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Today
in a blatant attempt at suppressing The Blanket,
the Andersonstown News threatened libel action
against a popular and respected website that hosts
on a daily basis a wide range of newspaper articles
offering commentary and analysis on Northern Irish
affairs. Consequently, the website in question felt
sufficiently pressurised to remove two links it had
carried taking readers to articles on The Blanket.
This was not because the articles were considered
necessarily libellous by the site in question but
because the site manager is not in a position to face
libel proceedings initiated by a business corporation.
Fortunately,
our readership is sufficiently well established as
to ensure that when links to such articles are removed
from another website, they are still read on our own.
This is borne out by the comments we receive on the
streets or at social gatherings in relation to articles
carried on The Blanket exclusively and not
on any other website; a point reinforced by the number
of daily hits we maintain. It is hardly coincidence
that the bulk of the favourable response in such circumstances
comes from those to the left of centre within the
nationalist community and pertains to those articles
which have taken the Andersonstown News to
task. Clearly, there are those within the nationalist
community who feel neither represented by nor happy
with the Andersonstown News presentation of
events.
There
should be little that surprises here. The paper puts
itself at the service of Sinn Fein, an authoritarian
party desperate to curb all alternative voices. Andersonstown
News has never managed to resolve the conflict
between a propaganda organ and a genuine news source
in favour of the latter. As Sinn Fein’s journey
over the years has taken it to the political right,
its steadily increasing pro-establishment discourse
chimes in unison with the business interests that
determine matters at the Andersonstown News.
Where once the paper operated as an expression of
community sentiment it now identifies with a specific
interest - that which enables the paper’s profiteers
to continue feathering their own nests.
The
Blanket, in exposing the repressive function,
hypocrisy and double standards of the Andersonstown
News along with the sycophancy and poor craftsmanship
of its editors, has sufficiently stung those members
of the business class that run the enterprise to the
point where they have lashed out - not for the first
time - in a bid to silence one of the few alternatives
to the subservient guff churned out twice weekly from
Teach Basil. Particularly galling to the paper's managerial
class seems to have been the rubbishing of the Squinter/Scap
double act which recently featured as a 'world exclusive'
in its pages.
The
Andersonstown News has for some time been resentful
that a number of republican writers have frustrated
its efforts to monopolise public commentary in West
Belfast. Its inability to force other voices off the
discursive field has left it exposed to ridicule.
As a corporate concern its spokespeople have been
furious that they alone do not have the final word.
Faced with a number of articulate critics unwilling
to gorge on the diet of nonsense the paper spews
out, the Andersonstown News has sought to smother
those voices. The ridiculous episode of Squinter vs.
The Portadown News will not easily be forgotten,
given that the result of Squinter's vendetta has made
its victim, Newton Emerson, into a regular media figure.
The Andersonstown News campaign of marginalization
has backfired before, and it will no doubt backfire
again.
The
contrast between The Blanket and the Andersonstown
News could hardly be more pronounced. The first
is a voluntary venture and is sustained by people
who live in working class estates, some of whom have
served time under the worst prison regimes to have
been implemented in this country. Its writers and
workers receive no stipend; there is no funding from
any quarter. None of them are to be found in the board
rooms of the West Belfast business class. Nor are
they to be seen associating with the venal William
Martin Murphy types of this city. Their commitment
to promoting and sustaining an open intellectual environment
is the driving force behind the project. It facilitates
all shades of opinion including Sinn Fein, one
of whose members has submitted a critique of The
Blanket to be carried today. The Blanket
is in hock to no political or financial concern. On
the other hand, the Andersonstown News is a
prosperous business concern with very definite political
interests. Despite its own plastic self-image it is
not a community newspaper. Its prominent money men
lead comfortable lives. Unlike those they seek to
censor, they have never placed themselves at the coalface
of the republican struggle but have financially benefited
from it. Now that the struggle is over and the middle
classes have done quite well, with only empty suits
mouthing rhetoric remaining, the business class at
Andersonstown News feels it safe and respectable
to hitch its wagon to a hollowed out republicanism
divested of any radical content.
We
are not responsible for the editorial incompetence
at the Andersonstown News. Seeking to censor
those who draw attention to the impaired efficiency
of the editor and the shoddy nature of the product
will prove a futile and ultimately humiliating experience
for the censors. There simply are no circumstances
under which The Blanket will be closed down
by the Andersonstown News. The money motive
of Long Kesh screws failed to close down the spirit
and idealism of the H-Block blanket - why should a
similar motive succeed today?
Nothing
that is written about the Andersonstown News
will be removed from The Blanket site regardless
of what threats the Andersonstown News makes.
Significantly, its top people have not come here threatening
us with libel action but instead have sought, in the
manner of the bully, to target others considered less
able to confront them head on. The Andersonstown
News will pursue the labour of Sisyphus if it
seeks to close us down. We refused to conform to the
demands of the screws on the inside - why would we
consider doing so for the new screws on the outside?
The Andersonstown News can appeal to its friends
with wooly faces to clamp down on us, it can go to
the courts, it can, as one of their editors has in
the past, mount intimidatory pickets on our homes.
What it cannot do is succeed - any more than its predecessors,
those Long Kesh screws - in silencing the voice of
The Blanket. Quite bluntly, we shall go to
jail for as long as it takes before conforming to
any demand made by the British courts on behalf of
the Andersonstown News to erase what we have
to say about this dubious business concern.
Censorship
is a crime against the public intellect. The Andersonstown
News in pursuit of its nefarious vendetta of censorship
will meet defiance stronger than its will to suppress.
Is it up to the battle? We are.
Read
the articles the Andersonstown News doesn't want you
to: Stalinville and
Send in the Sandbag
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