- 2 months ago
In 1988, when the British government declared that the voices of Sinn Féin or I.R.A. leaders were not to be heard, broadcasters soon discovered a loophole.
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00:00Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:30We've got journalists in Belfast. I mean, if you want to talk to them, contradict, let's
00:52assume they're part of the discussion of the audience here.
00:55The colour's on the left in this picture, is he?
00:59Yeah, honey, thank you.
01:01This is my spot for Ulster, isn't it?
01:03But it's okay, please.
01:05Pack it in now, you lot.
01:11Morning, Ivan. Morning, Ken. Nice to see you.
01:14Hello and good morning.
01:16Yesterday, the government banned all British television and radio stations from broadcasting interviews with members of Sinn Féin, or their supporters.
01:24But will it reduce terrorism, or merely curb press freedom?
01:35It's the past year of IRA bombing and killing that persuaded the government this summer to look at the whole of its policy for dealing with terrorism and its supporters in Northern Ireland.
01:45Ministers and many MPs have been incensed by the way people like Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams have appeared on television and radio after such attacks, sometimes to justify them, sometimes to make their apologies.
02:02In the past, Mrs. Thatcher thought that moral pressure on the broadcasters would be enough to stop such appearances.
02:13Now, the Prime Minister thinks that as Ulster terrorism has continued and increased, so have the obligations on broadcasters.
02:20The bodies of IRA men Eddie McSheffrey and Paddy Deary were borne into St. Eugene's Cathedral for Requiem Mass in defiance of Bishop Edward Daly's ban.
02:39It was a stand-off situation the IRA quickly exploited, smuggling a gunman among the mourners to fire shots over the coffins.
02:50The RUC said they'd be reviewing their policy on terrorist funerals. The IRA, they said, had shown no regard for reverence, dignity or civilised human behaviour.
03:01What had been a family day out turned to horror as a bomb exploded in a Catholic community centre. The building collapsed like a pack of cards on top of a group of 40 or 50 people.
03:14Get down! Get down! Get down! Everybody get down!
03:19Get down! Get down! Get down!
03:26Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down!
03:44This cycle of violence, either caused by the IRA or often provoked by them, causing frustration among other extremist groups,
03:53which leads to killing and counter-killing, shows the vicious awfulness of a group who have no mandate, who have no authority and know nothing but violence.
04:06When you've had a bomb outrage and there are pictures of bodies in distress and weeping relatives,
04:13and the next thing that happens, on the screen, in people's living room therefore, is somebody saying,
04:19well, you know, I support the arms struggle or they deserved it.
04:24Whether it's loyalist or whether it's IRA, that I think is not only offensive, but it's wrong and it's perfectly reasonable to remove that.
04:31Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The Prime Minister will say a few words and then we'll take questions for about half an hour. Prime Minister.
04:52I'd like to ask you a kind of double-barreled question.
04:57Oh, dear.
04:59Margaret Thatcher had said terrorists should not be getting the oxygen of publicity.
05:06Thatcher wanted to be seen to do something.
05:11Don't forget the IRA tried to kill her. That's the Brighton bombing.
05:17So you could understand when she said, look, I don't want to watch these guys in my living room.
05:22They tried to kill me and they did kill some of my friends.
05:24...after the bombing that the IRA fed, Mrs. Thatcher must now realise that Britain couldn't occupy their country,
05:30torture their prisoners and shoot their people and get away with it.
05:33The Provoos said they'd been unlucky with their bombing today, but added they only had to be lucky once.
05:39Mrs. Thatcher and her colleagues had to be lucky always.
05:44There can be no compromise with terrorism.
05:48Treating with terrorists can only lead to more bombings, more violence, more people murdered.
05:55The best defence against terrorism is to make clear that you will never give in.
06:03That particular Tory government had before a major blazing rise over its coverage with the BBC.
06:13So there was this hostility between the government and the broadcasters.
06:19In our societies, we don't believe in constraining the media, still less in censorship.
06:26But ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct?
06:38I don't think anyone actually expected the British law to be as severe as it was.
06:44I got phoned by the news desk in London.
06:51I said, oh my God.
06:53Charged into the office and started phoning as many people as I could.
06:56And it came out very quickly that the next day the British government were going to bring in these broadcasting restrictions.
07:03You could still interview them, you could go to their news conferences, you could record it.
07:13But you just could not broadcast the sound of the voice.
07:16I don't know who it was, but word came down that, yeah, you're to use actors.
07:26Tell somebody, find me an actor, you know? Ridiculous.
07:29My agent called me one day and said, could you get down to the BBC as soon as possible? You've got to go to the newsroom.
07:43The journalists, they were all stunned at what had happened.
07:48All that was known was they had to take the voice off.
07:51Then we recorded the voice onto a microphone.
07:55And they took that recording, they sat it onto the voice, and then it appeared on TV.
08:02It was really, really surreal.
08:11Affected by the ban in Northern Ireland will be more than 60 Sinn Féin councillors and one MP,
08:16the party leader, Gerry Adams, who's also one of its best known figures.
08:21In what may be his last British television interview, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams
08:26urged broadcasters to point up their exclusion in future by using a South African-type introduction
08:31that this report has been compiled under government restrictions.
08:35Mr. Adams, this must be no surprise to you, this proposed ban on you,
08:39because you are perceived by 80% of the population of Northern Ireland as the excusers of murderers,
08:45of people operating a guerrilla campaign in a normal society and trying to destroy that normal society.
08:52Well, I said earlier on, we have certain opinions, which include our belief that the IRA have a legitimate right to use arms struggle.
09:01Now, that's our opinion. We have the right to that opinion, in the same way as others may have totally opposite opinions,
09:06and they have the right to those opinions as well. What has been bound here is our right to give that opinion.
09:14Okay.
09:18Okay.
09:19Okay.
09:20Okay.
09:26How are you all doing?
09:53Don't be crying around us.
09:55To this day, I bump into people, maybe be wearing a cap or trying not to make eye contact,
10:11and then they'd hear me talking, and they'd immediately know it was me.
10:15Can you tell us in on what exactly you've been doing in the background?
10:19It's not for me to say that my voice is particularly distinctive or not. It's the only voice that I have.
10:27I'm optimistic because I come at this from a Republican perspective.
10:32We have been coming at these issues for almost a decade now, of trying to get these core issues up on the political agenda.
10:41So this year we managed, through a series of initiatives, and through just undenting hard work,
10:47and through the resilience of the Republican struggle, to put these core issues,
10:51and to focus the British government on those issues.
10:54Well, a lot of people thought it was a great improvement, you know, on my monotone.
11:01People would bring it to your attention, that there was a particularly funny, you know,
11:08or somebody with a squeaky voice, or clearly not me, for those who may have known me.
11:14Well, it falls upon me to introduce this education course.
11:18I'm very pleased to do so.
11:20There's been a lot of good work that's been put into preparing for all Republican activists.
11:27The whole history of Anglo involvement in Irish affairs is steeped in propaganda,
11:37and in demonization and vilification, because you can't go about the job of dealing with people as commodities.
11:44You have to dehumanize them, you have to demonize them to get away with that.
11:50Sinn Féin have so far denied they are backing the campaign.
11:54Earlier today I spoke to their deputy leader, Rory O'Connor,
11:57who under broadcasting restrictions must inhale helium to subtract credibility from his statements.
12:03So you do support this campaign of violence?
12:06I, uh...
12:11Sinn Féin is a legitimate political party.
12:13Which supports terrorist action.
12:15Your tone is antagonistic and you're making me very angry.
12:18Just for a moment and finally, for the average punter on the streets,
12:27is there not a danger that taking these sort of measures in the way that the Home Secretary seems to be taking them,
12:33the law itself will be left looking something of an ass?
12:37Uh...
12:39The law may be looking like a highly intelligent creature,
12:44uh...
12:46disgustingly confused.
12:51As actors, you're always looking for work.
12:53And this paid 60 pounds a pop.
12:57It was party time.
12:59You can't deny it.
13:01Then it became more and more competitive.
13:05So, I ended up getting a pager.
13:09And the guy said to me behind the counter,
13:12Are you a fireman?
13:13And I said, I'm an actor.
13:16I'm an actor.
13:17I do the broadcasting.
13:18I need this so that my agent can get me and I can beat the rest of them.
13:23The various actors would do anything.
13:24I remember one of my friends, Tim Lone, he got an answer machine.
13:28Within a week it had paid for itself, I think.
13:33It started off an occasional thing.
13:35Then it really built.
13:36It really did snowball.
13:39There were times when you would be in and out of the BBC,
13:41four or five times a day sometimes.
13:45Working with the actors were the most enormous pain in the backside.
13:50They were awful.
13:53We operated like a kind of a flying squad.
13:55Whoever was available was next in there to do the different voices.
14:11I'd been asked, would you come into the studio and re-voice Gerry Adams?
14:17The idea was to speak with as much clarity as possible
14:20so that the words that he was saying would get through to an audience.
14:25And I left out little fluffs.
14:28I didn't repeat mistakes because he was talking off the cuff.
14:33What was I going to do?
14:35Say to her, oh, get Kenneth Branagh to do it.
14:38What they objected to was these guys looking reasonable.
14:45These guys looking normal.
14:50Because if you're going to demonise terrorists,
14:53they can't be working class guys who can actually express themselves really well
14:58and are quick in debate.
14:59I think the voice of Gerry Adams, they wanted to take it away.
15:05These figures were hugely charismatic.
15:09I don't think there's any doubt that they perceived Adams' words as dangerous.
15:16I don't think a particularly great orator, but he's charismatic.
15:19And by trying to take away his voice, I presume they were trying to kill some of his charisma.
15:26There was a turning point in the broadcasting ban
15:30when word came from above that the dubbing was too good.
15:35And I remember the journalists themselves were sitting going, what?
15:39So we have to do it bad.
15:42If you ever managed to time your words too perfectly with the visual image,
15:47they would tell you to go back and do it again and mess it up on purpose.
15:50You would have people, friends or relatives telling you,
15:53how come you can't fit the words to the pictures better?
15:56We weren't allowed.
16:00The first thing they did originally was bring in actors to dub over my voice
16:05or Gerry Adams' voice.
16:07I think there was one occasion where the documentary was made
16:11about the prisoners in the H blocks of Long Kesh.
16:17And there was a scene when the spokesperson for the prisoners
16:22was debating about sausage rolls.
16:26And because the person was speaking from a Republican spokesperson position,
16:30they were banned.
16:32That was dubbed over.
16:33Here, the prison's catering officers are discussing a problem
16:37with the IRA spokesman on food.
16:39The thing about the sausage rolls,
16:42they're getting smaller,
16:47in terms of the size and all that there, you know.
16:50The quality's still all right.
16:53The quality's just getting a bit small.
16:55They're getting a bit small, you know.
16:57A bit better.
16:58Getting a bit better.
17:00I mean, it was farce ago.
17:05Being the National Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin,
17:08we weren't surprised by anything that Margaret Thatcher would do.
17:13In the Republican Press Centre,
17:15in the four months prior to the broadcasting ban,
17:19we had about 500 requests generated for interviews.
17:22And I think that dropped to about 110 in the four months afterwards.
17:27So it had a real effect.
17:29But it didn't stop the IRA.
17:30Do you think there are other things we should have done?
17:33Do you think, is the banning enough?
17:35Or should we have done more?
17:36It's not enough, it's just a drop in the ocean.
17:38Because there are criminals, terrorists, on the streets.
17:41Hold on, I live there.
17:44Sinn Féin was asked to stand for election.
17:46It proved that it had got the support,
17:48and the goalposts removed.
17:49Hang on now, come on.
17:50Everybody's going to get their fair share.
17:51Your point entered into talks with Gerry Adams,
17:53a man whose hands are stained with the blood
17:55of decent people in Northern Ireland.
17:56I'd just like to make one point.
17:58His means of achieving the end.
18:00Sinn Féin need to be eliminated.
18:07When the broadcasting ban was brought in,
18:10I hear people say, this is like the Soviet Union.
18:13What was different about the broadcasting ban here
18:15is that we are Western Europeans?
18:17There's no censorship, unlike all the places.
18:20And of course we were fooling ourselves.
18:23I can't remember a journalist coming out in the North
18:27and saying, this is a good idea.
18:29Keep the bastards off the air.
18:32Not one.
18:45Not one.
18:53At this time Sinn Féin were getting 10 to 15% of the vote
18:57in Northern Ireland.
18:59They had MPs.
19:01And it was just not right.
19:04Once you're an elected representative, things change.
19:09What they did was make the media part of the state's arsenal
19:12against the people who were writing up against the state.
19:18When I got to go to the USA,
19:21a lot of the media interest
19:23was in listening to this person
19:25whose voice was banned from the airwaves.
19:28It just shows you how counterproductive it is
19:30because had I not had these measures in place,
19:34it wouldn't have been a story.
19:35I mean a story.
19:40You know, the band, it did Jerry Adams to harm.
19:43Helped him to cover up the truth
19:44when he didn't know how to be interviewed about the truth.
19:47Go to America or Europe or anywhere else
19:49and say that they're silencing us.
19:51That's a very simple thing to say to audiences.
19:54Then he might know nothing at all about the North.
19:56They understood that.
19:58There's never been a mistake to be made
20:01in Northern Ireland
20:02that the British haven't taken the chance to do it.
20:06It was also an attack on the British public
20:09because it was an attempt to keep them ignorant
20:11about why their sons and daughters were getting killed in Ireland,
20:15why there was a conflict going on here.
20:18It was callous, the censorship,
20:21and it stopped dialogue.
20:23They thought that'll teach these sons of bitches.
20:26Good evening, you're watching UTV Live at 6 on Wednesday, August the 31st.
20:38After 25 years of violence and over 3,000 deaths,
20:43the IRA has declared what is regarded as its most significant ceasefire yet.
20:48It will be a complete cessation of military operations
20:50and all units have been instructed accordingly.
20:54It takes place from midnight to night.
20:57The noisy cavalcade winds its way down the falls
20:59and into the Nationalist New Lodge and Ardoin districts.
21:02The relief of people who crowded out of their houses to watch was palpable.
21:05I'm just absolutely delighted.
21:07And we'll continue to pray that the peace will last,
21:10not only for ourselves but for our non-Catholic friends as well.
21:12I remember getting a phone call 24 hours in advance to say,
21:20be on standby, can you get into the BBC at 7 o'clock in the morning?
21:24Dennis Murray was going, this is huge, get in here quick.
21:28And there was half a dozen of us.
21:31All actors, all who knew each other very well,
21:34sitting there drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes all day.
21:37You had to fight your way through the Marlborough smoke.
21:41Absolutely sensational atmosphere.
21:44I did Martin McGuinness for the Today programme on Radio 4.
21:48The reason I remembered is because my mother and father were on holidays
21:50and they heard my voice on the World Service telling them about the ceasefire.
21:57I went in and did the voice, Danny Morrison, I think it was.
22:01And then said, bye, see you later, went out.
22:05That was it.
22:08We're never back.
22:12So after six years, the broadcasting ban brought in by Margaret Thatcher
22:16to cut off the oxygen of publicity has finally been lifted.
22:20Reaction has been positive.
22:22Even the Elster Unionist Party said it was a joke.
22:24All paramilitaries and all those who speak on their behalf
22:28now have an opportunity.
22:30The opportunity to tell us directly, not under the cover of an actor's voice,
22:34that they are truly committed to peaceful methods only,
22:39and to there being no resumption of violence in the future.
22:42Well, we are now able to do our first interview with a member of Sinn Féin without using an actor's voice,
22:49and in our dairy studio, Martin McGuinness.
22:51Mr McGuinness, we haven't actually heard you speak for the last six years.
22:54I wonder if you could use this opportunity to satisfy the Prime Minister who's in Northern Ireland,
22:59that the IRA ceasefire is permanent.
23:02Well, the position is that Sinn Féin is not the IRA.
23:05I cannot reinterpret the IRA's statement.
23:07The IRA's statement, in my opinion, is very clear.
23:08What is your understanding of the IRA?
23:11Is your understanding of the IRA's statement, then, that it is permanent?
23:14Well, it's my understanding of the IRA's statement,
23:16in that they have totally transformed the situation on this island,
23:20and I think that the British government have to recognise that.
23:23I think that there has been widespread acclaim for that,
23:26and it's quite clear that the British government now have moved to end this ban
23:30as a result of the public criticism which they had over their begrudging attitude.
23:38The British government has been in the first place.
23:42Sinn Féin has welcomed the ending of the broadcasting ban.
23:45The party said it should never have been imposed in the first place.
23:51The organisation claimed the IRA's ceasefire had provided a golden opportunity
23:57to dramatically advance the peace process.
23:58Peter, what about your experience as a Panorama reporter? You've covered a great deal of Northern Ireland.
24:17Well, I think what's going to happen is that at the first electoral opportunity,
24:21Sinn Féin will jump on the bandwagon.
24:22The media from all over the world will be there, they'll be interested not in the by-election,
24:27they'll be interested in Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison,
24:30and everybody else will be interviewed at great length,
24:33and Sinn Féin will get the oxygen of publicity,
24:36which this whole operation is designed to deny them.
24:39It will be counterproductive. I don't think it will work.
24:41It will have to be balanced.
24:45Somebody has to draw the line, and this morning the line is drawn here.
24:48The line is drawn here.
25:18I think
25:33I'm going to do theffiti dinosaur form of the Mount Everest.
25:37I bring in on two sides,
25:40while regulating calculations,
25:44I'm not sure if that sees the tension on the treadmill,
25:46Transcription by CastingWords
26:16CastingWords
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