I noted a crazy little instance of revisionism gone out of
control on RTE last week. In a report on the plight of the people
of Montserrat in the Caribbean who may have to evacuate the
island if a volcano continues to erupt a news report referred to
the island's Irish connection. Many of them, the news reader
said, are descended from Irish people who ``emigrated'' there in
the 17th century.
The truth is a little bit harsher. The Irish people who found
themselves on Montserrat were sent there in chains by Cromwell
who banished them into slavery. Not exactly a first class ticket
to fame and fortune.
Isn't is strange that David Shayler, the former MI5 agent who is
spilling the beans on that disreputable organisation was once a
Sunday Times journalist? I thought the career route was the other
way round. First MI5, then a Sunday Times journalist.
You may recall three weeks ago on our Workers in Struggle page,
Neil Forde brought you news of Dave Thompson, the actor for the
children's TV programme Teletubbies who got the sack. It was all
so unfair, Neil said, and showed that ruthless capitalist
practices reached even into the wibbly wobbly world of the
Teletubbies.
But I'm afraid Neil was looking a bit sheepish this week when he
learned that Dave Thompson, far from being a working class hero,
was actually an agent of British imperialism. You see, as soon as
Dave was sacked he took off for a new job in the Falklands -
entertaining the British troops. If you see him in Lisburn or
wherever, tell him Neil wasn't asking.
John Taylor's remark that more people in the Six Counties speak
Chinese than Irish caused understandable offence. It is also
nonsense, particularly given the phenomenal growth in Irish
language schools over the past fifteen years. And now a letter
writer to the Daily Telegraph has taken John's little quip and
run across the border with it. Horace Woolington yesterday wrote:
``Many more people speak Chinese to each other in the Republic
than speak Irish.''
More nonsense, of course, but it made me wonder about a Unionist
fixation with the Chinese community which first came to my notice
a few months ago when Henry Reilly, a Unionist councillor in
Newry and Mourne Council, silenced the chamber during a debate in
which the name of a local Chinese restaurant was mentioned in
passing. ``I'll have you know,'' he said with a smile, ``all the
Chinese are good Unionists.'' It was the time of the return of
Hong Kong and I can only take it that poor Henry got the wrong
end of the political stick.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)