British doublespeak

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday August 05, 2002 23:15 by McMean

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.