Reality breaks through usual begrudgery

BY FRANK FARRELL

Sometimes reality and hard news manages to overcome media prejudice and to some extent this was reflected in the coverage of last weekend’s Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that voted to change its policy on policing. Two of the main newspapers, the Irish Examiner and Irish Independent, headlined the obvious political truth that the political onus now lies on the DUP and The Irish Times front page story also conceded that pressure would now fall on the DUP to enter a power sharing executive. The Star took the same line and editorialised to this effect although its editor, Ger Colleran, ever fearful of accusations that he is soft in republicanism, added the sanctimonious rider about the IRA being responsible for 30 years of violence (no mention of RUC collusion, MI5 murder and British state violence, naturally).

An Irish Times editorial also conceded: “All that remains is for Ian Paisley and the Democratic Unionist Party to join with Sinn Féin and others in a power-sharing executive”. Even the newspaper’s Northern Editor, Gerry Moriarty, acknowledged that it was now up to the DUP to respond and the paper’s overall coverage, while bearing traces of the usual condescending coverage of republicans debating politics, was balanced and unusually fitting for the paper of record.

The Indo was also reasonably objective and both its editorial and analysis by Maurice Hayes slapped it up to the DUP to move. A concession to the extreme right was a contribution from Ruth Dudley Edwards who warned that the PSNI would now be subverted from within.

How disappointing then that Seán O’Rourke, normally a strongly non-partisan presenter, should allow the Seán Haughey of Northern Unionism – Ian Kyle Paisley Jnr, to change the agenda on The Week in Politics. Bristling with negativity, Paisley Minor dismissed the Ard Fheis decision with a Johnny Cash soundbyte about ‘walking the walk’ rather than ‘talking the talk’. While one hopes that this is the DUP’s version of virginal political foreplay – and Pat Doherty appeared to treat it as such – O’Rourke allowed Paisley to channel the entire discussion along the lines of what Sinn Féin had to do before power sharing and the transfer of policing powers could be implemented.

This gave Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes (a remnant of John Bruton’s Unionist rump in Fine Gael) the opportunity to deliver the most begrudging and irrelevant contribution while Martin Mansergh - perhaps more concerned these days with 26 County electoral considerations – remained surprisingly supine in the face of Fine Gael’s intellectual pygmy.

 All in all, though, the media reflected political reality in the weekend that was in it. One wonders how long they will resist the usual temptation to collapse in the face of whatever unionist preconditions are tabled next.

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The unedifying spectacle of British ‘White trash’ disgracing themselves on the Celebrity Big Brother pantomime was both sickening and revealing with every British – and Irish – liberal commentator rushing to disclaim the irrefutable  evidence of British racism on display. That class resentment and simple jealousy of a beautiful and cultivated Indian starlet were factors in the hatred spewed out by uneducated members of the Brit ‘super race’ cannot disguise, much less excuse, the ingrained racism that still pervades British society.

Sheer embarrassment mobilised many to vote for Shilpa as the winner, thus enabling apologists for British racism to declare that multiculturalism had triumphed over racism in Britain. But newspapers like the Sun give the game away. This repulsive rag, which encourages racism as a matter of routine, loudly condemned the prejudices that it normally encourages and with which most of its readers are suffused. Out of a final list of around six Brits, two Americans and one Indian, it was the latter three who emerged as the most civilised – according to the British public’s own voting preferences. The fag end of empire was reached some years ago but the illusions and attitudes remain amongst large sections of the British public.