Timing and shaping a story

A long time ago when your granny was a slip of a girl, there was a singer called Jimmy Jones who sang a song called “Good Timin’ “.  It had a nice beat but it had better lyrics:

If little, little David hadn't grabbed that stone
Alyin' there on the ground
Big Goliath might've stomped on him
Instead of the other way 'round

But he had timin'
A tick, a tick, a tick, good timin'
A tock, a tock, a tock, a tock
A timin' is the thing
It's true, good timin' brought me to you

I thought of it last night as I watched the BBC’s ‘The View’. Mark Carruthers was interviewing Victims’ Commissioner Kathryn Stone.  She made it clear that by no means all victims were in favour of the proposed Alasdair’s Law legislation forbidding ex-prisoners who’d been imprisoned for more than five years to serve as special advisers at Stormont. She added that some in fact saw it as a “political sideswipe”.

I thought it was a good interview and showed something of the different shades of opinion as well as pain among victims.  My question, though, is simple: why didn’t we hear from Kathryn Stone with this information about a week ago? Because while it’s true that Ann Travers didn’t say she spoke for all victims (and if I said she did I was wrong),  she did say that this law targeting ex-prisoners was “for all victims”. Kathryn Stone made it clear that Ms Travers’s campaign was not something that all victims wanted, and that there was an element of political party-bashing attached to  it, as some victims saw it. 

But if Kathryn Stone had said this a week ago it would have trimmed back Ann Travers’s campaign as being solely motivated by her love for her dead sister and her concern for all victims of violence. However, it was only this week we got to hear the bigger victim story, at a point where it didn't really matter, as another flip-flop from the SDLP might be terminal. 

Besides timing, of course,  the media give shape to political events through the kinds of questions they ask and who they ask them of. On  Good Morning Ulster  this morning (I wonder how many Ballyshannon listeners it gets), Karen Patterson asked special adviser to Martin McGuinness, Paul Kavanagh, if he ever thought of those killed through his actions when he was in the IRA. Kavanagh said he did. 

It could be classified as a fair question, since victims have been the topic of the week. But I tried thinking back  to a time when a BBC interviewer  - or an interviewer from any other channel - asked the same question of someones from the British armed forces who’d been in Afghanistan or some such place,  and had been involved in attacks and gun battles there. It may have happened but I can’t for the life of me remember any such. 

And so we come back to that old word: consistency.  If it’s a reasonable question to ask Paul Kavanagh if he ever thinks of those who died as as result of his actions, it’s equally valid to ask a British soldier or officer how he feels about people he’s killed on the far side of the world. But we don’t get that. Instead we get Help for Heroes, welcoming-home parades and medals issued to those most prominent in the distribution of death. 

The media hold our reality in the palm of their hand like a piece of plasticine, and they can shape it whatever way they want.  Or are told to.  

Ann Travers, equations and history

I had every intention of moving on to a new topic today, which is partly why I missed the Nolan Show  last night. But I’m listening to the radio version of the show now and Nolan is interviewing Ann Travers and the truth is that her argument is all over the place. 

She argues that special advisers are paid out of the public purse and that this is particularly hurtful to victims such as herself.  There is no doubt that this could well be the case. But then had one of my relatives  been killed on Bloody Sunday, I might feel it particularly hurtful that the person who killed my relative was being paid out of the public purse. If I were one of the Finucanes, I might feel it particularly hurtful that those in the British armed services who colluded in the death of my father was paid out of the public purse. And you can add many other names yourself, I expect. 

Ann Travers has just made it clear that she does not claim to speak for all victims - but she does say that this bill is for all victims. She may think so but a number of victims want no hand, act or part in this bill. They are firmly opposed to it. These tend to be people whose loved ones were killed by the British state.

The discussion has now moved on to a moving description of the incident that resulted in Mary Travers’s death. While this is moving it doesn’t  advance the argument for blocking ex-prisoners from serving as special advisers one way or another. 

What all it comes down to is the question of how you regard the Troubles. If you believe that it was something more than a mass outbreak of murder, involving thousands of people who prior to the Troubles were not involved in violence of any kind and who post- the Troubles have not been involved in any form of violence - in fact they’re working hard to make sure the peace we now have stays in place - you'll disagree with Ann Travers.  If on the other hand you believe that every death inflicted by the IRA was murder pure and simple, you’ll think Ann Travers is absolutely right. 

One of Pat Finucane’s sons,  John I think, has just come on. Before the line dropped out he was saying that it was notable the difference in reaction to those who died at the hands of the IRA and those who died at the hands of state forces. That is the third leg of the stool - British state killings. In a simple equation, the argument could be stated as

IRA killings = murder; state/loyalist killings = legitimate response 

Whether we like it or not, or know it or not, this is about more than the death of one young woman. Whether Ann Travers likes it or not or knows it or not, this is about how the history of the Troubles is to be written. 

PS  Mike Nesbitt is now on talking about how Ann Travers should have been called before Mary McArdle was appointed. But I thought I had to draw the line somewhere and I've just switched off. 

Arguing up-hill about Alasdair's bill

That great Englishman George Orwell believed there was a direct correlation between the use of words and the quality of thought they embodied. Where words were used awkwardly or in an ugly fashion, they reflected awkward and ugly thinking. I’m not sure about the ugly part but listening to Alex Attwood being interviewed on the Nolan Show  on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster this morning felt as comfortable as the sound that dentists’ drills made circa 1957. Nolan played a clip of Dominic Bradley a little while back explaining why the SDLP would very likely vote against what has since become Alasdair’s Bill  (no, pace Jim Allister but it’s not Ann’s Bill - Alasdair was the man who made it happen). Nolan then asked Alex to explain the screeching hand-brake turn his party had made. Alex didn’t say it was less about victims and more about unionist votes in places like South Down, but you could tell something badly-oiled was clanking and grinding at the back of  his mind as he spoke. 

The Belfast Telegraph has devoted an editorial to the bill,  lamenting how badly the SDLP have handled the whole affair but arguing  it was vital that Alasdair’s bill be passed. Again the language has that slightly high-pitched, fake note. Hardly surprising, when you have the job of explaining that it’s OK to have ex-IRA people in government but it’s a grievous insult to victims to have ex-IRA people (who’ve served more than five years) acting as a special adviser: 

“They (ex-prisoners) are as entitled as anyone else to the vast majority of jobs, but it is uncaring and wounding to appoint people guilty of serious terrorist offences to positions at the very heart of the political administration. Quite rightly that will no longer be allowed when the bill becomes law.”

Mmm - ‘At the very heart of the political administration’. That sounds awfully like Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly and a few others you could probably add yourself. And yet the Bel Tel  strains every illogical fibre to argue that no, no, that’s different, that’s not a problem, it’s those pesky advisers.

Oh Orwell, thou should’st be living at this hour.

Alasdair and victims

As I watched Alasdair McDonnell declare on TV this evening “This is all about victims!”,   I thought of the Dean of St Columb’s College when I was a boarder there. He was a strange man, the Dean.  Some evenings he’d patrol the refectory smiling and talking quietly to himself, chuckling from time to time. Other evenings he’d walk up and down with a face like thunder, and God help you if you looked at him sideways. 

So how was he a soul-mate of Alasdair’s? Well, what would happen is this.  The Dean would catch you  (OK, me, me, not you) doing something forbidden - playing handball  against the wrong wall, reading a comic, smuggling a bottle of HP sauce into the refectory. Something bad like that. You’d be told to appear at his room at an appointed hour. He would then reach into his pocket, take out a strap and tell you to hold out first your right hand, then your left.   Four slaps if you were lucky, six if you were less lucky, ten if you were all outa luck. That strap hurt.

But there was a further sting on its way. Because on Saturday afternoons, we boarders would line up outside the Dean’s room and ask him if we could get out of the college for a couple of hours, into Derry, where we’d gorge ourselves on chips and sweets and smoke our heads off while watching Jane Russell being kissed by Gary Cooper on the silver screen. We’d form a long line and ask, and the lucky ones got a Yes. I can still feel the pang  of outrage when it came my turn, say two weeks after a leathering, and the Dean would listen to my request and then say “Would you run away out of my sight and don’t be bothering me”. Or put more succinctly - No. 

One crime, two punishments. In law it’s known as double jeopardy.  Some countries have protection from it built into their constitution. That’s because  there’s something inherently unjust about punishing someone twice for the same incident.  But not here. Thanks to Alasdair’s law, the spirit of our Dean will live on. 

That 92% in Creggan and Crossmaglen

There must have been more than one wry smile at the news that an Irish unity referendum has been held in the electoral wards of Creggan Upper Co Louth and Crossmaglen Co Armagh. And another when the results were announced: 92% of people voted for a united Ireland.  Had the referendum been held in the Shankill or East Belfast, it’s a safe bet a different result would have emerged.

But Sinn Féin tends not to do things for no reason. By holding this referendum, it’s sending a message to its supporters: we haven’t forgotten our core issue, national unity. It’s also showing that the idea of a united Ireland doesn’t have to remain at the level of theory, it can have a real-world existence, if only in two carefully-selected wards. 

Of course, Sinn Féin have been calling for a referendum on national unity for some time now. Arlene Foster has warned them to be careful what they wish for, they might get it. In other words, there’s no way a referendum on Irish unity would produce a majority in favour.  She believes the Shinners are simply posturing.

I think she’s wrong, for two reasons. One,  saying ‘I don’t want a united Ireland’ to someone with a Belfast Telegraph clip board is one thing; voting in the privacy of a polling booth could in many cases be a different matter. There’s also the fact that, even if it were to be defeated, a referendum would force politicians and people to examine what they mean by Irish unity and what they mean by union with Britain. What are the pluses, what the minuses in each case? So far, it’s been mainly flag-waving and sloganizing. A referendum, I’d hope, would get people to think about the position they support on the constitutional question and why they hold that position. Socrates believed that an unexamined life is not worth living. Equally, an unexamined unionist or republican position is not worth holding. 

Ian Óg on 'Question Time'

It’s important not to let a book’s cover put you off  but Ian Óg Paisley has a way of sitting in a chair that I find...peculiar. It involves hooking one arm around the back of his chair and positioning the rest of him in a forward-thrusting way. Lolling, you might say. Odd. Either he has a bad back or as one of the psychiatrists said to the other after five minutes with Basil Fawlty: “There’s enough there for a whole conference”.

The BBC’s Question Time was  from Belfast Thursday last and Ian Óg was on the panel so I had a chance to study his seating posture of choice. And to listen to his views on, among other things, gay marriage. He prefaced his judgement by explaining that he’d no doubt be demonised, castigated, told he was homophobic and a bigot and maybe a few other things, simply because he had the view that marriage was an institution for a man and a woman only. At that point he had my sympathy.  It is true that if you don’t take the liberal line on this subject (and many others) you’re opening yourself up to a barrage of abuse. I was at the Nolan Show  on Wednesday night and Ian Óg’s ex-colleague, Jim Allister, suffered just that fate. So much so that Jim Allister came out looking logical and rational, whereas the gays involved came out sounding shrill.

But then, back at Question Time,  David Dimbleby kind of ruined it  for Ian Óg by quoting some of the things he had said in the past about gays and what they got up to and how he felt about it.  In no time it began to look as though the man sitting beside him, Peter Tatchell, along with quite a few audience members might have had some grounds for castigating him. In fact, things got so hot and heavy, it seemed at one point that Ian Óg was issuing an implicit challenge to one audience member to step outside, just you and me, mate. Thinking back, he can’t possibly have said that, but he definitely did end his remarks to the audience member with the word “mate”,  and you didn’t need to see the look on his face to know  he wasn’t using the word in a friendly, let alone marital way: more in a “You talkin’ to me, mate?” sort of way. 

Or maybe that was just me. If you saw the programme you may have interpreted it differently.  Thing is, I’m grateful to Ian Óg - he gave me a half-hour of his time about a year ago with an interview for my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?, and I'm grateful for that. Though as I remember, he did sit in that funny way then too.  Must be a bad back. Mustn’t it?

So - are you Irish or what?

I recently watched The History Boys on TV. It’s a fascinating play, set in a 1980s Sheffield grammar school, raising questions about history, education, sexual abuse and more, all in that laconic and sometimes hilarious style that Alan Bennett has perfected. Bennett is part of a gritty, provincial-England tradition of writing that I’ve always enjoyed. I got hooked with  Saturday Night and Sunday Morning back in the 1960s and I’m still an addict. 

Last Thursday I was part of a panel in Toomebridge, discussing what being Irish involves;  as I watched The History Boys I began to wonder if my addiction to this strand of British fiction made me in some way British. Memories of playing cowboys and Indians in the Christian Brothers’ Primary School yard followed, and how later as teenagers in St Columb’s College in Derry we soaked in the rock and roll of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Gene Pitney and the rest. Maybe those experiences had made me a bit American?

It’s a question of how we see the outside world and respond to it.  I’m convinced my life would have been the poorer if I hadn’t read Stan Barstow, Alan Sillitoe and the likes of  Alan Bennett. And I’m equally sure the music of Elvis and Co provided consolation for my ricocheting hormones back in the late 1950s. 

But did those influences make me less Irish? Some would say yes,  it’s all part of the ‘soft power’ that empires use. Power over weaker nations doesn’t have to come from the barrel of a gun  -  the more subtle weapon of culture in the widest sense of that word does the job as well or better. When you’ve taught  the world to sing in perfect har-mon-ee that they love Coca Cola, you’ve gone some way to making them into mini-Americans. British and American music, fashion, movies, TV shows:  you could see them as, um,  chipping away at your Irishness. 

Yet oddly enough, it was spending several years living in North America that switched me on to the unique beauty of things Irish: the landscape, the music and literature, the verve and passion of the Irish people.  A case, I suppose, of  learning to appreciate something because it’s been removed from your everyday experience.

So what is it to be Irish?  Is it to create a shield between ourselves and outside influences?  That’s the thinking behind the famous GAA ban on soccer or other ‘foreign’ games, and we know now it didn’t work.   Is it to be born in Ireland? Uh-uh. Michael McDowell changed that one when he was Minister for Justice in the south. Besides, three of my four children were born in Canada and now live in England. If you’re thinking of telling them they’re not Irish, let me know so I can be somewhere else.

Maybe it comes down to identification with a country. Here in the north, we have the strange situation that a large part of the population have in the past resisted identifying with things Irish, even though what they claim as a key part of their culture is represented in the Irish national flag. Until we find ways to move that sense of Irish identity from the symbolism of the flag to an on-the-ground reality, talk of Irish unity will remain empty verbiage.

Yes I know - there was a time when these things all seemed so much simpler.  But simple thinking crumbles in the face of complex reality.  National identification doesn’t come from closing down the hatches and telling the world to go away.  It comes from opening our minds to the ways in which other cultures may enrich us.  When we can do that without tumbling into West Britishness or Americanization, we’ll have become a balanced and mature people.