‘Liveline’ throws a lifeline to four brave fighters against the IRA

LAST week saw both the strongest and weakest RTE response to the biggest problem in Irish politics — how to handle the past legacy of Sinn Fein as it bids for power, North and South.

The strong response was represented by Joe Duffy’s Liveline. It began by asking about Martin McGuinness being styled Oglach on his tombstone and developed into a dissection of our ambivalence about the IRA.

The weak response was represented by a Prime Time programme about the murder of Garda Tony Golden which incredibly allowed Gerry Adams to lecture us about proper police procedure.

To return to my opening statement, most media anoraks would not agree that Sinn Fein — and RTE’s response to it — is the major political problem. Brexit is their big bone.

Brexit does indeed pose political and economic problems. But a healthy Irish democracy can cope.

But McGuinness’s funeral, which RTE turned into a State funeral with the help of Official Ireland, shows we are far from healthy when asked to face facts about Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein’s strategy is to make perpetual mischief in the North and get into government in the Republic.

Straddling the two body politics, it plans to pursue a united Ireland agenda that can only end in tears.

Aiding and abetting this Sinn Fein agenda is our ambivalence about the IRA’s armed struggle.

This ambivalence is so deeply rooted both in Dail Eireann and in RTE that it is hard to argue with Eamonn McCann’s conclusion in last Tuesday’s Irish Times.

“History may mark the McGuinness funeral as the moment when the Provisional IRA was enfolded into the approved narrative of what Eamon Dunphy famously defined as ‘Official Ireland’.”

But last Tuesday, too, Duffy’s Liveline reached deep below the surface to make contact with Moby Dick and challenge the McGuinness myth.

In doing so, Duffy displayed a command of modern Irish history and politics that few RTE broadcasters could match.

More importantly, he deployed it with a moral authority, a Swiftian “savage indignation” that none could come near.

Duffy delved deeply into the abyss of ambivalence posed by McGuinness’s presidential election bid.

Had he succeeded, McGuinness would have been commander-in-chief of the Irish Army — although an IRA gang had murdered Private Kelly, a soldier of the Irish Army!

Arising from this ambivalence we come to the core issue of the next general election; whether Sinn Fein can make itself an attractive coalition partner.

To do so, it must cross its toxic threshold, set by McGuinness’s maximum vote in the 2011 presidential election, and Sinn Fein’s maximum vote in the 2016 General Election.

In the 2011 presidential election, Sinn Fein got 13.7pc. In the 2016 General Election, 13.8pc. Much the same.

And while its turnout vote in 2016 was well up on 2011, its threshold percentage stayed the same.

In sum, 13.8pc of the vote is their electoral high tide line. Away from the polls, free from massaging by the media, in the secrecy of the polling booth, the Irish people still smell the corpses of IRA victims.

Furthermore, although the craven Labour Party says it is willing to go into coalition with Sinn Fein, that won’t help with the threshold. Sinn Fein is still not transfer-friendly.

In fact, the single most important influence in making Sinn Fein palatable to the majority of Irish people is the State broadcaster RTE.

From which it also follows logically that if RTE is ambivalent about Sinn Fein, that ambivalence will adversely affect Irish democracy.

Respected former MEP John Cushnahan told Duffy that he believes RTE is ambivalent. Although he is almost alone in saying that, he is not alone in believing that.

Few politicians in the two major parties believe that they get the same fair play as Sinn Fein and, sooner or later, I believe they will do something about that.

Let me take the three most recent examples of RTE’s skewed sense of balance. Last Tuesday’s Six One News on the British general election, with no good reason, led off with Mary Lou McDonald.

Next day, on Drivetime Jim O’Dowd was lobbed soft balls on Brexit — but never once asked why Sinn Fein had collapsed the Executive.

Finally, last Thursday’s Prime Time about the murder of Garda Tony Golden was so fuzzy in its intentions you wonder how it passed editorial scrutiny.

On the surface, it seemed to be a police story with no political content. But then Gerry Adams suddenly popped up, again for no good reason, except to lecture us and look good.

To be put in such a respectful context was of immense political benefit to Adams in a week in which Duffy’s Liveline had left a nasty taste about Sinn Fein.

Were any hard-headed editorial questions asked when the Prime Time team first mooted having Adams on?

Let me suggest four. First, how about asking Adams about IRA crimes in his constituency area before you present him as a paragon of proper police procedure? Like the IRA’s 1991 abduction, torture and murder of Tom Oliver.

Second, more generally, given McGuinness met the murderers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe while they were on the run, has he (Adams) any information on the whereabouts of the two suspects still at large?

Third, cui bono? Who benefits, politically, from this programme? Answer: Gerry Adams.

Fourth, did we ever do a Prime Time investigates on the murder of Tom Oliver and if not, why not?

Denis Naughten is a dodo if he does not demand answers to these four questions. Every democratic politician in Dail Eireann should do the same.

Time the major parties showed a bit of bottle and gave RTE a reality check.

Time they reminded RTE that Tom Hardiman, its most distinguished director general, said RTE was not neutral about apartheid — and by the same token should not be neutral about Sinn Fein’s dark past.

Time they agreed to ask an objective outside monitoring body to measure political bias in RTE, not just in hard news but in soft programming.

Time too for Charlie Flanagan to tell officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs to stop deferring meekly to “peace process” parameters set by Sinn Fein.

Time the DFA faced the fact that Sinn Fein wants a period of direct rule so it can mark time, stoking tribal passions, while it concentrates on the Republic.

Time the DFA faced the fact that in pursuit of its new destablising agenda, Sinn Fein is willing to destroy the Good Friday Agreement — which significantly it never signed in the first place.

Time the DFA stopped trying to beat the DUP into concessions that won’t change SF policy.

Even if Arlene Foster spent a year in Rann na Feirste and came back fluent in Donegal Irish, Sinn Fein still wouldn’t set up the Northern Executive until it suited its agenda.

Finally, time politicians stopped hiding and helped the four freedom fighters who keep focus on Sinn Fein’s past: Ann McCabe, Austin Stack, David Kelly and Mairia Cahill.

‘Duffy delved deeply into the ambivalence posed by McGuinness’s presidential election bid...’