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Kevin Myers
From the 'Irish Times' column
'A Right Paean in the Ass'
Firstly, an interest to declare. Adrian Myers, aged 52 ½ doesn't like me. A few years ago he attacked the Arts Council for giving "a grant to one of the most sinister IRA terrorists of all, Danny Morrison." Last December he devoted his column to an attack on me because I had climbed out of steerage and complained about the service on the Enterprise train when we in second class had to wait for our breakfasts until those in first class were served. According to M, having a prison conviction pretty much disqualifies one from the human race.
"Danny, my boy, you're alive, and thousands are not. So shut up." Okay M, I'll listen to you instead.
M is a clever, provocative writer and often quite funny, if often pompous, pious and a paean in the ass. In the USA the President delivers a State of the Nation address once a year: our polymath in the 'Irish Times' can give you up to four a week. M has doctorates on himself, guerrilla, trench and conventional warfare, art, motor cars, mobile phones, sport, nature and the environment, architecture, Dublin city, the weather, women drivers, summer schools, the modern family, single mothers, immigrants, travellers, and wine and food, wasps, spiders and bats.
Obviously, much of his writing is geared to creating controversy, and there may be some who buy the paper solely for their M fix. But he doesn't come cheap. Several out of court libel settlements have cost the paper a pretty penny, including £250,000 in costs and damages paid out to the relatives of those killed in Derry.
An ordinary mortal, M has his share of contradictions. A man totally opposed to violence (and boxing) he upholds the jolly blood-sport of fox-hunting. "Might not the swift hunger of a pack of dogs, whose individuals can dispose of a cat in seconds, collectively deliver to a fox a hastier and more merciful end… If they get a fox, it will be a lucky fox, one that this night or next will not now die of cold or famine or disease…" Well, obviously not, since the poor thing has been eviscerated, drawn and quartered.
A psychologist might suggest that Squire M is suffering from secondary shell-shock. For years he has championed the cause of the forgotten Irish who died in the ranks of the British army in the First World War. Their war was a 'courageous' one, was 'poignant'. 'a true epic' full of sacrifice, even though, as it turned out, they weren't fighting for the cause that they thought. On the other hand, Irish republicans who fought in 1916 and in the Tan War, and who knew what they were fighting for, were stupid. The Easter Rising was "an unmitigated evil for Ireland" which left "a legacy of violence and murderous, clandestine covens."
IRA Volunteers 'murdered', whereas RIC men and British soldiers were merely doing 'their duty'. "I am not saying the security forces were not killing people at that time. But such killings were in spontaneous and occasional affrays." During the current conflict British army killings did "not compare with the atrociousness of the IRA campaign." The security forces are "amongst the true heroes of the Troubles."
He despises Michael Collins, opposed the candidacy of Marys Robinson and McAleese for the presidency, opposed the peace process, supported the release of Paratrooper Lee Clegg (M was "far from convinced that murder, in its full and premeditated sense, was what Clegg had in mind" when the two unarmed teenagers were shot in the back). Later, he admitted to being wrong in some of his opinions, but in subsequent diary entries he was stranded in no man's land, three battalions short of a regiment.
Adopting unionist-speak he refers to Sinn Fein/IRA. Republicans, he says, speak "heathen gibberish", though I suppose I should be thankful that omitted from this book is that appalling piece he wrote describing dead IRA Volunteers as 'the progeny of a sow's litter'. M at his humanitarian best.
Five years ago in 'The Spectator' magazine he wrote about an incident in the 1970s when he was working as a journalist in Belfast (and recalls it in this book). He said that he was in a pub in Andersonstown when a fight broke out between two men, one of whom was badly beaten. The IRA arrived to sort out the situation and Myers says that he heard Gerry Adams say to the IRA about one of the men, "Shoot him."
What is extraordinary about this story is the Myers can't remember the name of the bar, the date, who was shot (if anyone was shot), and, strange for a journalist, didn't write about his 'exclusive' at the time. Surprise, surprise, he only remembered the story at the height of the cease-fire in 1995, and used it to denigrate Adams and call into question his commitment to peace.
If you are a fox, a feminist, a single parent, a supporter of neutrality, an opponent of imperialism or an ex-internee, on a country lane in the vicinity of County Wicklow, and you see a bowler-hatted, jaunty, liveried equestrian, puffing up his cheeks to blow his horn, my advice to you is to run for your life, because Squire M takes no prisoners.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison