| Dia daoibh. Ta an-athas orm a bheith anseo anocht. I think
we were originally supposed to be in the Dairy Farm Library, and I hope nobody in here is
a library worker. I'm a member of the library and I think it's terrific but I haven't been
up in a while and I have a few testy letters lying on the telephone table in the hall to
prove it. And if you're the person who's put a request in for 'The Heart is a Lonely
Hunter', then I'm sorry and I'm leaving it back later this week.
If you'll bear with me for a couple of minutes, I'd like to start with a bit of a
personal story and the reason for that is that it has coloured and shaped a lot of my
present perceptions and attitudes towards this profession.
My sister Julie was 14 when she was killed by a British Army plastic bullet in 1981. I
was a journalism student at the time. As you can imagine, my mother took it hard - it's
not a natural thing for your youngest child to go before you do.
But what made it a thousand times harder for her was to watch as the sights of the
media - local and British - were turned on her dead child. The next day's Belfast
Telegraph quoted army sources to the effect that a full-scale riot was in progress at the
time. I should add that the inquest later found that the area was quiet at the time and
that Julie was an innocent victim.
That wasn't enough for the Telegraph, however. The same report also helpfully pointed
out that it was believed that she was from a leading republican family.
Most of the hate mail my mother received was of the "wee republican rioters
deserve all they get" kind. My mother telephoned the Telegraph and asked to speak to
the editor, but she couldn't get through. She jumped in a black taxi and went to the
Telegraph offices in Royal Avenue. She told the receptionist that she wanted to speak to
the editor and was going to sit there until he came down or the office closed. The editor
didn't appear, the office closed and my mother went home.
The media, electronic and printed, British and Irish, widely reported the non-existent
riot and then moved on. The Sunday Times went one better, though. Chris Ryder, a
well-known local journalist, reported that doctors had found that the dead child had an
abnormally thin skull and that the plastic bullet impact wouldn't have killed a normal
child.
This came as news to us. Already traumatised by the murder of her child, the reporting
of it and the hate mail that it brought, my mother retreated into an armchair in the
corner of the living room under a large framed picture of Julie and quietly knitted until
she died too.
She never had the heart to call the hospital, so I did. Needless to say, Chris Ryder's
story was complete nonsense, but as a Sunday Times journalist, he had done his job well.
Individual members of this community, like Julie, frequently fall victim. But an entire
community, too, can be vilified. The words ‘West Belfast’ suggest many things to
people outside this community. When they think of West Belfast, they're more likely to
think of violence and extremism. Not in a million years would they think of the kind of
positive, empowering things going on all around us in festival week, for instance.
That negative image of West Belfast was first planted in the mid- and late-70s, when
large numbers of displaced and unsettled nationalists flocked westwards, making this one
of the biggest population centres in Ireland, if not in Europe. No-go areas patrolled by
armed IRA men; daily and nightly riots and shootings and bombings all over its roads and
streets; increasing numbers of nationalist and republican politicians being returned by
increasing numbers of voters. It's not surprising to me that visiting English journalists
preferred to sit at the bar in the Europa and write what they wrote.
But things are changing for the better and not just because we're on the verge of
peace. They're changing because people like the West Belfast Festival Committee are not
only telling different stories, but making different stories too. The negativism is not
going to stop overnight, though.
This year the St Patrick's Day Parade went into Belfast City centre. A massive crowd of
around 40-60,000 thronged into the streets around the city hall, previously the bastion of
Ian Paisley-led loyalist gatherings. Bands played, people laughed and danced. Face-painted
children in their St Patrick's finest watched street entertainers from their father's
shoulders. It was a fantastic day. I was so proud to be there with my own daughter on my
shoulders in her green and white ribbons.
Writing in The Scotsman about the parade, Malachi O'Doherty saw it all differently. I
should point out that Malachi used to live in Riverdale – I live in Riverdale now.
There the similarity ends. "Much of Belfast did not know where to look when the
Catholics came to town," he wrote. "Just as the office workers were coming out
to do their lunchtime shopping in Boots and Marks & Spencers, into the city filed this
ragtag parade of the poor... these people are physically different from the people with
jobs and good clothes. They are paler and skinnier and they talk in coarser accents that
professional people lose."
Sadly, the Scotsman picture editor hadn't consulted with Malachi and illustrated the
piece with a lovely, vibrant, full-colour picture totally devoid of the pasty-faced,
malnourished troglodytes who ruined Malachi's day. Far from it: the people in the picture
were the people I spent the day with: smiling and laughing; old and young; turned out in
their spring best and, well... beautiful. Perhaps if the picture editor had consulted
Malachi, he would have been able to supply an illustration which suited his thesis better:
the rickets ward in the RVH circa 1927, for instance. It's clear that while the bad old
press days haven't gone away for good, they don't come as frequently. We have ourselves to
thank for that.
Given my early experiences of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Times, I first saw
my career developing a very long way away indeed. Then the Andytown News stepped in.
Being editor of the Andytown News isn't like being the editor of the Lurgan Mail or the
Mourne Observer. The Andytown News punches way above its weight. We're putting two local
weekly newspapers out with considerably less resources than other newspapers with perhaps
a third of our circulation - and yet we find ourselves quoted in Whitehouse briefing
papers; discussed in the House of Commons; referred back to as some sort of ultra-reliable
barometer of nationalist opinion in lengthy learned pieces in what we please to call the
quality press. If West Belfast really is the cockpit of the North, the Andytown News has
become its instrument panel. Which is why we get asked on the TV and radio quite a bit...
Once upon a time, I was quite keen and did the Barry Cowan rubber chicken circuit with
some enthusiasm. I stopped for a couple of reasons: first, half the time the BBC neglects
to pay you and the money isn't great anyway. Secondly, I became disenchanted because of
the fact that despite my best efforts (and admittedly I'm no Dan Rather) and those of
others, BBC Northern Ireland continues to treat this community like some recently
discovered tribe in Papua New Guinea.
When the West Belfast Festival was in its infancy, I agreed to go on Good Morning
Ulster to talk about the event. Deluded fool that I was, I fully expected to be quizzed
about who was headlining the last-night concert, or what artistic and cultural gems lay in
store for festival goers. The presenters opening gambit was to remind listeners that the
festival was also an internment commemoration, neglecting to add that it was designed to
take people away from the exhausting and depressing ritual of internment night rioting and
fighting. Next I was asked why the music was played so loud when it was obviously
alienating unionists and Protestants all over the city.
When I was asked how the festival proposed to attract members of the unionist
community, when so much of its content had a green or nationalist tinge, I said that those
who considered Irish people celebrating Irish culture in Ireland alienating would have to
answer that question for themselves and I was going on to speculate whether the BBC
thought the Notting Hill Carnival would be more fun if there were less of those damn
darkies and they turned that awful jungle music down, when I was cut short for the weather
and traffic update.
Well, you might say, that was a wee while ago. But while driving to work the other
morning, I heard festival director Caitriona Ruane come on the same programme to find
herself subjected to what was essentially the same interview. After three or four minutes
of unrelenting hostility, Caitriona protested that she was hoping to come on and talk
about the many wonderful events taking place in festival week. "Well now's your
chance, go ahead," came the reply. The listeners were left to add for themselves,
"if you must..."
Radio Ulster asked me on to discuss the funeral of INLA leader Gino Gallagher, which
was taking place just two minutes away from the Andersonstown News office. On my way into
work that morning, I counted 72 RUC Landrovers on the footpaths on the Glen Road, and I
think that was one of the first times that the RUC donned the new black, space-age riot
suits that they now favour. The operation was designed to stop six men in dark glasses,
white shirts and black ties from carrying the coffin. Not surprisingly, something of a
standoff had developed as relatives and mourners pleaded with the RUC to back off and the
RUC refused.
"Well, Robin, any sign of paramilitary activity there?" I knew what the
presenter meant. I knew the shorthand that he meant the six blokes with hankies over their
faces and the starry plough pins in their berets, but I couldn't resist it. "Yes
indeed," I said, "an awful lot in fact" and went on to tell him how many
Landrovers there were and how hundreds of latter-day Robocops had brought the area to a
standstill. I could sense the presenter's discomfort down the phone. "Yes," he
replied, "but they're only there doing their job. How about the INLA? Have they
turned up yet?
I learned later there had been a number of complaints from listeners who thought I was
a BBC reporter on the scene instead of an Andytown News hack looking out his window. I
marked that one down as a small victory. Later, the NUJ's Belfast branch received an
official complaint from an old sparring partner of mine who shall remain nameless. I got a
call from the Union, whose only dealings with me up to then - and since - have been via
direct debit subs at the end of every month. The guy on the end of the line coughed and
said, ah, he had received an angry call from a veteran union man and would I like to
explain myself. I offered to retire to the dark room with a bottle of whiskey and a
revolver, but the official was big enough to say that wouldn't be necessary. So I told him
to catch himself on and hung up. I've still got my press card by the way.
So as to avoid charges of parochialism, I should point out that it's not just the West
Belfast community which gets BBC Norn Iron treatment. Many of you may recall an incident
at the Derrynahirk Inn in Lurgan a while back, when punters were subjected to a terrifying
ordeal at the hands of heavily armed and masked RUC undercover unit in boiler suits who
opened up, burst into the bar and ordered customers on to the ground.
Not surprisingly, some of those customers are still having difficulty coming to terms
with their ordeal and a recent report by a team of respected psychologists revealed the
depth of the trauma suffered by those men and women present - all of whom thought they
were in the middle of Greysteel Mark Two. On the TV, Newsline 6.30 did a piece on the
report which was furnished with interviews with a couple of the psychiatrists involved in
compiling the report and clips from a reconstruction of the event filmed some time
previously for a Spotlight piece on the incident. And what do you think the BBC newsroom
finished their report with? A probing with Ronnie Flannagan perhaps? A scathing response
from Amnesty International? Well, no... they brought on an old soldier, a white-whiskered
Tommy who had seen action in Burma and the Malay Peninsula. In my day, he sneered, you
just got on with it. You straightened your spine, threw back your shoulders and got stuck
into the other lot. We'd no time for this girlie psychiatrist rubbish.
And that was the end of the report. I laughed out loud at the time, but after the
laughter subsided, I realised what I had just witnessed. Somebody at Ormeau Avenue had
decided that because those people receiving psychiatric care after their horrifying
experiences were nationalists, the report needed some 'balance'. These weren't suffering
human beings; these weren't damaged men and women; these were nationalists; these were
Catholics, Let's get somebody to put the other side... the other side to what, I ask
myself. The other side to mental illness? The other side to broken minds?
For the BBC, there always has to be another side. There has to be another side to the
West Belfast Festival. There even has to be another side to injustice. And in that respect
their journalism does as much to foster and promote division as those about whom they
write and speak.
For the press, too, there has to be another side, another story. There are many stories
to be told about every human being - there were many stories to be told about my sister
who knew she wanted to work with children in a nursery when she grew up even though she
was a child herself. That story never got told. What got told was the other story, the
other side: that she was a nationalist in a riot who died because she had something wrong
with her head.
If there is another side, and if that’s it, then I’m glad I’m on the
side of the Andytown News.
Go raibh maith agaibh and enjoy the rest of the night and the festival. |