JAMIE Bryson’s JWB Consultancy (New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Donaghadee) got involved in the Moygashel UDR/UVF commemoration parade at the weekend.
The band parade paying tribute to the bloke who blew himself up in the Miami Showband massacre had a bit of a PR problem – to wit, people don’t have much sympathy for mass murderers like Wesley Somerville. And so the organising committee decided to retain the services of Loyal Ulster’s most glamorous and efficient reputation management company in order to bang out their thoughts about it all.
Squinter’s not sure whether Jamie delegated the Moygashel gig to a colleague in the team of expert consultants that makes up his 2,500-strong worldwide workforce, or whether Eddie the Legal liaised with the organisers himself in his ma’s box room; but the result was the same either way: The parade organisers ended up claiming that Wesley was forced to do what he did by… the Ra.
“The commemorative event is a dignified gathering,” the JWB statement read, “remembering a young man who felt compelled when faced with the siege of an IRA terrorist campaign to take steps to defend his community and country.”
Wesley was 34 when he laid down his life for queen and country, and while he was a year younger when he died than Jamie is today, 34 is a pensionable age in military terms. Kevin Barry, for instance, was “just a boy of eighteen summers”; the strolling songwriter read on a gravestone that young Willie McBride “was only nineteen” when he “joined the great fallen of 1916”. Far from being a young man, Wesley was closer to 40 than 30 and probably got called Grampa Wes in the UDR canteen. But Squinter’s not naïve, he fully understands the need for JWB Consulting to get us to warm to Wesley, so on we crack.
“It is regrettable that any young man was ever put in this situation, but the responsibility for such circumstances lies firmly and squarely with the IRA. This event was a commemoration not a glorification of the conflict, unlike the continuous events held by Sinn Fein and republican surrogate groups who glorify the actions of IRA terrorists.”
Now everybody knows Jamie knows a lot about the law. He’s doing a night class at Bangor Tech and he carries a file about with him at all times, even in the dug-out at Donaghadee Dynamos. But maybe next year when he’s learned all there is to know about legal thingies he can do a course in history, where he will learn that the UVF in Belfast were killing Catholics as far back as 1966 while their UVF colleagues were blowing up utilities for Ian Paisley. The ‘IRA terrorist campaign’ didn’t start until four years later.
It’d be awkward, of course, for JWB Consulting to lay the death of ‘Lieutenant’ Somerville at the door of Gusty Spence. But anything’s possible.
