Listening to Ruth Dudley Edwards debating with Susan McKay on Talkback yesterday was – most of the time – like watching a slightly arthritic bull making bewildered lunges at a cool and skilful matador.
Ruth thought it was ‘absolutely terrible’ that Susan should refer to the TUV as extremist. “It is a terrible word to use!” about a totally peaceful party, she peeped. As to Kate Hoey, in her article she was talking about nationalists, not Catholics. “There are a lot of them about” Ruth warned.
There was then a short comic interlude during which Ruth boasted of having “seen off” John Finucane, Gerry Kelly, Michelle O’Neill and (a work still in progress) someone from Mary Lou McDonald’s office. I think that means she won legal cases against them, or maybe they were taking legal cases against her, or…Anyway, it was another muddle-headed lunge.
But Ruth’s main focus was on how right Kate Hoey was to draw attention to the number of Catholics/nationalists in the various professions. They were dominating the law and the media, she maintained, forming a ‘network of influence’ to drive us all towards a united Ireland.
As to Basil Brooke not having a Catholic about the place, “It wasn’t about Catholics” Ruth explained. “It was about people who wanted to kill you!”
There was then a clip from an interview William Crawley did with Prof Colin Harvey of Queen’s University. Colin stated his belief that in a healthy society, academics should be central in any debate, providing well-researched, evidence-based support for their argument. Fair point, which was totally ignored. The attacks and threats directed at him, he believed, were to make an example of him so others wouldn’t put their head above the parapet.
After that, Ruth went on to complain that the majority of people phoning into radio programmes were nationalists. What’s more, Colin Harvey was now ‘painting himself as a victim’ but the fact was, there were pictures of him with such people as Francie Molloy and John Finucane.
Flashback to 1989, dear reader. Douglas Hogg, then a Home Office minister, declared that some solicitors in Northern Ireland were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA. Three weeks later, on 12 February, loyalist killers, in collusion with British ‘security’ forces, shot dead human rights solicitor Pat Finucane before his wife and three children at his home in Belfast. One of those children was, of course, the John Finucane of whom Ruth speaks.
This is the point where, as with Boris Johnson, someone who was once thought funny suddenly sounds scary.
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