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Censors,
it seems, become fixated with their task. Some take
it to the point of obsession, thrashing and flailing
in a raging sea of ideas where they try to keep afloat
by imposing a calming stillness on the waters, even
freezing them so that nothing moves without their
approval. But like King Canute who stood on the beach
vainly commanding the tide to halt, the censor will
ultimately retch on the taste of frustration. As
Alfred Whitney Griswold once put it, 'in the long
run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have
always lost.'
Mairtin
O Muilleoir, of the West Belfast gombeen class and
numero uno in the Andersonstown News business
corporation, too, shall hardly avoid frustration’s
acrid taste. Last week in a fit of pique at his tabloid
being challenged by a writer who refused to prostitute
himself, he used his right to reply in the Irish
Echo, not to reply at all to an article by Eamon
Lynch, but to spit some bile in the direction of myself.
Maintaining faith with the standards of his own publications
his Irish Echo column was noticeably weak on
facts. Echo readers were instead treated to
a dance of deceit, the steps of which will be traced
in an upcoming article whether or not the millionaire
proprietor at the Echo honours my right to
reply.
O
Muilleoir’s business empire is no more governed
by an intellectual imperative to provide a news service
for a community than it is to enhance the status of
that community’s social and economic situation.
As the economist John Maynard Keynes dismissively
commented about the economic system promoted by O
Muilleoir: ‘capitalism is the extraordinary belief
that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons,
will somehow work for the benefit of us all.' Are
we to believe that ‘money-making Marty’
sees his business venture purely in terms of providing
a news service to which profit is only a contingent
and secondary consideration?
In
terms of information dissemination, the Andersonstown
News is primarily about manipulating the presentation
of events in a way which will leave readers less rather
than more informed. Moreover, it seems oblivious to
the existence of a wider community in West Belfast.
O Muilleoir describes the ethos of the Andersonstown
News as 'pro-Irish, pro-nationalist and pro-Catholic'.
He could have pre-fixed each of these with ‘conservative’
without anyone accusing him of dishonesty. It is always
the way with Catholic nationalism even when it tries
to assume the clothing of republicanism. James Connolly
made a piercing observation, which the passage of
time has done little to dull, when he referred to
the contradiction of those ‘who screech most
vehemently for national freedom’ being ‘in
domestic affairs in Ireland the allies and champions
of social reaction, and the enemies of intellectual
freedom.’
Without
question there are decent journalists and columnists
in the paper. One need only think of Des Wilson or
Allison Morris. That the editor does not happen to
be in their number is by the by. How he was ever released
from a journalist training school prematurely is perhaps
something the press council might concern itself with.
True, some of the paper’s staff may have won
awards. But none yet have won anything for being well
paid. The management’s commitment to low wages
ensures that they never will.
Arguably,
one string in the bow of O Muilleoir’s urge to
censor is that he does not want people asking questions
about the gombeen network of which he is a part. He
has probably suspected for some time that through
the columns of The Blanket people have been
considering digging deeper and asking probing questions
- employing the kind of awkward technique that Freddie
Scappaticci did not face in his interview with the
Andersonstown News. And O Muilleoir has the
business savvy to work out for himself that such questions
might address themselves to establishing what building
firm constructed Teach Basil (Basil’s House)
on Hannahstown Hill where the paper has its printing
presses; if the same firm built the Sinn Fein offices
on the Falls Road, and if it did how, with its reputation
as the Rachmans of the West Belfast building industry,
did it ever secure the contracts; if the same contracting
concern has been responsible for paying its non-unionised
staff the paltry sum of £2 an hour, sacks it
workers on the spot if they refuse to work in the
rain, exploits (the business euphemism is ‘employs’)
former republican prisoners to give the firm the whiff
of cordite and ward off probing investigative forays,
pays employees in pubs run by the same building concern,
inflicts untold economic hardship on the more impoverished
of West Belfast by cutting the required minimum heating
insulation in their homes by half; and bullies, threatens
and intimidates members of the public. O Muilleoir
might also have good grounds for suspecting that The
Blanket may further inquire into the suppression
of articles or references to such activity by both
An Phoblacht/Republican News and the Andersonstown
News.
In
this context where such questioning might throw light
on a nefarious network thriving on the exploitation
of the most needy in our community O Muilleoir might
just be left with some explaining to do. Consequently,
he is unsurprisingly apprehensive about journals that
refuse to prostitute themselves. And he is alarmed
by the existence of the type of people referred to
once by Breda O’Brien: those ‘who are outside
the inner circles and who are beholden to no one can
act as important critical voices, or as advocates
for those who otherwise would not be heard.'
The
point is, O Muilleoir can chase after The Blanket
for years if he so chooses. He can issue writs and
threaten libel action to the cows come home. People
who sat for years on end in a cell dressed only in
a prison blanket defying the might and power of the
British state in defence of a belief will hardly find
themselves perturbed by what a West Belfast capitalist
mutters and threatens. Ultimately, all O Muilleoir
is doing is plugging the holes we have already made
in the wall of silence which he and his fellow gombeen
men have constructed over the years. And we will continue
to poke and probe at every turn. Truth is speaking
to power and O Muilleoir doesn’t like it. Tough.
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