ENDING FEAR OF THE IRA
The media: Paul Johnson
wants to extend Thatcherism to Ulster
THE relationship between the media and the IRA in Ulster has now reached a crisis and the Government has a duty to resolve it. First, let us look at the decision of the BBC not to hand over unused film to the authorities without a court order. I am afraid the corporation, including its excel- lent chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, made rather an ass of itself over this issue. The BBC originally said that it was against its principles to give up the film voluntarily, as that jeopardised the safety of its people working in Ulster. The next we heard was that Hussey and the director-general, Michael Checkland, has asked to see the unused film and had pronounced it of no use to the police anyway.
Now it is not for Hussey and Checkland, a former newspaper executive and an accountant, to set themselves up as author- ities on criminal detection; it is clearly for the police to decide what is of use to their enquiries. Moreover, the implication of the showing was that if the two men had agreed the film was useful, it would have been handed over. In other words the principle is not a principle at all, but a variable piece of expediency. Finally we were told that two detectives simply walked into the BBC in Belfast, demanded the film under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and were given it. So no court order was required and the BBC had got the law all wrong. How this muddle occurred I cannot imagine. What it means is that the BBC has made itself hideously unpopular with the public, by appearing to be deliber- ately unco-operative in solving this horrific crime, and all to no conceivable purpose.
The BBC may well be right in believing that co-operating with the police is danger- ous in Ulster. There have been some disturbing reports about the extent to which the IRA and their supporters super- vise and threaten the media in West Belfast. The Sunday Times, whose cover- age of this issue has been superb — it is again emerging as the great newspaper it used to be in Denis Hamilton's day reported that the pictures it showed on Sunday 'had to be smuggled out of West Belfast after the IRA attempted to impose strong-arm censorship'. It stated that photographers were 'accosted in the street and told to hand over their film by IRA men who said they were armed', and that at the cemetery itself 'IRA officials herded photographers together and took their names and the publications they worked for'.
More disquieting information was pro- vided by a Sunday Telegraph reporter who claimed that, on the Falls Road, which after all is one of the most important streets in Belfast, not a back alley, 'young men in denims' were demanding of media people, 'Show us your ID,' and, 'Where are you from?' These, he wrote, were 'familiar commands', issued 'in the machine-gun delivery of Belfast'. We also have constant reports of 'IRA marshals' checking repor- ters' passes and generally hustling the media around. One is bound to ask: who is ruling West Belfast? Is it the lawful author- ities or is it the IRA? In the Sunday Telegraph Peregrine Worsthorne spoke for many of us when he pointed out that, if the media's relationship with the IRA is some- what ambivalent, that is in part the result of the Government's even greater ambiva- lence. 'After all', he continued, 'it was not the media which gave the IRA a virtually free hand to lynch those two British soldiers. No other terrorist organisation I can think of enjoys such opportunities. But the IRA does, by courtesy of government policy, and one has yet to hear Mrs Thatcher condemn herself for having allowed these funerals to proceed as IRA benefit performances without a police pre- sence.'
The police withdrew from the funerals, thus allowing the media to be threatened and coerced, apparently as a result of some assurances by Catholic clergy that there would be no volleys over the grave or other manifestations of IRA impudence. This was a most infamous bargain, as bad in its way as Willie Whitelaw's negotiations with the IRA, now universally admitted to have been a mistake. The fact that it led directly to the murder of five people is proof that it was contrary to all the sound principles of policing. At what level was this treaty made? Was it Sir John Hermon's decision? Was it Tom King's? Did it go before Cabinet? Parliament ought to demand answers to these questions. If necessary heads should roll.
But the evidence shows that it is not just at funerals that the IRA now has a physical and minatory presence on the streets of Belfast. How can this be allowed to hap- pen? There are more troops and police armed too — per square foot in Belfast than in any other city under British author- ity. Yet it appears that the Queen's writ does not run in substantial portions of it. By what right, and with what authority, do aggressive young men, who claim they are armed, demand to see journalists' identi- fication papers? Why do the police permit this to happen?
The cemetery lynchings make it clear that fundamental changes are needed in the way things are run in Ulster. I agree with those in Parliament and outside who demand that restrictions should now be placed on the reporting and especially the televising of IRA rituals. Let the media claim 'censorship' if they wish: there is no doubt that the vast majority of the public favour it in this case. It is not elear whether the security authorities have the right to impose such a ban under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and similar legislation. If not, then the Government should request, and Parliament provide, further powers as a matter of urgency. But the media did not create the problem: that was the fault of the Government, by permitting the IRA funerals to take place at all. Propaganda funerals of this kind — and any other public rituals — should be forbidden, and those attempting to organise them arrested. Indeed the bodies of IRA killers shot by the security forces should simply be incinerated and the ashes scattered at sea. Anyone attempting to exercise unlawful authority on the Belfast streets should likewise be arrested and charged, and journalists should not hesistate to point out and identify such persons.
But a more fundamental change of policy is needed. The arrogant 'presence' of the IRA is only made possible by the absence of internment. By abandoning the right to pull in known killers and their supporters, and hold them indefinitely, we have in fact been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, many of them completely innocent of any sectarian activ- ity and including scores of police officers and soldiers. Internment should be res- tored without further delay. The truth is that Ulster is now the only area of govern- ment policy left which has not been `Thatcherised'. The failure to do so has led to bloodshed on a huge scale. It is now time that the principles of Thatcherism doing the right thing and to hell with liberal critics — were extended to the Irish Prob- lem.
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