The Mary McAleese documentary on RTE ‘ With God on our Side’ was yet another superficial programme about the northern conflict.
The programme interviewed a number of people but few had anything useful or new to say –apart from Rev Harold Good, Séanna Walsh and Gerry Adams. Their contributions were thoughtful and valuable.
The only Catholic priest interviewed was Fr Martin Magill, a friend of Lyra MacKee who was killed during a riot in Derry. He had nothing to say. It showed his pathetic appeal during the funeral service for Lyra McKee in the Anglican Cathedral in Belfast.
This programme contributed nothing to our understanding of why Partition was imposed by the British. It failed to examine British history in Ireland and British motives for partitioning the country.
It showed Mary MacAleese being driven around Belfast in a taxi driven by a loyalist.
One contributor stated that the issue was not religion. It was Identity. That does not explain much about why the country was Partitioned.
Other contributors including former First Minister Arlene Foster who had nothing to say except to tell us again about the terrible IRA. She thought integrated schools were the answer.
There were three youths from Derry interviewed. I do not know what they were trying to say.
Religion is not about being nice as Mary mcAleese and Fr Magill would have us believe. That’s not what Jesus had in mind. That is not what he was arrested, tortured and condemned for saying!
The McAleese programme ignored the root cause of division and sectarianism in the north.
There was nothing about the injustice of Partition and how that impacted on the Nationalist/republican population condemned to live in the Six Counties.
There was a fleeting reference to Brexit.
When will RTÉ make an in-depth documentary about the evil of colonial rule and the British policy of divide and conquer?
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