This week:
Mulling over power and how it’s used
ITAKE issue with An Tanáiste, Michéal Martin’s call on the GAA to do more to encourage its members to join the PSNI. I do so, not just because of my own experiences of the forces of Law and Order, but because it is not the business of any politician – especially a government minister – to call on any individual independent sporting organisation to become recruiting agents for the police, or anything else s/ he might personally think people should join.
It is either an abuse to use that authority to add weight to a personal opinion, or alternatively, if made on behalf of the government of the Republic of Ireland, a gross interference in the internal affairs of an independent sporting organisation.
It is important, in the context of the perfectly valid financial contribution of the Irish government to Casement Park, to clarify that no inference of ‘political strings attached’ comes with that finance.
I noted no inclusion of the FAI or IFA, the golf clubs, yacht clubs or any tiddledywinks federation to do likewise.
Was there an assumption that Catholics, at whom the recruitment was aimed, don’t engage in these sports?
The reality of the experience of joining the PSNI for many of those not identifying as British or Unionist who did so – be they Nationalists, Catholics, people of colour, women, gay, lesbian or trans people – has been less than good.
There is also the very serious matter of collusion in the murder of Bellaghy GAA member Sean Browne, and the history of which that is an integral part.
Michéal Marin is, by all accounts, a decent man, and not without political intelligence.
He might want to let the PSNI do its own recruiting.
THERE a few other things tumbling in my mind this week, all of which need time to settle, be sieved through and then shared in the greater depth they deserve.
They include the BBC journalists now owning up to the antics of the BBC in its coverage of the ‘Troubles’.
(I have never liked that word. It minimised and often trivialised what is happening).
The pen is mightier than the sword. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t make it all right for those who, as journalists, were power players in a dirty war game, and chose to comply with silence in order to protect their careers.
They, too, had alternatives.
The medals go to those who didn’t do the bidding of their masters – but then, they didn’t get to be BBC journalists of longstanding.
I AM still carefully reading and digesting the Kinovo Interim Report.
While it does not tell us anything new, it may yet prove to be an iceberg that could sink several Titanics, even at the glacial speed with which John Boucher acknowledged the wheels of justice appear to move in the DPP.