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Out
for a walk this evening with a friend, Kevin McQuillan,
we had the misfortune to come across an irate Sinn
Fein councillor, Tom Hartley, on the Andersonstown
Road. The source of his ire, strangely, seemed not
to be state collusion and the manipulation of agents
for the purposes of murder, or the possibility of
water charges being inflicted upon an impoverished
community; nor was it that the British had decided
to show who was boss and had suspended elections.
It was not even caused by a sense of humiliation that
party leaders had, in the words of Brian Feeney, grovelled
to the Brits and pleaded for a chance to be allowed
to cut back on acute health services on behalf of
Britain once again. No, the ire raging within Tom
Hartley was for me!
Although
Hartley these days is as subversive as your average
vicar, myself and him normally exchange pleasantries
or platitudes, he mildly berates me for not thinking
the way he thinks I should think - and then having
dutifully went through the perfunctory motions of
inflicting the party line on me we part ways much
the same as we met. Tonight was different. He was
seething. It was as if I had defied a Sinn Fein banning
order prohibiting me from being seen in public. People
might think that I really did exist and was not something
that lived in the attic of the BBC, to be wheeled
out very now and then - as Big Brother No 1 likes
to spoof to his RTE audience - to heretically hold
forth against the unassailable wisdom of the peace
process. Although we had bumped into a couple of ex-prisoners
along the way and chewed the fat with them, Tom was
the first apparatchik. The contrast between the activist
and bureaucratic levels in republicanism, on this
occasion, could not have been more marked. People,
mere yards apart, inhabited two contrasting intellectual
worlds. One healthy and porous where ideas can breathe,
the other pathological, smothered and stifled where
autonomous intellect is only welcome after it has
been filtered and stripped of its independence.
Having
greeted him, 'well Tom' (I didn't even address him
as 'Tombstone Tom' to wind him up over his guided
tours of the cemeteries) I was immediately subjected
to a tirade and told I was 'disgraceful last week'.
He did not clarify - clarity not being a concept the
peace process rests comfortably with - but merely
got very aggressive, finger wagged and pontificated
to the effect that there was no room in West Belfast
for views that Big Brother No 1 had not given prior
approval to. Seemingly, what I fail to understand
is that within West Belfast Big Brother No 1 just
loves his subjects so much that in order to relieve
us of our democratic burden he shall do all our thinking
so that we are free to concern ourselves with the
real things in life - tending the garden, watching
football and all that. A West Belfast version of democratic
centralism where Big Brother No 1 democratically decides
for the rest of us. In his infinite kindness Big Brother
No 1 has secured fundamental freedoms - even for malcontents
like myself - including the right to be free from
making decisions that govern our lives. My view that
we should have the right to be free from the decision
makers is mere clever dick semantics employed solely
to 'confuse the gullible.' An understanding of real
freedom is beyond my ken.
In
any event, I was left to presume that Councillor Hartley
was referring to the views I had expressed through
a number of media outlets including The Blanket on
the Steak Knife affair. In his fulminations he neglected
to tell me what it was he was fulminating against.
And there was me thinking that Des Wilson was right
when he said democracy is always enhanced when people
know more rather than less. Not here where it works
the other way round. The less we know the more the
leadership will praise us for our intellect and tell
us that we are the most politicised people in Western
Europe. Ours is a disciplined and collective intellect
- evidenced by our willingness to tear out of the
Ulster Hall and chant in unison 'securocrats'. Anyone
suggesting that the controlocrats amongst the liarocracy
who devise such intellectually limiting concepts may
just have something to explain themselves, are dismissed
as rejectionists. In our insular little world where
we all need each other’s falsehoods to reinforce
our faith in the incredible, the leadership alone
will slay the legions of securocrat and rejectionist
dragons - not to mention define who they are. That
is of course when they are not secretly meeting securocrats
in the form of Michael Oatley or John Deverell to
plan the implementation of Britain’s alternative
to republicanism.
Not
being the type to get excited one way or the other
about anything Tom Hartley would have to say, and
being mildly curious to find out if he would tell
me Steak Knife was touting for peace, I asked him
'are you defending touts?' His response was to froth
even more at the mouth as he stuttered out the words
'it is you that is a disgrace.' Me - a disgrace. And
Stake Knife? Well, he’s alright. Bring back Stormont
and nobody will mention him. Not vaguely interested
in calming the fuming, gesticulating Stalinist that
now confronted me I sought to draw him by suggesting
that perhaps it was natural for touts to support the
peace process. It did not produce any answer other
than a snarl, but at least it got rid of him as he
took off up the road like a scalded cat muttering
and mumbling while I stood somewhere between amazement
and hilarity wondering at the absurdity of it all.
‘Do you think he behaves like that to the unionists?’
I pondered to Kevin. ‘What was all that about
- he still hasn’t told you why you are a disgrace?’
was his only comment as we walked on down the road,
half anticipating to be gripped by one of the many
cop patrols doing the rounds, and asked: ‘Are
you in possession of an alternative idea sir? Under
Section 31 that is an offence in West Belfast. We
will need to send for the thought disposal unit to
render it harmless.’
What
this was all about was a Sinn Fein apparatchik trying
to create a poisonous atmosphere that would suffocate
any version of events that would call into question
the credentials of the bureaucratic structure that
endows him with self-importance. The friendly face
of moderation when making overtures to the unionists,
quickly vanishes to be replaced with a fascistic scowl
towards republicans who will not buy into the bollix.
Out goes the tuxedo and the ‘I say old chap’
to be replaced with the green shirt and the harsh
command of ‘verboten’. Make the streets
a hostile sea controlled and cruised by goondas whose
repressive efficacy is derived from their usefulness
to the power structure more than it is on their own
talents, and depth charge every alternative idea that
happens to traverse along the sub current. Here I
was being subjected to an aggressive rant by a city
councillor while the party to which he belonged was
shouting 'get Freddie a solicitor' - Freddie being
the man at the centre of the Steak Knife allegations.
Seems that both Scappaticci and Hartley thought a
good piece of work for the peace process was having
a go at me on the same day. Old Freddie, seemingly
not the most devout practitioner of omerta, accused
me in the Andytout News of being embittered and working
to an agenda. I read on hoping he would call me an
enemy of the peace process.
Now,
I am hardly going to worry in the slightest that Freddie
Scappaticci finds me on the opposite side of the fence
from him. The peace process deserves his backing -
after all he has been supporting it for years. Perhaps
my cardinal sin in the eyes of Hartley has been to
ask that awkward question - why?
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