The other morning I tuned into BBC Radio 4 and its God-slot “Thought for Today.” Its female presenter was talking about Fake News and mentioned “Harry Evans” , whom she regarded as the Gold Standard of journalistic integrity. So I got up and went to the bathroom.
Harold Evans, since Knighted, edited “The Times” from 1981 to 1982 during the Hunger Strikes when Bobby Sands and nine other Republicans starved to death in Long Kesh . Two of those who died were elected during General Elections for Westminster and Leinster House, Sands in the Westminster and Kieran Doherty in the Leinster House election. Paddy Agnew, who survived the Hunger Strike was also elected in the Leinster House election.
In May 1981 in its front-page account of the funeral of Bobby Sands “The Times” asserted that Bobby Sands’ comrades had killed over 2,000 Protestants. As the total fatalities of the previous 12 years amounted to about 2,000 the obvious, and intended, implication was that only Republicans inflicted death and only Protestants suffered death in the disturbances of those years I contacted the paper and asked them to correct it. The paper stood by its untruth and tried to defend it before Britain’s Press Council (with great help from that Council) for another nine months after I took up the matter with it. I wrote about two letters a week to the Council, in longhand, until it finally censured “The Times”in February 1982 Harold Evans wrote “Good Times, Bad Times” about his time as Editor there, but made no mention of its dishonesty. Perhaps you’ll understand why I made for the bathroom after hearing him praised on “Thought for Today”.
Neither the ultra-liberal “Guardian” nor its stablemate “The Observer ” reported the condemnation of “The Times” by “The Press Council.” At the time the Editor -in-Chief of “The Observer” was Conor Cruise O’Brien, who had been given the bum’s rush from Leinster House by the electors of Dublin North East some years before.
O’Brien, long one of the best informed men on the planet wrote a very silly piece in “The Observer” (January 10 1982) and I had fun with a letter in “The Sunday Press” (Dublin) commenting on it.
I hope you enjoy enjoy it –
“IN AN article in “The Observer” on January 10, Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, speculating on race relations in Britain, recorded that his wife, visiting Harrods with their adopted Hiberno/Afro children, had been treated with an unwonted deference.He suggested that the shop assistants thought that they were dealing with oil-rich young Arabs and their Irish nanny. Irish accents, on their own, were presumed to conjure up bombs in the minds of London assistants.
The Doctor may be right, particularly if the assistants limit their reading to such papers as “The Observer” which that same day invented a visit to Belfast by the late President Kennedy. But I like to think that the management and staff of London stores are aware of the relative importance of Irish and Arab- and indeed of US, German and Japanese trade and that this awareness results from a letter of mine published in “The Irish Post” in London on June 7 !980, when Britain’s Government was grovelling to Saudi Arabia over the “Death of a Princess” TV programme. The UK exports to her best eight Middle Eastern markets in 1979 (Saudi Arabia, Dubai,Egypt, Libya, Kuwait,Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi) together totalled less than her exports to the Irish Republic.The UK earned a piddling £200 million surplus in the area , with a £215 million deficit on trade with Saudi Arabia. The UK had a surplus of £866 million in trade with the Irish Republic.. (All figures are Sterling and were obtained from the British Department of Trade.)
The table below should go some way in furthering the Doctor’s Education, and may be worth pondering by Irish people wrestling with personal and national budgets.
Both aggregately and individually Britain does best with Irish customers and the respect afforded Dr O’Brien’s wife in Harrods has been earned, or at least spent, by her countrymen. I understand that last year (1980) the UK hjad a £1,300 million surplus in her trade with the Republic.
Donal Kennedy
London
UK Trade 1979 in Millions of Pounds Sterling:
Exports Imports Surplus Deficit.
USA £4,047 M £4,920 M £873 M
West Germany £4,244 M £5,799 M £1,555 M
Irish Republic £2,555 M £1,689 M £866 M
Japan £ 606 M £1,490 M £ 884 M
Saudi Arabia £ 894 M £1,109 M £ 215 M
Mary Holland was among one of the most respected journalists, writing in the sixties and seventies about events in the Six Counties. The Observer was the first of the establishment, British press to expose political and religious discrimination in this place with her detailed exposé , ‘John Bull’s Other Island’, which was published in October 1968. Holland met and talked with people , directly affected by the Unionist Government. Malpractice by the security forces, led by the British army were frequently raised by her. As Editor-in-Chief, O’Brien in his leaders on Ireland was adopting a very different tone and consciously engineered the removal of the prize-winning journalist from the Observer.
I think by now most people would have simply laughed at anything the BBC puts out as ‘truth’. An absolute lying British state propaganda network full stop. The eye candy, if you can call them that, that read the news or simply just reading a script.