PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

On Friday this week voters  will  elect the President of Ireland for a seven year term.

RTÉ, the Irish state broadcasting company, arranged a series of public debates between the six candidates for the Presidency including Michal D Higgins the present holder of the office.

It was not the happiest of arrangements.

Debates on RTÉ are carefully arranged. They  bring into a small  studio space four or five participants and a chairperson. They may allow  one hour for discussion,  but this includes adverts, introduction and  conclusion lasting some eight to ten  minutes altogether.  So each speaker has at most a few minutes of speaking time. In the case of the presidential debates more time was given and a larger space but time was also allowed for interventions from an audience.  This meant six highly vocal candidates struggling for space to speak.  

The format is confrontational, so the speakers, most of whom are very articulate and anxious  to talk, often interrupt each other, speak over each other, sometimes reducing the discussion  to chaos.

Seasoned discussers have  some interesting techniques.  For instance, they can disrupt an opponent not necessarily by talking over a whole sentence but by interrupting just the most important word in a sentence : one of the panel says, " I believe government priority must be....... (interruption of one or more voices )..... and this should become government policy....".  Unfortunately  the loss  of one word has made it impossible for listener or viewer to know what the priority is. That is an economical as well as a frequent  kind of interruption !  

Then there may be two or three - or even four - suddenly talking together, blocking out what everyone is saying. When the descent into chaos begins  the listener or  viewer - who in theory is the most important person involved in the broadcast - seems to have been forgotten. A studio discussion  becomes even more  chaotic when the chairperson  joins in, as often happens.

This  RTÉ format for discussion then is not the happiest arrangement in any case but particularly when selecting  a possible future President. A President is meant to be  a national and international  symbol of a country at ease with itself, quietly persuasive, thoughtful , courteous even when saying things  not every fellow-citizen agrees with. Presidency  is a delicate job and that format of RTÉ discussion programmes cannot reflect this.

Our neighbours "across the water" make quite a good job of presenting their  head of state, their monarch, as a permanent symbol of unity and national self-confidence;  in  face of so much past and present disunity,  public fear and doubt in Britain this  is a notable success, but  it cannot be successful forever.  It  has been achieved at the price  of  having their presidency, the  monarchy, confined to a single family and  this  helps  to reassure  British people they are united even when they are not.  Irish people must have a different solution.

Most of the  public discourse in either regime  is confrontational.  Our courts are confrontational, one side ranged against another, our sports are confrontational, our radio and television interviews are confrontational. That need not always be the case, it is what we have chosen, or has  been thrust upon us as a modern way of doing things. RTÉ has  the choice:  it can adopt this confrontational  approach, confronting and questioning everything that  interviewed persons  say, or  it can courteously draw out people's  ideas without taking one side or another.   The confrontational approach is often used - not only in RTÉ -  and is open to abuse, with  different treatment for those thought politically, religiously or otherwise desirable and those thought not to be. A presenter or interviewer may be allowed to make the choice, or the radio and television  news departments. A member of staff put it honestly : " It is our job to confront the people we interview".  Actually it isn't.  The job may instead be to  get the interviewed person  to tell the viewer/listener what he or she is thinking or doing, not to argue about it.  

RTÉ used that confrontational model in its discussions between  presidential candidates. The candidates had little possibility of avoiding confrontation with each other whether they liked it or not. So the image of a future President confidently and courteously acting for all the people, whatever their views, soon  disappeared. So a future  President is made to appear, and may continue for years to appear, not as a symbol of a nation at peace with itself but as a symbol  of people arguing with each other at every level, and about every issue, even when their Constitution suggests  that Presidency  should represent a truce among us all. 

That is  a pity. Our  image of a nation at peace with itself  needs  all the courtesies it can muster and is  very precious.

So, will people see  the Irish President during the next seven years as the person who at the debates was rude to So-and-So, interrupted So-and-So, rudely brushed aside a sad attempt by one candidate to be nice to another, as the person who in discussion not only insisted on being the only reasonable choice but slightingly dismissed five out of six  citizens who offered their services as President?  Or as a symbol of national unity in his or her  courteous recognition that  all people, citizens or not, have a Constitutional right to be treated with equal courtesy?

RTÉ presidential discussions  have not been helpful.

Perhaps there is another way. The writers of the Irish Constitution must have seen  the Presidency  as a national family affair in which we rejoice in each others' excellence and say so at home and abroad. We don't appoint judges by arranging such public in-fighting among candidates, or chiefs of police, or members of Aosdána , whatever quiet manoeuvring may take place in appointing any of them. The  Presidency can  be a powerful  symbol of our respect for national excellence and  international differences.   

So is the present way of presenting candidates for Presidency  - and  talking about them - the right way?  Perhaps , next time round, RTÉ could  leave out the confrontational models and just present to listeners and viewers those  willing to be President one by one and  talk to them about  what particular excellence they are  able and willing to foster  - not only to create but to foster  - among their  Irish  fellow  citizens.

Less exciting as a broadcast perhaps.

But probably more worthy of both Constitution and people. 

TROUBLED BY TROUBLES?

Some people refer to the political upheaval  in N Ireland since October 5th. 1968 as "The Troubles".

That is curious.

Some  are even asking if October 5th 1968 was "The Beginning of The Troubles"

That is very curious indeed.

 October  5th. 1968 was a day when police beat  a massive Human Rights march into the ground.

But when my parents talked to us about The Troubles they were talking about events in Belfast during the nineteen twenties and  nineteen thirties when one section of our population was regularly attacked by supporters of the government urged on by street preachers and secret societies.
When people were violently  forced out of  homes  and jobs.

When people like my relatives  sheltered under the stairs because the death squads were out, some emerging from police barracks.

A continuation of our history in which, as the late Andrew Boyd pointed out, there had been an average of one such major government-assisted pogrom  once every twelve years for a hundred years.

A time when the preachers' condemnation of alcohol in East Belfast escalated into pogroms against those who sold it, followed by their premises changing ownership at a low price and returning  to business under new, government approving, management.

That and much else of this same kind is what parents and others were talking about when they talked to us about "The Troubles" .

So .....to refer  to what happened after October 5th 1968 as " the beginning  of  The Troubles " is asking us to wipe out of our memory a  long history of troubles inflicted on my parents ' generation and many before and after them.  That means  fitting one set of Troubles  into a historical cage in order to forget the others.

A march for civil rights was not the beginning of The Troubles.

The beating of the march into the ground was not the beginning of The Troubles

The political system within which we lived  and our parents lived had Troubles  deliberately and permanently built into it.
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Those of us  who  grew up  in the time  of the European dictators can put  into context what was happening in Belfast more easily than those who didn't.  We can understand how and why some people used words about it to soften the effect of their  memories on us. My parents' generation  used the words "The Troubles"  to  soften their story of atrocities so that we and they might demand remedy for them , not retribution. Their memories and the reason they described events  as they did, as "troubles" rather than atrocities,  deserve to  be recognised and not used to pretend  such things did not happen.

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TWO  RELEVANT  THOUGHTS

1.  We were invited, two of us, a Church of Ireland friend and I,  to talk to a peace group in Athlone.

On arrival we realised the Peace Group was run by the local military. When talking to them about what was happening on the other side of the border we used the word "war" describing it.

We were rebuked for that by members of the audience who said calling it a war was to give it a dignity it did not deserve. They said it was just criminal activity.

Our reply was simple :  it had all the elements of war and therefore was a war. And the military and we had different ideas about dignity.

Years later I listened to  a British military officer claiming that his job was to bring peace  in N.Ireland. I said, "You cannot bring peace if you don't tell your government the truth and you are not doing that".

He admitted that what he and his troops were fighting was an efficient , highly organised and effective political guerrilla force.....not, as described by his government, a crowd of thugs....

Another person in the conversation said : "You have to remember that what an army tells its government is one thing, what the government tells its people is often something quite different".

The military officer agreed.
 

2.  The words  "The Troubles " may remind us Oldies of stories in magazines and books of our times about the Empire  -  like  :

 " I say , old chap," said the brigadier as we passed the port around in our tent that dusty desert evening,  "Old Fotheringay  tells me the natives are somewhat restless around the hills these days ..... bit of trouble there d'you think .... ?  "Oh I shouldn't think so, always Troubles up that neck of the woods you know........Natives get restless , nothing  the sight of a few chaps with bayonets won't cure.......... ".

This is not a real quote. But it's near enough.

That Imperial mind still endures, even as the empire departs .................

INSULTING COLUMNS?

Some newspaper columnists refer to our politicians in Ireland - and indeed to us voters - as Neanderthals, that is to say, we are living about forty thousand or even ten times that much out of date.   This is one of a number of current  journalist  insults offered to readers, an even more considered insult  than, say, calling someone Rocket-man" or "pinhead".   Some of our newspaper columnists  seem to encourage  this abuse, some  not.   Maybe they insult people out of habit.  But is that  the only reason they do it? And how much insult are  we, the readers and customers, to  take ?

Our fellow citizens  are said to be humans thinking  "tribally" or not thinking at all.  Some columnists say we, whether politicians or voters, are  "idiots", a word which in decent modern journalism should not be used about anyone.  Calling people idiots  is offensive but  writers who would primly and coyly refer to the "n.....   word" and the "f...  word" and the "c...word" as if they would not sully their copy  with them nevertheless use the, let' s call it " the idiot word".   Just when psychologists and other professional health workers wouldn't dare use it.   Abuse  by word seems at times likely to overshadow the work of the majority of our journalists who reflect what is best because they respect it rather than the worst because it is politically or financially useful.    

So we read the opinion columns about political parties with" control freakery" rather than reason, about how one political party campaigns for something but the other "touts the notion....", such and such a political idea is dismissed  as  "a stupid  idea.....", that  in N.  Ireland  people are obsessed with trivial issues in a way that others are not......, about how Stormont "reeked" and if  Stormont (parliament building)  needed decorated it's unlikely the MLAs could agree a colour scheme beyond magnolia.....unionists here are still stuck in a time warp.....Mr.  So and So MP is reliably spluttery......nothing has changed, every year it springs to mind :  Time to give 'the dreary steeples '  their regular dust down and  repointing........"

But people think and vote  for reasons.  Writers and analysts have the wonderful privilege of revealing  reasons to readers who want to know them.   Calling people idiots, incompetents, lazy and gormless is not reasonable, it is as if we were afraid of looking for reasons or unaware that there are any.   Disdain aplenty.  Analysis short. 

We  criticise the policies of  our newspapers, politicians and churches, of course we do, we make and re-make our decisions, certainly we do .   But we do things for reasons.  It is for our writers to look for reasons and treat the people who have them with courtesy.  A prominent academic said about us in West Belfast, where I live, that we are solipsistic.  We are neither solipsistic ( always inward looking) nor selfish any more than other people, or if we are, let someone prove it, not just say it.    Nor are we, as one of our bishops has said of us, that we are  "opposed to authority and law and everything..." .    We may not, in the words of the Bible, have turned swords into ploughshares but we turned Bonfires into Festivals while many others built their  bonfires bigger and that was no mean feat. 

Publicly describing any of our neighbours as Neanderthal  or  stupid, as leeches sucking blood out of the treasury  or worshippers of  stale ideas because they are old ones does  not reflect us in our many views and choices.  It cannot represent  our opponents either.   

Years ago at a meeting in Dublin I listened to  people around a table saying again and again  that we in the North of Ireland voted "tribally".   When  my time came to speak I objected to this and said it  was a denial of the fact that we thought a great deal about why and how we should vote.  Accusing us of  simply being "tribal" is an easy way out, a refusal, perhaps an inability, to analyse our real thoughts and actions.  As we left  the meeting I was approached by one of the speakers who then accused me of being a racist because I objected to the term "tribal" being used to describe our thinking. 

I believe we are among the most aware of people regarding politics, having had plenty to think and talk about, and thinking and talking plenty .  Among my voting neighbours during my lifetime there have been nationalists, socialists, unionists, republicans and others ; our political choices  changed from time to time, otherwise there would be little point in canvassing at election time because canvassing  is based upon the idea that voters  can and do think, can and do change.  There was a time in N Ireland - I am old enough to remember such things  - when many local council seats went "unopposed"  in elections - this was not  because people did not think rationally about it, they did but  the electoral system was so rigged that it was  pointless to express  new choices or encourage observers to believe there could be any.  Changing possession of many of the council seats had been systematically rendered impossible.  This was not the voters'  fault, it was the fault of a system imposed by  government.    

Anyway, we don't necessarily do what our parents or our ancestors did.  My Father and Mother were Nationalists.   They were among the early buyers of a few  shares in a newspaper and this showed what side of the Nationalists they were on.   I inherited the shares, changed my political - and religious - views as I got older and sold the shares  because I wanted the cash more than the newspaper's  politics.   

Growing up we learned about the importance of difference.   In a dozen  neighbouring houses in the mixed area  where I grew up there lived Professor Savoury who spent many weekends preaching against Catholics - he was of Huguenot stock, a couple of doors from him lived a Nationalist family, divided between both nationalist sides following the Treaty, but  one of whom was arrested  "for wearing the Easter Lily of the Republic".  In a neighbouring parish people were advised from the pulpit - I remember this too - to vote unionist rather than for  a socialist republican.  My Father who came from Cavan favoured Mr De Valera, listened happily to  broadcasts during  elections down South when Fianna Fail won in 1932, but disapproved of some of De Valera's followers .  Friends urged him to enter the political arena  in Belfast on the Nationalist  side but my Mother persuaded him not to - it was a time when Catholics were targets and we were a growing-up family, so minds had to be made up not always between the good and the bad but  between the good and the better.   In adulthood one of my brothers joined the Anti-Partition League and became its Treasurer but resigned when they insisted on having a picture of the Pope on the wall of their Belfast Office.   He admired the Indian medical Service and those who joined it but he read more books critical of  the British Empire than the rest of us put together while my Father and his friends on their days off would take the  tram to Glengormley and walk and talk together about Labour in Irish History.   When the Orangemen marched down the Ormeau Road  my Father would ask us to come out and watch "the brethren" as he always called them.  Most of the time we said No.  We made choices, we did not always "follow my leader".  He was satisfied either way.

So in  West Belfast which has been my home now for many years, I have been able to  appreciate with great respect  the breadth of choices and decisions my neighbours make.   Somewhere in my cupboards there  is a beautiful banner in green and gold announcing, "Long Live Our Member for West Belfast ".   It must have been  for Joe Devlin, Hibernian and conservative Nationalist, certainly too early  for Gerry Adams the republican to whom so many voters turned in later years.  The banner  is a reminder of how people  adjust to changing times, adjust their genius for knowing what should come next rather than repeat what went before;  different choices people in West Belfast have made as they thought about what they should do to make politics different in a world different from that of their forebears. 

People change.  Some writers don't notice the change, perhaps imagining or pretending there is none.  They say their fellow citizens struggling to adjust their ideas to the  times and the times to their ideals are simply humans thinking  tribally or humans not thinking at all.  Some of our newspapers are reflecting this verbal abuse.   But since people think and do things for a reason a  wonderful  privilege journalist  writers and analysts have is to reveal and discuss reasons.  Calling people idiots and incompetents, lazy and gormless is a useful backstop only when we are afraid of reasons or ignorant of them .      

A new generation of journalists is emerging  now.  Our newspapers at best reflect this and  are helping young new journalists  to emerge.  It is a delicate and rewarding thing to do.  The new generation  need not  copy the style of those who for good or ill went before them.   But the depth and frequency of abusive journalism seems to cast a shadow on their future.   So can all of us, readers and writers, cooperate in refreshing and renewing our present and future conversation between neighbours, avoiding the worst of the past and encouraging the best in it? The  young ones emerging deserve the best, the best skills of analysis, expression, attracting  those who want to know and who enjoy  the excitement of knowing.  In my last years at school I wanted to become either a journalist or a scientist.   When circumstances changed  I changed my mind and did something else.   That's the kind of people we are.  We think.  We go ahead.  We change.   So often we find to our surprise that we love the things and people we criticise, so our criticism needs to have a culture, even a language of special quality that says what we need to say but does not damage our neighbours  and is so precious. 

Through the years we Oldies  changed our judgements on our once favoured writers.  Chesterton and Belloc and Wells were often laid aside and replaced by Connolly and lots of writers whom some of our betters despised because they appeared in Penguin editions.   There was sometimes disdain in the choice of literature  as well as in voting - but a  Penguin or a Pelican or a foreign  volume with uncut pages meant we no longer judged a sausage by its overcoat or a book by its cover ; of course at times we felt superior and amused at what otherwise sensible people had written abusively or flippantly about each others' religion  or politics  -  for instance  that Catholicism was better than Protestantism, or vice versa, because there were  less Catholic  prostitutes in London than Protestants - or vice versa.  Even  the greatly admired  Chesterton and Belloc  whom we  admired in days of youth were not above such stuff.  And  in Belfast our local  abusive preachers were not soloists, they belonged to an inglorious and permanent ensemble.  Read the things the reformer Martin Luther said about people ! We stopped being amused by them when we realised that  in the end the abusive  word, like crime, doesn't pay. 

Can we get rid of insulting  descriptions, accusations, labels in journalism, or should we ? Since I wrote a first newspaper column in 1952 and  made a first broadcast in 1954 many journalistic courtesies  have disappeared from  air and paper and  internet  communication.   Can we insist on  fresh ways of criticism that reflect  our own dignity and that of our friends and opponents ?  Or is there any need to try ? To recognise we are making a new world for ourselves, all of us ?

If my Mother, Father, Uncles and Aunts who  discussed politics and books about politics and changes in politics and desires in politics when we were growing up  were to come back to life on earth they could hardly have agreed  that nothing has changed when they saw Rabbi and Priest in the grounds of  Belfast City Hall praying for the city in Irish and Hebrew, people visiting their own City Hall for the first time because now they felt at home in it, when a republican shook  hands with a queen and you could publish books about Irish culture and unity without risking arrest ......  they would  remember but  forgive the days when Nationalists made a conciliatory gesture and became an official Stormont opposition  only to find they would never be allowed to do more than support an amendment to a bill for the protection of wild birds.  ......protection not for their civilised  voters but for wild birds. 

They might look on with wonder at a republican or a nationalist presiding over such change..............

At  very least they would quite rationally - not tribally, not unthinkingly or stupidly, conclude that some things have changed and some things are changeable, that our generosity has been and can be a catalyst for more to come, enriching  our lives, enhancing our ability to write and talk reasonably about it all. 

Saying all this may seem  airy, unnecessary and out of kilter with  modern ideas of freedom of speech.   But there is a new generation arising  for whom everything is possible and everything is for them and us and all the rest as well.    Journalists  are privileged to enrich the atmosphere, the discourse, the political air they breathe, the  things they  offer each other, our  conversations about what  we all have that are so richly ours ......honourable change, truth, courtesy, generosity, understanding  being among the most precious of the gifts we all in turn  give to friends and opponents  alike by what we say. 

And do. 

And write.