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Sidelines: Stemming the TideSource: Fortnight, No. 17 (May 14, 1971), pp. 12-13Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25543505 .

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Yo FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1971

'middle-class intelligent Protestant circles' for their information.

But how reliable is it? The sensational story and headline last

August 7th of a "Reign of Terror in Coalisland" ? Catholic mobs

allegedly roaming the streets in the town centre to "frighten the lives" out of Protestants in a "Republican takeover' ? was apparently based on a phone call from "A leading local Unionist," included no picture nor any real evidence either then or since and was denied immediate

ly, officially and completely by the

police. The Coalisland story shocked even some trusty Newsletter readers into partial disbelief and there were mutters about referring the matter to the Press Council.

The Newsletter's editor. Cowan

Watson, withdrew no part of the

story, but declared in print on

August 8th that "the truth can be elusive in these troubled times." Indeed it can.

The two papers stand back to

back at the great politico-religious divide. But where the Newsletter seems to equate 'Roman' Catholic ism with every kind of political aberrance (and would seem to be

trying hard to ignore the Alliance

Party, as a bunch of unionist

heretics), it's hard to find a sign of anti-Protestant bias as such in the Irish News. The Irish News is just solidly pro-Catholic, rather than anti-anything. It has given sympathetic notice on the front page to moderate Unionist

murmurs, such as they are and is cautiously approving of the

Alliance despite the party's firm constitutional line. It pillories the right-wing of the Unionist party rather than the party as a whole.

, Both papers are products of the

system. Both papers still feed upon it. It's a truism that a community gets not only the Press it deserves but also the Press it wants; and it would be asking far too much to look to Northern Ireland's news

papers for solutions to Northern Ireland's problems. Nor is it

possible to read and compare the Irish News and the Newletter and arrive at any kind of truth. They do not balance, let alone cancel each other out; you can't add them

up and divide by two. But, leaving aside the degree and-or quality of their bias, it is their sheer pig headed consistency and consistent

pig-headedness, that is so striking and so depressing. There can be

nothing like it anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

This Ulster

Compiled by Eugene McEldowney

An .American street preacher

struggling under the v eight of a

200 pounds cross ran into

| some trouble when he tried to do

f a tour of Belfast's peace-line last

{ week.

I First of all he was picked up by

j the army and bundled into a jeep.

! After being, released he was

j surrounded by a crowd of children | and a man told him to, take his

cross home as Belfast had enough

anc| didnt need any more.

Belfast Telegraph, May 7

There would appear to be a

j ventiloquist on the staff of Armagh

j City Hall. At a recent meeting a

j complaint was made about the

! treatment meted out to a lady who

i had gone to the hall to make an

; enquiry., The following remarks

1 were made.

\ "Mr. R. B. hadn't even the

decency to go to the window to

j speak to her. Instead he hail

| spoken to her from around the

corner in a manner which, to say the least was unbecoming an

official."

Armagh Guardian April 8th.

****

And news of a contortionist in

Lame, "when Constable Cairns drew nearer Mc ? * ?

adopted a

hostile manner and hid a glass cutter behind his back which he then threw onto the street."

East Antrim Times April 29th.

In order to avoid paying for a

meal he had just consumed in a

Lisburn restaurant, a Derriaghy man climbed out the toilet window, scaled a 20 ft drainpipe, made his

way across a roof top, dropped

through a skylight and emerged from an office block further up the street.

Threatening him with prison if he ever appeared again, the magistrate added that he wasn't sure if prison could hold him

Ulster Star May 1st.

SIDELINES

Stemming

the Tide On top of everything else we

are now apparently threatened by a "rising tide of immorality, obscenity, and filth which threa tens to drown the entire commu

nity in its slimy waters." Thus Mr. John Carron in introducing his Indecent Publications Bill last week at Stormont. For our

money the threat is of a rather different kind, but it is inter

esting to note that Mr. Carron

managed to secure the support of Rev. Paisley on the general principle of stemming the tide, if not on the details of the Bill which proposes a new indepen dent censorship board. If only the two sides of the religious barrier could get together more often on matters like this they might begin to see that they have more in common than their mutual distinct and suspicion. Another

thing they could campaign togeth er about is the evil of ecumen ism. If they forbid divorce by law in the South, why not a Bill

against Church unity here in the North?

* * * Things were simpler before the

reforms. It wasn't so long ago that all goings on were automati

cally attributed to the IRA without a second thought. Now, though the Prime Minister is

hanging on to the myth of the one-sided bombing campaign for dear life, the RUC is being a bit

more careful. So careful that you have to be a bit of a

professional interpreter to read between the lines, like the old

style Kremlinologists gauging the current line up of personalities from the position on the plat form, or the particular form of address in Pravda. Last week's

explosion at McKeague's shop iirst of all brought the astonish

ing statement that there was no sectarian element involved. As an attack on a leading right winger could scarcely be non-political too,

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FORTNIGHT 13 .-:

the sophisticated reader imme

diately assumed that it was the Prods that had done it. This

interpretation was strengthened by the reports that the three

men held overnight were in fact Protestants. The way was open for speculation on whether it was an attempt to lay the blame on the IRA, or an internal right

wing feud. Then came the release of the detainees and a

gradual withdrawal by the RUC from their confident statements

implying that they knew exactly who was behind it all. Now we have the statement that it as all a "mistake", that "they" thought both McKeague and his mother were away. The implication is that this made it safer to blow the place up. Does that mean that the suspicion shifts back to the Prods again? One is only

pulled back from the joys of the interpretation game by the sick

ening thought that whatever

happened there is one more

totally unnecessary victimi The Prime Minister has at least got something right in adopting the "mad bomber" as his phrase for the week.

* * *

Tory Ministers who use unchecked, information from Unionist Ministers, run a grave risk of discrediting themselves. Lord Balniel, Minister of State for Defence, repeated in parrot fashion Mr. Faulkner's placebo. It runs like this ? the bombing outrages are a good sign, because

they prove that the IRA has lost influence in the streets. The rats are on the run. The gangsters

will be licked. There is little or nothing in

this theory. The top Security officers whose job it is to run the rats to earth have had their homes blown up, and their forensic laboratory damaged. As for street influence, it only requires a few domiciliary searches in Lower Falls or

Ballymurphy to show that Re

publican leadership is intact. Mr. Faulkner and Lord Balniel

let each other down in a more

serious matter ? and our Press has studiously avoided underlin

ing their gaffes. Asked by Mr. Fitt in Stormont if he would agree

? (a 'Loyalist' pub and a

priest's house having gone up the

night before) ? that there were

two factions at work, Mr. Faulkner said 'NO.' His secret information was to the effect that there was only one extremist

group active, and that it was

Republican. The very next day, Lord

Balniel was asked the same

question. Perhaps unaware of Faulkner's equivocation, he repl ied that there were certainty two factions at work ?

as, indeed, is obvious to anyone.

The seriousness of this is that

Faulkner, even with the Province in extremis and unable to protect its own police officers, is still

playing the sectarian game and

blaming everything on the Cath olics. We can only hope that his views and policies do not pervert the Police from an objective and

_I

scientific pursuit of the criminals, whomsoever they may be.

* * * The following true story mig^it

add a little fuel to the welcome and overdue fires of Womens' Liberation. A certain Belfast doctor was examining a young

wife who was pregnant for the

eleventh time. Asked when she

had her last period, she replied that she had never had one! She had been married, she said, before her periods began, and she had been pregnant, with only the briefest of intermissions, since that day.

The doctor did not tell me her religion, and it is a question

which no sensible Ulsterman should ever again ask. Whether the Pope or Paisley is to blame is anybody's guess, for, as the

Census will show, there is not a

button of difference between

breeding rates on Falls and

Shankill.

A child's guide to

Ulster politicians

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