QC says report will include some "highly-classified documents". Oo-er.

Sir Desmond de Silva QC (don’t you wish you’d a name like that?) who’s been leading a British government review of the killing of Pat Finucane says some “highly-classified documents” will be included in the report. The idea, apparently, is to ensure public confidence when it comes out. De Silva says he's rather proud of the fact that his review has been produced “on time and on budget”.

That’s nice. It’s not what the Finucane family wanted - they wanted a full public inquiry  - but it’s nice. And it’s nice that the report will include highly-classified stuff. But the elegantly-named Sir Desmond has over-reached himself a bit when he talks “ensuring public confidence”.  Because it won’t, you know. The Finucanes and thousands of others will wonder what other “highly-classified documents” were there that the the British government, vis Sir D de S QC, chose not  to include. British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers has said there’s nothing in the de Silva report that’ll affect British security or put anyone’s life at risk. Which suggests the bottom-line criteria for releasing documents can be found in the answer to the question “Will this be bad for us?”  Us being the British government. 

In sum: the wishes of the family of the victim have been ignored; the review will not carry any information that might be bad for British ‘security’, and the person carrying it out has been appointed by the British government. 

The rest of us will get to see the report  in early December. Let’s hope  our other Christmas presents are a bit more promising-looking. 

George, James and Alastair

I wish I were smarter and could see what everybody else appears to see - or certainly all commentators I've heard so far appear to see. Fact: the BBC's Director-General has had to resign. Why? Because somebody on Newsnight  accused a leading Tory in the 1970s of sexual abuse. The accused was not named. People on the internet then claimed it was Lord McAlpine. The accuser says it wasn't. And then the BBC's DG decides he must resign and everybody agrees. Am I missing something? Or has the BBC world gone mad? I'm no admirer of what I've experienced of BBC management but I think if the top manager is going to get the boot, he should have been responsible for something a bit more awful than allowing a programme to go out that includes a claim that an unnamed leading Tory was a sexual abuser. This is the Tories we're talking about. Doesn't anyone remember another Tory in the early 1960s called John (Jack to his friends) Profumo, CBE?

New chapter: I noticed on RTÉ's Premier Soccer Saturday that the entire Man United team were wearing jerseys that had a poppy as part of the shirt's fabric. So was Alex Ferguson so conversant with the war views of his international team that there was no opt-out necessary? And if sport and politics aren't supposed to mix, how come sport and war are clearly mixed in this case?  As for James McClean, late of this parish, my hat is off to him for doing his own thinking and not wearing a poppy, despite the fact that all his Sunderland  team-mates did. And my other hat is off to Martin O'Neill, the Sunderland manager, who presumably (unlike Ferguson) left room for personal choice in the matter.

And finally: I don't think I've ever seen a political party leader's key-note speech received with such critical commentary as was Alastair McDonnell's yesterday by Professor Rick Wilford. Immediately after the speech, Wilford pointed out that it was full of generalities  (apart from the mandatory kicking of Sinn Féin); it promised a renewal of the SDLP, something that, at last year's SDLP conference, was promised would happen inside three months; and while the speech was better than McDonnell's shambolic "Jeez boys, them lights is blindin' me!" performance last year,  it must have left any honest SDLP member in the hall with that by-now-familiar sinking feeling.  It's the good doctor's wife I feel sorry for.

Two cheers for Barack Obama

Below is the article I wrote for The Andersonstown News group of papers earlier this week. I  could have lopped out the top bit and made it more up-to-date, but since I've been wrong (like so many others) so often in my predictions,  allow me a quick wallow in self-congratulation. Besides, it's fun to remember that Truman  headline provided you don't think about how Truman ordered the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as it's fun seeing Obama win, providing one doesn't think of his ordering the release of drone bombs responsible for terrible carnage in Afghanistan.

By the time you read this, Barack Hussein Obama will have been re-elected President of the United States. Probably. You never can be sure with these things. In 1948, Thomas Dewey, a man so pompous it was said he could strut while sitting down,  fought Harry Truman for the American presidency. The  pundits were so convinced Dewey would win at a canter, The Chicago Herald Tribune  ran the headline in its early edition: ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’.  Oh-oh.  In fact Truman won and there’s a great picture of him holding up the daft headline and grinning from ear to ear. 

Today there are those so convinced of an Obama win, they’re saying the neck-and neck talk is just journalists trying to make the race exciting.  So let’s assume  they’re right and ask what  has swung Americans behind the incumbent?

Well, Romney for a start. Obama’s challenger kept dropping these resounding clangers.  Introducing his vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan  he declared “Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States - Paul Ryan!!” When asked what he wears in bed  he said “I think the best answer is as little as possible”. And then there was a speech where he really went weird:   “ When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no-- and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.”  Say what, Mitt?

But then came that first televised debate and Obama was the one in trouble. He performed like a man who was bored and suddenly the polls showed Romney on his shoulder and gathering momentum. That is, until Sandy came along. The President’s handling of the hurricane aftermath so impressed Americans, Obama surged again and it now looks as though he’s ahead and will stay there.  

Of course other things like jobs  and foreign wars and Guantanamo Bay mattered as well.  But the fact is most Americans have jobs, most Americans haven’t lost a loved one in war, most Americans excuse Guantanamo Bay in the name of Homeland Security.  And while the sheen may have gone off Obama after four years, most Americans figure a right-wing, abrasive Romney in the White House would make things worse. ’

But here’s the worrying part.  Does it matter if Obama is a good TV debater or not?  Not a button. Just like it didn’t matter that JFK looked better on TV than Nixon, or that Reagan had better one-liners on TV than Jimmy Carter.  Choosing the president of your country isn’t  like choosing a winner on X Factor, or it shouldn’t be, but that’s what will determine the vote of many Americans this week. TV footage of the Sandy aftermath showed Obama walking around with his hands in his pockets, looking suitably glum. But it’s that kind of thing that gets the votes. Bill Clinton used to be good at doing the “I feel your pain” thing too, and the electorate loved him for it. 

So it was a bad TV debate performance sent Obama’s ratings sliding and it was a good hurricane-aftermath showing on TV that has sent him back into the lead.  Yes siree, the housing market matters (“It’s the economy, stupid”), but deep down those Americans who aren’t hurting too much want a president who talks good and looks sympathetic. For God’s sake - they elected George Bush (twice) because they thought he’d be a nice guy to have a beer with. 

Only in America, eh? Or maybe not.  Just over a year ago, the Irish people in the in the twenty-six counties missed a historic opportunity because a TV presenter saw fit to ask one candidate if he went to confession.  We’re not so smart ourselves, when you think about it. 

Frank and his poppy

Oh dear. It’s that time of year again. Poppy time.  When those who don’t wear the poppy are depicted as backward-looking anti-Brit bigots, stuffed with spleen and blind to the sacrifice of their fellow-countrymen. When politicians like Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan can wear their poppy with pride in the Dail, to show how open-minded and progressive he is. “We have well and truly moved on from that dark, bloody era in the North before the evolution of the peace process” Frank says. “Thankfully, the peace dividend has delivered a new politics which has allowed us to publicly respect all traditions on this island”. And that’s why Frank’s wearing a poppy.

And why not?  I expect at Easter, Frank will sport an Easter lily, to commemorate the courage of the men who gave their lives so that ‘this island’ could govern itself.  I shouldn’t be surprised if Frank doesn’t call for all RTÉ presenters to copy his example and wear an Easter lily on air... And pigs might what, you say? Fly?

Ah. Now I get it. “All traditions on this island” ( go on, Frank - go mad and call it ‘Ireland’) really means “certain traditions on this island”. That’d explain why Frank and other southern politicians were so quiet when a BBC presenter in Belfast a few years ago was, um, persuaded that her non-poppy-wearing thinking was part of a false consciousness   and if she wanted to go on presenting she’d be well advised to make that false consciousness true. So she did. Saw her wearing on the other evening.

Of course, Frank may not have  heard about the white poppy campaign in England, where a lot of people want to distance themselves from the militaristic nature of Remembrance ceremonies.  He almost certainly hasn’t heard Channel 4’s Jon Snow who talks of ‘poppy fascism’, such is the pressure on presenters to toe the poppy line. 

Here’s the thing, Frank  If  you want to make public your views and loyalties to the rest of us (and your colleagues in the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly), that’s fine. But if you do, you should be ready to speak out with equal boldness in defence of those who, for whatever reason, choose not to wear a poppy. And speak out even more boldly for those who choose to wear an Easter lily on any part of' this island.‘  And, as with the poppy,  maybe lead by example.  Get your Easter lily in place, take a stroll down  Sandy Row or the main street of Aghohill, and you'll almost certainly learn something about respect for all traditions on this island. 

Are you wondering where to slip the new Irish Times?

I see where, over on sluggerotoole.com, Mick Fealty is going all thoughtful and running a professional eye over The Irish Times, which today apparently has adopted a new format.  It’s not gone tabloid but it hasn’t stayed broadsheet either. Somewhere in between.

 Mick says things like “The Berliner is a personal favorite of mine, not least because it  has the kind of charm of the unusual you get from like the quarto and octavo in books or magazines... The new Irish Times is much less radical, as I suspect was the intention. The size is identifiably broadsheet, but is also double tabloid size. So it sits handily inside the Irish Indo for instance.”

Is Mick taking the mickey? Personally  I don’t give a monkey’s whether the Irish Times sits handily inside the Irish Indo  or not. For two reasons.

The first is because I’d rather scoop my eyes out with a soup spoon than buy The Indo,  and on the rare occasion I buy The Irish Times I either read it or shove it in my coat pocket. In fact these days I do virtually all my newspaper reading online.  Two years ago I realised that, apart from the expense, I was cluttering up the house and eating into my time by buying and then feeling obliged to read two newspapers every day. So I stopped and I can’t tell you how cleansing it feels. 

The second reason I think the Irish Times  format is not worth discussing is not the reason Mick suggests - that inside five years all newspaper reading will have migrated online. It’s because I think it’s infinitely more important what the paper says than what size or shape it is. Do its journalists and columnists report the truth or do they bend to the pressures of editor and owner? Do they treat the north as somewhere ‘up there’ or do they afford it the same space and attention as any other part of the country?  Do they do profiles of the rich and famous or do they deal with real issues?Those are questions worth spending ink on - not on whether one slips neatly within the other. For God’s sake, Mick - that’s near cat-walk talk. 

What I would welcome is a discussion of how Irish - and English - national newspapers will deal with 2016. And  how many of them will have the cojones to print the editorial line they took on Easter Week  one hundred years earlier?  

It’s the message that counts, Mick, not the handwriting. 

Drugs and death

It’s not a position I usually find myself in, but I reacted negatively yesterday when I heard someone - almost certainly a politician - talk about the death of David Black as ‘an all-Ireland problem’. I concede that the dissident group which killed him very likely has members north and south of the border, but that wasn’t the point that was being made. “They’ve shown they’re quite prepared to kill people on both sides of the border” was the thrust of the statement.

That’s true. But it seems to me a misleading comment. While not wishing to take from the brutality of David Black’s death, the violent deaths south of the border which are being attributed to dissident republicans  involved not prison officers, but drug dealers. How often have you heard the phrase “He was well-known to the gardaí” when one of these fatal shootings happened?   Yet  despite their frequency, despite promises from the likes of former Justice Minister Michael McDowell that they would clean up the mess,  the killings continue with little or no political or public outcry.. Why? Because deep down there is a perverted satisfaction that one more drug-dealer is dead. 

The state in the south appears powerless to prevent both dealing in drugs and the deaths that happen in the course of this dealing. Almost certainly that’s a major contributor to the relative political silence when one of these  people die violently. Make too much noise and it might draw attention to the state’s  impotence or lack of concern that another drug-dealer has been dealt with, not by the state, but some illegal grouping.

Were the deaths of drug-dealers any less horrible than the death of David Black? Not really, except you believe some human lives are more worthy of protection than others. But the chorus of politicians’ voices from the south in recent days over David Black contrasts sharply with their silence and inactivity each time another person “well-known to the gardaí” is gunned down. Maybe they’re afraid that people will start demanding that (i) the drug problem be tackled in a way that works; and (ii) that all lives, including and maybe especially the lives of those we detest, be protected. Wasn’t there a line in the Easter Proclamation about all of the children of the nation being cherished equally?

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.