If they survive in the BBC Archives the Corporation is in no hurry to tell us.
All this was 57 years ago, I suspect many decades before Laura Abernethy was a distant glimmer in her Grandparents’ eyes. But she and the Belfast Telegraph are in a mental
time warp.
Alan Whicker, an Englishman of a conservative disposition, was contemptuous of the Loyalist cry of “outrage” and the spineless behaviour of the BBC on hearing it. The more
the Blimps and Jingoes cry “Outrage!” the more I will I be satisfied that some commentators are doing an honest job.
Yours faithfully
Donal Kennedy
Can I bring it to your attention, Donal, that according to Kevin Myers in The Sunday Times on Sunday past, there never were any Black and Tans. It is all a figment of our feverish Oirish imagination.
Wouldn’t a memory of convenience be such an enviable attribute?
fiosrach
Could not see that. Was it in 5th June?
When Myers writes or opens his mouth about anything he reveals but one truth – that
he is a mercenary hack, who, if he had one tenth the integrity of a Richard Pigott would
have taken a powder years ago.
Evidence/supporting comment, Donal??
Myers has written things about Terence MacSwiney, about the shooting dead by the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park of “a thirteen year old boy named Playfair” on Easter Monday 1916 which were proven untrue. He endorsed “The IRA and its Enemies” whose author claimed to have interviewed an IRA survivor of the Kilmichael ambush, when that survivor was beyond the capability of being interviewed. Myers is as unreliable a source of history as one can get.
He hates Ireland, the Irish language, Republicans and mild Nationalists, and tradeunionists..
It is reasonable to compare him unfavourably with Richard Pigott whose saving grace was a sense of shame. Meda Ryan and Manus O’Riordan have comprehensively demolished
Myers’ credibility.
When you know you’re on sound ground Donal. Go for it ye bai ye
In fairness to Myers he is British and he is attempting to further the aim of his country and country men. I wish we had as patriotic a journalist on our (Irish) side. Myers has never pretended to be anything other then British, his culture is British, his accent is British, his antipathy towards Irish culture is typically British. His hatred of Republicans is British, his complete lack of balance in reporting on Loyalists is British (I always thought it interesting that Loyalists knew to contact him, and how to contact him, as a precursor to the Lough Sheelin talks). The guy is just your typical knee jerk, reactionary, mildly thick Brit…. why are we expecting him to say or do anything else?
Why Irish people listen to him and Irish media outlets employ him is a totally different issue though.
Donal
Just as a matter of interest,was your letter actually published in the Belfast Telegraph?
I don’t know.
John T –
Myers for many years wrote “An Irishman’s Diary” for the “IRISH TIMES”. I believe his grandfather was a senior officer in the Dublin Fire Brigade.
You do Britishers an injustice. I’ve been nearly 52 years in London, worked and socialised
with Britishers, have an English wife, a Scottish daughter in law and heavenly grandchildren.
Myers belongs to the perverted league of anti-Irish Irishmen.
Donal Kennedy > I actually always saw the ‘Irish Mans Diary’as irony. I know it probably wasn’t meant as such, but by god, it was nearly the definition of the word.
It is hard to know which camp Myers is from, is he a pro Brit Brit, or a pro Brit West Brit. I suspect he is more the original of the species, a real Brit, but at the end of the day it is all the same. I do remain suspicious of his motivations and also his motivators….
But I take your point, and I have been loose in by definitions. I am referring to a stereotype Empire type Brit of which there are many. But conversely there are many many Brirish people who are 100% sound.
The title “IRISH TIMES” has been ironic for most of its history.