Republican News · Thursday 1 August 2002

British doublespeak

BY FERN LANE

While the loyalist campaign was in full flow last week, the British government considered the IRA cessation. On the matter of sectarian violence, John Reid claimed during his Commons statement last Wednesday that British forces have been sent in to, in his words, dominate interface areas to stop the violence. He seemed blissfully unaware that his claim was being contradicted almost as he spoke, not only by the experience of the Catholic residents of those areas, but by the RUC/PSNI itself. Its spokesmen (and they are always men) insouciantly claim - on the rare occasions that attacks on Catholics make it into the news - that the force does not have the manpower to tackle the loyalist mobs who invade Catholic areas on an almost nightly basis.

But despite the evidence to the contrary, the RUC and the British government continue to vigorously promote the tit-for-tat theory; the myth that loyalist violence is, by definition, a reaction to republican violence and of equal magnitude. It is a neverending source of astonishment and anger to nationalists that the media colludes with the manifest nonsense that sectarian violence is perpetrated equally by both sides. As Liz Curtis observed some years ago in "Ireland: The Propaganda War", the defining characteristic of mainstream media reporting from the Six Counties has not been censorship, but self-censorship on the part of journalists. It seems that the fear of being labeled, or rather smeared, as a nationalist sympathiser still overrides the imperative to tell the whole story.

The BBC's Newsnight, for example, ran a piece on north Belfast last week. It featured a woman from the loyalist part of Ardoyne who explained in a soft and reasonable voice how, sadly, she had never ventured to the intersection at the end of her street because of her fear of violence at the hands of Catholic residents on the other side. Many residents of Ardoyne, Catholic and Protestant, will have recognised her as a spokeswoman for the Glenbryn Holy Cross protestors; those men and women who psychologically tortured and physically threatened small children - and who scandalously encouraged their own children to take part in the abuse - as they made their way to school, for the simple reason that they could not stomach the sight of Catholics on their street. Did Newsnight mention the nice lady's job as defender of a sectarian mob? Of course not.

Much of the media has also slavishly followed the UDA line that the murder of Gerard Lawlor was purely a response to the shooting of a Protestant teenager some hours earlier. None thought to investigate the fact that this was one of five incidents on that night in which loyalists attempted to randomly kill Catholics. It was not an entirely spontaneous response, merely, in the UDA‚s terms, a successful one. Five murder gangs, five stolen vehicles and five weapons require a degree of organisation which takes longer than a couple of hours. The UDA had been trying for some days to get a 'kill' but in accepting its version of events without challenge - to the extent that its press conference threatening 'retaliation' against Catholics was obligingly aired without comment or question.

The mainstream British media, both television and print, has itself become part of the problem on which it reports, tolerating the overwhelming majority of violent attacks on Catholics by virtue of non-reporting and thus helping to create a culture which facilitates further attacks.

To add insult to the huge level of injury, nationalists and republicans had to watch the thoroughly offensive sight of Tony Blair indulging David Trimble's fear of his own party and engage in the farcical exercise of considering whether the IRA cessation - yes, the IRA cessation - remains intact.

One has ask why this should be, given that Blair has total power, legislative, administrative and military, over the situation. He could quite conceivably call Trimble's bluff, let him resign, and then get to work with all of those who genuinely wish to uphold the Agreement to which they signed their names.

So, given that neither he nor his Secretary of State show any real desire to face down Trimble, what can it be that stops them? The answer must lie, as ever, in ideology. They may well dislike Trimble as an individual, but both share his politics. Both Blair and Reid are on the record as declaring themselves to be unionists.

Neither Blair nor Reid care any more than Trimble, Reg Empey or any other unionist about the plight of Catholics, not just in Belfast but throughout the Six Counties. Actually, they don't really care too much about the conditions in which many working class Protestants live either; they are merely useful fodder in the neverending battle to try and get one over on republicans.

The refusal of these unionists, aided by the willing collusion of the media, to fully acknowledge the systematic persecution of Catholics, is just part of their war.