Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Dublin Letter: Box ColonyAuthor(s): Dennis KennedySource: Fortnight, No. 62 (May 21, 1973), p. 8Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25544583 .

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8 MONDAY, 21st MAY, 1973

BOX COLONY Dennis Kennedy

Of all the exciting things to happen in

his epoch of the National Coalition, none

probably means as much to the plain

people of Republican Ireland as Dr.

Conor Cruise O'Brien's plans to bring the

delights of UTV and BBC within the reach of all.

Beside this, the Presidential election, Erskine Childer's gold and royal blue coa/b. and his equally majestic concept of

th Presidency, Dr. FitzGerald's

irrepressible pursuit of a foreign policy, Mr. Ryan's (partial) emancipation of

women at a stroke, the abolition of

compulsory Irish for exams, even the

anticipated Budget, mean little. If there is one thing fighting Cork is ready to. fight for at the moment, it is Match of the Day.

People along the Soth's East coast, and

: parts near the Border have for long

i .; ved both BBC and UTV?sometimes

i V Harlech, not Ulster. They do this either by a high aerial, or by piped TV.

Good multi-channel reception now comes

to many homes in Dublin and elsewhere b* oiped systems. But it does not go to

C v or Limerick or Waterford, and

ti eie is a hold-up on the commercial

provision of piped systems. RTE, while fighting a losing battle to

retain viewers who have the choice, has

gone into the business of giving them the choice and is operating its own piped-TV company. The further you go South and

West, however, the greater the technical

proM?ms involved. Meanwhile the plain pe ^?e are crying discrimination and

deprivation. If Dublin can have British

television^ why cannot the rest of the

country? Why does Dublin have all the

advantages. (The question of whether

three TV channels constitute an advantage over one, or simply multiply the felony by three is not discussed. Even the

sophisticated Dr. O'Brien no longer mentions the threat to Irish society of a

tide of Anglo-American slush. Not that

either UTV or BBC could compete with

present RTE programmes in this respect.) The piping in to all Ireland of BBC and

UTV would, in fact, present RTE

programmers with some problems, as they

would presumably have to look elsewhere for a lot of their stock imported material.

However, Dr. O'Brien may well be

making the best of the inevitable. If

people all over the Republic are going, sooner or later, to have access to British

stations, then the situation should be

recognised, and RTE brought into some

agreement with its competitors. There is

the added bonus of talk of "freedom of the air" in Ireland, and of a drawing together of North and South. (Given the

great numbers of viewers in the Republic who watch News at Ten, or the BBC every

night for their information on the North, it

might be worth studying to what extent this fact has helped influence Southern attitudes to violence in the North, and the

general total lack of sympathy, particularly in the Dublin area.)

*****

Meanwhile the Presidential campaign rolls towards polling day, May 30th, with the main issues being Mr. Childers'

inability to speak Irish, and the same

gentleman's courtly view of the office he is

seeking. Both candidates promise to be

more active than the incumbent?they could hardly be otherwise. But Mr.

Childers began his campaign with

something more in the nature of a promise to be a one-man Opposition.

He would, he said, gather about him a

group of men to produce ideas for the Ireland of the future. (When he referred to this as a "think-tank", the purists began to doubt his English as well as his Irish.)

He would also lend the weight of the office to support various worthwhile social

organisations and campaigners. One factor that has not been an issue at

all is Mr. Childers' religion. He is a

Protestant, or to be more precise, an

Anglican. But there is nothing "Protestant" about Mr. Childers' politics.

He is an adamant opponent of the secular

state, of the permissive, even the liberal

society. He has often expressed the view

that Irish society, whatever its defects, is

superior to any other around.

At the launching of his campaign one

aspect of the Presidency, as he saw it, was

its identification with religious organisations. He promised a major effort

to prevent cynicism on the one hand, or

over-conservatism on the other,

"destroying the great and beneficient

influence of the Churches and religious organisations."

His opponent and a decade his junior, Mr. Tom O'Higgins, is no Godless

Socialist, but an affable, fatherly Fine Gael politician he absorbed a deal of liberalism from his younger colleagues in

and around the party, and would

undoubtedly have had no trouble sitting in the National Coalition Cabinet with

Labour. (At one point Labour men were

saying they would never accept Liam

Cosgrave as head of a Coalition, but

would settle for O'Higgins.)

PLANNING GONE MAD Ron Wiener

While the wider political issues are of

great importance to most of the parties

contesting the forthcoming elections, it

would be tragic if social issues were not

also to the forefront. If Northern Ireland

is not to remain significantly worse off in

many social fields than other parts of

Britain, politicians must be prepared to

examine in depth the proposals and

actions of civil servants in fields such as

planning. With the assistance of the bombing

campaign, the redevelopment of Belfast

continues to move on. If the present plans

are not altered, Belfast by 1980 is likely to have earned the distinction of being one of

the most unpleasant cities in Britain. It

will have a road and motorway system

which was first thought of in 1946 and was out of date by 1960. In addition unless the standard of housing that the Executive produces for Belfast is a radical

improvement on that of the Trust and the

Corporation, much of the inner city will be a vast slum.

What has gone wrong in Belfast? How is it that in city after city across the water,

road transport solutions have ended up in

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