26 February 1998 Edition
Time for the Therapist
by Meadbh Gallagher
Mary Nelis has written before on this page about the things you don't get to read about if you rely for your coverage of things political on the mainstream press. This week, as unionists pumped up the volume on their determined and deliberate efforts to claim that the IRA is responsible for every bomb blast in town, it was remarkable that coverage of the car bomb in Dromad, County Louth received very little attention at all.
This is the second such car bomb sent by the Loyalist Volunteer Force south of the border in the past year. You'll remember the one in Drogheda last September, following the killing of drug dealer Patrick Farrell.
Dromad was the stuff that usually brings a flurry of media activity and a good few column inches of witness accounts and ritual condemnations. In the early hours of Monday morning, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes and from two nearby discos and a hotel. When two controlled explosions rendered it harmless after 8am, the Gardai said it was a crude device but that it contained commercial explosives and was capable of causing serious damage and possible injury.
Now as bombs go, this wasn't a biggie, but you'd imagine that the fact that it was placed outside a police station south of the border would have increased its significance on the media merit scales. Not a hope of it. Not a whiff of it either in the international press. No coverage, no comment.
Didn't happen really I suppose. The Gardai and the people of Dromad were deluding themselves. It was a mirage, a foggy dew, a dream - at best a nightmare that you wouldn't even remember when you woke up.
And then David Trimble takes time out to remind his consorts in the LVF that they shouldn't really be doing that kind of thing anyway. Not just `cause they shouldn't, you understand, but for other reasons, you see. They shouldn't be doing it because they'd be mad to be bombing at this moment in time, you see, because with all the heat on the RA over the Moira and Portadown bombs, what use would it be to loyalists to be blamed for bombs too?
Sharp operator, that Trimble. He leads his troopers up and down the hill but he can't bring himself to stand at the top of it and ``talk to terrorists''.
With the peace process crumbing all around him, he stands and grins to the cameras. As each twitch of his body communicates the panic he does not want to show, he denies it all the more. And all the time he is looking over his shoulder as he goes. What a job. Poor man.
Some one should tell him the snipper's twitch is what soldiers should have. Not politicians. Not ``the leader of the main Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.'' Not the leader of ``the greater number'' of people. Not someone looking ahead.
With all the resources at their disposal, etcetera, cannot the British establishment send David to a shrink? Can they not at least try to befriend him, to be genuine and tell him the truth?
Can they not bring him to Barbados? Can they not send John Taylor to the Welsh valleys and Ken Maginnis to the Cayman's? Therapy trips for all..
It's not reconvened talks that's needed, it's reconstructed unionists.The LVF car bomb at Dromad won't even be remembered next week. But violence and the threat of violence will remain the habit of loyalism for as long as loyalists have to defend their state.
And their state is not Britain. And Britain should tell them that.
Mary Nelis has written before on this page about the things you don't get to read about if you rely for your coverage of things political on the mainstream press. This week, as unionists pumped up the volume on their determined and deliberate efforts to claim that the IRA is responsible for every bomb blast in town, it was remarkable that coverage of the car bomb in Dromad, County Louth received very little attention at all.
This is the second such car bomb sent by the Loyalist Volunteer Force south of the border in the past year. You'll remember the one in Drogheda last September, following the killing of drug dealer Patrick Farrell.
Dromad was the stuff that usually brings a flurry of media activity and a good few column inches of witness accounts and ritual condemnations. In the early hours of Monday morning, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes and from two nearby discos and a hotel. When two controlled explosions rendered it harmless after 8am, the Gardai said it was a crude device but that it contained commercial explosives and was capable of causing serious damage and possible injury.
Now as bombs go, this wasn't a biggie, but you'd imagine that the fact that it was placed outside a police station south of the border would have increased its significance on the media merit scales. Not a hope of it. Not a whiff of it either in the international press. No coverage, no comment.
Didn't happen really I suppose. The Gardai and the people of Dromad were deluding themselves. It was a mirage, a foggy dew, a dream - at best a nightmare that you wouldn't even remember when you woke up.
And then David Trimble takes time out to remind his consorts in the LVF that they shouldn't really be doing that kind of thing anyway. Not just `cause they shouldn't, you understand, but for other reasons, you see. They shouldn't be doing it because they'd be mad to be bombing at this moment in time, you see, because with all the heat on the RA over the Moira and Portadown bombs, what use would it be to loyalists to be blamed for bombs too?
Sharp operator, that Trimble. He leads his troopers up and down the hill but he can't bring himself to stand at the top of it and ``talk to terrorists''.
With the peace process crumbing all around him, he stands and grins to the cameras. As each twitch of his body communicates the panic he does not want to show, he denies it all the more. And all the time he is looking over his shoulder as he goes. What a job. Poor man.
Some one should tell him the snipper's twitch is what soldiers should have. Not politicians. Not ``the leader of the main Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.'' Not the leader of ``the greater number'' of people. Not someone looking ahead.
With all the resources at their disposal, etcetera, cannot the British establishment send David to a shrink? Can they not at least try to befriend him, to be genuine and tell him the truth?
Can they not bring him to Barbados? Can they not send John Taylor to the Welsh valleys and Ken Maginnis to the Cayman's? Therapy trips for all..
It's not reconvened talks that's needed, it's reconstructed unionists.The LVF car bomb at Dromad won't even be remembered next week. But violence and the threat of violence will remain the habit of loyalism for as long as loyalists have to defend their state.
And their state is not Britain. And Britain should tell them that.