- The Observer,
- Sunday January 12 2003
In his last despatch for Paris Soir before his plane was shot down, Delapree ended acidly with the observation that 'the massacre of a hundred Spanish children is less interesting than a sigh from Mrs Simpson'.
More than a dozen widows, their children and their extended families in Northern Ireland can be forgiven for thinking that not much has changed in the press more than over 60 years later. Their loved ones may have been shot, beaten or stabbed to death but the geographical location of this dozen or so murders last year makes them irrelevant in terms of the British metropolitan media.
Last week the English media suffered a bout of collective hysteria over the murder of two girls in Birmingham. Suddenly Britain was under the shadow of a 'gun culture'; crimes involving firearms had more than doubled under their government and something inevitably had to be done - in this case the introduction of a five year minimum sentence for possessing a pistol, rifle or sub-machine-gun.
Tabloid newspapers put up £50,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of the killers. The press and electronic the broadcasters focussed in on street gang sub-culture. Even gangsta rap was dragged into the controversy with lyrics extolling guns and violence being blamed for the fatal shooting in Aston.
For everyone living on this side of the Irish Sea, particularly the families of the victims of our own 'gun culture', the screaming headlines and the panic-button-response of New Labour Ministers was a reminder that life is infinitely cheaper in the north of Ireland than in Britain.
To borrow Delapree's brilliant phrase, the sighs from Victoria Beckham or Ulrika Jonsson are more interesting than the tears of women and children at their loved ones' gravesides in Ulster. It seems as if it is only when violent death involving the gun descends upon English streets that the media and political classes wake up from the torpor of the trivial and take notice.
A parallel indifference pertains, by the way, south of the border. Contrast for instance the national outcry in the Republic over Veronica Guerin's murder to the slaying of Martin O'Hagan in Lurgan in 2001, the latter victim receiving far less coverage or concern.
The London media's indifference to murder and mayhem in Northern Ireland is well known. The IRA knew this when they began bombing British cities in the 1970s.
It has become one of the well-worn clichés of the Troubles but it remains a truism: one bomb in the City of London is worth more in terms of publicity than 10 bombs in Belfast. Yet what is new about the contrasting treatment of 'gun culture' in England to 'gun culture' over here is the naked hypocrisy of New Labour.
While David Blunkett and the Cabinet prepare to get tough with the gunmen who listen to NWA and So Solid Crew in Birmingham or Brixton, the Prime Minister and his underlings in the Northern Ireland Office turn a blind eye to the activities of gunmen who listen to the Wolf Tones and Platoon in Derry or Belfast.
Instead of crackdowns our gunmen face 'creative ambiguity', in place of immediate responses they are allowed to kill their own under the cloak of that chilling phrase, 'internal housekeeping'.
No one ever expected a perfect peace after 30 years of sectarian conflict. What is important to remember, however, is the double standards New Labour operate. In England they want to be seen as the party that bashes the criminal; in Northern Ireland gun gangs kill with impunity.
Even the arrest on Friday evening of Johnny Adair points up this discrepancy in policy. On the face of it the move to put Adair behind bars might seem like a government determined to curb the cult of paramilitarism.
The reality is that this same Government has no interest in dismantling paramilitary organisations, especially on the republican side.
Expect no such drives against the smugglers of South Armagh in the run up to IRA 'acts of completion' between now and when the bombs start raining on Baghdad. In contrast Adair, by virtue of his high profile and personality cult status, is an easy target to take off the streets.
Today he merely represents one recalcitrant faction hemmed into a hermetically sealed stronghold on the Shankill Road. In short, he is easily dealt with. The UDA's remaining five brigades, on the other hand, will remain untouched. The bitter truth about is that as long as loyalists and republicans are only beating and shooting 'their own' their ceasefires will be judged 'in the round' (copyright: Mo Mowlam circa 1999) to be intact and the commitment of paramilitary groups' political wings to peace will be deemed genuine.
