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IR}:IJAND fHffi PH.OPAGANPA }\IARtx3 ctlRTrslrelan {: The Propaganda ltllar caussd a sensation when itfirst c lme out in '1984 and was soon ertablishec$ as a rlassic.It des :ribes in vivid and shocking detail how su*cessivegsver rments and the media have suppressed and distortednews irom the North of lreland. This new edition containsan ex'onsivoly updatod rhronology covering the notorious'broaricasting ban' of 1988-$4, under which republicansappse red on TV 're^voiced' by actors.

'One o the most devastating indictments of the British media to appear inprint.^. lhe incidents o{ self-censorship, constant government interference,..unrern ting arrny pressilre, the use of "hlack" propagan*a against the tinyband c ' journaiists determined to uncover the truth, make a fascinatinq read'

- Tari, Ali, flrne Ouf'Excellc ,rt' - Tim Pat (oogan'A det; rled and telling indictment o{ British media coverage o{ lreland'

- Dav J Beresford, The 1uardian'Probai ly the most important book dealing with Northern lreland to havebeen p rblished since the present "troubles" began'-" Ihe lrrsh Fost

'lt is ve y, very good' -* Fr Des Wifion, Andersanstawn News

'l just 1 et so angry at tirnes I had ta put it down. I have lived throughall the :vents in the book,.. But I had forgotten ali the diity details'

- Ed f ioloney. fartnight'lt is ar exposure, that will be almost impossible to refute, of the utterlydishon rst record o{ the Eritish press, the radio and the television in coveringup Brit rin's responsihility for the continuing crisis in the six counties'

- Ano ew Boyd, The lrish lndependent'ls fiil.. an leabhar seo a fh*il agus 6 a scrud0 go curamach'- Bre; rddn fr htithir; The lrish Times'Anybr jy who is interested in the truth should read this hook, and journalistsshould lake it to heart' - tVew Sari*y lsBN 1_eo1oo5_15_1

,ililtilx[liltill[il[[il,f11.$ : stg S,*a*

Liz Curtis

freland:The propaganda warThe British media and the 'battlefor hearts and minds'

Liz Curtis was born in England and has taken an active interestin events in Ireland since the 1970s. She has written extensivelyon Irish affairs. Her books include two acclaimed histories,Nothing But The Same Old Story. The roots of antilrish racism,and The Couse of lreland. From the United lrishmen to portition.She now lives in lreland, where she is learning [rish andimproving her photography.

lreland.. The Propaganda War was first published in 1984by Pluto Press Limited, London

This updatecl edition published in 1998 by Sista,The Ashton Centre, Churchill Street, Belfast BT15 2BP

Copyright O Liz Curtis 1998

All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for thepurposes o[ review, no l)art of this publication ntay be reproduced ortransmitted in any form rtr by any means, electronic or mechanical,photocopying or recorcling or any information and retrieval system,

without I)rior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Curtis, LizIreland : the l)ropaganda war : the British medi;r and the battle

for hearts and minds'. - Updated ed.l.Mass media - Political aspects - Great Britain 2.Mass meclia -

Great Britain - Censorship 3.Northern Ireland - Politicsand government - 1969-

I. Tirle07 0.4' 49',9416',0824

tsBN I 901005 15 r

Trade Distribution: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd, Unit iJ,Of ympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, London N2'2 6T2.

Tel.018l 8'293000. Fax Ultil 881 508ti. Em;ril: turnuk@aol.conr

Cover drawinq by Steve LeeC

iv / Contents

4. Reporting the British army / 68

Ulsterisation / Routinelies / Thekillingof MajellaO'Hare /More lies / nnc complaints / Reflex lying / Pressure /Minimal accounts / Sympathy for rhe squaddies / Coffeepot girls I Dog of war

5. Reporting loyalist violence / 89Selective amnesia / McGurk's Bar / Assassinations /Following the official line / Religious labels / 'Random'violence / The shooting of the McAliskeys / uoainterviews / The uwc stoppage

6. Reporting republican violence / 107Dominating the coverage / Blaming the rRA / Bombs inBritain / Human interest I Lord Mountbatten I CaptainNairac / Sefton / Fantasies / The Margaret McKearneysaga / Bald Eagle and the white Opel / Not the day of theJackal / 'Godfathers' / 'Terrorists' in rv drama / Politicalvocabulary

7. Televising republicans / 138The rarity of lRa interviews / Arguments for and againstrepublicans on Tv / Bans 1970-71 / Bans in the mid-seventies / The veto tactic / Inhibitions / Rows about rRAappearances / The second battle of Culloden I Tonight onthe IRA / The tNla interview / The Carrickmore affair I Awave of fury / Scotland Yard I The Havers judgement

8. The reference upwards system / 173Development of the rules / The roleof theNorthern IrelandController / The scope of the rules / Rules on republicaninterviews / Balance / Hostile interviews / Censorship /Self-censorship / Radio Telefis Eireann / Conor CruiseO'Brien / The effects of Section 31

Contents / v

9. Reporting nationalist perspectives I tg7Bans / Creggan / 'Credible witnesses' / The peace people /The 1981 hunger strike / Opinion in Britain / .Red Ken inIRA storm' / History / Michael Collins I Curious Journey IThe Green, the Orange and the Red, White and Blue I Twomajor series / A limited backlash I The Crime of CaptainColthurst / Anti-Irish racism / A long tradition / Cartoonsand jokes

10. Propaganda machines I 229British army propaganda I 'Information policy' / Adjustingto the North / Propaganda on the ground / 'Black'propaganda I Tara / The Niedermayersmear / TheNorthern Ireland Office committee / Surveillance / Fakepress cards / Routine pR / Use of the law / Harassment /The RUC press office / The Northern Ireland Office pressoffice / Methods / Interventions overseas / Republicanpublicity / Development of the press centre / Raids onRepublican News I Veracity / Relations with journalists /Improvements

Conclusion / 275

Appendix: Programmes on the North of Ireland banned,censored or delayd I 279

References and notes / 301

Index / 335

Introduction

Ulster is not just another country. It is another planet.

Jon Akass, The Sun,31 May 1983

This book tells a story that is sad. infuriating, and sometimes, in aperverse way, even funny. It is about the propaganda war thathas been fought, through the British media, for the hearts andminds of the British people on the question of Ireland.

The level of awareness in Britain about the situation in theNorth of Ireland is of major political significance. The West-minster government rules the North in the name of the Britishpeople and using their money. The British people have theultimate veto on their government's presence in the North and itspolicies there. Successive administrations have demonstratedthat they are well aware that one way of keeping the peopleacquiescent is to keep them in ignorance.

Media coverage of the conflict reaches the people of theNorth and the people of Britain very differently. The populationof the North is daily inundated with news. Local papers, hourlyradio bulletins, regular local tv news broadcasts supplementedby the early evening magazine programmes all put out a streamof information about bombings and shootings, arrests and trials,the manoeuvrings of political groups.

Further, in the North the national media do not have amonopoly on news or analysis of the conflict. The unionist andnationalist communities each have their own papers, and theirown political, educational and cultural institutions, and in anarea with a population of only one-and-a-half million - roughly60 per cent unionist and 40 per cent nationalist - news travels fastby word of mouth. While people in the North consume a rela.tively

2 I lreland: The propagandawar

large arnount of news and current affairs coverage, they are alsovery critical. Using mutually exclusive standards, nationalistsand unionists evaluate the output of the national media accord-ing to how it reflects their own experiences and the perceptionsshared by their respective communities.

People in Britain, by contrast, receive only a dribble ofnews from the North, except when a crisis hijacks the headlines.They have no direct experience of the conflict, save for inter-mittent bombings in British cities, and Ireland is conspicuouslyabsent from educational curricula. Groups trying to circulatealternative information about events in the North are small andimpoverished. British people are, therefore, almost entirelydependent on the mass media for news and interpretations ofevents in Ireland. The quality of the coverage is of vital im-portance, for it influences the extent to which British people canparticipate in an informed discussion about their government'sIrish policies.

This book aims to highlight certain major characteristics ofthe British media's Irish coverage, and to describe the activitiesof the various interested parties - politicians, broadcastingchiefs, newspaper editors, journalists, the army and police -which influence the shape the coverage rakes. It is writtenprimarily for the general reader, but there are plentiful refer-ences for those wishing to pursue the issues further.

The book begins in 1971, the year when the first crucialbattles over Irish coverage were fought. It then moves back intime, to sketch in the 'silent years' from 1920 to 1968, whenBritish people heard nothing of the North, and then the media'sresponses to the civil rights movement and the arrival of troopson the streets. The central section of the book looks at how themedia have represented the armed participants in the conflict -the British army and Royal Ulster Constabulary, loyalist para-militaries and republicans. It also describes the development ofthe internal controls in broadcasting - the 'reference upwards'system - and looks at the media's handling of the views andaspirations of the nationalist community. Finally, it outlines thedevelopment of the 'propaganda machines' operated by theBritish army, the RUC and the Northern Ireland Office on theone side and the republican movement on the other.

I would like to thank the many people who have helpedwith this book: the journalists and television workers who haveshared their insights and experiences with me, and most of whom

Introduction / 3

wished to remain anonymous; the sociologists who have done thespadework on which parts of the book rely, especially Ph-ilipIllliott, whose research on the subject is invaluable and who diedthis year after a long illness; the republicans who discussed thehistory of their publicity work; the librarians' especially those inmy local library, who have patiently unearthed old newspapers.

Warm thanks are also due to the many people who haveoffered ideas, sent newspaper cuttings and videos, and suggestedstories that needed investigating: Frances Mary Blake' SharonMcCormick, Mair6de Thomas, Paul Madden, Deborah Devenny,Danny Devenny, Gerry McDonnell. Duncan Smith, MargaretHenry, students at the evening class I ran on the subject in 1981,and many others.

I would like especially to thank Alastair Renwick, PhilipSchlesinger, John Lloyd and Gill Biggs for their constant helpand supfort, and comments on the manuscript. The completedtext remains, of course, solely my responsibility.

Finally, comments and additional information from readerswould be welcome, and can be sent to me via the publishers.

London, October 1983

Preface to the 1998 editionIt is hard now to recall the fear that surroundecl the issue ofIreland when this book was written 15 years ago. To criticise thegovernment or put the nationaiist case vr'as to risk being cast intoouter darkness. The Birmingham Six, the Guilclford Four and theMaguire Seven were still abandoned in jail, evidence of the song:'Being lrish means we're guilty

- 5s 1^/s,1s guilty one and all.'Today the world seems topsy-turvy. The English have fallen inlove with Riverdance and Irish writers; the Irish recoil at drunkenBrit stag parties in Temple Bar. The ,Celtic Tiger,is rampant, Irishemigrants are flooding home, and house prices have gone ballis_tic. British chainstores are recolonising the South - happy to putup signs in lrish if it brings in the punts. And in the North? Well,there is very cautious optimism for a peace based on compro-mise.

In the wider world, we have seen the rise ancl fall of Thatcherand Reagan, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In Britain, ,newmoney' has seen off patricians and labour stalwarts alike, anclidealists reside in trees rather than on picketJines. The much-ridiculed 'broadcasting ban' on lrish organisations has come andgone, and many miscarriages of justice have been exposed, tear-ing to shreds the image of Britain as a haven of free speech andfair play.

After many years of monitoring British TV coverage of lrelancl,it becomes harcl to watch. The hectoring questions and themacho obsession with men in balaclavas are cosmically tiring. Adelightful bonus of moving to Ireland ancl learning the languagl isdiscovering a different kind of media - the lrishJanguage radioand TV stations, and the hugely popular community radio stationthat goes on air in Belfast during the summer festivals. Drawingon the talents, traditions and experience of the communities theyserve, these stations are full of life and meaning. They show thatthere are a wealth of possibilities.

For help in updating the appendix, thanks to yvonne Murphyand Ciar6n Crossey of the Linen Hall Library, and to David Millerand designer Joy Arden.

Sl6n go f6ill.Liz CurtisOctober 1998

l. 1971: Year of crisis

Echoes of Vietnam

In a few stormy months after the introduction of internmentwithout trial in 1971, media coverage of the conflict in the Northof Ireland was hammered into the shape we know today.

Ireland was buzzing with stories of torture and troopbrutality. Massive protest demonstrations were being organised.The long dormant IRA was once again on the offensive. Immedi-ately, the British authorities manifested a deep concern to con-trol the flow of information to the British public.

The supposed effects of television coverage of the war inVietnam on the American public were fresh in establishmentminds. A Sunday Express commentator, heavily critical of tele-vision for showing the British army in Ireland 'in a bad light',noted,

It is only now that we in Britain are running up against thisproblem. It is one that has assailed the United States for nearly adecade.

There can be little doubt that television coverage of theVietnam War was largely responsible for sapping the moral fibreof the American people to continue the struggle.l

Again and again the fear was expressed that the televisioncoverage of Ireland would make it impossible for the govern-ment to continue with what was openly called a guerrilla war.Politicians and newspaper editors agreed that negative coverageof the British army and Northern Ireland government, and sym-pathetic coverage of detainees' torture allegations and the viewstrf nationalists such as Bernadette Devlin, would undermine

6 / Ireland: The propaganda war

'political nerve', would sap the morale of the army and wouldlead to pressure in Britain for withdrawal of the troops. And theBritish public was proving fickle: a national opinion poll pub-lished inthe Daily Mail on24 September 1971 showed tiat 59 percent wanted the troops brought home.

The broadcasters clamp down

Within days of the introduction of internment, a backbench ToryMP, E.velyn King, wrote to Defence Secretary Lord Carringtonlcgqslng the BBC of a host of crimes, including underminingBritish army morale by daily'sniping'at it. 'No national armyihe wrote later to The Daily Telegraph, 'can in the 1970s sustainitsmorale without the support of home television and radio.'2

Carrington took up the theme, launching a public attack onthe BBC. In a letter to BBC Chairman Lord Hill, he demandedthat 'everything possible should be done to prevent repetition'ofreports 'which are unfairly loaded to suggest improper behaviourby British troops.'3

The ssc partially gave in. One of Carrington's complaintsconcerned a World at One radio report on the death of Catholicpriest Father Hugh Mullan, who had been shot dead by Britishtroops on 10 August while giving the last rites to an injured man.Interviewed on World at One, the injured man said that FatherMullan had been shot in the back. Carrington complained thatthe radio presenter had accepted this statement 'without ques-tion', and had summed up with the words, 'An eye-wiinessputting the blame fairly and squarely

8 / Ireland: The propaganda war

cians hostile to the rRA. na Chairman Lord Aylestone objectedto the programme 'on principle', claiming thatlt was ,aiding andabetting the enemy'. Ulster rv Managing Director 6rumHenderson, whose role is similar to that of the sgc's NorthernIreland Controller, was said to have been instrumental in secur-ilg tlr" ban: he had already ensured that only two out of fiveWorld in Action programmes on the North of lreland had beenshown by uw. 12

The establishment attacks

The escalating censorship and network of restrictions inside theTv companies did not satisfy the politicians, u,ho wanted toensure that not a single hint of criticism of British policy pene-trated the airwaves. They were, as they still are, partic;larlyconcerned about television because it has huge audiences, be-cau-se-its visual images have greater impact than radio and print,and also because, since it is technically non-party-political,lt hasa greater reputation for objectivity than the press. Their attackson the BBC were particularly venomous, because it was felt to beidentified in the public mind as'the voice of the nation'.13 In-!eg!.. a Tiyte.r survey of a representative sample of people listedin Who's Who found that a majority thoughi that ihe esc wasmore influential than Parliament, the press, trade unions, thecivil service, the monarchy and the church. ra

On 17 October The Sunday Times finally published allega-tions that internees had been tortured by Britiih soldiers and i"heRUC Special Branch: allegations which had appeared in the Irishpress as long before as the end of August. The controversy overthe British army's conduct which had been raging for months inIreland was now spilling over into Britain, and the politicians weredetermined that none of it should reach the nation's TV screens.

Tory MPs wrote indignant letters to The Daity Telegraphattacking the BBC. Mary Whitehouse and the leader writ6rs'ofthe right wing press joined the attack. All were agreed that sincetherewas undeniably a waron, the BBC, being ,British,, must lineup fair and square on the nation's side, jusl as it had done inWorld War II. As it was, the BBC was giving too much emphasisto allegations of brutality by the security forces, was harissingthe army and giving aid and comfort to the rRA.

An interview by Panorama's Alan Hart on 8 Novemberwith Stormont Prime Minister Brian Faulkner raised a fierce

1971:Yearof crisis / 9

little storm. Faulkner had blandly predicted that in years to comeCatholics would thank him for introducing internment, where-upon Hart retorted angrily that he thought. he knew more aboutiatholics in the North than Faulkner did. 'A lot of peoplethought it was unfair to Faulkner.' then Director-General charlesCurr"an later recalled.ls Mary Whitehouse complained that theinterview 'makes one bound to ask where the sympathies of theBBC lie.'16 The newspapers attacked televisions deviations withgusto. The Daily ExPress warned'

While British troops are involved in fighting a terrorist-anarchistorganisation . . . there is no room for impartiality ' ' ' There is noqtf,stion here of political censorship . . . people whotromb, killand maim in order to smash the fabric of society Put themselvesoutside the normal conventions, which include freedom of speech

. . . the soldier or the policeman who never knows where the nextshot will come from deserves support in a hazardous and desper-ately difficult task. The snide remark u'hich undermines his moraleis almost as bad as the sniper's bullet.17

Jak of the Et'ening, Standard contributed a cartoon whichshowed a television producer asking British troops' one of whomlay wounded, to expose themselves to fire again for the benefit ofthl cameras. 1 8 Cummings of the Dailv Express drew a televisionpresenter. looking remarkably like Robin Day. happily ptgsiq-i.tg ou". a friendly discussion betrveen Adolf Hitler and hisGEstapo chief Himmler. with the caption' 'If only we'd hadshowbiz tv during the /asr war!'1s

The Tory backbenchers mustered their ranks, and on 15November more than eighty of them gathered to complain bitter-ly to Home Secretary Maudling that the government was 'losingt'he propaganda wart.20 If the media did not voluntarily restrainthemseivei, they said, 'patriotic censorship' should 9" i-.posed.21 Among their number was Lieutenant-Colonel 'MadMitct' Mitchell, who next day accused the BBC of 'subsidisedsubversion' and 'contributing towards IRR objectives by urcler-mining the will of the home population to fight in Ulster''22

The nnc succumbs

The furore produced results: Maudling immediately issued asummons to the chairmen of the BBC and the IndependentTelevision Authority to see him. Maudling saw Bsc ChairmanLord Hill on 19 November. The next day, Christopher Chataway,

l0 / Ireland: The propaganda war

who as Minister for Posts and Telecommunications was thenresponsible for broadcasting, made a key speech. Radio and tele-vision, he said, were not required to strike an equal balancebetween the IRA and the Ulster government, nor between theBritish army and 'terrorists'. While propaganda should not besubstituted for truthful reporting, it would be just as obnoxiousto have the soldier and the murderer treated as moral equals.23

In a letter to Maudling three days later, Lord Hill adoptedthese sentiments wholesale. He wrote:

The sec and its staffabhor the terrorism ofthe lne and reporttheir campaign of murder with revulsion . . . as between theGovernment and the Opposition, as between the two communitiesin Northern Ireland, the sec has a duty to be impartial no less thanin the rest of the United Kingdom. But, as berween the Britisharmy and the gunmen, the BBC is not and cannot be impartial.2a

It was not long before the ITA Chairman Lord Aylestone wasechoing this view, though in a rather cruder way. 'As far as I'mconcerned,' he was quoted as saying, 'Britain is at war with theIRA in Ulster and the Ina will get no more coverage than theNazis would have done in the last war.'25

Lord Hill had publicly abandoned the BBC's cherishedpretension to impartiality at a time when, in the wake of intern-ment and the use of sensory deprivation torture techniquesagainst internees, the nationalist community's antipathy to theBritish government and army was stronger than at any time sincethe troubles started. The Observer lamented, 'The rRA hasalready succeeded, to an alarming degree, in becoming thechampion of a large part, perhaps a majority, of Ulster'sCatholics.'26 In this context, it was impossible for the BBC both toreport the IRA 'with revulsion' and to remain impartial'betweenthe two communities'. Nor was it possible for the BBC to take theside of the British army against the 'gunmen' and at the sametime to expose atrocities committed by the troops. The commit-ment to non-impartiality meant that only one side of the storycould be told, and that the views and experiences of a largeproportion of nationalists were now taboo.

To censor or not to censor?

The more sensible pundits, along with the senior broadcasters,realised that there were wiser options than state control of tele-

1971:Year of crisis / 11

vision output. Their arguments were based more on pragmatismthan on principle. A Times leader argued in mid-November 1971that

censorship would be directly counter-productive. Nothing wouldbe of greater assistance to the IRA in the propaganda and politicalcontests that are part of the wider conflict in Northern lreland. Itwould mean that no fact, no assessment offered by British tele-vision, radio or newspapers would be free of the taint that it hadbeen presented under government supervision. The suspicionwould soon develop that the truth was being hidden, or distorted,because it was too unsavoury to be presented fully and fairly to theBritish public. Nothing could do more to undermine confidence.For those who wish to see constitutional authority winning thepropaganda and political contests in Northern Ireland censorshipis not a weapon but a temptation.2T

The Times put forward an alternative remedy. The BeC's 'fail-ings', such as the 'hectoring tone' of Alan Hart's interview withBrian Faulkner, were 'essentially professional errors requiringprofessional improvement.'28

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, right-wing journalistPeregrine Worsthorne opposed political censorship on thegrounds that the media would only accept it when there was aconsensus in the country, as there had been in World War II.Ireland was different: unionists felt the government was notbeing tough enough, while according to the polls a majority inBritain wanted the troops withdrawn. He summed up:

Public opinion, in short, is deeply divided. There is no patrioticline to cling to, no national ethos governing what should be said ordone.

Against this confused background only one point stands outwith absolute clarity; no form of political censorship, either overtor covert, is either desirable or even possible, since any attempt toapply pressure on the media will have exactly the opposite effectfrom that desired.2e

Two types of censorship were being mooted at the time:state-operated censorship, and'voluntary' censorship regulatedby the broadcasting authorities themselves. The ssc chiefsrejected both notions, mainly on the grounds that formal censor-ship of any kind would undermine their credibility. enc Director-General Charles Curran said in October l97l that for the BBC tocensor the reporting of Ireland 'would be subject to one fatalcriticism.' He continued:

12 I lreland: Thepropagandawar

It is an essential function of news to be believed. Unless peoplehave a conviction that the agency from which they are receivingtheir news is honestly attempting to tell the whole truth they willcease to believe it and the most valuable quality which news canhave - its credibility - will be undermined.3o

Writing to Home Secretary Maudling the following month,BBC Chairman Lord Hill echoed this argument, and respondedto the idea of 'voluntary'censorship by pointing out that the BBCwas already vetting its Irish coverage:

The ssc already undertakes a scrupulous editorial watch at alllevels. We believe that if we went beyond that we would donothing but harm and we would reject any such suggestion, fromwhatever quarter it might come. Its immediate effect would be todestroy the credibility of all our reporting.sl

As Hill's letter indicated, the broadcasters' solution was anew form of censorship, hidden from the public eye: the 'pro-fessional improvements' advocated by The Times, realisedthrough a 'sCrupulous editorial watch' within the broadcastingorganisations.- The military, too, had reservations about censorship,though retired army officers were in the forefront of the parli-amentary campaign for it. The army's counter-insurgency hand-book, Land Operations: Volume III - Counter RevolutionaryOperations, issued in August 1969 and based on the experienceof the 53 counter-revolutionary wars conducted since World WarII, states, 'The government should permit a free press to exist asfar as this is possible . . . Action to muzzle the press almostinvariably rebounds on the government, and any proposedrestrictions on press activities must be carefully considered"32The handbook argues, in effect, that manipulating the press ismore effective than censoring it: 'The press, properly handled, ispotentially one of the government's strongest weapons.'33-

[n a book based on his experiences as an army commanderin the North of Ireland in the early.seventies, Colonel RobinEvelegh wrote:

The trouble with any form of censorship is that, like most forms ofdishonesty, its advantages are short-term while its disadvantagesare long-term and soon completely overwhelm whatever good hasbeen done. The key question concerns the credibility of Govern-ment spokesmen. It does not matter what somebody says to thepress or shows on television if no one believes him.s

l97l Year of crisis / 13

As the war in the North escalated, the army concentratedon overhauling and extending its propaganda operation, whichwas much more important there than it had been in wars con-ducted in less accessible parts of the world. Shortly after the startof internment, the army set up an 'Information Policy' unit,responsible for a range of psychological warfare activities, in-cluding poster campaigns by local units, the planting of stories inthe media, and straightforward press relations.3s

Top enc man Desmond Taylor, who in 1971 was Editor ofNews and Current Affairs, later expressed his appreciation of thearmy's approach:

One of the most serious challenges to our reporting arose when theArmy . . came into conflict with large sections of the population.Allegations were made of mistaken and even indiscriminate killingby soldiers . . . Reporting these allegations raised in acute formthe argument as to whether journalism should in effect be cen-sored to help the authorities . . . Our critics suggested forciblythat we were in what amounted to a state of war, it was our job tohelp the Army and not to stab them in the back . . . but ourarguments carried force with the Army itself, and it initiated apolicy of putting up spokesmen to give its side of the story whichiustained public belief in our fairness and impartiality and did theArmy a great deal of good in the process.36

A maze of restrictions

The Tories of the 'imperial right' had not achieved the 'patrioticcensorship' they wanted, but they had helped to get results. Theself-policing by nnc and trv executives was to prove more effec-tive, because more subtle and concealed, than any overt censor-ship would have been. As the Secretary of the Federation ofBroadcasting Unions, Tom Rhys, put it in a letter of protest toLord Hill in early 1972, the'checks and balances' introduced bythe BBC 'were becoming as effective as censorship, probablymore effective because they were not much known outside thecircles immediately involved, were superficially merely an inten-sification of normal safeguards, and were too vague and distant atarget for public criticism.'37 Frustrated staff, said Rhys, werebeginning to avoid 'items on which they ought to work', or avoidIrish subjects altogether, and members believed that their careerswere jeopardised by disagreements over items on lreland.

The internal controls allowed the BBC to implement,

14 I heland: Thepropagandawar

without appearing to concede its independence, many of thecritics' demands. From now on, critical questioning of the armywas out, detailed probing of Unionist politicians was out, sym-pathetic questioning of victims of army brutality was out, andinterviews with the IRA were out except in the most exceptionalcircumstances.

. Those reporters who believed their role was to ask ques-tions, however inconvenient for the government, were effectivelymuzzled. As Jonathan Dimbleby wrote in an unsigned article inthe New Statesman in December I971,

The censorship and restrictions now imposed on reporters andeditors make it practically impossible for them to ask the question'why?'Why do the Catholics now laugh openly when a Britishsoldier is shot down and killed, when a year ago they would offerthe army cups of tea? Why do the Catholics refuse to condemn thebombings and the shootings? Why do they still succour theIRA . . ? What influence today does the Civil Rights Movementhave? Or the solp? The answers to such questions are fundamentalto understanding the problem, crucial to any judgement of Britishpolicy, yet they cannot be asked by onc employees: quite simplythe management of the BBC has decided that it does not want iuchquestions raised. Its reporters and editors stand transfixed -censored - in a maze of insuperable restrictions.3s

Dimbleby's concern was shared by many leading journalistsand broadcasters, and in November 1971 some 200 of them gath-ered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London to protestagainst 'the intensification of censorship on TV, radio and the presscoverage of events in Northern Ireland'. Among them was seniorBBC reporter Keith Kyle, who said, 'There is no higher nationalinterest than avoiding self-deception in Northern Ireiand.'3s

But their protest was hampered by their refusal to declarethemselves publicly. Fearing for their careers, they asked thattheir.names not be published, and only The lrish iimes, barelyread in Britain, broke ranks. A few went on trying to cover Irelandconscientiously, some resigned their posts, while others gave up.gave up. They drifted into a silence that would not be brokenagain until 1976, when Jonathan Dimbleby startled a somnolenttelevision discussion into life by declaring that .the politicalinstitutions, BBC, IBA, British government, British opposition. . . don't wish us to know too much too well about NorthernIreland.'ao

l97l:Year of crisis / 15

'l'he right wins round one

So by the end of 1,971 a tiny minority of the population - bu9\-hcnch Tory MPs, letter writers to The Daily Telegraph withnames like Colonel the Lord Clifford of Chudleigh oBE DL, acouple of government ministers, the top figures in the.rv hier-archy and Fleet Street editors - had succeeded in excising fromtclevision most vestiges of questioning of the government's Irishpolicy. There had been scarcely a word of dissent from theopposition benches in the House of Commons.

Once tried and proved effective, the same tactics were to beused again and again. Whenever the broadcasting organisationsappeared to be wavering from the narrow path of patriotism, the^sime group of people would raise the same rallying cries ofte levision's treason and support for the rebels. 'We are losing thepropaganda war,' they would lament, as they re-enacted thestytiseA drama. And the rv chiefs, while paying lip service totheir independence from the state, would re-assert their non-impartialitlz and tighten up their internal controls' The ritual wasto

-be played out once more, with almost uncanny similarity, in

the controversy over Tv coverage of the war in the South Atlanticin May 1982.41

Focussing their anger on television coverage' the politi-cians neglected to examine whether it was in fact their policiesthat were the problem. Television provided, as it was to do sooften in the fuiure, a convenient scapegoat and diversion. Politi-cal scientist Jay G. Blumler suggested in New Society that per-haps the real similarity with Vietnam lay not in the influence oftel-evision, but in 'the peculiarities of the cause at stake', 'in theintrinsic difficulty for a democracy of fighting a war that arouseslittle genuine passion among ordinary people, and also seemspotentially endless.'42' A lone right-winger, Tory ur Philip Goodhart, suggestedthat the solution to the problem of public opinion might not becensorship but a change in political strategy. In a propheticarticle in The Daily Telegrapft, he argued that, like the Americansin Vietnam, Britain had made the mistake of pushing her owntroops into the main combat role. Now, following the Americanexample, they should be pulled back from the front line andlocally recruited forces should be given 'more responsible andvigorous roles'. The solution to the media's'damaging effect onp;bhc opinion' lay in 'the path of partial Ulsterisation ' ' '

16 / Ireland: The propagandawar

machine-guns and armoured cars for the RUC and an offensive rolefor the uDR.'43 As things turned out, both partial censorship andpartial Ulsterisation were to be the order of the day.

The establishment had won, almost unchallenged, thiscrucial first round in the battle to control the flow of informationabout the war in the North of Ireland. The British public, asintended, had lost: their morale, or at least passive acquiescencein the government's Irish policy was to be maintained at the priceof ignorance. Indeed, since the debate had largely been confinedto the editorials and letters columns in The Times and The DailyTelegraph, many people were unaware that a battle was inprogress. Since knowledge of the mechanisms of censorship inbroadcasting was confined to the people who worked in thatfield, the public at large had little idea of how their informationwas being manipulated.

The Question of Ulster

At the turn of the year l97l-:72, there was a major row betweenthe government and the BBC over a marathon rv debate calledThe Question of Ulster, but this did not affect the trend towardsever tighter restrictions on programme makers. The Question ofUlster featured several Irish politicians being questioned by twoLords and a judge who was also a Tory MP. Home SecretaryMaudling reportedly 'blew his top' when he heard about theprogramme,44 and, along with the Northern Ireland govern-ment, tried desperately to stop it. What they were afraid of, saidthe W Mail, 'is that any point of view other than their own will beexpressed' and that 'the viewing public might realise that there ranother point of view at all.'as

The nnc, which had not in any case invited the IRa toparticipate, responded to the pressure by agreeing to restructurethe programme to give more emphasis to the 'special position ofthe majority party in Ulster'46, but this failed to placate thepoliticians. The British and Stormont governments said theywould boycott the programme, hoping that by 'unbalancing' itthey would prevent the BBC going ahead. The Bnc, which hadbeen thrown into 'much anguished dithering',47 said it wouldindeed scrap the programme if no one could be found to representthe Stormont point of view; but in the nick of time Ulster UnionisttvtP John Maginnis broke ranks and agreed to appear.

The government could have banned the programme by

1971: Year of crisis / 17

invoking clause 13( ) of the BBC's licence, which permits theminister responsible for broadcasting to order the BBC not totransmit specified material.as The government stopped short ofdoing this, perhaps because Lord Hill had said he would makeany such ban public. But the day before the programme was dueto go out, Maudling issued an unprecedented public rebuke toLord Hill: 'I believe that this programme in the form in which ithas been devised can do no good, and could do serious harm.'ae

Maudling had overshot the mark. The pressure was soblatant that, as the Financial Times observed, the BBC'had littleoption' but to go ahead with the programme, 'since as an in-dependent corporation it could not be seen to give in to politicalpressures.'50

After all the uproar, British viewers found the programmeon transmission so boring that half of them switched over to afootball match on ITv.51 Lord Caradon, one of the tribunalmembers on the show, summed up with the words, 'We have notdone much damage tonight. We may have been dull but we havenot been dangerous.'s2 The atmosphere of the talk-in, whichlasted two hours fifty minutes, was, said the Financial Times,'typical of the BBC at its most sober, and within the programmeitself there was not a single example of controversy.'s3 One letterwriter to The Times quoted Sir Thomas Browne: 'This is thedormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum to makeme sleep.'sa

The response in Whitehall, however, was less languid.There, according to The Guardian, it was argued'with the utmostvehemence that the impact of the programme threatened tocreate an attitude of despair and indifference among the Britishpublic, and to feed the view that British troops should bewithdrawn'.55

2. From silence to civil rights

The silent years

In the ferment of 1970 and 1971, as the television companiestightened up their internal censorship procedures and the pressadopted an uncritical pro-British army stance, they were con-tinuing a 50-year-old tradition of tacit support for governmentpolicy on Ireland. Ever since Ireland was partitioned in 1920, andihe North given its local Parliament at Stormont, there had beena convention in the House of Commons that the affairs of theprovince were never discussed there. The British media madeihemselves part of this conspiracy of silence, which lasted untilthe civil rights explosion of the late sixties made it impossible toturn a blind eye any longer.

Until nv arrived in the North in 1959, the BBC monopolisedbroadcasting in the Six Counties, and from the start it wasintimately linked with the Unionist hierarchy. Gerald Beadle,who became manager of the first Northern Ireland radio stationin 1926 and later director of sec television, recalled:

mine was a task of consolidation, which meant building the sscinto the lives of the people of the province and making it one oftheir public institutions . . . I was invited to become a member ofthe Ulster Club; the Governor, the Duke of Abercorn, was im-mensely helpful and friendly, and Lord Craigavon, the PrimeMinister, was a keen supporter of our work. ln effect I was made amember of the Establishment.l

The Unionist regime chose to act as if neither the South oflreland nor any minority tradition in the North actually existed-The new BBC radio station dutifully followed suit. A locallyowned news agency supplied all the news, no political statements

From silence to civil rights / 19

were permitted unless made by major local politicians, and eventhe results of matches organised by the Gaelic Athletic Associ-ation, which organises traditional Irish games such as GaelicI'ootball, were not broadcast.

Any divergence from the orthodoxy was greeted with astorm of Unionist protest. Beadle's drama department wasattacked for using southern accents in some of its plays, and hisdecision to celebrate St Patrick's Day provoked outrage. But onthe whole Beadle's policy was to act, as former BBC programmeeditor Anthony Smith put it, 'as if the Border was an Atlanticcoast.'2

A nnc document of 1930 made the position absolutelyclear. The nnC Regional Service, it said, 'reflects the sentimentsof the people who have always maintained unswerving loyalty toBritish ideals and to British culture. Northern Ireland relies onbroadcasting to strengthen its common loyalties with Britain.'3

Under G.L. Marshall, who was Director of Bsc NorthernIreland from the mid-thirties until well after the second worldwar, the policy was 'to keep an iron grip on local news and allownothing to go out which suggested that anything in NorthernIreland could or would ever change.'a As well as ignoring theexistence of the nationalist community, the BBC steered clear ofprovocative Unionist activities, and did not report the OrangeOrder's annual 12 July demonstrations.

Crucially for the British and international audiences,Marshall managed to get into a position where he effectivelycontrolled all sec material relating to the North of Ireland.Smith writes that

Marshall demanded and was given the right to be consulted by alldepartments of the ssc on any matter relating to Ireland in anyway. Thus, the chief in Belfast came to act as a kind of censor overthe whole of the ssc's output from London both in its domesticand overseas services, and naturally this tended to give a Unionisttinge to everything that came out.5

The Controller of BBC Northern lreland still holds this power.After the war, the system became a little more flexible. The

Catholic Church was represented on the religious advisorycommittee, and both Gaelic games and the Unionist 12 Julymarches were now reported. But on the fundamental politicalquestions there was no movement. When the BBC NorthernIreland Advisory Council, a body made up of influential people

20 I keland: The propagandawar

from the community, was set up in 1947, at the very first meetingthe chairperson ruled that the question of partition and theborder was out of order. The Regional Director issued a directivethat BBC policy was'not to admit any attack on the constitutionalposition of Northern Ireland.'6 The ssc continued to ignoreevents south of the border, and gave no hint of discontent orinjustice in the north. The arrival of television in Belfast - just intime for the coronation - brought no changes'

The Whicker affair

On the couple of occasions in 1959 when British televisionallowed fleefing glimpses of another version of reality, Unionistwrath descendedon it with a vengeance. On Ed Murrow's talkprogramme , See It Now, Southern Irish actress Siobhan McKennadescribed some IRA internees in the South sympathetically as'young idealists'. There was an indignant reaction in the North ofIreland: Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Lord Brookeboroughprotested vehemently to the BBC, who responded by dropping aiecond programme in which McKenna appeared, despite the factthat in it she discussed only the innocuous topic of the Irish senseof humour.T

The second occasion was both bizarre and illuminating' InJanuary 1959 the Tonight current affairs programme sent reporterAIan Whicker to film eight ten-minute reports in the SixCounties. 'Each was matter-of-fact and straight down themiddle. None took more than a tangential look at religion orpolitics,' he recalled in his autobiography. But the openingprogram-e - about, of all things, betting shops - was enough tobring the sky down on the ssC's head.-

Whicker sinned, quite unwittingly, in the opening sequence'Along with general shots of the Stormont Parliament and theCity Hall, he showed graffiti on the walls such as'No Pope here'and 'Vote Sinn Fein'. Then, showing a close-up of a policeman'srevolver, he 'mentioned that Northern Ireland, though intenselyloyal and the birthplace of most of Britain's best generals, hadarmed police but no conscription.'8 Then he went on to describehow betting shops operated; already legal in the North, theywere about to be introduced in Britain.

He describes how he watched the programme in a Derryhotel:

From silence to civil rights / 21

When the report ended there was silence in our hotel lounge' Theman I had been drinking with turned to me: 'You can't say that sortof thing.' I was baffled. During the previous year I had reported.inexactly the same straightforward way from 17 different countrieswithout being told I could not get away with it. 'Why ever not?Every word's true.' 'I know,' he said, 'but that doesn't matter' Youjust ian't say that sort of thing.' As I was to find out later - he wasabsolutely right.s

Next morning the little Tonight report dominated the localnews headlines. A bishop and a senator flew to London tocomplain. 'The chairman of the Tourist Board expressedoutrage,'Whicker recorded, 'and a BBC Sportsview team filminga local football match was dragged down from its camera standand attacked.'10 Northern lreland's Prime Minister LordBrookeborough intervened personallyll and Stormont threat-ened to remove broadcasting from the nBC. The BBC's NorthernIieland Controller replied with, in Whicker's words, 'a cravenstatement grovelling at their "distress and indignation".'Apologising for the aspects of life in the North shown in the film,ne aissociatid himself and his staff from this 'unbalanced pictureof life in the Province' . 12

The esc never screened the following seven Tonightreports, and did not attempt another programme on the SixCounties until several years later.

Ulster Tv arrives

The opening of Ulster rv in 1959 put pressure on the BBC toliberalise its coverage. The group which owned urv was headedby the Earl of Antrim, whose extensive business interests in-ciuded the rabidly loyalist paper, the News Letter; urv's manag-ing director was Brum Henderson, whose brother runs the NewsLitter as well as the Century Press, which printed the StormontHansard and other Northern Ireland government papers' Atleast initially, however, commercial interest dictated that urvcould not afford to alienate the nationalist third of its potentialaudience. It reportedly gained a reputation for fairness in itscoverage, although it did ihave to be nagged and cajoled at timesinto venturing into public affairs coverage on any importantscale.'13 In faCt uTv only originated six hours of material a week:the rest was supplied from Britain.

i

l

22 I heland: Thepropagandawar

As urv developed, it proved itself ultra-cautious, and, likethe BBC, quailed before the major political issues in the SixCounties. Its sister station, Rediffusion, produced the only tworeports on the political situation in the North th4t were trans-mitted on national television prior to 1968: but UTV refused totransmit these reports, made by the This Week programme, in itsjurisdiction.la Well over a decade later, and still under BrumHenderson, urv was still displaying the same timidity. In 1980, acritic opposing the renewal of urv's franchise said, 'They'vetried to be neutral and ended up being nothing.'He went on topoint out that in ten years of war urv had not made a singleprogramme which tried to explain what the conflict was allabout. l s

The arrival of urv, which rapidly gained 65 per cent of theaudience, forced the BBC into a measure of liberalisation, but in aframework of trying to 'maintain a consensus and build up themiddle ground'.16 The appointment of Waldo Maguire as theBBC's Northern Ireland Controller reportedly accelerated thisprocess: 'reporters from London were welcomed and helped todo their work . . . local talent, Protestant and Catholic alike wasencouraged.'1 7

But Maguire kept the London-based reporters on a tightrein, and the emphasis was still on giving a positive picture of lifein the Six Counties. Like his predecessors, he had the right to beconsulted on every programme dealing with either part of Ireland.Indeed, his power of veto over programmes transmitted in Britainwas now for all practical purposes absolute, because in the sixtiesthe BBC adopted a 'Catch 22' approach: it had decreed that allprogrammes on Ireland should be suitable for transmissionthroughout the United Kingdom, and the Director General hadalso instructed producers to do nothing that would provokeMaguire into shutting off the BBC Northern Ireland transmitter,as he then had the power to do.18

The civil rights movement ignored

As the civrt rights movement gathered momentum, the BBC bothnationally and locally continued to ignore the issues it raised. In1966 a Tonight reporter, who later became a producer of ITV'sThis Week, reportedly left the BBC because he was not allowed tomake a film about gerrymanded.g," the process by which theregime manipulated constituency boundaries so that local elec-

From silence to civil rights / 23

lion results were grossly distorted in favour of the Unionists.Then in June 1968 one of the key events in the history of the

civil rights movement occurred. The Unionist-controlled localuuthorities allocated council houses on a sectarian basis, givingprecedence to Protestants regardless of their circumstances. Inprotest, homeless Catholic families squatted newly built councilItrtuses in Caledon, Co. Tyrone. The local authority evicted themund gave one of the houses to a l9-year-old single Protestantwoman who was the secretary of a Unionist parliamentary can-didate. A Nationalist MP at Stormont, Austin Currie, thenoccupied the house and was himself evicted, and in the processsuccessfully drew attention to discrimination in housing. ThellllC's reaction was later described by senior reporter Keith Kyle:

The coverage of that became an occasion of much controversy,and the Regional Controller of the ssc in Northern Ireland at thetime thought that a feature programme should not be made of thisevent. That became a sort of cause celebre within the ngc.20

The identification of the broadcasting companies with thestatus quo in the Six Counties and their refusal to acknowledgethe underlying political schisms had profound effects. In theNorth, the alienation of the nationalist community from the statewas paralleled by their alienation from ry and radio, which theygenerally regarded with deep scepticism. Broadcasters haveturgued that by preventing nationalists from putting their case onlhe air, TV and radio contributed to the conflict by forcing themlo pursue their 'legitimate aims' outside the 'democratic frame-work'.21

In Britain prior to 1968 the only television investigationshad been the two This Week reports, and there had been almostno in-depth newspaper coverage: a Sunday Times report ondiscrimination printed in 1966 was a rare exception.22 Coupledwith the veto on parliamentary discussion and the absence of 'theIrish question' from school and university curricula, the mediasilence meant that British people were scarcely aware of thecxistence of the Six Counties, let alone of the perverse andabusive system that was being operated in their name.

Civil rights in the spotlight

It was the North's second civil rights march, on 5 October 1968 inDerry, that finally brought the bizarre regime to international

24 I beland: Thepropagandawar

attention. The first march, from Coalisland to Dungannon sixweeks earlier, had been ignored, but the Derry demonstrationwas well covered by television, and viewers throughout Britainand Ireland saw the RUC baton-charge the demonstrators, leav-ing an MP, Gerry Fitt, arnong the injured.

After 5 October, journalists poured into the North. Irishjournalist and then civil rights activist Eamonn McCann toldhow British reporters roamed the streets of Derry's Bogsideseeking articulate, Catholic, unemployed slum-dwellers tointerview.23 British Prime Minister Harold Wilson began press-ing openly for reforms, and the Unionist regime was con-demned by all sections of the British media. 'If you want roses,fishing or beautiful scenery,' wrote Puncft cartoonist Mahoodin January 1969, parodying a holiday brochure, 'IJlster has thebest. The same goes for religious maniacs, gerrymanderers andbigots.'24

Bernadette Devlin's election and arrival at Westminster in1969 were greeted with a rapture which reflected the media'sattitude to the civil rights cause as much as their eagerness toexploit her sex and youthfulness. 'She's Bernadette, she's 21,she's an Mp, she's swinging', enthused the Daily Express.2s'Swinging - that's petite Bernadette Devlin,' trilled the DailyMirror.26 'She is a bonny fighter,' proclaimed The Times in afront page article headlined, 'Miss Devlin enthrals packed Housewith straight-from-heart speech.'27

With the arrival of British troops on the streets of Derryand Belfast in August 1969, all that was to change. Britain wasnow openly, and physically, involved, and British observerscould no longer regard the situation with detached distaste. Themedia's identification with the troops was instant and total.Reporting their arrival in Derry, John Chartres of The Timeswrote:

Whatever happens now, and whatever the political implicationsturn out to be, one thing is certain - the 'dreaded'British Army isno longer dreaded by anyone here except the utterly bigoted . . .It is only after 24 hours that one can appreciate the impact that thearrival of 350 cheerful (but highly professional) Yorkshiremenwith soti brogues from the Dales and Moors, a fund of good storiesfrom the Leeds and Huddersfield public houses, but a skill at armsstretching back through Aden, Cyprus, Malaya, and the Greekinsurrection, made on a town that really was beginning to twitchwith fear.28

From silence to civil rights / 25

Rhona Churchill of the Daily Mail described how the troopsItrrndled the locals: 'Over and over again they said patiently andpolitely "Would you mind very much moving on, please?" Andgtcople have moved on. This was the British Tommy in actionhcre. You felt proud of him.'2e

Later, explaining why despite himself he felt more stronglytu lluut the death of a British soldier than the death of an Irishman,Simon Winchester of The Guardian described the emotional tieItctween British journalists and soldiers:

There was an indefinable feeling of being in a foreign country inIreland, North or South-and, itmust be admitted, there was someidentification, some commonality between the ordinary Britishsquaddie on the street and the ordinary British reporter or photo-grapher or television man who followed him around . . . Oftenb

26 I heland:The propaganda war

every act of violence and major outburst of rioting was blamedon the IRA.

There were no limits to the journalistic imagination when itcame to portraying the British side as good and the nationalistside as evil, with sometimes farcical results. 'Troops fear thecroak of the frog', announced the Daily Sketch in June 1970,explaining:

Behind the swirling haze of cs gas, the croak of the frog summonsLondonderry to riot. It blares above the crash of the gas cannistersand rises over the screams of terror. It is a voice the troops in theBogside would dearly love to identify.

They call it the frog and every soldier now recognises it after48 hours of almost continual fighting. It moves from street battle tostreet battle pouring out a continual stream of hate, vilificationand obscenities.33

Reporters put the best possible construction on armybehaviour, making allowances even for flagrant brutality.Evening Standard reporter Max Hastings, who became one ofthe best known war correspondents in the South Atlantic in 1982,described an incident in which a soldier beat a man with suchforce that his baton broke;

As the riot squad moved up they banged their shields with theirbatons in rhythm with their marching time, then, at a yell fromtheir officer they sprinted into the darkness among the crowd toreturn dragging a youthful rioter. The whole Company cheeredspontaneously. 'Broke my baton, this one,'said a corporal cheer-fully holding up the stump.3a

As Eamonn McCann commented, Hastings made the incidentsound 'like a jolly adventure, more Biggles than Belfast.'3s

When British soldiers shot somebody dead, the press hadno qualms in accepting the army's word that the victim was a'petrol-bomber' or 'gunman'. One article, by John Chartres ofThe Times, became part of nationalist folklore. On 3l July 1970soldiers shot dead Danny O'Hagan in the New Lodge Road inBelfast. The British army said he had been throwing petrolbombs, but local people denied this so vehemently that mostpapers hesitated to repeat it. John Chartres, however, came upwith a most original compromise. A civilian had been killed, hewrote, when 'the army for the first time carried out its threat toshoot assistant petrol bombers.'36

Even journalists who believed themselves to be sceptical

From silence to civil rights / 27

tended unquestioningly to accept the army's version, unless theyhad personally witnessed the event in question. Simon Winchestertold how. after the curfew imposed on the Lower Falls in Belfastin July 1970. the British army said they had fired onlv 15 shots -but the true figure turned out to be 1,454 rounds. 'Never, sincethen,' he wrote. 'have I found myself able to take the army'sexplanation about anv single incident with any less a pinch of saltthan I would take any other explanation.'37 Yet the followingFebruary. in a case that was publicised when Bernadette Devlinraised it in Parliament, Winchester accepted the word of a para-troop officer that a man just shot by soldiers. Bernard Watt, wasa 'petrol bomber'. Defending himself against Devlin's accusationthat he had 'casually libelled a Belfast worker . . . the effect ofthe libel being to justify his killing,'s8 Winchester explained hisreasoning: 'a soldier cannot legally shoot "a rioter" . . . He hasto wait until a man has committed one of a number of specificoffences, of which throwing petrol bombs is one. I accepted atthe time that this is what Mr Watt must have done, and this I dulyreported.'3s

The newspapers' flattering portraval of the army rvas not allthe tault of journalists. Some did try to report honestly on theincreasingly widespread army brutality, but again and again suchaccounts were dropped. Kevin Dowling. who reported from theNorth for the Sunday Mirror betrveen 1970 and 1974, recalled,'What I remember most about the period is the number ofuncomfortable news stories I have covered which were notprinted, but which turned out to be true.'ao He cited a story hewrote on the eve of internment. On 7 August 1971 HarryThornton, a building worker, was driving his van past SpringfieldRoad barracks when it backfired. Soldiers opened fire and killedhim. His friend Murphy was dragged from the van and taken intothe barracks. Dowling explained:

It was obvious that evening that Thornton was killed by mistakeand it also became obvious that his friend had been taken in andbeaten mercilessly by the Paras and the police.

He was brought to hospital later with a fracture of the skull. Iphoned over my story. Not only was it not used. but I was threat-ened with dismissal if I ever again suggested that our army wasdoing such nasty things in Northern lreland.al

The papers not only played down army violence, but alsomobilised their readers into active support for the troops. In late

28 / Ireland: The propaganda war

1971, the Daily Mirror was running an airlift to give 'homecomforts' to the soldiers; The Daily Telegraph and The SundayTelegraph had set up a colour rv fund for them - a project thatwas repeated in later years; the Daily Express had launched acampaign urging its women readers to write to the 'Ulster her-mits'; and the Daily Mail was sponsoring tours of the camps inthe Six Counties by well-known entertainers.a2

Yet by this time, as the Sunday Times Insight team wrote,the army's conduct had emerged as 'the most sensitive singleissue raised by military involvement in Ulster.a3 The refusal ofmost of the media to acknowledge this meant that the Britishpublic had a completely erroneous view of what was happening.It also meant that the media were, in practice, giving the govern-ment and army permission to continue hammering the national-ist community.

John O'Callaghan, then a senior reporter in The Guardian'sLondon office, took three weeks leave in January 1972 and wentto Derry, Belfast and Dublin to investigate the situation. 'I foundthe Catholic minority have had a far worse battering than everappears in any English papers,' he said later. He considered thatif even The Guardian, with its 'tradition of opposition towardsany kind of state or institutional violence', was behind the army,then the army would 'feel that nobody is looking or going toquestion them at all.'aa After Bloody Sunday, he resigned fromThe Guardian in protest at its Irish coverage.

3. Reporting British violence

Reporting torture: 1971

Since the start of the conflict, a central problem for the Britishauthorities has been how to use sufficient force to subduenationalist protest without, at the same time, alienating'moder-ate' nationalists, shattering the British public's faith in theirgovernment's policy, and undermining Britain's democraticimage internationally. Counter-insurgency expert Frank Kitsonadvocates a balancing act. He counsels against 'the ruthlessapplication of naked force' because 'it is most unlikely that theBritish government, or indeed any Western government, wouldbe politically able to operate on these lines even if it wanted to doso.' He goes on:

Although with an eye to world opinion and to the need to retainthe allegiance of the people, no more force than is necessary forcontaining the situation should be used, conditions can be madereasonably uncomfortable for the population as a whole, in orderto provide an incentive for a return to normal life and to act as adeterrent towards a resumption of the campaign. 1

This position is difficult to maintain. The actions involvedin making conditions 'reasonably uncomfortable for the popula-tion' may well, if word spreads beyond those immediately af-fected, alienate both world opinion and the local populace. Onesolution, therefore, is to try to stop the news getting out.

Repeatedly - as with torture and troop brutality in the earlyseventies, Bloody Sunday, the use of torture to obtain con-fessions, plastic bullets, and the shooting of unarmed people -Britain has resorted to a level of force which clearly violatesdemocratic standards. Consequently, in every such instance, the

30 / Ireland: The propaganda war

authorities have tried to minimise the damage to their image byusing various cover-up devices: pretending the incident had notoccurred, lying about what had happened, blaming it on some-one else, usually republicans, saying it was a creation of enemypropaganda, or advancing justifications for the action.

Within the Six Counties, it is impossible for the authoritiesfully to conceal what is going on, because the people have directexperience of events. Such concealment is also, to some extent,undesirable from the government's point of view, since violencehas its uses both in intimidating nationalists and placating loyal-ists. But beyond the borders of the North, and especially inBritain, the authorities are able to exert a big influence on howthe public perceives events. The British media have, by andlarge, promoted the establishment's version, though a very fewjournalists have insisted on reporting events as they saw them.

Allegations ignored

On l9 August 197 l, tendays after the first big internment swoop,a local nationalist paper, the Tyrone Democrat, carried a pageone headline which read, 'Warning! Don't Read This If YouHave A Weak Stomach . . .'The paper contained eight pages ofstatements from men who had been arrested, detailing maltreat-ment by the army, together with reports of local protests. A25-year-old man from Belfast. Henry Bennett, told of his experi-ences in Girdwood Barracks, one of the 'holding centres':

I was forccd to run over broken glass and rough stones to ahelicopter without shoes. I spent only fifteen seconds in the heli-copter and I was then pushed out into the hands of militarypolicemen. I was forced to crawl between these policemen back tothe building. They kicked me on the hands, legs, ribs and kidneyarea .2

Such accounts were widely published in Ireland, but the firstresponse of British papers was to ignore them. As the SundayTimes Insight team noted in their book, Ulster,

Most British newspapers found the mounting allegations soincendiary that they ignored them, or confined their concern to theevents over the fprty-eight hours of 9-10 August 1971, followingthe introduction of internment. Even the most formal of thoseinquirieswas . . inadequate.3

Reporting British violence / 31

The most sinister allegations concerned 11 internees, laterknown as 'the guineapigs', who became the victims of a bizarreund terrifying experiment in the application of sensory depriva-tion torture techniques. By 20 August, statements from thelorture victims had been circulated to the press by the Associ-ation for Legal Justice. By the end of August these accounts hadruppeared in the Irish papers. Then in the first week of Septemberthe British-based Anti-Internnrent League circulated a 10-pagedossier to all British papers.a

But the British public heard nothing till 17 October, when'l'he Sunday Times published an article titled 'How Ulsterinternees are made to talk' by the Insight team with John Whale.lJoth the headline and the introduction implied that the army wasobtaining a flow of useful information through its interrogationmethods: this was not the case, and no such claims were made inthe article. Although the piece was on the front page, it playedsecond fiddle to a story titled, 'Arms plane held in Holland: ToptRA man sought'. At any rate, two months after the allegationshad first been made, British people now learned of the 'disori-entation' techniques that were being applied by specially trainedmilitary interrogators and RUC Special Branch men.

They had been rounded up at various points in the province . . .All were blindfolded by having a hood, two layers of fabric thick,placed over their heads. These hoods remained on their heads forup to six days.

Each man was then flown by helicopter to an unknowndestination - in fact Palace Barracks. During the period of theirinterrogation, they were continuously hooded, barefoot, dressedonly in an over-large boiler suit, and spreadeagled against a wall . . .

The only sound that filled the room was a high-pitchedthrob . . . The noise literally drove them out of their minds.5

C)ne of the victims, Patrick Shivers, explained what it felt like:

I was taken into a room. In the room there was a consistent noiselike the escaping of compressed air. It was loud and deafening.The noise was continuous. I then heard a voice moaning. Itsounded like a person who wanted to die. My hands were put highabove my head against the wall. My legs were spread apart. Myhead was pulled back by someone catching hold of the hood and atthe same time my backside was pushed in so as to cause themaximum strain on my body. I was kept in this position for four, orperhaps six hours until I collapsed and fell to the ground. After Ifell I was lifted up again and put against the wall in the same

32 I lreland: The propagandawar

position and the same routine was followed until I again collapsed.Again I was put up and this continued indefinitely. This treatmentlasted for two or three days and during this time I got no sleep andno food. I lost consciousness several times.6

Patrick Shivers, never, incidentally, a member of the rRe,was awarded f 15,000 damages against the British and NorthernIreland governments in 1974. In the years following his experi-ence, he saw five psychiatrists and was still suffering from inter-mittent depression when interviewed by Andrew Stephen of TheObserver in 1976.7

The broadcasting organisations were no more anxious toreport the allegations than were the newspapers. A formerreporter for BBC radio's World at One recalled that weeks beforeThe Sunday Times printed the article, BBC reporters were doingthe same research because they were getting the same leads.

They came up with interviews which seemed compelling evidence.They were never transmitted and there was immense frustrationinside the BBC. Then The Sunday Timesprintedits allegations andin the World This Weekend office - we got the newspapers in onthe Saturday night - we said, 'Now is the time to run thoseinterviews.' And the editor, I presume under instruction, and in avery, very fierce row with me, that ended up with me threateningto resign and him white-faced, the editor forbade the use ofthoseinterviews. This was a crucial demonstration for the people in thatoffice of the emergence of a problem which up to then they hadn'tbeen very aware of.

Then we finally got around it by a compromise, by gettingBrian Faulkner to talk quite separately about the police. Then wewcnt on to ask liin-r il'hc had see n the allegations in Tlre SunduyTimes. He responded to the allegations, and we carried that as thefirst interview in the World This Weekend. There had been beforethat as far as I know in the news bulletins no reference to theSunday Times report.B

Inquiring TV reporters, too, were running into a wall ofhostility from their superiors. The sgc's Today programme did afilmed interview with Michael Farrell, a leader of People'sDemocracy who had just been released from detention, and nowa noted historian. It was due to go out at the start of September,but was banned. At a top level internal BBC meeting on 17September, Roland Fox, assistant to the Editor of News andCurrent Affairs, explained why. The minutes record his viewthat:

Reporting British violence i 33

After weighing up all the factors, taking into account the fact thatit had not been possible to make the item's treatment defensible asa whole on the grounds offairness, he had decided that the itemwas expendable. It had in any case been an item of marginalimportance, being a description by an admitted extremiit of con-ditions in the Crumlin Road prison.s

The BBC reporters had been instructed to present all inter-vicws with ex-internees 'in as sceptical a manner as possible';lhcy had done this, and the interviews had nonetheiess beenbanned. They had also been forbidden to seek corroborationlrom doctors and pri6sts. which would have lent weight to thertlleg_ations. As Jonathan Dimbleby wrote. 'euite cleirly, untilllrc Compton Report bore out much of what had been alleged,thc ssc's intention was to discredit the allegations and those whotnade them.'1o

Army propaganda

lirllowing The Sunday Tintes'disclosures. politicians, the armyitnd sections of the press did their best to discredit the stories oftorture by putting them down to 'rRA propaganda'which hadbcen swallowed by a gullible press. As Northein Ireland,s primeMinister Brian Faulkner put it. the rRA 'had poured out propa-ganda aimed at undermining public morale, confusing the issuesitnd discrediting the Government and security . . . Lurid storiesof torture and brutality were blazened throughout the world.'11

The army press department, using a device that was tollccome familiar with the re-emergence of systematic torture inI977,-planted the story that the rRA was beating up its own peoplein order to present them to the press as victims-of army and policelrrutality. On 24 Ocrober. a week afrer its first iepori, fheS-unday Times planned to publish further allegations of brutality.Part of the report concerned 36-year-old Geiard McAllister, ;nll{A- member previously imprisoned for wearing military-styleuniform at an IRA funeral. On release, he wis immediatLlyrcarrested and interrogated for 26 hours before being set free.'lwo men then delivered him to a hospital in County LJuth in theSouth of Ireland. The consultant psychiatrist at the hospital, DrJames J. Wilson, London-trained and fervently p.o-British,was not pleased when McAllister was brought in. He almostrefused him admission and only agreed when he observed hismental state. McAllister's condition so shocked Dr Wilson that

34 I lrelandl'The propaganda war

he wrote to The Sunday Times, The Observer and The SundayTekgrgOh. The latter two responded with standard printed formsthanking him for his letter, but The Sunday Timis sent over areporter who took statements both from him and from McAllister.Dr Wilson told them that on admission McAllister

seemed literally frozen with terror . . a severe, acute anxiety case- the kind of condition you sometimes find among men who havebeen in heavy combat, or who h4ve miraculously escaped from aroad disaster. It is a condition of almost total immobility, wrth allbodily responses severely repressed - being almost frozen withfear . . . the dominant reason for his condition seemed to be histreatment in the interrogation centre.12

nu-C Special Branch men and soldiers had inflicted a range ofindignities on McAllister, including squeezing his testicles ihenhe failed to give satisfactory replies to questions.'[he Sunday Times went to the army and asked aboutMcAllister, but got no response. Then, the day before theybroke the story, the Daily Express splashed across its front page aquite different story about McAllister. A huge headline, .sEH-hroTHE WIRE!', was accompanied by two smaller headlines:'."Brutality" charges denied' and 'Army tells how IRA beat uptheir own man after he was freed'.13 The story began, .A dossieiis being compiled by police and the army in Ulster of rRA terror -against its own men.' It went on to allege that McAllister hadbeen beaten up by the IRA after his release, then presented at thehospital as a victim of injuries sustained during interrogation.The Sunday Times concluded that this version of the case ,*aspresumably based on British military sources, as neither DrWilson nor Mr McAllister were contacted by the Daily Express.,For his part, Dr Wilson said,

The allegationsinthe Daily Expressleaveme breathless. They arequite fantastic. What makes them completely absurd is thesuggestion that he was badly beaten up by the rne before he wasbrought here. The damage was psychological not physical.ra

Committees of inquiry

With the allegations out in the open, and with the Irish govern-ment's decision to take a case against Britain to the EuropeanCommission of Human Rights, the British government s-et inmotion a cover-up routine that was to last foi seven years. The

Reporting British violence / 35

I'irst, headed by Sir Edmund Compton, interviewed 143 wit-ncsses, all but three from the military, police or prison staff. Itconfirmed the use of sensory deprivation techniques, and saidthat physical ill-treatment had taken place. But through a re-markable piece of sophistry, Compton concluded that there hadbeen no brutality, because the interrogators had not intended toinflict pain. 1s The suffering of the victims was, it seemed, irrele-vant. Compton also made the astonishing claim that techniquessuch as hooding might help the internees by protecting themfrom possible IRA retribution.

The Guardian's response to Compton was illuminating,undermining the paper's pretensions to liberalism. 'Vigorousand tough interrogation must go on. Discomfort of the kindrevealed in this report, leaving no physical damage, cannot beweighed against the number of human lives which will be lost ifthe security forces do not get a continuing flow of information.'16Some of the paper's journalists protested, but to no avail.

The subsequent Parker Committee's majority report con-cluded that the techniques of interrogation were entirely justifi-able and, despite the evidence of four disringuished psychiatristsand neurologists, rejected the possibility of long-term mentalcffects. The minority reporr submitted by Lord Gardiner heldthat the techniques were 'illegal alike by the law of England andthe law of Northern Ireland'.

Disregarding Gardiner's conclusions, the Attorney-Generalannounced in May 1972 that no prosecution would be broughtagainst anybody involved in the interrogations. The governmenttook a further step to keep the issue out of the limelight bydeciding not to contest the cases brought by the internees for themental suffering they had been caused. Instead, the governmentpaid out compensation to the tune of more than f200,000 forfourteen men by 1978.

The European Commission

Both Tory and then Labour ministers expressed their displeasurewith the Irish government for proceeding with the Stiasbourgcase, and made repeated attempts to get them to call it off.British governments also did their best to hinder the course of theStrasbourg enquiry, repeatedly finding excuses for postponinghearings - after months of delay, one hearing was held at

-Britis[

36 / Ireland: The propaganda war

insistence on a remote Norwegian airfield - and refusing toanswer detailed questions. 17

The British media took their cue from their government.Criticism of British interrogation methods was out; criticism ofthe Irish government was in. In general, the media preferred toforget the issue altogether, but when it was forcid on theirattention they minimised the effects of sensory deprivation,justified the use of the techniques and unleashed a flood ofinvective against the Irish government.

The esc demonstrated its sensitivity in its treatment ofArticle 5, a play by Brian Phelan which attempted to unravel themoral implications of Britain's use of torture. The play,s titlereferred to the section of the 1948 Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights which condemns torture. The half-hour play wascommissioned by the BBC, and was recorded on 12 January 1975 .lut in-May-or June 1975 it was viewed by Aubrey Si.,ger,Controller of eecz, who said that it would not be allowed td beshown.18 Singer's explanation, given in March 1976, was that'The play would have caused such offence to viewers that itsi_mpact would have been dulled and its message negated.,reLater, in an attempt to stifle accusations of political censorship, itwas put about at hrgh levels in the BeC that the play was .bad art,.But Financial Times TV correspondent Chris Dunkley wrote: .Itis- certainly a horribly vivid and frighteningly thought-provokingplay. But it is tightly written, well acted, and quite competent inall technical respects.'20

The media had no intention of asking awkward questions.When, in September 1976, the European Commission of HumanRights ruled that the sensory deprivation techniques constitutedtorture, the media turned their indignation not against the Britishgovernment, but against the Irish government. The response tothe Commission's ruling was carefully manipulated by the North-ern lreland Office. The day before the report was to be pub-lished, Northern Ireland Secretary Merlyn Rees and his officialscalled several newspaper and rv editors into his Whitehall officesfor drinks and a chat about what was likelv to come out in thereport. As a result, virtually .uery n"*rpaper carried almostidentical headlines the following day, highlighting not the tortureverdict but Rees's reaction to it, and suggesting that it was theIrish government that was in the wrong for raising the issue in thefirst place.2l The Daily Express headlined the story, ,Rees lashesDublin over torture report', The Times, 'Angry Rees attack as

Reporting British violence / 37

l)ublin charge of torture is upheld', The Dail1, Telegraph,,ReesIlngry as Eire presses torture issue', and so on.22

This theme was carried over into the editorial columns. Thel)aily Mail headed its comment,'The fatal flaw of the Irish', and!eg1n 'Mr Merlyn Rees has every right to feel exasperated withthe lrish'. Some papers, including The Times, accuied the Irishgovernment of providing propaganda for the provisionals. Ilre(iuardian contended that the Irish government's motives wouldhe 'seriously suspect' if it took the case on to the European(lourt: 'Dublin will be guilty of torturing Norrhern Ireland if itgoes on force-feeding the Provisionals with propaganda.,23 Thepapers made it easy to forget just who had tortured whom.

l)xcusing torture

Since the early fifties hundreds of scientific papers had beenpublished on the effects of sensory deprivation, and in I 971 therewere numerous predictions that the hooding would producescrious after-effects. This was confirmed in aitudy, by RobertI)aly, a professor of psychiatry, of 13 of the l4 men who irad beensubjected to sensory deprivation. Daly found that .in all but onecase there was clear evidence of long-lasting psychological dis-ahilities and suffering, in many cases seveie, ind thit maiorpsychosomatic illness had also been frequent.'2a The study wasmade public in May 1976, yet in their responses to the European(lommission's verdict in September the pipers ignored it. Initeadthey_went to great lengths to point out that sensory deprivationwas less serious than other, more old-fashioncd, torture tcch-niques. As neuropsychologist Dr Tim Shallice commented, themedia'ignored scientific evidence on the techniques and encour-aged the common-sense but fallacious view that psychologicalstresses are necessarily less inhumane than physical ones.'2s

Thus Tfte T'imes made'a distinction between degrees ofcvil,' claiming that there was no conclusive evidence ihat thetechniques would do mental damage and that they were differentin purpose from 'the rack, water tolture, electric iorture, beatingand such brutalities' because the aim of the latter was to inducEterrifying pain, while the former aimed only at .menral dis-

38 / Ireland: The propaganda war

ing electric shocks to their genitalia . . . Many people who areneither callous nor fascist might accept the use of the Comptonmethods, whereas very few would endorse outright brutality.'27The Telegrapft had drawn exactly the conclusion intended by thedesigners of this most modern form of torture. Producing themaximum distress to the victim with the minimum direct mutila-tion, sensory deprivation was intended to produce less politicalrepercussions than cruder methods, and to be more acceptable tothe inhabitants of liberal democracies. A telling example of thisexercise in self-delusion was provided by a BBC World Serviceprogramme, Ulster Today, which said, 'Not since the days ofhanging, drawing and quartering and the rack, has the word"torture" tainted the Mother of Parliaments here in Britain'. Asjournalist John Shirley, who cited this quote in the Neu, States-man, pointed out, that was 'simply not true':

Britain holds the unenviable distinction of being the onlyEuropean country to be accused before the Human RightsCommission twice for torturing people (the last time was inCyprus). The techniques of sensory deprivation were not appliedto only 14 men in Belfast as /o ng ago as 1971, as the papers were sokeen to emphasise. They have been used in varying combinationsby British Army interrogators in almost every colonial campaignthe ux has fought since the end of World War II. 28

The European Court

When Britain appeared before the European Court in April1977 , two of Britain's most popular daily papers, The Sun and theMirror, managed to ignore the tbur days of the hearing alto-gether. The other papers continued the old theme of bashing theIrish government but with a new twist: the Irish were now accusedof helping the 'reds'.

'Russian interest in hearing of torture case against Britain',ran The Times headline above the story that 'An intensive newwave of anti-Western propaganda is expected to arise from thecurrent final round of the protracted case over allegations oftorture made against Britain by the Irish Republic . . .'2s TheSunday Telegraph, in a feature article titled 'Ireland's Gift toRussia', attacked the Irish Attorney General, whom it calleda 'fanatical' and 'blinkered Irish zealot'. He had, saidthe Tele-graph, supplied the 'Reds' with 'human rights missiles', which'can be used not only against Britain, but by inference against the

Reporting British violence / 39

entire Western democratic structure.'3o But who, after all, hadconstructed the 'human rights missiles'in the first place?

The Daily Express tried another line of attack. A massivefront page headline announced "tt1E REAL oBSCENITY' over apicture of the aftermath of a bomb explosion in a Belfast street.31A no-warning car bomb had exploded the previous day at afuneral in the nationalist Ardoyne district, blowing the head offl9-year-old Sean Campbell and causing several serious injuries.Inconveniently for the Express, it was, as The lrish Timespointed out, obviously a loyalist bomb.32 This did not suit thethrust of the Express's article, which was that the IRA, rather thanBritain, should be in the dock. So the paper stated that 'IRA orLoyalist splinter groups could be guilty.' It was not until the veryend of the article that readers were told that the funeral takingplace when the bomb exploded was for a volunteer in the juniorIRA - hardly an IRA target.33

In January 1978 the European Court concluded that thetechniques Britain had employed had caused 'intense physicaland mental suffering and . . acute psychiatric disturbanceduring interrogation'. But, they said - though with four of the l7judges dissenting - this constituted not torture, but inhuman anddegrading treatment.

The ultra-right-wing papers crowed with detight. 'StrasbourgTriumph' announced The Daily Telegraph, saying that a primi-tive reaction to the court's findings might be briefly indulged:'That reaction is a whoop of joy at the discomfort of the Irishgovernment.' It went on to justify the use of the techniques, withthe words, 'Can a State threatened by anarchy be properly andrealistically expected not to employ such methods?'

The Daily Express, too, decided that Britain was nowentirely in the clear. Under two headlines. 'No torture, judgesreject Irish bid to brand Britain' and 'Euro Court hits out at IRAterrorists', the Express annou