Looking for something stupid and cack-handed? Try Portstewart

OK - no politics today. Well, sort of but not full frontal politics.

A year or so ago I found myself in what some geographical illiterates call  'the North-West' - in Portstewart, to be exact. Up for the day, a nice walk along that fabulous beach, a bit of lunch. Now as you maybe know I think golf is a dumb game but I’ve no objection to their club-houses as somewhere to get a bite to eat, especially Portstewart Golf Club which has a nice view of that amazing beach.  Anyway I was inside and heading up the stairs to the restaurant when I heard a loud voice from below calling “Remove the hat, sir!” I looked down and it was an official-looking chap staring up at me. “No hats to be worn in the club-house” he informed me. As one easily over-awed by authority, I immediately plucked off my sun protector and went and had my meal. But with every biteful I kept kicking myself for my compliance and wondering why on earth they had this rule. So on the way out I put my hat defiantly in place and headed for the exit, and there was the chap who had demanded my hat-removal. So I asked him why the rule. “It’s the policy here, sir”.  Yes I know, but why? After a couple of more versions of ‘It’s the policy here’, he confessed that he hadn’t a clue but he was under instructions.

That was some time ago, and I’m old enough and ugly enough not to let these things bother me. But a case I heard of recently has made my blood simmer if not boil. A family group went for a meal in Portstewart Golf Club restaurant. As it happened a young boy in the family suffers from alopecia - his head is totally without hair, and so he habitually wears a cap.  No sooner were they in Portstewart Golf Club than the official was on the spot telling the youngster to remove his cap, adding by way of explanation “For the ladies”. So the boy, who is understandably attached to his hat in emotional as well as physical ways, was forced to remove it. Alopecia on view.

Now I don’t blame the guy who carries out this dumbest of club-house rules-  he’s following orders and probably glad of the job. I do blame the nineteenth-century ninnies who devised the rule and who appear to believe that respectability has something to do with taking off your hat on their holy ground. And who, in implementing that rule, show all the flexibility and sensitivity of a rhinoceros’s arse.  Is there some reason these people  would rather bully a vulnerable child into compliance than use the space between their ears where other people have a brain? Maybe you can think of one. I can’t.

Malachi, me and that movie

I'm just back from a debate (?) on  BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence. My sparring partner was Malachi O'Doherty, who is a good example of someone whom I like but whose opinions on most things I disagree with. This time we were disagreeing about the film Mea Maxima Culpa, which is (or certainly was) showing at the Queen's Film Theatre.

The film is about a Father Laurence Murphy of Miwaukee, who abused a group of deaf children in his care over a  number of years. Some of the boys, now elderly men,  told their story through sign language, with actors doing a voice-over. There was something truly chilling about the little gasps the men made and the slap of their hands as they signed the story of their suffering. The film brings to life yet another shameful episode of clerical sexual abuse of children and the arrogance of some of those in power in the Catholic Church at the time (1960s/70s).

Where I part way with Malachi is over the fact that the film presented the Catholic Church as a uniquely corrupt institution from top to bottom, with corruption allowed unchecked and its lay members held in check by the threat of damnation. This is simply untrue. To take the Murphy case (two other cases featured as well), the film notes that in 1974 some boys from the home went to the police and then the District Attorney's office with their complaint against Murphy. So too did Fr Thomas Brundage, the judicial vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The film notes the fact that the boys went to the civil authorities and were ignored, and leaves it at that.  It doesn't follow-up on this failure by the civil authorities, which could have stopped Murphy and his abuse in its tracks. Nor does it mention that Brundage contacted the District Attorney's office with his concern. Nor does it mention Brundage's claim that many of the other boys from the home not featured in the film contacted him and expressed their gratitude for his efforts on their behalf.

The other point of difference that I have is a wider one, and one rarely referred to. The film overall gives the impression of an institution, the Catholic Church, which is peculiarly prone to the crime of sexual abuse. This is not the case. Figures on this matter are hard to come by, and when you ask for them you are sometimes greeted with hostility. I recall a UTV programme a few years back, in which I was one of the audience. The panel was a group of experts, including Dame Nuala O'Loan  (and my apologies that I can't recall other people). I asked the panel if anyone knew how the level of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church compared with the level of abuse in other faiths and in the general population.  No one could or would give me an answer. Immediately following the programme, I was approached by three Protestant clergymen - two Presbyterian, I think, and one Church of Ireland. They admonished me sharply for daring to raise such an issue - the problem was one unique to the Catholic Church, they explained, because of the rule of celibacy for priests. When I asked for some research that would support this claim, I was told it was unnecessary - they knew it was so.

In fact there are some figures. A study from Stanford University scored the incidence of Catholic clergy sexual abuse over the second half of the twentieth century at somewhere between 2-5% of clergy. The rate of child sexual abuse in the general population is about 8%. The US Department of Education reported that nearly 10% of students in Grades 8-11 had reported incidents of sexual misconduct by teachers.  Yet none of this has prompted attention or investigation from the media.

It would be safe to say that most people believe with my Protestant clergymen that child sexual abuse is unique to the Catholic Church, as is cover-up of these crimes by the Church. Films like Mea Maxima Culpa  go a long way to reinforcing this impression. Which prompts the question 'Why?' Perhaps it's lazy journalism. Or maybe it makes a better story to set child abuse exclusively within the the Catholic Church - all that stuff about crucifixes and confession and candles and the rest. Or maybe it's a plain old-fashioned desire to put the boot into the Catholic Church. There are people in our society who made their names doing just that.

If the Jimmy Savile scandal inflicted suffering on untold numbers of vulnerable children, it also did one good thing. It showed that widespread sexual abuse of children and minors isn't confined to the Catholic Church and that other institutions do just what often happened in the Catholic Church: they experienced child sexual abuse and they tried try to cover it up for as long as possible. Mea Maxima Culpa brings alive real suffering and baffling evil. The existence of such suffering and evil to an equal or greater extent in other areas, it ignores.

But don't take my word for it. Newseek  in 2010 quoted Ernie Allen,  president of the National Center for Missing and Exploted Children in the US: "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others",

Not many people know that. Some don't want to.

An interview with Davy Adams

[This is an edited version of the interview in my book 'Whose Past Is It Anyway?']

Davy Adams was involved in the struggle from his earliest years. No, not the political struggle - the struggle to put bread on the table. He is one of ten children and that was their everyday worry - getting the money to survive and endure as a family.

But his home was a political one, in that his mother always insisted that they vote: “She said it was the one time everyone was equal”. Although his home was the only Protestant one in a small row of houses, it was set in a wider predominantly unionist area. “Three-quarters of the population could have sat at home and the unionist guy would still have swept home with the vote”.

His parents never had any fear that their children would be swept into paramilitarism or “become enthralled by Paisley or any of his people”, because they believed their children were too sensible. They were right, with one exception: their son Davy, who joined the UDA. He speaks of a resentment among working-class unionists about how deprived other people were. “We had nothing either, and it was as if we were living in the lap of luxury. And then you would know people who were killed, people who were in no-warning bombs or shot on the least excuse or no excuse at all...I joined the UDA very late, in relative terms - I would have been in my early twenties - and it flowed from knowing people who had been murdered and decent people who had done no one any wrong.”

He says his thinking these days is massively changed. “In fact I’m not even sure that I would have a party political mode of thinking. I would be unionist because I happen to think that’s where the best future lies. According to the Good Friday Agreement, and I stick very much by that, if the majority on both sides of the border voted for a united Ireland, they would get no reaction from me. If there was a proper united Ireland out there, that would benefit us all and suit us all, where the pain and hatred and nastiness could be set aside or left behind, that would be no problem for me”.

He doesn’t believe the Stormont Assembly is achieving much in real terms, but “I think they’re doing an awful lot in terms of building understandings and building relationships, not only among themselves, but ones that bleed down into the wider community”. 

A bad way of commemorating centenaries would be to be too militaristic or celebrating subjugation. “There are no more multi-racial,multi-ethnic, multi-religious communities than there are within the UK. That’s what unionism should have been pointing out for years and should be pointing out now. So a bad commemoration would be singular, it would be triumphalist it would be about subjugation, it would be harking back to supposed good old days when unionists ruled the roost completely - that to me would be a bad commemoration”.

He would like to see republicans invited to commemorations of the signing of the Ulster Covenant, but he’s not too optimistic that the invitations will be offered or, if offered, accepted. “It would be great if people from all sections took part in each of the commemorations, but even if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think that’s a recipe for disaster necessarily. I think it can still be handled”.

He thinks 2012 is a good opportunity for unionists to reflect on unionism, although “no one can say that unionism hasn’t spent forty years reflecting on unionism. An awful lot of it had to be forced on them, but it happened none the less”. 

He believes there is “widespread ignorance” in the unionist community about 1916, and a few television programmes about it would help. “What we need is a straight historical piece - or two or three - on the Easter Rising, what foreshadowed it, what brought it about, what followed, the Civil War even. And you know, the state that came from it wasn’t exactly in line with Irish republicanism - I would argue it wasn’t within a beagle’s goul of Irish republicanism.”

He believes we should spend less time dwelling on the pitfalls of the centenaries and more on what can be done with them.

“There’s a great opportunity for education here and understanding other points of view - about how people got to the position they were in, how people ended up with their beliefs and allegiances, and how people who have different allegiances don’t necessarily have to be enemies, even such starkly different allegiances as those to an Irish Republic or those to a Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom”.

He’s very much opposed to “one-eyed presentation” of events - providing a unionist-weighted programme, then a republican-weighted programme, and then claiming you’ve created balance. “Each programme should be a historical analysis, a straight historical analysis pointing out benefits, faults, why people made the decisions they did”.

He believes that what both unionism and republicanism have to learn is Irishness - “the breadth of Irishness. It doesn’t stop at a certain religion or a certain set of political views, and it never did until relatively recent times. My father was born before partition, and a lot of his modes of reference were in an Irish context.  He’d say ‘Ah, you wouldn’t meet a dafter man if you walked to Dublin!’ And if you’d asked him if he was Irish he’d have laughed at you.  ‘Do you think I’m Australian or something?’ That was lost, so we all have to learn that Irishness doesn’t belong to one, almost singular identity”.

He acknowledges that it’s hard to project oneself into the past and understand it. “But it’s not impossible. I think we underestimate ourselves far, far too much in Northern Ireland. We just say, ‘Ah, Jesus, we can’t trust ourselves to do this that or the other’. And often, almost subconsciously,you can attract the reaction that you expect - not that you want but that you expect. Instead, why not go for it? Let’s go for it and do it properly, and do it hoping for the best and planning to get the best from both sides of the community”.

He thinks republicans and nationalists in the north may go a bit overboard “to prove how Irish and republican they are [Laughs]  Whereas down in the south, they’re far more relaxed about it. I think the commemoration in the south will be a relaxed thing - probably far, far better done in terms of presenting different sides of the story accurately”.

The Battle of the Somme commemorations, he believes, have always been something that unionism has claimed ownership of, although that may in part have been due to nationalism “pushing it away”. “It never should have been treated like that. It was a sacrifice made by people from all arts and parts of Ireland, and from all religions and all politics, so I think it has real potential for being commemorated in the proper sense and it has far more legitimacy for being commemorated right across the communities.”

He sees the Great War as being imperial. “You know the old one - ‘Lions led by donkeys’. It wasn’t quite the case but that certainly has got a grip now on people’s understanding of that event”.

But in terms of the centenary commemorations generally? He’s optimistic. “Minds are broadening - I’ve no doubt about that. You’ve only to look at who’s sitting up in Stormont together. That has set a great example to the rest of Northern Ireland. The centenaries are going to happen, they’re historical events, let’s look at them, let’s commemorate them. And let’s try and do it in as reasonable and as sensible a manner possible, with an underlying notion of using them to help better understanding across communities.”

A rose by any other name...

I think Herr S Freud would have enjoyed this one...(No prizes for the eagle-eyed, sorry)

Action and reaction

Ill-informed Person:  Why is there unionist opposition to the appointment of Rosa McLaughlin as Vice-Principal of St Mary’s College in Derry? I thought unionists weren’t interested in Catholic education.

Know-it-all Person:  It’s different this time. Rosa McLaughlin was once in the IRA and served a three-year prison sentence. 

Ill-informed Person: But she’s out now.

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes.

Ill-informed Person: So what’s the problem?

Know-it-all Person: Well, there have been suggestions from unionist quarters that someone who’d been in the IRA would be sort of, um, corrupting the young if she/he taught them.

Ill-informed Person: How so?

Know-it-all Person: Afraid I’m not clear how.

Ill-informed Person: If Ms McLaughlin is down to be Vice-Principal, what has the Principal to say of her appointment?

Know-it-all Person: ”Ms McLaughlin is a more than capable teacher and she is in school working this week despite the difficult situation she has been facing”.

Ill-informed Person: Sounds like the Principal is happy enough with the appointment.

Know-it-all Person: It does indeed. Can we talk about something else for a while?

Ill-informed Person: Certainly. Who is Nigel Lutton?

Know-it-all Person: He’s the ‘agreed’ unionist candidate for the coming Westminster by-election in Mid-Ulster. And before you ask, the by-election was called  because Martin McGuinness gave up his Mid-Ulster seat, as part of Sinn Féin ending double-jobbing.

Ill-informed Person: Right. So this Mr Lutton -  he’s a well-known politician then? An MLA perhaps?

Know-it-all Person: Well no. Although he is a cousin of David Simpson.

Ill-informed Person: Who?

Know-it-all Person: David Simpson, the well-known DUP MP. 

Ill-informed Person: What’s he well-known for?

Know-it-all Person: Well in this instance for what he said in the House of Commons in 2007.

Ill-informed Person:  Which was?

Know-it-all Person:  That Francie Molloy was involved in the killing of Nigel Lutton’s father in 1979. Mr Lutton Sr was a part-time RUC reservist. 

Ill-informed Person: Why did Mr Simpson make this claim in the House of Commons?

Know-it-all Person: Parliamentary privilege

Ill-informed Person: What’s that?

Know-it-all Person: Well, apparently you can say nearly anything about a  person in the House of Commons  under parliamentary privilege. 

Ill-informed Person: Why not say it outside the House of Commons?

Know-it-all Person: Because you’d need proof or you could be sued.

Ill-informed Person; Had Mr Simpson proof?

Know-it-all Person: He said the police told him.

Ill-informed Person: But no proof beyond that?

Know-it-all Person: Not as far as I know. Mr Molloy has strongly denied the charge and challenged anyone to make the claim outside Parliament. 

Ill-informed Person: And has anyone taken him up on it?

Know-it-all Person: No. 

Ill-informed Person:  I see. So who’s standing for the Shinners then?

Know-it-all Person: Francie Molloy.

Ill-informed Person:Eh?

Know-it-all Person: Francie Molloy. The veteran Sinn Féin MLA and deputy Speaker up in Stormont. 

Ill-informed Person: So did the choice of Mr Lutton as ‘agreed’ unionist candidate happen before or after the Shinners chose Mr Molloy?

Know-it-all Person: After. 

Ill-informed Person: I see. Then is that why unionists chose Mr Lutton as an ‘agreed’ candidate? That his father was killed, probably by the IRA, and David Simpson claimed, without evidence, that Francie Molloy was involved?

Know-it-all Person: You may say that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Ill-informed Person: So have the unionists a chance of winning this seat? And is it true that Willie Frazer may also stand as a unionist candidate?

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes.

Ill-informed Person: Oh yes what? That the unionists do have a chance of winning this seat or Oh yes Willie Frazer may also stand as a unionist candidate?

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes both. 

Ill-informedPerson: And how highly would you rate either Mr Lutton or Mr Frazer’s chances of being elected?

Know-it-all Person: About that of a snowball in Hades.

Ill-informed Person: So you’re saying Mr Molloy may well retain the seat for Sinn Féin?

Know-it-all Person: He may well indeed. In fact do you notice my hat?

Ill-informed Person: What about it?

A: I will eat it for lunch if he doesn’t. Although we must await the outcome of polling on 7 March.

Ill-informed Person: How wise you are. Go raibh maith agat.

Know-it-all Person: Failte romhat.

Mid-Ulster: a tale of two candidates

So now we know. Sinn Féin some weeks ago chose their candidate for the Mid-Ulster seat vacated by Martin McGuinness:  they picked veteran republican Francie Molloy, who was director of election for Bobby Sands and is currently deputy Speaker in the Stormont Assembly. The two unionist parties, after much to-ing and fro-ing, have now come up with an agreed candidate: Nigel Lutton. He’s a cousin of the DUP’s David Simpson and his father, an RUC reservist, was shot dead by the IRA in 1979.

There are a number of things to be kept in mind about this by-election. The first is that Nigel Lutton relates to David Simpson in other ways than that they are cousins. In 2007,  David Simpson in the House of Commons named Francie Molloy as having been involved in the killing of Nigel Lutton’s father.  The fact that he made the claim - which he said the police had given him - meant that he was protected by parliamentary privilege. That is, he couldn’t be charged with slander. Of course, if you have proof of your statement or claim, it stops being slander. 

How has Molloy reacted? He has denied any such involvement and has challenged anyone (with Simpson in mind, I should think) to make such a claim outside the British parliament. The implication is that he would sue them. 

So why did the DUP and the UUP choose Mr Lutton as their candidate? Well, the claim is that he helps highlight the plight of victims of the Troubles, and certainly Mr Lutton exemplifies just that. It's striking, though, that their choice was made after Sinn Féin had made theirs, so you may be sure Mr Lutton was chosen with Mr Simpson’s 2007 House of Commons claim in mind.  The death of Mr Lutton’s father will now be a feature of the election campaign.

Statements made under parliamentary privilege are or can be deeply disturbing. The example that jumps out in terms of the north of Ireland is that made by Douglas Hogg in 1989. After a briefing from senior RUC officers,  he claimed that some solicitors here were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”.  A few weeks later, Pat Finucane was shot dead in his home. Sir John Stevens, who authored a major report into collaboration between security forces and loyalism, said Hogg’s comments hadn’t been justified. 

One of the cornerstones of the British justice system is that you are innocent until you are proved guilty. The fact that David Simpson made his claim under parliamentary privilege strongly suggests he had not got proof of that claim, any more than Hogg had of his. Yet the UUP and the DUP appear to have chosen their candidate with the notion of targeting Francie Molloy’s reputation. Had their sole objective been to highlight the unhappy state of victims of the Troubles, there are many others - unionist others - they could have chosen.  By choosing Mr Lutton, they have put the notion of people being innocent until proven guilty under near-breaking-point pressure.

What’s almost equally dismaying is that the two unionist parties know that their man has practically no chance of winning. And of course if Willie Frazer were to come off the fence and stand, they’d have less chance still. 

Footnote: As always, I welcome comment on and argument with this posting. But please, in the light of the response to my posting last Friday, engage with the argument and skip the insults, OK?

Whither the flags protest?

Where are the flag-protestors going? Nowhere fast, it would appear. There have been dwindling numbers, which is not surprising, since pretty well everybody accepts that Belfast City Council isn’t going to accede to their demands that the Union flag be reinstated to fly 365 days a year.  If they did, it would be a signal that democratic decision-making can be stopped in its tracks if you defy the law loudly enough and often enough. But when you know your objective is never going to happen, it’s common sense to stop standing about in the cold codding yourself you’re doing something useful.   

But I do agree with the flag protestors’ Jamie Bryson on one point:  "I view this as a cynical attempt to use the UDR parade and the protest to undermine each other and create divisions within our community” Jamie says. Well no, I don’t quite agree with him. The aim of unionist politicians is not to undermine the flag protest movement. The aim is to kill it. It’s embarrassing them as well as harming the international image of Belfast and local trade.

Maybe I’m just getting forgetful, but were there 1,000 people on the streets this time last year, commemorating the two UDR soldier killed by an IRA bomb in 1988? Perhaps there were. But if there weren’t, then it’s hard not to see unionist leaders using the anniversary of the two men’s deaths as anything other than a weapon with which to club the flags’ protest out of existence.