paul100days-blog

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The verdict is in

On 28 March the four defendants in the rugby rape trial were acquitted. This morning another verdict was announced, following an internal inquiry set up in the wake of the trial by Ulster rugby and the Irish Rugby Football Union.  There was a third trial, held in the court of public opinion.  This is the one where Anna’s ad played its part, helping to mobilise pressure on the rugby authorities. We will never know how much the public debate shaped the decision-making process in the IRFU inquiry, but it is certainly the case that the various street protests, rallies, hashtag groups, letters to newspapers and voices on the radio were at a pitch that could not be ignored.

The decisive intervention came a few days ago when the main sponsor of Irish rugby, the Bank of Ireland, issued a statement making it clear that it expected the inquiry to take a ‘robust’ approach. No matter how long you looked at that word it would be hard to read it as anything other than a straightforward demand for the two players to be sacked. There was no way the Bank of Ireland wanted to see Jackson and Olding back in the shirts with the bank’s name and logo.

While that can be described as a discrete initiative, the reality is that it came out of a public mood, one in which Anna’s ad most certainly played its part. One thing leads to another. And sometimes the connections can be surprising. There is certainly a difference in tone, but the content of the ad and the IRFU statement were very similar: both made it clear that the behaviour of the players fell below acceptable standards. If that was the conclusion that the IRFU was driving towards then Anna’s ad must have helped by pushing public feeling in that direction.      

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The 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement

There has been a lot of coverage of the anniversary in the media, and as part of this I met with a researcher from a local production company who wanted to know about the organisation of the Yes Campaign in the referendum which followed the negotiation of the agreement.  I had taken a month off work to act as chair of the campaign and although I deposited many of the materials with the Linen Hall Library, I still have some of the reports we published, Working for Yes. When I went to lift one off the shelf a piece of paper fell out. It was the art work for a poster we put out at the height of the campaign.

It is an image I won’t forget. It shows a new-born baby cradled in her mother’s arms. The text reads ‘Hanna Louise Davison was born in the Royal Victoria Hospital yesterday,’ and then beneath that the bold type message Give Her A Future.  We got the idea for this when we went for a bite after closing up the office one evening.  Such were the resources at our disposal that no sooner had the idea crystallised than we had a photographer on his way up to the maternity unit with us, and found a couple who were very happy to have their daughter’s birth associated with this moment of hope. It was a full page ad in all three papers the next day and widely circulated in the national press.

I wonder what happened to her. I know that whatever failures have occurred in politics here, she will not have been caught in a bomb blast, witnessed a shooting or suffered any violence. The Northern Ireland she has grown up in is incomparably better than what existed before the peace agreement.  

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The ad and the counter ad

Anna’s ad triggered a reaction. The fact that the Belfast Telegraph put it in the front page (admittedly because they thought Anna was a television celebrity) meant it was carried as a news item on the early morning bulletins. It was still a story on the lunchtime news but the newsreader interrupted her script to say there was some breaking news. Paddy Jackson had issued an apology.  The next day’s coverage bundled the two stories together, the ad and the apology. In most cases no direct connection was made (though it might be inferred) but Henry McDonald wrote it up in a direct cause-and-effect way in the Guardian. My guess is that it was neither coincidental, nor something written in response to the ad. I tend to think that once Ulster Rugby realised what a disaster it had been to threaten everyone with legal action, an alternative strategy of a statement of remorse was decided upon and a wording agreed. The ad may have tipped them into issuing it at that particular time, and so in an odd and ironic way the ad may have helped by providing a cue. Whatever way it came about it there was a satisfying narrative arc:  the ad appeared and the apology followed.  

The story then began to feed itself. Paddy Jackson’s apology was welcomed by all, and for some it was sufficient for them to call for a reinstatement of the two players on to the team. There were others who more sceptical about the sincerity of the apology.  Allison Morris, who covered the trial for the Irish News started her article by saying that she could spot a professionally crafted press release when she saw one. A photograph appeared of the piece of paper on which Stuart Olding had scribbled the conciliatory statement made on his behalf by his solicitor immediately after the acquital, and it was written in his own hand. It spoke to a sincerity gap between the two statements.

Lara was interviewed on Radio Ulster and squeaked through. By contrast Anna was adroit in her handling of the same difficult questions in the Belfast Telegraph, and an accompanying photograph cleared up any possible confusion that may have lingered concerning that other Anna Nolan.

Today, Thursday 11th a counter ad appeared, this one coming from rugby fans, calling into question the provenance of the Anna/Lara ad, and calling for the reinstatement of the players.  Radio 4 picked up on the story at this point and did an interview with Anna. The Ulster Rugby fans had done themselves no favours by being unable to provide a spokesperson, and so Anna’s was the only voice on the subject. She was gently interrogated by the interviewer but appeared relaxed, and gave thoughtful answers to all the questions put to her.  We had been given a few minutes notice that the story was going to run, but Kate caught it live, as did Marie’s friend Pam, and congratulations followed from family and friends.    

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The ad and the counter ad

Anna’s ad triggered a reaction. The fact that the Belfast Telegraph put it in the front page (admittedly because they thought Anna was a television celebrity) meant it was carried as a news item on the early morning bulletins. It was still a story on the lunchtime news but the newsreader interrupted her script to say there was some breaking news. Paddy Jackson had issued an apology.  The next day’s coverage bundled the two stories together, the ad and the apology. In most cases no direct connection was made (though it might be inferred) but Henry McDonald wrote it up in a direct cause-and-effect way in the Guardian. My guess is that it was neither coincidental, nor something written in response to the ad. I tend to think that once Ulster Rugby realised what a disaster it had been to threaten everyone with legal action, an alternative strategy of a statement of remorse was decided upon and a wording agreed. The ad may have tipped them into issuing it at that particular time, and so in an odd and ironic way the ad may have helped by providing a cue. Whatever way it came about it there was a satisfying narrative arc:  the ad appeared and the apology followed.  

The story then began to feed itself. Paddy Jackson’s apology was welcomed by all, and for some it was sufficient for them to call for a reinstatement of the two players on to the team. There were others who more sceptical about the sincerity of the apology.  Allison Morris, who covered the trial for the Irish News started her article by saying that she could spot a professionally crafted press release when she saw one.  A photograph appeared of the piece of paper on which Stuart Olding had scribbled the conciliatory statement made on his behalf by his solicitor immediately after the acquital, and it was written in his own hand. It spoke to a sincerity gap between the two statements.

Lara was interviewed on Radio Ulster and squeaked through. By contrast Anna was adroit in her handling of the same difficult questions in the Belfast Telegraph, and an accompanying photograph cleared up any possible confusion that may have lingered concerning that other Anna Nolan.

Today, Thursday 11th a counter ad appeared, this one coming from rugby fans, calling into question the provenance of the Anna/Lara ad, and calling for the reinstatement of the players.  Radio 4 picked up on the story at this point and did an interview with Anna. The Ulster Rugby fans had done themselves no favours by being unable to provide a spokesperson, and so Anna’s was the only voice on the subject. She was gently interrogated by the interviewer but appeared relaxed, and gave thoughtful answers to all the questions put to her.  We had been given a few minutes notice that the story was going to run, but Kate caught it live, as did Marie’s friend Pam, and congratulations followed from family and friends.    

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Anna and the other Anna

There was no-one in the Co-op shop other than a bored till assistant.  A man walked in, glanced at the newspaper rack, threw back his head and laughed. He then picked the Belfast Telegraph from its shelf, opened it up and laughed even louder. Grabbing three copies of the paper he made his way to the till. ‘Something good in the Tele today?’ asked the assistant laconically.

I called up the stairs to Marie – for yes, that man was me – to let her know I’d got the paper. You’ll not believe this, I said. Marie came down the stairs, her face tight with anxiety. I placed the page on the hob, under the light of the cooker hood. First the front page with the pic of the reality TV show celebrity, Anna Nolan, then the spread on the inside page where the pic of the celebrity Anna Nolan showed her to be in a state of indignation about the morals of rugby players.

Marie turned to me, her face a mask of incomprehension. Then we both burst out laughing. Has Anna seen it, we wondered. I took pics and out them up on the family app. The responses were instant. This is nuts. This is insane. There were rows of emojis of faces with tears of laughter bursting from their eyes.

Later, Anna was able to put the story together. Obviously, she had never masqueraded as the other Anna Nolan, but somewhere along the way someone had gained the impression that it was the former Big Brother contestant ( and subsequently, RTE presenter) who had decided to crowd fund for this ad.  It was only at 1.30 in the morning when the presses were rolling that the mistake was realised. That must have been a difficult moment.    

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A Wobbly start to the day

At 8.30 this morning I was in a small seminar room overlooking the quad at Queen’s. The European Social Sciences History conference was on, and Joanna McMinn had told me that an American guy who was staying in her Airbnb was here to deliver a talk on the Wobblies.  So of course I had to go.  The Industrial Workers of the World, to give the organisation its proper name, was a radical left wing group which believed that the working class would achieve power not by forming a political party, but by organising in the workplace. They first began organising in Chicago in the early part of the 20th century, and had the ambition of developing into an international network – ‘One Big Union’.  The great union organiser and songwriter, Joe Hill, was a member (Ruairi has a poster of him) and the Irish socialists James Connolly and Jim Larkin both spent time in the Wobbly ranks when they were in America.

Why were they called the Wobblies? No-one knows for sure, but the most popular version goes like this. The IWW organised the immigrant Chinese when no other union would admit them.  A restaurant owner in Vancouver felt so grateful that he would always give a free meal to anyone who was a member.  You eye-double –you-double-you? he would ask. Yes, the hungry union member would reply, copying the Chinese accent so that the phrase I wobbly –you-wobbly-you became a form of greeting inside the organisation.

They’re gone now, the Wobblies, gone but not forgotten. This morning at 8.30 a group of historians, drawn from all parts of the globe, and all experts on some aspects of the movement, gathered to sift through Wobbly history. They were, I have to say, something of an oddball collection, antiquarian in their approach.  But the spirit lives on in other ways. Like when Billy Bragg’s re-working of the Joe Hill song, ‘There is power, there is power in a band of working men’ was used in the soundtrack of the film Pride.  I remembered also the lyrics to The Ballad of Joe Hill:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you or me Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead I never died, says he I never died, says he

In Salt Lake, Joe, says I to him Him standing by my bed They framed you on a murder charge Says Joe, But I ain't dead Says Joe, But I ain't dead

The copper bosses killed you, Joe They shot you, Joe, says I Takes more than guns to kill a man Says Joe, I didn't die Says Joe, I didn't die

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Anyone could get that wrong

This afternoon I went the Ulster Museum to see the new permanent exhibition of materials related to the Troubles. This replaces what had been a fairly thin and token range of materials; by contrast the new collection is diverse, a bit chaotic, but with an interesting range of eclectic pieces. It has also been very well-researched and the text is informative and scrupulously dispassionate.

I was only there for about ten minutes when I spotted it. The mistake. There was a section on the 1980s which included a number of posters from the period. One was a poster protesting about the opening of the first private hospital in Belfast. It was a hand-drawn image of a group of masked-up surgeons leaning over a patient as they extract a bank note from his stomach. The poster was attributed to the Workers’ Party. I knew that was wrong. You see, I drew that poster. In fact, I still have some copies here in the study.

The mistake was understandable. At that time I was one of a group of activists who produced left-wing research journalism, under the name of the Workers’ Research Unit. In terms of vowels and consonants it is undeniably close to the Workers Party. But, in terms of the political sectarianism of the time we were miles apart. You see, we were Trots and they were Stalinists. In truth, while they really were Stalinists we weren’t really Trots. What made us seem that way was that with my large moustache and my gold-rimmed glasses I did bear a passing resemblance to the late Leon. 

No matter. The Museum will receive a stiff letter in the morning.     

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Day Two

And on day two this is where you will write 

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This would be the first entry

Hi Dad. This is where you write your 15 mins everyday.