LET me just set down my mug of tea and get comfortable in my faux-leather swivel chair here before I click on Google, key in ‘Bik McFarlane death’ and push the Enter button.
Bear with…
Aaand there we are.
The first headlines are:
‘Bereaved sister of Bik McFarlane murder victim tells Celtic fans to grow up’ (News Letter).
‘Celtic FC: Call for club to take action over IRA Brendan McFarlane video’ (BBC Ulster).
‘Sinn Féin accused of “disgraceful” commentary over Bik McFarlane death’ (Belfast Live).
‘"Any person who sets out to take a life is no hero": Emma Little-Pengelly’ (Belfast Telegraph).
Now let me take a sip of my tea before I ask Professor Google to work just a little bit harder. ‘Glenn Barr death 2017’.
Bear with...
Aaand there we are.
The first headlines are:
‘Glenn Barr: Man who led Ulster to a standstill but later devoted himself to peace’ (News Letter).
‘Late ex-UDA leader Glenn Barr reflects on peace process impact (click to watch and listen)’ (BBC Ulster).
‘Loyalist leader Glenn Barr dies at age of 75’ (Belfast Live).
‘Glenn Barr mourners told “desire to help working class” drove him into politics’ (Belfast Telegraph).
You can see the problem here, can’t you?
No?
Fair enough, then, let me see if I can help you out a bit.
The Loyal Ulster consensus on Bik McFarlane is unmistakable. He was an IRA man, red in tooth and claw, and those who paid tribute to him, or indeed remembered him in any way other than with contempt, are stained with the blood of his victims.
The Loyal Ulster consensus on Glenn Barr, however, was rather more benign. While he was a leading figure in an organisation whose raison d’être was the slaughter of innocent Catholics, it was unseemly to raise that awkward business at a time of sorrow, a time for traybakes, not earthquakes. And those who felt warmly enough towards him to pay tribute, or indeed remember him in any way other than with contempt, are not stained with the blood of his victims, rather their words are to be respectfully archived for posterity; and, yes, for me.
Both Barr and McFarlane were men of peace in their latter years. The UDA man turned away from violence and then from post-violence politics to pursue initiatives of personal interest to him – notably youth employment and the Messines Project, which saw the shared experience of unionists and nationalists in the Great War as a common space on which meaningful conversations on peace could take place. The IRA man played a pivotal role in convincing his comrades-in-arms that the conflict had run its course and – much more importantly – had been a key steadying influence during the many occasions on which republicans came close to being convinced that they were being played like Seamus Mallon’s famous 2lb trout.
But in Barr’s case, a kindly veil of silence was drawn over what the UDA was, what it got up to and what those various contributions to modern Irish and British history actually consisted of. Don’t take my word for it, do what I did and Google the coverage of Barr’s death and see how, for instance, the UWC strike that he helped organise and lead in 1974 was described following his death. An artificial intelligence engine fed only by those reports from the autumn of 2017 would inform the world that the loyalist stoppage was a plucky reaction to the frankly unacceptable treatment of the hard-pressed Ulster people. You’ll find no mention of the intimidation, the violence, the thuggery and the lawlessness of the men in the sunglasses and knee-length Wranglers taking their orders from Barr and his chums. They were ensconced in leafy Hawthornden Street in the ’nice’ part of East Belfast, disturbed only by birdsong, the hum of early summer lawnmowers and Pliers cocking his Belfast-made Mackies Sten gun. NEVER THE FIRST TIME: Ian Paisley addressed a loyalist crowd at Stormont during the 1974 UWC strike
Barr and his UVF opposite numbers decided with the aid of their legal adviser – Trimble, David – who got vouchers for petrol and food while my mother cooked tins of beans for us in the back garden over a tiny barbecue made of bricks and a wire grill from the oven. Of the UDA’s ‘Romper Room’ torture of Catholics, mention was there none in coverage so respectful and subdued the pages might as well have had black borders and the radio and TV reports read to the muted accompaniment of Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
Bik McFarlane, though? That guy was Ted Bundy in a beret. His life in the near-30 years between the IRA ceasefire and his death – years of unswerving commitment to a peaceful path to his political goals – might as well never have been lived. Out came the newsroom phones on Bik’s death a week ago and thumbs frantically scrolled A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, IRA victims game for a quote about anything.
Here's the thing, though. Glenn seemed a nice guy and he got the send-off he deserved. He lived a good life, a worthwhile life, in the decades between turning his back on the UDA and his death. Not only do I not care that the grim reality of his life as a key component of a killing machine was glossed over, I’m glad it was. I’m glad first of all because at the time it saved those who knew and loved him from the bear-baiting that passes for journalism which Bik’s family and comrades are currently witnessing; but secondly, and just as importantly, I'm glad because the fact of that glossing-over tells us a wider, vital truth. And that truth is that the media aren’t driven by some unwritten, cosmically-compelling need to tell the truth though the heavens fall. They aren’t churning out vast acres of no-holds-barred, warts-and-all coverage of Bik McFarlane’s life and death because it’s their job; they’re doing it either because they don’t like him, or because the people they work for don’t like him. Mostly both.
And here's a last last thing. Everbody agreed that Glenn Barr was a nice guy, but in his efforts as a man of peace to persuade his former comrades in the UDA to put away their South African guns he failed. He succeeded multiple times in smaller things: Bringing young people together in local settings, teaching them that the poppy fields of Flanders were fertilised by the blood oozing from the meat-grinder. And I hope he died believing that these things were enough. But the UDA has gone nowhere; they’re still armed, still dangerous, still dealing drugs and death, still being courted by unionist politicians.
Bik McFarlane, on the other hand, succeeded. The IRA that he helped to go away in 1997 has stayed away. The proof of that short and plain statement lies not in the unprovable fact of its existence or otherwise, but in the total absence today of IRA horror stories from the pages and the airwaves of the media that fell hungrily on his death.
Unable despite their Homeric efforts to find IRA outrages to report, Loyal Ulster’s newsrooms are reduced to rerunning their greatest IRA hits every time a noted republican dies.
But those reruns are in black and white, and when they end, when the film comes off the second reel and slaps the projector, the lights come up to reveal they’re playing these movies to themselves.
