The Other View

In Defence of Pat Magee

By Anthony McIntyre

In a recent judgement pertaining to the expression of fundamentalist religious ideas a British High court judge made the comment that ‘the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and provocative have a right to be heard … our world has seen to many examples of the state control of unofficial ideas’.

It is a viewpoint the former controller (in the most negative and authoritarian sense of the term) of RTE, Muiris Mac Conghail, would seek to dispute thus placing himself to the right of the British judiciary – no mean achievement. In an Irish Times opinion piece on the 6^th of September, Mac Conghail seemed incandescent with rage that Patrick Magee – convicted for the 1984 Brighton bomb attack should have his views aired on RTE. Magee was not rallying people to the cause of killing murderous British Prime Ministers. In fact he expressed the somewhat strange and arguably unsustainable view that it was better Margaret Thatcher survived the attack as it led to the peace process.

Indeed it would seem that Mac Conghail was alert to this and under the guise of attacking Magee’s right to speak he sought to undermine the wider public’s right to hear. Hence his complaint that ‘what Magee achieved in his interview was a considerable psychological victory for Sinn Fein as the truly nationalist party in Northern Ireland and, indeed, in Ireland as a whole’. If he was so upset about those convicted of killing others during the course of the Northern conflict being allowed to speak on RTE, is it not plausible to expect in the interests of consistency and non-partisanship, that his voice of opposition would have been raised before now? Opportunities were abundant – myself, John White of UFF notoriety and others have articulated our respective positions on the airwaves.

As a former comrade of Patrick Magee, convicted of activity of a similar gravity, and reasonably frequent participant in RTE discussions – accompanied by Eoghan Harris who did not walk out or object to my presence – I think it is essential that people like ourselves have full freedom to explain why we behaved as we did. Equally so, the full rigour of investigative journalism should be employed against us so that our views may be challenged and that the public are afforded a fuller appreciation of the issues at stake. Colum Kenny in the Sunday Independent, in this respect, has a much greater appreciation than Mac Conghail.

In this context it is important to bear in mind that the Brighton bomb did not impact on everyone as it did on Muiris Mac Conghail. When asked for his views on that particular attack on the former Prime Minister of Israel – a state for which Thatcher had profound admiration – Yitshak Shamir said ‘I would say neutral. It is a question of the battle of freedom .. I remember the British have been very cruel in their behavior with them. I remember during the hunger strikes that their position was very cruel’.

Pat Magee gained a doctorate of philosophy while in prison. That gives him no more right to speak than anyone else. But it does suggest that he is capable of articulating his position with certain strength of logic and clarity. Furthermore, the substance of his doctoral thesis poses a challenge to the received wisdom on republicanism as expressed through much literature. For this reason it is all the more important that his philosophical reflections are not banished to the intellectual wilderness. Maybe Mac Conghail would prefer that only those as articulate as Johnny Adair be allowed on air – a bit of fun for the interviewer and the sporting public in between races.

At his trial in ancient Greece, Socrates told his jurors in defence of freedom of expression, ‘while I have life and strength I shall never cease to follow philosophy … I shall have to die for it many times’. Had this principle been applied during Mac Conghail’s control career at RTE perhaps the culture of corruption now so pervasive throughout Southern Irish society may have been challenged and thwarted. Unfortunately, unaccountable power occupied the position of the privileged and, in the manner of the bully, Mac Conghail authoritarian ire was reserved for those he considered too marginalised to do anything about it.

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