“I’m sorry” – where are you when we need you, Brenda Lee?

Over the years, Mark Carruthers has changed as an interviewer. Back in the day when unionist pressure groups hadn’t yet succeeded in having me barred from the premises, I used talk to Mark and suggest that a bit more vinegar and less sugar would spice up his interviews. He disagreed and argued that you got as much or more from a  quiet  interview approach than from a hectoring approach.

Not now.  For example, when Mark interviewed Gavin Robinson, the leader of the DUP, he was more than firm about such matters as previous leader Jeffrey Donaldson saying he’d sorted the border in the Irish Sea and what G Robinson was now saying about it  being a work in progress. 

Granted, an interviewer can only ask so many questions, but  I noted a sharp contrast between the Robinson interview and that with Michelle O’Neill this week. Much of the interview seemed to rotate around whether Michelle as First Minister would continue to attend republican commemorations of Volunteers who died in the conflict, and would Michelle now concede that the whole IRA campaign was wrong and  apologise for it? Maybe with some Paisleyite sackcloth and ashes thrown in?

There are a number of criticisms that could be made of this line of questioning. Members of the IRA didn’t believe they were doing wrong when they picked up weapons and used them: they saw themselves as part of a long struggle for Irish people to be free of British interference. So does Mark think that there is any point in him digging into Michelle,  who never was in the IRA, for an apology? Apart from the daftness of apologising for things others have done, what difference would it make? Would those who died come back to life? Would people who had lost loved ones feel satisfied with “I’m sorry”  from Michelle? 

Pat Culllen,  Sinn Féin candidate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone got similar treatment on Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh.  I didn’t hear it but I gather it was again a series of demands for apology for republican actions by Pat Cullen. Guys, guys – Pat Cullen was a nurse during the Troubles. You know, attending to sick or dying people. Trying to make them well.  Cheeeeshhh…

As I said earlier, digging an apology out of someone  achieves little, beyond humiliating the person pressured into the apology. But even more important than that: when is the even-handed, superbly balanced B(ritish)BC going to ask Gavin Robinson to apologise for actions by the B Specials, the RUC, the UDR, the UVF, the UDA, the fifty years of discrimination and gerrymander and  annual supremacy parades with the loyal bands belting it out as they passed any Catholic church, and demanding the right to march on any part of the Queen’s highway,  pausing occasionally to relieve themselves against Catholic Church property? 

I’m not saying I want an apology from Gavin for any of these matters, because as I’ve said, I see apology of this sort as a pointless exercise in humiliation. But I am saying that if the B(ritish)BC believes it’s OK to do a verbal rough-up of republicans for events in republican history, it’s essential that unionist leaders and candidates are bashed about by the same kind of questioning.

Because if the B(ritish)BC don’t do that, there’ll be people who might conclude that the B(ritish)BC isn’t quite the exquisitely balanced media organ it proclaims itself to be. And that would be an appalling vista.