I like the BBC. It performs a quality set of services that the market just couldn’t. The reporting of the end of Operation Banner however, was disgracefully one sided across the BBC. The event was used with impunity by Republicans to lie about the troubles, misrepresent facts, and I did not see anywhere near balance on any of the channels or shows. O’Neill complained to the Jeremy Vine show, and received a quite abrupt reply.
The oft-quoted verse from the book of Proverbs, ‘where there is no vision, the people perish,’ (chapter 29, verse 18) opens a new book by Gerry O’Hanlon, A New Vision for the Catholic Church: A View from Ireland (Columba Press, 2011). That verse could be considered an apt summary of the current state of the [...] read our review »
This is article was first published in Fortnight magazine back in February 2003. Chris Farrington is now a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. Although the circumstances it describes has changed radically and [...] read our review »
Somehow I escaped reading this essential school text, with its story of racism in 1930s American South. Living in Northern Ireland, I draw parallels with sectarianism, with its similar bigotry and prejudice. To Kill a Mockingbird was part of a Unite Against Hate campaign event at Parliament Buildings in Northern Ireland, which I’ve written [...] read our review »
That Republican triumphalist argument in full:
1. We won
2. Brits Out
3. Er
The Unionist response:
1. Democracy beat pyhsical force republicanism and the loyalist perversion it spawned so we all won.
2. Hello?, check the weather forecast. The wiggly line is still here and so are we.
3. That’s it
Come on folks, all this BBC-bashing about biased Operation Banner coverage is a joke.
It’s the first time the Beeb does an objective piece on the role of the Army here and some Unionist elements go crazy.
Just because the establishment is used to hearing its own news from the BBC, and UTV (anybody see the best of ‘Ulster’ thing?!), doesn’t mean things are going to stay that way.
I was in Grantham for most of the day, but I listened to Radio Ulster on the way to the airport until almost 8am. I heard serving and former soldiers being interviewed, in a fair and compassionate manner by Karen Patterson. She asked about their feelings, and indeed went into some detail about PTSD.
Later that night, I watched the BBC 10 o’clock news in England, and again saw Operation Banner covered in a fair and dispassionate manner.
I fail to see how Michael can claim it was one-sided coverage. I accept I did not catch some of the coverage, but the portions I saw and heard fairly represented the British side.
Is there a suggestion that the ‘other side’ are not worthy of expressing their opinion?
Lets not be insulting Miss Fitz.
I watched the coverage on News 24, BBC NI, and I have to say particularly on TalkBack, the bias of balance of commentators, as well as the downright lies that were told almost completely unchallenged by those commentators, was disgraceful.
other side’ are not worthy of expressing their opinion:
The intergrity of republican wish fullfillment masquerading as ‘viewpoint’ is unmatched anywhere. But stacking this up against an agency of the state which is much more constrained and restrained in commentary is hardly ‘balance.’
I saw several instances of ‘bufton-tufton versus the shinner spinner’ on interviews. It made good television but poor truth. In my viewing of the reports there was very little evidence of the voice of Protestants along the border who relied on the army literally as a bulwark against ethnic cleansing by republican terrorists.
Didn’t see much of the coverage you speak of just what was on C4 News and newsnight. What lies are you specifically referring to about the troubles?
As far as most ationalists are concerned, the troubles began when civil rights marches were held across the North against corrupt, oppressive illegalities like gerrymandering etc. The Unionists’ response, as I understand it (I’m from the South so I’m sure I’ll get some unionist ‘version’ in response) was to burn people out of their homes and kill nationalists in the street. Then you had Bloody Sunday, which cemented the BA’s motives in NI for most if not all nationalists.
All whataboutery aside, is this not the cause of all the bother? As someone recently said to me, if the Catholics in Northern Ireland were black, the situation in NI would never have been tolerated for as long as it was and would have been sorted out 25/30 years ago.
Republican revisionism has taught you well Wang.
MS
Reporting with a tinge of political expediency should no longer be expected I’m afraid.
I think its important to differentiate between news coverage and opinion programmes.
To say that you were particularly annoyed at the Talkback show is difficult to counter. Talkback is an open mike show for members of the public. If the show is dominated on a particular day, that has less to do with the ‘disgraceful’ BBC coverage than it has to do with other elements of manipulation.
As I said, I listened to Radio Ulster and watched the news in England, and found the BBC coverage to be fair and balanced.
The BBC and UTV have for years had an explicit 32 county agenda which in the former case has been rolled back somewhat because of unionist vigilance in defending our rights.
The coverage of Operation Banner seems to emphasise that this vigilance must be maintained.
Of course we still have a regional UK TV station that covers intricately the news affairs of a foreign nation as if it were local news, reports on foreign sport in regional sports’ programming and delivers foreign weather in regional weather forecasts (even to the extent of including foreign towns on the map). The border was abolished entirely on the weather map before unionists forced a slim line to be reinstated.
prince eoghan et al – the central point of the argument is that on every occasion that the subject was discussed, professional republican politicians were pitched against army personel or journalists.
In this thread the OP was about an offensive song.
None of you have actually adressed these points – your answers have been along the lines of “nana na na na you’re upset so we’re happy”.
mnob
C’mon now! I know the song well, as you and everyone else knows the ‘Brits’ refers to the British war machine. Not as is suggested to those who feel culturally British. A silly allegation!
Since MS and self parody are getting on so well, why shouldn’t we throw rotten fruit and laugh our little hearts out? from the cheap seats of course.
Absolutely, who contributes from the floor or calls into TalkBack isn’t an issue for balance, but who the BBC invite to contribute to an almost panel format for that show are. And on that day, TalkBack was hideously one sided on all counts.
Prince Eoghan – and ‘fenian’ means a member of the irish republican brotherhood – so can we have the billy boys sung on Radio 4 a few times please ?
Still no answer on the makeup of the interviews I note.
“The border was abolished entirely on the weather map before unionists forced a slim line to be reinstated.”
Jesus, the sheer oppression of it all. I’m glad the vigilant are standing up for our birthrights!
mnob
As has been noted here many times. Context!
The makeup should consist of whom then in your opinion? Was it not the IRA and the Brits at war? who else held centre stage?
The BBC is disgraceful. It is infiltrated by Republicans and does not provide the public service it is supposed to. The security forces stood between us and the tyranny of Rome. The watchword should always be Not an inch to the cowards who shoot the guardians of the law in the back.
Of course, the cowards of the IRA and INLA killed more of their own men than did the security forces. Psychopaths are never satiated.
Well done Michael. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
So what exactly is the complaint?
There have been posts about this for days now. You’re angry because the ‘accepted version’ of the history of the troubles in NI, even from the BBC’s point of view, is not the one you’d hoped for, so therefore you attack it as warped and imbalanced? That the British army don’t get portrayed as covering themselves in glory and ride off into the sunset as heroes?
Get over it, people…It’s called history. You continue to propogate your version of events, the rest of the world gets to hear and see what actually happened.
THAT TALK BACK TRANSCRIPT IN FULL:
David Dunseith:
So what about the Brit’s leaving? Are we pleased to see them go or do I just have something big in my pocket? Let’s talk to Kelly Gerry who has lived on Bessbrook heliport in a caravan since 1297? Kelly are you there?
Kelly: I’m here and the Brits aren’t! Sure it’s a lovely day in Ireland for beating prods, I mean swords, into ploughshares! They slaughtered us all with their scouse accents and their foreign ways, like scotch eggs. But although we’re all murdered dead, we’re still here. And I wanted to turn Boruki sanger into a chip shop but the securocrats wouldn’t let me and all my pigs have 5 legs. And who do I sue now for compensation?
David: Thanks Kelly. Let’s go to a nursing home in Cricklewood and speak to Leiutenant General Fenian D’Eath. How do you respond to the fact that you have mutated pigs and caused AIDs?
D’Eath: I can well remember fishing as a young subaltern near the border in the lakes near Meigh, lovely days, then…
David: I’m sorry we’ve lost Gen D’Eath as he’s just died a broken man. Over to our regular commentator Phil Graves who as a decommissioned IRA volunteer with an ology reflects on why catching fish is really a metaphor for shoot-to-kill.
Jesus, the sheer oppression of it all. I’m glad the vigilant are standing up for our birthrights!
You may take the piss, but when this cultural creepage is an official policy designed to sell out Ulster then vigilance is our only defence.
Resist the cultural genocide practised by BBC!
Radio Ulster would have a little more credibility if it didn’t employ Danny Morrison’s wife as a producer.
Watcher
Away and troll somewhere else you buffoon
Michael Shilliday , jeez you really are scraping the barrel with this complaint. Have you listened to and watched and analysed every piece of BBC coverage of the event in the last few eeeks. I doubt it. You clearly expressing a partial view based on an incomplete analysis.
I for one listened to an excellent balanced piece of coverage on Radio 5 live last week with Gerry Kelly and Jeffrey Donalsdon.
The crux of your complaint is that the BBC did not cover and analyse the event as you would have liked.
Have you made a formal complaint to the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
or you just looking for something to say on Slugger and this is the best you could do?
Watcher,
There has been a lot of Southern accents on display in washing powder adverts lately. You may be on to something.
I saw the thread yesterday about the complaint by AARSE so I checked out their website, which had threads about which advert mums they would ‘do’. Charming.
I thought some of the coverage was a bit obvious, but much of it fair and reasonable. I didn’t listen to Talkback, but I’ve listened to it in the past and it does tend to attract the more ranting listener.
Michael – history will distort your view, just as it will many republicans’ views. History is collective. We all know the old cliche about three sides to the story – one side, the other side and the truth. You may diagree with others’ views, but to call them lies is ungracious.
Resist the cultural genocide practised by BBC!
The BBC is disgraceful. It is infiltrated by Republicans and does not provide the public service it is supposed to. The security forces stood between us and the tyranny of Rome.
lol does wee ian know you’ve taken his diary and are printing excerpts on slugger
i really cant understand some of you republicans,
“oooo we got the brits out! victory for us!”
this is such crap! if anything you kept them here 30 years longer than they should have been!
and itsnt it strange that it was the IRA to lower the guns and call a ceasefire before they left! hmm, doesnt sound like a victory to me!
it was by a pen and not a gun that got the british army top leave, and they are still here, what ever happened to brits out, no stormont, united ireland! Shinn Fein has went against everyhting they stood for!
Hunger strikers would be turning in thier gave!
But thank God that the Shinners finalyl realised SDLP were right all along, to bad you cant turn back 100s of innocent deaths!
“….so can we have the billy boys sung on Radio 4 a few times please ?”.
No, Mnob, you most certainly cannot. Gangsta Rap is as Mozart compared to that shit and no one wants it, thank you very much.
But a rebel song is just dandy?
**As far as most ationalists are concerned, the troubles began when civil rights marches were held across the North against corrupt, oppressive illegalities like gerrymandering etc. The Unionists’ response, as I understand it (I’m from the South so I’m sure I’ll get some unionist ‘version’ in response) was to burn people out of their homes and kill nationalists in the street. Then you had Bloody Sunday, which cemented the BA’s motives in NI for most if not all nationalists.**
OK allow me.
The Civil Rights Movement achieved all their demands by November 1968, this is a fact (the only exception being repeal of the Special Powers Act, roughly equivalent to the Emergency Powers Act which was currently also in force in the Republic). So no, nobody’s homes were burned out, in fact, the demands were met after a handful of marches by Nationalists. Wow! Such oppression! Oh the humanity!
So how did the homes get burned out? Well that’s kinda embarrasing, coz the first home burning was done by rioting Nationalists in Derry, yup, you never hear to much about that do you? The Nationalists had previously attacked a perfectly peaceful march by protestant fellow citizens who had the temerity to express their culture in a Catholic dominated city. After two days of wanton destruction, with an exhausted police force and a walk around Waterloo Square by country bumpkin B Specials the army was sent in to prevent Derry city centre being razed to the ground (although Nationalists were subsequently able to achieve this in coming years using bombs).
However that wasn’t enough for the Civil Rights Movement whose demands had been met almost a year earlier, they called on an uprising of Nationalist rioters throughout the North to “take the pressure off Derry”. Nationalists obliged and communal disturbances erupted across the North, an exhausted RUC and hopelessly ill equipped and under trained Special Constabulary reacted with heavy handed recklessness leading to several innocents being killed and when Belfast Nationalists were foolhardy to start rioting and burning in the streets around Divis the powder keg blew and inter-community rioting took place as a result of which not surprisingly the majority community took the heavier toll on the minority.
So how did we get to Bloody Sunday? Well that was a full two and a half years later. British troops who were initially welcomed by Nationalists (this is not a myth as some try to allege) then found themselves on the receiving end of a resurgent IRA, who armed and financed by leading members of the Irish government, decided that it was time to take on the old enemy and to hell with civil rights. A brutal terrorist campaign was launched with bombs and assassinations a commonplace, this proceeded for two more years until, exasperated, the British government introduced internment.
Internment was woefully implemented, the wrong people were arrested, it was one sided, and many detainees were badly treated. The IRA intensified its campaign and disorder and mass violence became the norm (note, the demands of the Civil Rights Movement already had been granted three years earlier). In January 1972, an illegal anti-internment march in Derry was prevented from getting to the city centre, in the subsequent rioting a platoon of Paratroopers ran amok for thirty minutes and disgracefully shot dead 13 unarmed demonstrators, most of whom had no role in the rioting.
This incident was appalling and more pertinently a one off, no such massacre of civilians was to take place again despite the IRA and Loyalist terrorists carrying out dozens of similar atrocities in the decades to come. The British Army also lost over 700 members.
So there you have in Wang, feel free to contradict any historical facts (as opposed to opinions) which I have got wrong. Oh and simply labelling me a “revisionist” will not be sufficient.
Actually, Harry, that was an admirably succinct post.
Aah right, now I see…so the violence broke out for no reason at all then, just that all Catholics are murdering vermin scum? Thanks for clearing that up for me. I’ll be off now, thanks.
“Watcher,
There has been a lot of Southern accents on display in washing powder adverts lately. You may be on to something. ”
Begorrah, I didnt think those unwashed Micks had any need for washing powder now. Go back to Calton radio and spout you bile there.
Hows your “Airport for Buncrana” campaign going there Michael? If its such a lucrative business opportunity, why don’t you open one yourself?
There were none so happy to go home than the Brit soldiers themselves. In fairness you don;t join the army to sit in South Armagh playing connect 4.
Harry
Genuine Question – what makes you say all the civil rights marchers demands had been met in 68?
That indeed was a fairly well balanced analysis Harry although I know a lot of people will disagree.
If the Sunningdale agreement had been given half a chance, we wouldn’t have had those awful years and all the atrocities.
But, now we can move forward, I hope.
Harry F,
Here’s some stuff I pulled off CAIN. Many of the NICRA demands had been met, but by no means all in 1968.
NICRA’s first meeting was in early 1967:
“The Civil Rights Movement called for a number of reforms one of which was for ‘one man, one vote’, that is, a universal franchise for local government elections. At the time only rate-payers were entitled to votes, and there were other anomalies to do with additional votes for companies. The association also campaigned for the end to gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. Other reforms pressed for included: the end to perceived discrimination in the allocation of public sector housing and appointments to, particularly, public sector employment; the repeal of the Special Powers Act; and the disbandment of the ‘B-Specials’”
The reforms you refer to in November 1968 were:
“Terence O’Neill, then Northern Ireland Prime Minister, announced a package of reform measures which had resulted from meetings in London with Harold Wilson, then British Prime Minister, and James Callaghan, then British Home Secretary. The five point reform plan included:
a nine member ‘Development Commission’ to take over the powers of the Londonderry Corporation;
an ombudsman to investigate complaints against government departments;
the allocation of houses by local authorities to be based on need;
the Special Powers Act to be abolished as it was safe to do so; and
some reform of the local government franchise (the end of the company votes).”
As you can see from comparing the two, this was far from meeting all NICRA’s demands, especially on the franchise and gerrymandering, on the coercive powers of the state, and regarding the allocation of houses, these reforms didn’t work, and it needed the foundation of the NIHE several years later to finally solve the issue.
The reform package came only after the brutal assault on the march in Derry was televised and embarassed the British government into forcing action from Stormont.
NICRA achieved its goals not by 1968 but by 1970, through peaceful means. Alas by then the sectarian dynamic on both sides was too strong.
As for the riots that kicked things off – surely you have to take into account the provocative behaviour of the marchers in mocking the people of the Bogside. And given the track record of the hopelessly ill-equipped and undermanned RUC, it was not an uninvolved ajudicator and peacekeeping force, but a central player in unleashing the storm.
One key moment was the Belfast/Derry march, which was opposed by almost all of NICRA erm..except for the marchers who took part, Mr Farrell and Ms Devlin (or so it seems)
I recall Ms. Devlin stating that the intention of the march was purely to provoke and to expose the “rotten nature of the state” or some such claim. Well, she sort of succeeded. But is a provoked and angry person thereby revealing their “true” self? I don’t think those who stoned (as distinct from those who were stoned) at Burntollet, were typical of anyone.
I Wonder,
The problem was that the state was in fact discriminatory, as was a great deal of civil society, and so much about it was rotten. You can blame people for provoking a response but of course the response that they provoked was only possible if much of what they had been saying was right.
Thanks Garibaldy.
I won’t quibble with you, Garibaldy, on whether the November ’68 package actually achieved the demands of NICRA to my mind they did so to all intents and purposes. Nor will I argue that the overreaction of the RUC in Duke Street was the catalyst for these reforms, however despite the overblown rhetoric of the time compared to what the Metropolitan Police ladled out at Grosvenor Square London that same year it was small beer indeed.
I do have a dispute with the marchers who “mocked” and “provoked” the Bogsiders. There is always the apocryphal story of Orangemen throwing pennies at the Bogside from the Walls but I have to honestly say I have never met anyone who actually witnessed this, they always tell you they heard from someone they knew who had a friend who says he met someone who saw it but surprisingly for such a pivotal occasion there doesn’t actually seem to be any first hand witnesses. Furthermore that would also presume that this alleged provocation was the spark which ignited the Bogside when the world and his aunty knew for weeks beforehand that trouble was being prepared and Derry Citizen Action/Defence Committees had their contingency plans (barricades, petrol bombs etc) well in hand in time for the day itself.
As regards Burntollet there is no doubt in my mind that this was the turning point, it was utterly unnecessary and destroyed any chance of a peaceful settlement, to say this in no way excuses the reprhensible actions of on and off duty policemen along the route and later in Derry itself. But Christ help us what might have been stopped if Bernadette hadn’t decided to trail her coat along that bloody road!
Harry,
The pennies may or may not be true, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that jeering and sectarian taunts were shouted. As for the contingency plans, I don’t know but I guess we’ll never know if that trouble was inevitable or was sparked by provocation. Either is possible.
Burntollet was pivotal I agree. Not sure I agree it was unnecessary. I can certainly understand why people thought it was necessary at the time. I do think that the civil rights movement was necessary, that there were serious deficiencies in NI. I’m also tempted to think that if the attack by extreme unionists hadn’t come at Burntollet it would have come elsewhere. There were too many unionists who rejected any need for reform and were prepared to resort to initimidation and violence to try and protect the undemocratic aspects of the state and society.
It was due to the amorphous nature of the CR movement that a small and distinctly unrepresentative group was able to do what they did. (Devlin and Farrell as revolutionary scoialists weren’t really typical of those who made the former a MP.) There is no excusing what was done to them, nor indeed would I attempt to cloak the rotten-ness that was revealed. I wonder what history would have been like had that march been called off, as indeed many prominent CR leaders had asked.
I’m English and the mainstream view here now is that colonialism was a bad thing. So if you are taught that colonialism is a bad thing, how can you make an exception for Ulster and defend the colonialists? You wouldn’t get a report on the BBC defending our rule in India or South Africa would you?
We’ve withdrawn from all our other colonies, apart from a few tiny islands.
Wang!
Is that you Aidan?
Vambo
Tracey,
Not everyone accepts that NI is a colonial situation. Hence for many, if not most, it’s a moot point.
VVVAAAAAAMMMMMBBOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
No.
Tracey, it wasn’t a colonial thing, if it had been it all would have been so easy, the Governor-General in his fine white suit and cockatoo feather pith helmet saluting as the Royal Marine band beat the retreat and the Union Jack came slowly down to be replaced by some multi-coloured monstrosity representing the new age of tribalist one party rule, mass murder and occasional cannibalism. Oh if it had only been that simple (by the way I wouldn’t be so convinced that the “mainstream view” is that colonialism was all bad, a fine dose of the white man’s burden seems to have helped out in Sierra Leone recently).
To the substantive point, I have no doubt that Northern Irish society was in serious need of reform in 1968, no one could possibly gainsay that. However my point relates to Wang (where’d he go by the way? I thought he’d give me a run for my money) and others who spuriously connect the IRA campaign of 1970-97 with the Civil Rights Movement.
The two issues were entirely unconnected, indeed ask the average Provie of that period whom he most despised and he would have said John Hume, Gerry Fitt, Ivan Cooper, Paddy Devlin, Austin Currie etc, precisely the mainstays of the Civil Rights campaign (the Provos loathed Maggie Thatcher and Roy Mason but they at least had some respect for them). The Provos didn’t fight the Brits for electoral reform of Londonderry Corporation or fair distribution of jobs within the Stormont Ministry of Labour, they wanted the Brits out, plain and simple and their campaign to do so completely post dates the Civil Rights Movement despite the post facto blurring of dates and issues by later Republicans.
Northern Ireland was in need of reform, it got it, and it got it a long time before the IRA got into gear. Northern Ireland was reformable, it was in the process of reform, it was not Nazi Germany, it was not Apartheid South Africa, it was not Pinochet’s Chile, it was not even Jim Crow Alabama, it was merely a provincial backwater of the United Kingdom in need of some not too drastic modernisation.
Nothing justified the cataclysm that was unleashed from 1969 to 1998.
Gawd help me, I keep agreein’ with Harry!
Don’t worry IW, I am sure I’ll say something that will get you right back on track again, I always do
Perhaps you are correct Harry but since it was the loyalist paramilitaries that started the killing, who unleashed the cataclysm?
So blaming the IRA is what? can you say wrong!
Sorry, been working…
I don’t mean to make any spurious connections between the civil rights movement and the IRA campaign, it’s just that to read a lot of unionist posts on this blog you’d nearly conclude that it happened for no reason other than that catholics/nationalists were full of hatred for everything that wasn’t green and just woke up one morning and decided to start killing people at random and blowing up everything in sight, which is utter nonsense. Many unionists seem to think that all was rosy in the garden in NI before 1968-69.
So what kicked it all off? Like I say I don’t want to get into whataboutery, and I agree that the IRA campaign was completely unjustified, in fact I have long argued on this site that the republican paramilitaries walked straight into a trap by waging that campaign, a war that they could never hope to win, that was always going to end, as it did, in stalemate at best. But I wholeheartedly disagree with people – including nationalists/republicans – who say it was in the interests of the ’cause’ to wage a violent campaign.
It suited unionism down to the ground to have that situation go on for 35 years. The last thing Unionism wanted was peaceful stability in the North, and a normal relationship between the Belfast & Dublin govts, lest you had established migration criss-crossing the border day in, day out. I think you’d have to be incredibly naive not to trealise that unionist saw where that would lead over time, i.e. the possibility of thousands upon thousands of southerners moving to the North and settling there. Scaring the p*ss out of Southerners – which was achieved very effectively by the kind of mayhem they witnessed every time they turned on the evening news – served the very useful purpose of making sure the anticipated human traffic which would have all but dissolved the border in time, never materialised.
The IRA and their cohorts may have thought they could make NI ungovernable (and eventually unliveable in) but it took them 20 years longer than it should have to realise their campaign was never going to succeed. I know a lot of other people have various other conspiracy theories about how it suited all parties in the conflict to keep it going for the last 10-15 years of it and everybody became so used to the north being carved up into terriories a la the Sopranos or other ganster stories, but that’s another story, or as I say, theory.
Anyway, how that relates to the original topic on the thread I’m not sure. In a perfect world, after the first couple of weeks/months/years of the troubles everybody would have agreed to sit down together, stop the madness and work things out… Sunningdale, anyone? Seeing as we’re trawling through the history books, and I genuinely do need to be told this, what was so wrong with the Sunningdale agreement anyway?