Documents containing off the cuff remarks or new information can completely transform our understanding of a particular event or can confirm long standing suspicions.
So one can imagine the surprise Jack Lane (Aubane Historical Society) had when he found a letter written by the British Ambassador to Ireland from October 1969. Although marked to be destroyed, it was located in the British Public Records Office in Kew. Detailing a meeting between the British Ambassador and Major Thomas McDowell, the Belfast born chief executive of The Irish Times, it contains this segment:
McDowell is one of the five (Protestant) owners of the Irish Times, and he and his associates are increasingly concerned about the line the paper is taking under its present (Protestant, Belfast-born) Editor, [Douglas] Gageby, whom he described as a very fine journalist, an excellent man, but on Northern questions a renegade or white nigger.
This was unprecedented: an owner of a well-known Irish newspaper meeting with British representatives and describing his own editor in such stark, racist terminology. And, when paired with this extraordinary excerpt, the reading is quite clear: McDowell was inviting the British government to help steer the Irish Times:
…McDowell went on to say that he now felt that a certain degree of guidance, in respect of which lines were helpful…might be acceptable to himself and…the Board; this was what he had had in mind in telephoning to No.10…I am writing this letter…in case you wish to brief No.10 and assure them that we will do what we can to exploit this opening.
While it’s hardly a surprise that governments would seek to influence popular opinion with the media, it is quite breath taking to read (what amounts to) an open invitation to do so by one of the most senior members of the paper. But if rumours are to be believed that he had connections to British Intelligence due to work he carried out in Austria during World War II, then such an approach makes sense. McDowell always denied referring to Gageby in such terms and claimed he was trying to find ways of brokering peace in the North after the events of August 1969.
Using this letter as a lynchpin, John Martin (a longtime member of the Athol Street brigade) does an exceptional job exploring how the paper stuck to its elite, unionist and Anglo-Irish worldview from its foundation right through to the time of writing (2008). Along the way, it was dismissive of Home Rule, emphasised the importance of blood sacrifice during WWI, described the leaders of the Easter Rising as malignant growths, called for the British to introduce Martial Law to defeat the IRA and deplored partition, albeit from an Anglo-Irish perspective as opposed to a republican one.
Not a great track record for Ireland’s premier broadsheet!
Martin convincingly argues that the paper’s editorial line, post-partition, was to be even more stand offish towards the new state, opposing de Valera on the grounds that he wanted further independence and forever looked across the water for its cues. The end result was a paper produced for a shrinking minority and verging on extinction by 1959.
However, within a few years, two Belfast Protestants (McDowell and Gageby) turned the paper around to not only be a financial success but also one that broke out of its myopic Anglo-Irish outlook.
Then August 1969 happened. For defending the Civil Rights Association, criticising the RUC and backing Jack Lynch after his comments about not being able to stand by, Gageby was branded a “white nigger” by his fellow beal feirstian, albeit one who was known to wear a monocle with no sense of irony.
Examining the class, identity and political history of such a prominent paper would be an exercise in dry academia when handled by most people. In Martin’s hands, it’s a slick, highly informed and very readable book which skewers some sacred cows and offers up some telling examples over how the paper has attempted to control the narratives over certain key events in modern Irish history (collapse of the Reynolds government and Ahern’s appearances at the Mahon Tribunal).
Discussing the paper’s seeming obsession with WWI, Martin speculates that:
…perhaps The Irish Times has a psychological need to return to this period because it feels guilty about its own behaviour. Having urged tens of thousands of Irish people to fight to maintain ‘England’s place among the nations of the world’ and having rejoiced at the blood sacrifice, the best it could do in 1918 was to urge support for one Irish Parliamentary Party candidate…after 1918 it was all going to go horribly wrong for The Irish Times.
Think of that next time you stumble across a think piece from Fintan O’Toole.
John Martin, 2008, The Irish Times: Past and Present. Belfast Historical and Educational Society. ISBN: 978-1872078137
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
No comments