Did you watch that programme last night, Hawks and Doves (RTÉ ONE), presented by Michael Portillo? The programme was teed up as a chance to see the emergence of the Irish state through the eyes of a true Brit – in fact, Portillo was a member of Maggie Thatcher’s cabinet. I didn’t find that the most interesting thing. Nor even the fact that Portillo had substituted his usual technicolour range of trousers for a blanket-size scarf. This is just the first part of the series – second part on Sunday, I think- but what impressed me most was how familiar it all sounded.
One instance: Portillo started in Versailles, talking about the importance of the Treaty of Versailles and its emphasis on the sovereignty of small countries; meanwhile back in Ireland, the British were slowly realising that they’d have to stamp on those who claimed independence for Ireland. Maggie Thatcher in the Malvinas and in Ireland, anyone?
Then there was the attack at Soloheadbeg by Dan Breen and some other revolutionaries. In the first violent act of the Black and Tan war, they attacked an RIC unit escorting a convoy of gelignite. Two RIC men were shot dead. Both were Catholics, one an Irish speaker. The attack was reported in the next day’s papers and denounced as murder of fellow-countrymen. But the man whose painting hangs today in the Taoiseach’s office pounded Breen and Co. on the back and said “Well done!”
Then there was the shooting dead of two Black and Tans in a pub, followed shortly after by the sack of Balbriggan, which saw the burning of several houses, including two pubs, and the arrest of two local men, whose bodies were found beaten and lifeless the next day. And of course we heard again about Bloody Sunday , when Michael Collins’s men shot dead sixteen undercover British intelligence agents and the British responded with the famous attack in Croke Park, where fourteen innocent people were killed. Portillo used the word ‘murder’ of IRA killings.
As I say, it all sounded familiar – so similar to our more recent Troubles, you could have mistaken one for the other. A judge bundled off a train and shot dead. Hunger strikes. The attempted assassination of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Armed conflict, as Martin McGuinness reminded people, is not a glamorous business. Shocking things are done by both sides. It’s only when you re-hear the killings and attacks of the Black and Tan war that you realise killings then had the same terrible finality and brutality.
But please don’t ask Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin to spot those similarities. If they did, they’d be stripped of reasons for refusing to speak to Sinn Féin, much less negotiate a plan of government with them. In short, even though it wasn’t his intention, Portillo’s programme last night shouted “Hypocrisy!” with every bloody black-and-white frame.
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