Within a few months of the publication in February 1982 of the Press Council’s censure of the of THE TIMES article (by its Northern Ireland correspondent, Christopher Thomas) nine months earlier. implying that all the circa 2,000 fatalities in 12 years of political strife in North of Ireland had been suffered by Protestants and inflicted by Catholics or Republicans, the same Cock and Bull, story appeared in THE DAILY EXPRESS and its stablemate THE DAILY STAR, together with THE DAILY MAIL, all on the same morning.
It was coordinated Ken Livingstone, the then leader of the Greater London Coumcil which had met democratically elected MPs from Sinn Fein, and also members of the African National Congress and called for the release from imprisonment of the “Terrorist” (Mrs Thatcher’s term) Nelson Mandela.
The articles copied Verbatim the earlier TIMES article.
Mr. D.F. Conlan of Birmingham, an elderly and heroic gentleman, contacted me and complained to the Press Council about THE DAILY EXPRESS and THE DAILY
STAR. Sixteen innocent Irishmen from Birmingham were still languishing in Jail having signed false confessions of murder extracted by police beatings and other inducements. One had an angry Alsatian dog loosed in his cell. The PRESS COUNCIL took another 9 months to uphold Mr Conlan’s complaint.
I complained about the DAILY MAIL article.But the PRESS COUNCIL did not have the integrity to adjudicate on the matter, nor to publicly record that a complaint had been lodged. It arranged for the publication of a couple of sentences “correcting” an article covering nearly a page of script, much of it in high case and underlined.
The article had been published under the name of Sir Humphrey Atkins, Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Informed people in Britain by then realised that the Press Council was a toothless defender of honest journalism.
So the Council changed its name to THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISION. Most of the staff remained unchanged.
Five years later Humphrey Atkins disappeared when he was made a Peer of the Realm under the name Baron Colnbrook.
Baron Colnbrook was made a Commissioner of THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION.
This body had a new rule. A mere newspaper buyer could not make the sort of complaint I made. I objected to a lie about the IRA. Not being a member of the IRA I would have no LOCUS STANDI.
I dread to think the reception a member of the IRA would get complaining to a British Tribunal about a lie told about his organisation. I imagine it would be more severe than that of an Irish-speaking chap being cross-examined in Irish by an IRA court- martial.
He asks “An gceapan tu gur Spiare me?” (Do you think I’m a Spy?)
His interrogator answers “Ni cheapaim?” (I do not think so”)
And the poor guy got knee-capped
“an Irish-speaking chap”
would that be one who went to Eton or Harrow or some other public school..?? I don’t think too many of them joined the IRA…!!
The sheer idiocy of British propaganda. Does that mean the IRA carried out The Ballymurphy Massacre and Bloody Sunday? The Shankill Butchers were Republicans? Ludicrous. Mind you, as a former colonial power Britain has been making up stories of daring do in the far flung corners of the shrinking empire for generations. Someone compared the populace as mushrooms as far as Ireland was concerned, kept in the dark and fed shit.