The few things we know and the many we don't

Maybe you better stop reading now. That is, if you’ve heard all you want to hear on the subject of sexual abuse, about which tens of thousands, maybe millions of words have been written and spoken in recent years....You still want to go on reading? Despite last night seeing that odd and sad figure, Freddie Starr, denouncing Jimmy Savile in the hope that he himself would sound more on the side of the angels?OK. It’s a free country. (Well, maybe not but you know what I mean.) 

What dismays me is not so much what has been written and said about paedophilia as what’s not been said about paedophilia. Despite all the verbiage, all the screen time, several things are still unclear, or they are to me anyway.  Take for example the guestion of guilt. 

If the alleged crimes - as in the Jimmy Savile case - were committed some years ago,  then presumably there isn’t material evidence of what happened. In which case - again I’m guessing - guilt or innocence is decided by testimony from those who say they were abused. As with all dead people, it’s impossible to say how Jimmy Savile would react to the charges against him. But let’s assume he was alive and denied them. Then it’d be his word against the word of his alleged victims - somewhere around 300, last I heard. Among the general public there’s been an outcry against the one-time hero:  strip him of his knighthood, both British and papal;  change the names of streets that were given his name. Burn those ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ badges. All of which clearly assumes Savile was guilty of the charges against him. But is that assumption built on the fact that so many people say they were his victim?  If it is, that’s a bit worrying.. Read Arthur Miller’s great play The Crucible  and you’ll see what happens when passionate but unsubstantiated charges are made against people. A witch-hunt develops.

That’s the first thing I worry about. The second is, what is sexual abuse?  I know of a case of a priest who had a teenage girl come to him for advice. In the course of their  private encounter, he had her on his knee and was kissing her. Was that sexual abuse? No, no, I didn’t say was it completely wrong behaviour for a priest to engage in with a teenager.  I said was it sexual abuse? And if so, are there degrees of sexual abuse?  Or do we just lump  an unwanted kiss-and-cuddle in along with rape and classify as monsters all of those guilty of such acts?

The third thing I worry about it is, what’s to be done with those who are proven child sexual abusers? When a Catholic priest was found to be guilty of sexual abuse in the past, there was a pattern of moving him on to another parish, and this was denounced as exposing other innocent children to the predator. That’s because child sexual abusers are sick recidivists. They inevitably revert to their abuse again when afforded the opportunity. So does that mean the abuser can’t stop abusing - in other words, he’s in the grip of an illness? If that’s the case, he belongs in a psychiatric hospital, not in a prison, because you can’t be held responsible for something over which you’ve no control. 

You’d hardly think it possible that questions like these would remain, given how much ink has been spilled and airtime exhausted.  At the moment, the Savile case is the one hitting the headlines, and if good can come out of (alleged) evil, then this case serves one useful purpose. It shows that sexual abuse occurs outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy as well as within them. For too long the problem has been discussed as though the Catholic Church was the sole source of paedophilia.  At a public forum I once voiced the possibility that clergy from other Churches and from the general public were as likely to be child abusers as Catholic priests,  and was sharply reprimanded by three clergymen from the Protestant faith. No, they told me firmly: child sexual abuse was a problem centred solely on the Catholic Church and was rooted in the celibacy rule. When I asked for research evidence to support that contention,  I was told there was no need for research, they knew. 

I suppose in the end all my questions on the topic boil down to that:  why is it, in the Savile case and all the others, so many people talk as if they know, when in fact all they’re doing is repeating what everybody else is saying?

Suggestion: let’s confine witch-hunting to Halloween.

Death of a prison officer

It’s strange. Just after I heard of the killing of David Black, the prison officer, I heard that someone I admire a great deal was suffering from terminal cancer. So the two deaths came together in my head.  

Condemnations of the David Black killing have come flooding in. Peter Robinson says it’s the work of ‘flat-earth fanatics’. Martin McGuinness has denounced the killing as ‘meaningless and futile’.

I’m not sure I agree. The terminal condition of the cancer sufferer is hard to attach meaning to, but the killing of David Black does have meaning. That is to say, it was done with a purpose in mind - to send a message to the prison authorities in Maghaberry about strip-searching.  It’s an uncomfortable fact full of echoes from the past, but there are a number of dissident republican prisoners in Maghaberry on a dirty protest  - not washing, not shaving, throwing their excrement from their cells.  Apparently there is an alternative scanning process that can be used  instead of strip-searching and it is used elsewhere in the north. But it hasn’t been used in Maghaberry. David Black was probably shot dead by people who believe that this will help galvanize the authorities into ending strip searching. 

So to repeat, it has meaning. But equally it may be futile, or worse than futile. It may harden the resolve of the authorities to prevent any public notion that they are responding to pressure from dissidents. Then again, it may result in the authorities quietly and quickly installing scanning equipment in Maghaberry. 

But whether it has meaning and/or is futile is different from asking ‘Was it morally wrong?’  I think of the cancer sufferer and I think it is surely sacrilegious to deliberately snuff out a life, erasing all the hopes and plans and life that lay ahead for this 52-year-old and those that loved him. Even if it did achieve the dissidents’ end, would it be worth it to come at  such a heavy, terrible price? Doesn’t death come quick enough for us all?

But a proviso, to myself  as much as anyone who may be tempted to share my reaction. There’s a man in the US today, who most of us are hoping will get another four years in the White House. He regularly gives orders that send death, not just to one man on a motorway, but to dozens at a time,  wiping away the innocent with the guilty. He’s the drone-bomb man and he’s called Barack Obama. That’s how political ends are achieved in this world. So as we hold our noses at the cruel death this morning, let’s be equally outraged - maybe more outraged - at the casual slaughter that barely gets a line in print. 

My favourite town? Corby of course.

People someitmes ask me what’s my favourite town and I never hesitate or stop to think. Not Belfast, not Derry, not Omagh - my favourite town is Corby. Never heard of it? Let me explain then.

Corby is located in Northamptonshire in England and what makes it my favourite place is that it wants to be allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum. You see, a lot of Scottish people travelled south to Corby in the 1930s, to work in the iron and steel mills. The descendants of these migrants to England, led by Conservative councillor Rob McKellar, want to have a say in the independence or non-independence of Scotland. There’s roughly 12,000 of them. Mr McKellar is a second generation Scot himself and he says Corby has been influenced by Scottish culture, dialect, food and places of worship. “I think anybody who is entitled to hold a Scottish passport under the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) regime should be allowed to do so”.

I’m with Mr McKellar. You don’t have to be living in a place to feel all sorts of emotional ties and loyalties to it. I’ve not lived full-time in Omagh since I was twelve yet I feel a tug, a sense of belonging to that town, even if it does come second to gallant little Corby. 

Of course it would be wrong to apply this in just one instance. If the children and grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren of migrants to Corby are to get a vote in Scotland’s future, it’s only fair that the diaspora of other countries should have the same rights. What was it Councillor McKellar figured was the number entitled to vote in Corby - 12,000?  OK. At last count in the United States alone, there are some 40 million people who have an Irish background and who feel some degree of loyalty to Ireland. And it goes without saying that Ireland has "influenced culture, dialect, food and places of worship" in that country. So  when the Scottish referendum is held in 2014, Corby’s 12,000 really should have a say. Likewise, when we persuade the British Secretary of State to get her finger out and allow a border poll here - should the constitutional position be changed so a United Ireland can come about - then the US’s 40 million must have a say too. And after that there’s Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland...

So stand up for the Corby men! And women. They could yet play a part in changing (perhaps unwittingly)  the fate of these islands.  

Can you describe this man?

History can be depressing but not all the time. Sometimes it’s enlightening and even fun.

In the Irish Times this morning there’s a report that Michael Collins called on the help of British forces during the Civil War to shell the Four Courts, where anti-Treaty forces had been in place for three months. That’s Michael Collins who played such a vital and daring part in the war on British forces during the struggle for independence. The charming, good-looking, fearless Michael Collins who arranged for British agents to be killed on the morning of  the first Bloody Sunday. Come the Civil War, he’s not only intent on killing his fellow-Irishmen, he’s got the British to help him. 

That’s the depressing bit. The enlightening and even fun bit emerged in a book I’ve just finished reading. (You can hear a review of it on Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh on Sunday 4 December, when I’m on the book programme with Alex Kane. And yes, both he and presenter William Crawley are both very nice men.) Where was I? Oh yes - that book. It’s called The Two Unions and it’s by Alvin Jackson.  It compares the union of England and Scotland  with the union between England and Ireland. The first worked, Jackson figures, because for the Scots, “the union was sufficiently capacious and flexible to allow the flourishing of distinctive Scottish institutions and patriotic sentiments”. But now that its various props of empire and monarchy are no longer what they were, now that Britain is involved in unpopular foreign wars, that there is regimental amalgamation, denationalization of state asset and industries, all bets are off. 

 As for the union with Ireland, Jackson figures that it never really was able to accommodate things Irish and so was doomed. The official union of England and Ireland  in 1801 “was fundamentally about salesmanship with secret backhanders, inducements and penalties, the purchase of seats and the epic dispensation of hospitality”,  Jackson is particularly good at selecting telling descriptions. He quotes a Scottish judge, Lord Stott, who described Terence O’Neill as “a pathetic figure, like a drunk man who had reached the melancholy stage”. And then there’s Andrew Nutting, a Conservative MP, on the Ulster Unionist parliamentarians who graced the House of Commons from the early 1920s to the early 1970s: “As a smug, offensive and mediocre collection of bible-bashing hypocrites they would be hard to beat”. He’s also pretty good on the insatiable appetite of the Irish for royal honours and titles, an appetite that’s as voracious today as it was in the nineteenth century.

Alvin Jackons is a smart,  wonderfully learned and witty man.  His book would make a splendid Christmas present for anyone interested in Irish (or Scottish) history.  After you’ve got them my own book, of course.  

He asked for WHAT?

What baffles me is who’s calling for it.  About a week ago Gerry Adams made a speech in the Dail where, among other things, he requested the Taoiseach to support the notion of a referendum on constitutional change in Ireland. Translated, that means he asked for a poll about the border. No, ‘fraid not, Enda told him. There is no call for that at the moment at all at all.  Last week also, Declan Kearney of Sinn Féin made a speech in Westminster (no, Virginia, not actually in the House of Commons chamber - in Westminster)  in which he called, among other things, for a referendum on the border.  

Both these requests were a bit surprising. Because as John Taylor has been telling us for about twenty years now,  anywhere around 30% of Catholics are very happy where they are, in the United Kingdom. The Belfast Telegraph had a poll and they found that there were about four Catholics in the entire state in favour of a united Ireland. That Sinn Féin and anybody else who thought there was a will for a united Ireland was talking out of the back of his or her neck. 

So there’s disagrement. Despite John Taylor, despite the Belfast Telegraph, Gerry Adams and Declan Kearney and presumably a lot of other people would like an official referendum on the subject. Well, count me in on that. And my surprise is that   Enda Kenny and Peter Robinson and all of the DUP and the UUP (or what’s left of its badly-mangled semi-corpse) would be in favour of it. You’d also think that Gerry Adams and Declan Kearney would be trying to AVOID having a border poll, given that there’s only four Catholics in favour of it. Or 30%. Or whatever. Because the result would be a ringing endorsement of staying in the UK. Right?

Well, I don’t know. Neither does John Taylor or Declan or Gerry or Peter. Or the Belfast Tele. There’s only one way to find out: have the referendum. Let’s have the facts of the matter. If there’s a majority in favour of constitutional change, well, then everybody will have to read the bit in the Good Friday Agreement that tells us what happens next. If there’s a majority in favour of no constitutional change, well, then everybody will have to readjust their thinking or, if they believe in a united Ireland, ask themselves how they can persuade people. One way or another, we’ll know the truth. And then we won’t have to take Enda or Peter or John or the Belfast Tele’s word for it any more. 

I always think it’s easier judging what a room looks like when you switch on the light, don’t you? 

Jimmy Savile: he's opened our eyes. Maybe.

Sometimes out of evil comes good. Or if not good, an improved view of the problem. For years now, we’ve been hearing about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. When anyone tried to make the point that focusing solely on the Catholic clergy was to suggest that the problem didn’t exist elsewhere and on a comparable scale, they were slapped down. I remember myself asking the question about child abuse and other faiths, as well as the wider public. It was during a TV debate, and after the broadcast was over I was verbally mugged by three clergymen - two Presbyterian, one Church of Ireland, as I remember. They informed me with some intensity that this was a mischievous question and that such abuse was confined to the Roman Catholic Church.

So in that sense, thank God for Jimmy Savile. It now appears clear that he engaged in sexual abuse of children over decades, often on BBC premises. Just like the Catholic Church - just like all big organisations - the BBC covered up for the sake of their own reputation. Nor is Savile the only subject of investigation for such crimes. It appears that a number of doctors from the hospitals he helped raise money for, a number of other people in the BBC - whether guests or staff - were similarly engaged in abuse. 

Move from there to the Leveson Inquiry - remember it?  Not into child abuse but press invasion of privacy. From top to bottom, it’s clear that the British press were gathering information illegally and that their bosses knew about it and said nothing. Cover-up again.

And then there’s the Hillsborough disaster, where nearly 100 fans lost their lives, and the police then lied about the reasons for it happening, blaming drunken Liverpool supporters. And what did the higher-ups in the West Yorkshire police do? You guessed it.Covered up.

If you’re old enough, you’ll probably remember the Widgery Whitewash - the forerunner of the Saville Inquiry (no relation, by the way) into the deaths of fourteen people on Bloody Sunday in Derry. The initial report lied about what had happened, as did the British Army which supplied the supposed facts. Once again, cover-up, this time not about abuse, but about life and death. And what did Lord Denning say about opening the can of lying worms concerning the Birmingham Six? To do so would be to present ‘an appalling vista’. Let’s keep it under wraps - it’s better that way. 

If nothing else, the Jimmy Savile case and all the others should teach us not to believe a word we’re told by the authorities, except there’s clear supporting evidence. The question is, what lies are the authorities telling us now, that in twenty years we’ll be kicking ourselves for not having spotted at the time? Or as Jeremy Paxman so eloquently put it about interviewing politicians:  "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

Obama - he's the good guy, right? Wrong.

Sometimes you could despair about the human race. Or at least that part of it which reacts to political events. Like, for example, the American presidential election. Figures carried by the Irish Times yesterday showed that 90% of Irish people favoured the Democrat candidate, Barack Obama. And had I a vote, I’d probably cast it for him as well.  But it’s not quite going with good against evil, as an article in today’s Guardian shows.

It’s headed ‘UK support for US drones in Pakistan may be war crime, court is told’. A young Pakistani man is seeking legal redress for the killing of his father by a drone since the unmanned aircraft flew with the assistance of UK locational intelligence. More than 40 other people were killed in the incident. They had gathered to discuss a local mining dispute. 

But Britain doesn’t stop with providing intelligence. The RAF has confirmed that it’ll double the number of drones used over Afghanistan. They’ll be operated from the UK, unlike its existing Reaper drones, which are operated from an air force base in Nevada.

The great thing about drones is that it keeps the people operating them well away from danger themselves. You just sit in Nevada - or somewhere in England - and make things happen in Afghanistan or Pakistan. What could be better? Or worse. Over the last eight years, drone strikes have killed roughly 3,000 people in Pakistan, with about 600 of them civilians, of whom 176 were children. 

Big deal, you say? Those are tiny figures in a war. Well yes, comparatively speaking. But if you take the figure for innocent adults and children alone, that’s the equivalent of around 18  Omagh bombs going off, killing innocent adults and children.  Remember when the Omagh bomb went off, Bill Clinton and every bigwig imaginable rushed to Omagh to express their horror? Not much rushing or horror expressed by Obama or Romney. Or anyone else.

Which brings us neatly to the US presidential election. For many of us, Obama represents hope - hope of a US and a world freed from racial prejudice, hope of a new US that has stopped acting, not so much as the world’s policeman as the world’s rogue cop. And Obama’s got a smart wife and two terrifically sweet daughters. 

But this is also the man who’s been giving the green light for drones to be sent to explode -  about 500 lbs in each case - and inevitably kill innocent men, women and children. If you reviled those who set the Omagh bomb in place, they have one advantage over Obama: they didn’t intend to kill people, as far as we know. They killed them all right but it wasn’t what they set out to do. But the man who’s running for the White House, the man who is indisputably the preference of most of us, regularly gives the thumbs-up for pilotless planes to fly in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the explicit intention of killing people. And if  a good number of civilians and children get blown away as well as enemy combatants, well, hey, that’s what we call collateral damage. 

And yet, I’m ashamed to say, I’d still vote for Obama. What a vile thing American foreign policy is.