Touting for respectability
By Eoghan MacCormaic
One night last month, just before the referendums, I watched a
late night TV show which discussed the effects of violence over
the past 30 years.
It was never going to be an easy discussion; the audience was the
families raw with the pain of their own loss, angry victims and
the injured. The victims, of course, were all victims of
non-state violence, bombs and shootings, carried out by either
republican or loyalist groups. There were no relatives from
Bloody Sunday, or plastic bullets, or of trigger-happy British
soldiers present. Facing them, as we were given to believe, sat
the culprits.
Now the culprits were an unusual bunch. In person and by video
link up, we saw two touts, a wannabe and a UVF man; Eamonn
Collins, Martin McGartland, Vincent McKenna and Eddie Kinner
explaining the use of violence. I almost felt sorry for Kinner,
bunched in as he was with the other reprobates., and he looked
uncomfortable.
It was a weird, weird show and it came in the same week as a
widely reported libel case was heard in Dublin and where the
chief witnesses to give `evidence' were Eamonn Collins and Sean
O'Callaghan. Grotesque, unbelievable and bizarre. But not
unprecedented.
Touts are the flavour of the month. Yet just last week Fine Gael
launched a campaign against ticket touts under the unlikely title
Touts Out. I kid you not. Touts Out. Maybe they too are growing
tired of the sight of the species; if they are it's no surprise.
Everywhere you look these days it seems you'll find one. The Pat
Kenny show and other phone-in programmes provide platforms for
these unlikely heroes and the respectability thus gained
percolates out from the educated classes whose finger is never
off the dial to the great unwashed. And the sneak, stoolie,
brussell sprout, grass, is rehabilitated. For once they're happy
to hear that they're going to be `plugged' at 11.00 am.
It's big business. Even a casual stroll through Eason's today is
enough to send an Ordinary Decent Citizen rushing for an alibi.
Where bookshops once presented displays of wine, or gardening, or
science fiction books for the masses Eason's now has the makings
of a shelf specially reserved for informers. Gilmore walks on
Dead Ground, Collins is consumed by Killing Rage, McGartland has
Fifty Dead Men Walking and O'Callaghan has the ever so subtly
titled The Informer. A small library of bare cheek for all who
want to read it awaits book buyers - and apparently this is only
the beginning. The advice from editors seems to be `Whatever you
say, say something' and there is apparently a huge demand for
spiller-thrillers.
The most famous informer book in Ireland is Liam O Flaherty's
`The Informer'. It's a dark, brooding book. The thought of giving
information is a worm eating its way through Gypo Nolan's soul,
and from the minute he betrays his comrade, Frankie McPhillips
his end is in sight. That odium in which anyone giving
information on friends is held, isn't confined to Ireland. When
Mafioso Joe Vallachi broke the code of Omerta and became The
Canary Who Sang back in the mid-seventies, the book recounting
his betrayal, The Vallachi Papers, became a huge best-seller. I
remember reading it, with a fading hope that the book would end
with Joe drinking his cocoa before going to sleep with the
fishes, but alas, no.
Most people would read the books by O'Callaghan and his sort with
the same desire. In Ireland giving information isn't a social
service, it is a blight which marks out innocent families of
selfish people for generations. As John Bruton would say, Touts
Out. Unfortunately they are. Out and about.
But where is the dignity? Surely even informers have some self
respect? Surely some vague and vain hope of reconciliation?
O'Flaherty's Gypo Nolan spent his final days wandering round,
vainly trying to be accepted, and died seeking forgiveness for
his foul deeds. The present breed seem shameless in comparison.
Instead, is it all true, that they were only in it for the greasy
coin, for the fistful of silver and the glint of greed? And that
they wouldn't just betray their mother for money, but they'd
betray themselves too. The Gilmores and O'Callaghans have already
made small fortunes by selling information, now they're trying to
make more.
The bookshelves in Easons are full of books by informers. They
should stay that way.
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