(A couple of years ago I came across a letter which I had prepared concerning that address but may not have posted. But I think it reveals the murky depths to which even the most intelligent and arguably most urbane of leaders can dive.)
…………………………
“IN HIS ADDRESS TO THE FINE GAEL ARD-FHEIS, THE TAOISEACH ASSERTED that the Unionist people have been the victims of a campaign of murder, verging on genocide.
Professor John A. Murphy, as much an opponent of the IRA as Dr. Fitzgerald, has shown, in a review
in the Sunday Press, that more Catholics have been killed in the Northern conflict than Protestants.
As Catholics are in the minority in that part of Ireland, if I am to take Dr. Fitzgerald’s word seriously, the Catholics have suffered a campaign of genocide.
If one excludes from the fatalities persons, Catholics, Protestant or whatever, who habitually carry firearms, the proportion of Catholic dead increases still further, and the killers in these cases were
overwhelmingly Unionists – illegal (UVF), legal (UDA) or Official (British Regular Army, Ulster
Defence Regiment, RUC).
Dr. Fitzgerald’s role is, and has been to supplement the propaganda of British and Unionist apologists for the anti-Catholic, anti-Nationalist campaign of murder.
Three years ago I took the London TIMES to the Press Council for attributing all the killings in
the North of Ireland to the IRA and describing all those killed as Protestants. After a tedious
exchange of letters and the lapse of nine months, the Council censured THE TIMES.
Subsequently THE DAILY EXPRESS and THE DAILY STAR repeated the untruth, and another
Irishman, living in Birmingham took those papers to the Press Council, which again took nine months to condemn them.
THE DAILY MAIL published the same lie, but retracted it as soon I complained to the Press Council.
It was a retraction made in a few words, in order that readers should not be reminded that the lie went out over the name of Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Humphrey Atkins.
Dr Fitzgerald is given from time to time to writing articles for London’s EVENING STANDARD and
THE TIMES.
I challenge him to repeat the statement that Unionists have been subject to a murder campaign verging on genocide, and subjecting it to the judgement of Britain’s PRESS COUNCIL”
Donal Kennedy
London
1984
“IN HIS ADDRESS TO THE FINE GAEL ARD-FHEIS, THE TAOISEACH ASSERTED that the Unionist people have been the victims of a campaign of murder, verging on genocide.
Professor John A. Murphy, as much an opponent of the IRA as Dr. Fitzgerald, has shown, in a review
in the Sunday Press, that more Catholics have been killed in the Northern conflict than Protestants.
As Catholics are in the minority in that part of Ireland, if I am to take Dr. Fitzgerald’s word seriously, the Catholics have suffered a campaign of genocide.
If one excludes from the fatalities persons, Catholics, Protestant or whatever, who habitually carry firearms, the proportion of Catholic dead increases still further, and the killers in these cases were
overwhelmingly Unionists – illegal (UVF), legal (UDA) or Official (British Regular Army, Ulster
Defence Regiment, RUC).
Dr. Fitzgerald’s role is, and has been to supplement the propaganda of British and Unionist apologists for the anti-Catholic, anti-Nationalist campaign of murder.
Three years ago I took the London TIMES to the Press Council for attributing all the killings in
the North of Ireland to the IRA and describing all those killed as Protestants. After a tedious
exchange of letters and the lapse of nine months, the Council censured THE TIMES.
Subsequently THE DAILY EXPRESS and THE DAILY STAR repeated the untruth, and another
Irishman, living in Birmingham took those papers to the Press Council, which again took nine months to condemn them.
THE DAILY MAIL published the same lie, but retracted it as soon I complained to the Press Council.
It was a retraction made in a few words, in order that readers should not be reminded that the lie went out over the name of Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Humphrey Atkins.
Dr Fitzgerald is given from time to time to writing articles for London’s EVENING STANDARD and
THE TIMES.
I challenge him to repeat the statement that Unionists have been subject to a murder campaign verging on genocide, and subjecting it to the judgement of Britain’s PRESS COUNCIL”
Donal Kennedy
London
1984
Not long after the events recalled above the Press Council disappeared and was renamed the PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION.
Sir Humphrey Atkins also disappeared but reappeared in the HOUSE OF PEERS,as Baron Colnbrook of Saint Lawrence.
He was then made a Commissioner of The Press Complaints Commissioner.
Under its rules, an ordinary reader who had paid money to read THE TIMES would have no Locus Standi in making the complaint I had made.
The lie published in THE TIMES, THE DAILY EXPRESS, THE DAILY STAR, (and THE DAILY MAIL under SIR HUMPHREY’s name, was
about the IRA. Not being a member of that well meaning body I could not have a complaint examined.
should read
BARON COLNBROOK OF WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE