Time for the Therapist
by Meadbh Gallagher
Mary Nelis has written before on this page about the
things you don't get to read about if you rely for your
coverage of things political on the mainstream press.
This week, as unionists pumped up the volume on their
determined and deliberate efforts to claim that the
IRA is responsible for every bomb blast in town, it was
remarkable that coverage of the car bomb in Dromad,
County Louth received very little attention at all.
This is the second such car bomb sent by the Loyalist
Volunteer Force south of the border in the past year.
You'll remember the one in Drogheda last September,
following the killing of drug dealer Patrick Farrell.
Dromad was the stuff that usually brings a flurry of
media activity and a good few column inches of witness
accounts and ritual condemnations. In the early hours
of Monday morning, thousands of people were evacuated
from their homes and from two nearby discos and a
hotel. When two controlled explosions rendered it
harmless after 8am, the Gardai said it was a crude
device but that it contained commercial explosives and
was capable of causing serious damage and possible
injury.
Now as bombs go, this wasn't a biggie, but you'd
imagine that the fact that it was placed outside a
police station south of the border would have increased
its significance on the media merit scales. Not a hope
of it. Not a whiff of it either in the international
press. No coverage, no comment.
Didn't happen really I suppose. The Gardai and the
people of Dromad were deluding themselves. It was a
mirage, a foggy dew, a dream - at best a nightmare that
you wouldn't even remember when you woke up.
d then David Trimble takes time out to remind his
consorts in the LVF that they shouldn't really be doing
that kind of thing anyway. Not just `cause they
shouldn't, you understand, but for other reasons, you
see. They shouldn't be doing it because they'd be mad
to be bombing at this moment in time, you see, because
with all the heat on the RA over the Moira and
Portadown bombs, what use would it be to loyalists to
be blamed for bombs too?
Sharp operator, that Trimble. He leads his troopers up
and down the hill but he can't bring himself to stand
at the top of it and ``talk to terrorists''.
With the peace process crumbing all around him, he
stands and grins to the cameras. As each twitch of his
body communicates the panic he does not want to show,
he denies it all the more. And all the time he is
looking over his shoulder as he goes. What a job. Poor
man.
Some one should tell him the snipper's twitch is what
soldiers should have. Not politicians. Not ``the leader
of the main Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.'' Not
the leader of ``the greater number'' of people. Not
someone looking ahead.
With all the resources at their disposal, etcetera,
cannot the British establishment send David to a
shrink? Can they not at least try to befriend him, to
be genuine and tell him the truth?
Can they not bring him to Barbados? Can they not send
John Taylor to the Welsh valleys and Ken Maginnis to
the Cayman's? Therapy trips for all..
It's not reconvened talks that's needed, it's
reconstructed unionists.The LVF car bomb at Dromad
won't even be remembered next week. But violence and
the threat of violence will remain the habit of
loyalism for as long as loyalists have to defend their
state.
d their state is not Britain. And Britain should tell
them that.
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