It seems to me that THE IRISH TIMES today is bound neither by a discernible code of ethics nor that it navigates with the aid of a moral compass. I have been a regular reader of the paper since the early 1960s when it did not set my teeth on edge.
But the paper appears to me and to others whose judgement I trust, to be tightly governed by a secretive, oathbound “Trust” established by the late Lord Arnold Goodman, acting for the late British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, following an approach by the late Major Tom McDowell of MI5 to the late British Ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist in Dublin in 1969.
The Belfast-born McDowell was a former Major in the British Army was a Director of the IRISH TIMES and had contacted Gilchrist, concerned about his fellow Director,Douglas Gageby, a Protestant brought up in Belfast, who had served as an Officer in the Irish Army, edited the Dublin Evening Press,( from the de Valera founded IRISH PRESS GROUP), and had, on taking the Edoitor’s Chair at The Irish Times, made it a paper that Irish citizens could have in their homes whilst retaining their self-respect.
Douglas Gageby was not one to boast of his Commission ,in the Irish Army nor to put on airs, whereas McDowell,five years his junior, wore a monocle, a three-piece suit and a gold fob-watch, like a fool in a Carry-On Film,and in speaking with the British Ambassador, could speak the language of a British Officers’ Messwhen describing his Editor –
“a very fine journalist, an excellent man, but on Northern questions, a renegade, or white nigger”
A WORD OR TWO, for you, Dear Reader, on Trust, Trusts and persons posing as Worthies –
“After Arnold Goodman’s death. one of his wealthy clients, Lord Portman, alleged that Goodman stole funds worth £10 Million from his family trust fund over 30 years” – Wikipedia
Sir Andrew Gilchrist, when Ambassador to Indonesia in 1965 prepared a lying propaganda campaign and orchestrated with the Americans the murder of about one million civilians.
This massacre is covered by the Australian Journalist, John Pilger, in “The New Rulers of The World” (2002) and by John Martin of the Belfast Historical and EducationalSociety’s publication”THE IRISH TIMES:PAST AND PRESENT” (2008).
John Martin’s book should be read by every adult Irish citizen and should be reviewed by international academics with no axes to grind.
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