“Makes Me Ashamed to be an Academic”. Harsh. But Fair?

One of Cedar Lounge Revolution’s regular contributors has already delivered a short review of last night’s TV show “The Day The Troubles Began” here, dismissing the on-air arguments of the show’s historical advisor, Dr. Simon Prince, as “nothing less than a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters of historical truth”. I have no intention of putting words into anyone’s mouth – the author of these criticisms can elaborate on them if they wish – but those words are worth bearing in mind when thinking about the show.

First, the good bits. Lots of original footage, interviews with many of the participants, including the organisers and one of the RUC men on duty that day (though I would have liked to see his answer to the questions of whether he had been swinging his baton that day, and whether he thought the force used was appropriate). Excellent material on the influence of international affairs, especially the example of Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights movement. The interviews with those involved in protests in 1968 in other countries like Tom Hayden, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Alain Gesmair were fascinating, as was the American news coverage of the attack on the march. All set to a quality soundtrack. And, perhaps best of all, no extended discussion of how Northern Ireland was really like west Germany. The programme fairly raced along, and was often a compelling watch.

What then of its problems? Firstly, there were a number of niggling inaccuracies. Finbar O’Doherty – and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether he approved of the use of the English version of his name – was described as a member of the Derry Housing Action group, not the Derry Housing Action Committee (the name is important, of which more later). There was also footage of later marches and interviews which suggested that John Hume – who had opposed the October 5th march – had been involved with it. In addition, some of the international stuf seemed to go nowhere – there was extended coverage of Martin Luther King’s funeral, and some participants recalled their reaction to his death – but no-one said how this did or didn’t affect their determination to press on, what tactics they might use etc.

The main problem though that I could see was that it told the story of Duke Street from one particular angle, to the virtual exclusion of all others. That angle was that of the elements involved who later became active in the People’s Democracy, and by extension the story told in Simon Prince’s own book. In this story, October 5th was deliberately planned as a provocation designed to demonstrate to the world, especially Britain, but also to local opinion the corrupt, repressive and arbitrary nature of the unionist regime by provoking the police into attacking non-violent marchers. This done, the oppressive and anti-working class nature of the regime obvious, there was a possibility of re-running Paris in May 68 in Northern Ireland. Hence Prince talking about the 68ers. And there is certainly a good deal of truth in this argument. Eamon Melaugh, one of the main organisers, said as much, and that he had nothing to apologise for.

The question becomes what constitutes provocation, and whether the police or the marchers should be blamed for the violence that followed. Prince, possibly following one of the Young Socialists interviewed for the programme, has been drawing a distinction between non-violent and peaceful. He argues that the marchers were non-violent but the marches were not peaceful because there was an intention to provoke violence from the police. This seems to me to be deliberately missing the point. The point being that the people who attack non-violent marchers are the violent ones, and it is they who are responsible. Not the marchers. The marchers may have expected, or even hoped for violence, but that is still not the same as initiating it. The look on the face of the senior RUC officer who has just been swinging his blackthorn stick at a marcher lying on the ground spoke volumes. Bernadette Devlin spoke of her shock of the hatred on the RUC men’s faces, and this is also the recollection of others.

Then there is the sequence of violence versus provocation. And here the comparison with the first, peaceful Dungannon march is instructive. The footage last night showed the Dungannon marchers be approached by an RUC officer and told to stop (as in Derry several weeks later, they had been banned from entering part of the town). There is a moment’s hestitation before a woman (possibly Mrs Mc Cluskey of the Campaign for Social Justice and NICRA but I can’t say for sure), waves the marchers forward. They proceed, and are not attacked by the RUC. If we turn then to the march that had been surrounded by the police in Duke Street, we see the same thing. The marchers approach what is this time an RUC line. They walk right up to it, and the momentum of the crowd behind pushes them forward. A few make it through. The others get batoned – Gerry Fitt being the first, needing three stitches (Austin Currie’s remarks about the determination of the marchers behind to ensure that the MPs – him, Fitt, and Nationalist Party leader Eddie Mc Ateer – stayed in the front line raised a smile). The RUC man interviewed said he would leave it to others to judge whether walking right up to police lines constituted provocation. It is clear from Dungannon that a few weeks before it was not regarded as provocation worthy of being batoned. Perhaps that little fact escaped the programme makers’ attention. The provocation described by the programme makers involved the giving of Nazi sautes to the police, and the throwing of (paper thin) placards. Yet as we can see, the violence had been initiated by the RUC beforehand. This seems to me to undermine the argument put forward in the programme.

Next comes the sin of omission. As I said above, the programme interviewed many of the organisers and participants. But they were overwhelmingly drawn from one small part of the overall civil rights movement. No-one was there from the central executive of NICRA explaining why it backed the march. Which meant that no-one was there from the Communist Party, even though some of its members participated. There were several people interviewed, including Michael Farrell, who had gotten the Young Socialist bus up from Belfast. Yet no-one was interviewed from the busload of Republican Clubs members who also left from Belfast that day. Why not? It is possible that neither the programme makers nor their historical advisor was aware of this bus, and the nice contrast such an interview may have made. But they were certainly not unaware of the major republican presence at the march. The second banner carried, immediately behind the NICRA one and impossible to miss, was that of the James Connolly Republican Club. It appeared several times. Where were the interviews with the republicans, local or otherwise to explain their presence on the march, their aims, how NICRA fit into their strategy? In fact, according to Eamon Mc Cann’s account, Republicans made up two of the five people on the Ad-Hoc Civil Rights Committee that organised the march. One of them was O’Doherty, yet he was described as Housing Action group. Now given the subsequent troubled history of splits within republicanism, it is possible O’Doherty chose to be identified with the Housing Action campaign, rather than anything else, though he has never been shy of discussing his republican history. The very name Derry Housing Action Committee was lifted from the Dublin Housing Action Committee, a group established by Sinn Féin, with others, to further the socialist and politicising goals of the Goulding leadership. What did 1968 mean to the Republicans, especially the ones who unlike Farrell saw positive attributes in the USSR? So there is a context here screaming to be discussed, and that could have been easily discussed with one of the participants, never mind getting an extra interview. Yet it fit neither the story of the PDs, nor the historical advisor, and so we find it absent. Certainly, from his book, we know Prince was well aware of republican involvement in NICRA, and in the planning for October – he recounts how a broken down car stopped senior republicans being there. We can only conclude then this was deliberate omission, an editorial choice, taken for the sake of coherence but at the expense of historical accuracy and explanatory power.

Eamon Melaugh has spoken just this weekend of the attempts to write him and others out of the story of October 5th. And while the programme organisers featured him prominently in the account of the origins of the march, he disappeared from the discussion of the march, and its aftermath. Might this have been because he had nothing to say? Anyone who has met him will find this unlikely. Given that unlike the Mc Canns and the Farrells and the Devlins, he (re)joined the Republican Clubs and The Workers’ Party, it seems quite possible what he had to say did not fit the story being told, and so it was left on the cutting room floor. As with the Republican Clubs, the programme makers stand condemned by their own film.

One other virtual omission. Paisleyism. There was no mention of Paisleyite attempts to provoke violence in Dungannon – which were successfully resisted by republican stewards – nor of the fact that the reason given for Craig’s ban on the October 5th march was that a Loyal order march had been moved to ensure there was a clas. What about this provocation, the people standing behind police lines egging them on.

To sum up then, this was an interesting, informative, but deeply flawed programme. Its explanations at times lacked credibility, and it was clearly one sided. But it’s on BBC iplayer and on again on Thursday at 9 on BBC NI 2, so judge for yourselves.