Cabbage soup

By Sean O'Donaile

For the first time in my life I've managed to stick with one of my New Year's resolutions. I've been surviving on a diet of cabbage soup, skimmed milk and seaweed, in a desperate bid to shed my John Hume chins and the Christmas pudding which seemed to have lodged itself on the outside of my belly.

I was helped along the road to sensibility after stewing over Cancer Wars, (Channel 4 - Sunday), which detailed the highs and mostly lows of smoking since the Third Reich, when scientists, in their drive to create the Aryan race, first discovered the harmful effects of cigarettes. Hitler was ahead of his time in banning smoking from public places and German society was in the process of taking on the Cancer Wars, when the little business of conquering the world intervened and the research was quickly buried by advancing Allies, who shipped in 93,000 tonnes of tobacco to Germany in 1945.

Smoking was ``cool'' in post-war years, and it was the thing to do whether you were swinging a hurl, a scythe, or your partner in the ballroom. Janet Sachman was ``Miss Lucky Strike'' but her luck ran out a few thousand packs later when she contracted lung cancer. Cigarette consumption doubled in the States in ten years and Britain and Ireland duly followed. There was little or no research and cancer sufferers were treated with similar disdain to that meted out to AIDs sufferers. When British scientists attempted to publicise findings on lung cancer, that august organ The Times rejected them in favour of the tobacco companies, who had a stranglehold over them.

It was only in the late `60s, when the average Yank was puffing through 4,000 a year, that the link with ``the big C'' was brought to public attention. Tobacco companies continued to hide their own findings and received complicit support from government sources and it wasn't until 1971, when Nixon's $100m Cancer Act was introduced, that the corner was turned. Unfortunately, as smoking declines in the West, the people in the rest of the globe are being ``sacrificed for the short term gain of politicians and capitalists'' - surprise, surprise!

So cast aside your twenty Regal, get up offa your bar stool and get down to the Conway Mill for some of Alsie's Cabbage soup!

There was further gloomy viewing on RTE's award winning, but overly condensed, Divided World, which focused on the plight of the Aborigines whose children were forcibly taken from them and placed in permanent foster care with ``more civilised folk (sic)'' right up to the 1970s as part of Australian government policy.

Julie was one of the 100,000 or so taken at three weeks to a white middle class suburb in Sydney, where she grew up with ``nice folk''. At 32 she is one of many who have now traced their families, and demand compensation as part of the healing process.

Julie regards the treatment of Aborigines as an act of genocide as they were robbed of their land, culture, families and language. Unfortunately the One Nation Party don't share their views and in a DUP style speech, their leader expressed their exasperation at listening to ``these moaners about equality'' and socialist types who'd never do a day's work if you put a shovel in their hand.

Fr Ray Bourgouis has to deal with such fascists at ``The School of the Americas'' - a cover name for a training camp for Latin America death squads, which he permanently pickets in an attempt to persuade the US government to close. The ``School'' has turned out most of Latin America's worst death squads and dictators over the last 40 years, and whose pictures adorn the Hall of Fame.

Sgt McIvor delights in telling us that these graduates have risen to ``lead'' their countries, putting the torture techniques to good use along the path to ``democracy''. Poor Fr Bourgouis' only luxury is the good weather and he regularly ends up in jail as a result of his campaign of disobedience. Still, he could be stuck with a banner on O'Connell Bridge on a windy day!

One can't but highlight the more humorous side to Spotlight's focus on Long Kesh on BBC. Finlay Spratt, head of The Prison Officers' Association, told us of their plight ``feeling more like Redcoats in Butlins'' than real screws. Who can forget 1983, when Gerry Kelly, Bik McFarlane and friends piled into their Fiat Unos, twenty five at a time. Another suit told us of the volunteers ``putting a great deal of work'' into their tunnel, ``which wasn't just an exercise''.

Of course, it must be remembered that Finlay and his friends' role in life is to sell a version of prison life which will ensure them more money and jobs. And on Spotlight they treated us to a star performance.

There were more exciting details of Liam Averill's drag party, courtesy of An Phoblacht, and the poor screw who told us of the rowdy Provos who wouldn't sit down in the bus and ``I just couldn't count''!

Yet another suit ``couldn't believe that the prisoners would use it as opportunity to escape'' and the harassed Governor revealed to us that POWs spend their days on ``bouncy castles and Karaoke machines'', but he re-assured us by stating that ``I didn't go on them''.

And we thought they spent their time doing jigsaws!

Don't mention the (Civil) War

The Madness from Within

The cult of Michael Collins has a lot to answer for. It was rejuvinated by Neil Jordan's film, which, while excellent in its portrayal of the war against the British, distorted the Treaty debates and the Civil War almost out of recognition. It is no longer fashionable to go along with anti- nationalist historians such as Roy Foster who refute the interpretation of Irish history as essentially a struggle against colonialism. Largely because of the cult of Collins it is now officially hip again to hate the Black and Tans. But you must still oppose the `Irregulars'.

Thus Tim Pat Coogan, the only non-revisionist historian interviewed on The Madness from Within (RTE 1 Wednesday) might have been expected to provide some balance. But instead his worship of Collins and deep antipathy to de Valera meant that the republican case against the Treaty was not articulated. Hailed as ``a major documentary'' this programme was RTE's nod to the 75th anniversary of the Civil War.

Coming so soon after Pat Butler's outstanding documentary on Ballyseedy it was a deep disappointment.

The main selling point of the programme was the interviews with veterans from both sides of the Civil War. These were interesting enough but none of the interviewees were significant players and their contributions were used only to illustrate the point that feelings ran very deep and still do. True, but far from enough to justify RTE's claim that the programme was ``perhaps the first full account and analysis on television of this troubled and taboo subject''.

Its account of events was piecemeal and its analysis was biased. The real meat of the programme was the pro-Free State interpretation, obviously influenced by the two revisionist historians featured, Michael Laffan and Tom Garvin.

The familiar line was trotted out - the Free Staters were defending democracy, albeit by sometimes ruthless means, while the republicans were crazed gunmen out to set up a military dictatorship. There was absolutely no analysis of the actual causes of the Civil War. The Government of Ireland Act, the Treaty, the Dáil debates, the lead-up to the start of the war, the role of the British government in fomenting it - all were omitted.

The programme was worth seeing principally for the historic film footage; but the problem here was that it was not contextualised. We were not told what was happening.

At the press preview I made the point to presenter Bryan Dobson that the Section 31 mentality in RTE for years had prevented the making of programmes about Irish history and many of the veterans who should have been interviewed are now dead. He did not demur but said that the main reason for avoiding the Civil War was the unwillingess of veterans to talk.

But who had most to lose by talking? Uinseann MacEoin filled a large volume (Survivors, 1980) with republican Civil War veterans willing to speak. The Free Staters had the political power to cover up their own actions and the media on their side to slam the actions of the republicans. As the Ballyseedy documentary showed they had more to hide in the aftermath and it was clearly those on the Free State side who said least in subsequent years. This was no excuse for RTE not doing their duty.

The balance now needs to be struck and perhaps in 1998 some film-maker will produce a documentary giving the republican view. It might focus in particular on Liam Mellows, the nearest the country came to producing a successor to James Connolly in his understanding of the interconnections between the national and the social questions.

BY MICHEAL MacDONNCHA