I think that in Part One I disposed of the credibility of Emeritus Professor Liam Kennedy’s contention that Bloody Sunday was a mere blip in an attempt to bring peace, contentment and light to the benighted people of Ireland.
The Knighted General Frank Kitson, veteran of barbarous campaigns of repression in Malaya and Kenya, and 1971 author of Low Intensity Operations was made CBE 17 days after Bloody Sunday, for his inhuman endeavours in Ireland during the previous twelve months, and far from distancing itself from that “Public Relations Blunder” the British Establishment defended the atrocity for thirty-eight years, A key to the cover-up was the INSIGHT team of the Sunday Times which investigated the atrocity but kept its findings secret. A Dublin man who became chief Archivist of NEWS INTERNATIONAL discovered the findings, and, against the wishes of his employers made sure it was presented to Lord Saville’s Enquiry. It demolished the report which Captain Mike Jackson, Adjutant to the 1st Battallion, the Parachute Regiment made on Bloody Sunday. Jackson was knighted later and became a full General and Chief of the General Staff. Harold Evans who commissioned and suppressed the INSIGHT investigation, published lies as Editor of THE TIMES, which were censured by the Press Council at my instigation and was subsequently knighted. It would not surprise me if Liam Kennedy was similarly rewarded by those he serves.
I see in today’s IRISH TIMES ((10 December 2021) a letter from Spain demolishing a lazily-researched article which appeared in it yesterday, insisting that Sinn Fein should repudiate the IRA campaign of resistance, and follow the example shown it by Basque Separatists.
The Spaniard gave a translation of the Basque statement which did not repudiate the campaign of the armed separatists.
The lazy researcher was FIntan O’Toole
Laziness and gutlessness are traits which I would suggest are typical of O’Toole, He was born in February 1958. His latest book “WE DON’T KNOW OURSELVES –A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958″ has just been pronounced “IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR” by “An Post.”. Was it for this that Connolly and Pearse seizedthe GPO? you may well ask. Where is the Irish Mel Brookes to dramatise this?
When the news of the Press Council’s censure of THE TIMES was released in February 1982 there was no mention of it on TV or Radio nor in THE GUARDIAN. That evening I turned on TV to see the Editor of the paper awarded the title “Editor of the Year” by his fellow Editors. Prominent among them was an Irish former scourge of censorship, and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Master of Dublin’s GPO), who, turfed out of Dail Eireann by his constituents, was made Editor-in-Chief of London’s OBSERVER. I refer to my fellow-traveller on the Hill of Howth Tram, Conor Cruise O’Brien.
I am old enough to remember when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So I can be appalled but not surprised by injustice.
I am also old enough to remember when the Gardai prosecuted the producers of “THE ROSE TATTOO” in Dublin. The Gardai apparently said that a condom had been dropped on stage. Fintan O’Toole has a bee in his bonnet about the incident, The case went to the District Court and was thrown out. However a campaign by a bunch of busybodies associated with the Knights of Columbanus and allegedly in cahoots with Archbishop McQuaid ruined the successful Pike Theatre and lts founders, Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift.
The story that a condom was dropped on the stage was refuted by Carolyn Swift in a letter published in the Irish Times more than 20 years ago, But O’Toole who lectures in IRISH LETTERS at Princeton University insists that a French Letter was involved when the Gardai stopped the show in May 1957, nine months before he himself was born. One can only speculate whether Fintan would have been conceived if such devices were circulating in any quantity in Catholic working class Dublin at the time.
The censorship as then enforced by the state, and the prurience of pietistic citizens were indeed ridiculous, but common amongst English-speaking people the world over.
The Irish Times was involved in Protestant mother and baby homes every bit as abusive as the worst Catholic ones, and there were many businesses in Ireland which excluded Catholics from managerial roles – some of which stipulated that no Catholics could be members of their Boards. At the time most large firms in the Republic were owned by Protestants.
Today the Irish Times spikes most letters which refute its most egregious assertions. There are claims that it is controlled by a secretive, oath bound Trust, established by the late Lord Goodman, accused by Lord Portman of pocketing £10,000,000 of the latter’s money. When handling his cash Goodman established the Trust as an agent of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, following a message from Sir Andrew Gilchrist when the latter was British Ambassador in Dublin, Sir Andrew when Ambassador to Indonesia in 1965 manipulated the media to effect a coup in that country which had genocidal consequences, killing at least 500,000, mainly civilian, men women and children and placing that country’s vast resources under the control of American, British and other Western companies.
The British Navy carried the assassination squads between the Indonesian islands,
A few years ago O’Toole promised to stand for election to Dail Eireann, He bottled it. It should not be hard for someone with intelligence to win a seat in a multi-seat constituency with the sort of backing American, British and their collaborationist cronies exert. Fintan, could, had he the guts, have got himself a seat in Leinster House, where he could challenge a Government or seek to convert it to his way of thinking
Instead he chose to launch broadsides of bullshit from JOHN BULL’S OTHER TIMES on those of his fellow citizens who didn’t share his perverse and ignorant prejudices.
He became the very model of a pseudo Intellectual. His paper commissioned him to write a piece for the 75th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Having a few years earlier demonstrated that he knew nothing of the Rising, he had the time to research it. But he was too lazy to consider why it happened, the thinking of the insurgents, their conduct, and the aftermath. O’Toole demonstrated that he still knew nothing. And he was at sea not knowing what was happening in and to Ireland during his own years in the country.
Charles Haughey, the most outstanding politician in the Ireland in O’Toole’s life was elected to Dail Eireann in March 1957 and headed the poll in his constituency for a generation. He distinguished himself in every office he held and was the architect of the State’s rise to prosperity, and full employment,
O’Toole has not either the wit nor the grace to acknowledge Haughey’s contribution to the welfare of the formerly poor Irish majority.
1. Women’s succession rights.
2. Increased pensions for former State Employees who for decades received exactly what they had received on retirement without increases to keep pace with inflation.
3. Free bus and rail travel for all pensioners throughout the State.
4. Support for Knock Airport.
5. Redevelopment of Dublin Inner City.
6. Establishment of Financial Services Centre
7. State funding for the Arts – including The Gate Theatre
8. Encouragement of the Hume-Adams talks.
9. Establishment of co-operation of employers, trade unions and Government to achieve common social and economic progress.
Some of these measures were Haughey’s ideas. More of them were backed by Haughey when persuaded by others that they would work. Haughey was brought up in dirt poor circumstances and he ensured that others would have boots and straps to pull themselves up by. Haughey might be described as pragmatic idealist.
His grasp of social reality may perhaps best be contrasted with that of Fine Gael under the leadership of Garret Fitzgerald, a well-meaning theoretician.
John Bruton, from a Grazier caste in County Meath, had more Bullocks than Brains, and as Finance Minister introduced a Budget to tax children’s shoes.
Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, from a comfortable background, backed him. The Coalition Government included Labour, whose supporters tended to have more children than Bullocks, fell.
Haughey led the next Government.
Haughey understood how to transform the lives of those who lived on or below the breadline. And he understood also the advantage of Knock Airport for emigrants from the West during short breaks from Britain, and grandparents in the West visiting grandchildren in Britain.
The Irish Constitution enacted by her plain people commits the State to adhere to peaceful resolution of international disputes (Article 29).When Charlie Haughey backed neither the Argentine Generals’ seizure of the Malvinas nor Thatcher’s murderous sinking of the General Belgrano, he was sticking to the duties imposed on him by the people he served.
Haughey’s lazy, ignorant detractors and begrudgers do not understand that.
O’Toole is probably less a dog in the manger, than an envious eunuch witnessing the progress of a Don Juan.
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