In Dublin in 1981, at the Sinn Féin Ard Féis – the annual convention of what was widely considered to be the political wing of the Irish Republican Army – Danny Morrison, who two years earlier had become Sinn Féin's communications director, posed the challenge: “Who here really believes we can win the war at the ballot box? But will anyone here object if we take power with ballot in one hand and Armalite in the other?” in Ireland?
It is easy to imagine how Margaret Thatcher, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, felt watching this. Her grievances would only increase in October 1984 when the IRA planted a bomb in a Brighton hotel, narrowly missing her. The IRA's subsequent statement – “Remember, we only get lucky once, but you always get lucky” – made it clear that they were dealing with a powerful enemy, as adept at making pithy and memorable statements as they were at using explosives. In a speech the following year, Thatcher said: “We must try to find ways of starving the terrorists and the thieves of the advertising oxygen on which they depend.” She called on the British media to self-regulate to prevent a situation in which a Sinn Féin spokesman could appear on television after the IRA outrage and calmly claim that it was all in the name of Irish freedom. What happened next is the subject of Roisin Agnew's incisive and sharply edited documentary, Banning.
Morrison was one of a generation of activists who took over the leadership of Sinn Féin in the early 1980s, as did Gerry Adams, who became party president in 1983. Together with Martin McGuinness, Adams' deputy in Derry, they were a formidable group of articulate and brilliant media performers. If you need a quick sound bite, Morrison can always provide it. If you want a more thoughtful and Jesuitical set of arguments for Republicans, look no further than Adams. Of the three, McGuinness was the toughest and most direct. Part of the threat these men posed was their ability to talk like intelligent politicians while effectively waging a ruthless terrorist campaign.
As soon as the first television station opened in Dublin in 1961, the Irish government gave itself the right to censor material intended for broadcast. In 1971 they went even further, effectively banning groups such as Sinn Féin and the IRA from appearing on air. This ban remained in force until 1994, the same year the IRA declared a ceasefire.
The British did not have such legislation to suppress general silence. But in October 1988, the Thatcher administration decided that its initial call for media self-regulation was not enough. The result was one of the most comical, counterproductive and clumsy episodes in the long history of British efforts to settle relations with Ireland.
The British government has said that the voices of representatives of Sinn Féin or the IRA, among others, should not be broadcast on television or radio. Broadcasters soon discovered a loophole in the ban: they began hiring voice-over actors for interviews with Sinn Féin leaders and others affected by the restriction. During the six years that the ban was in effect (like the Irish ban, it ended in 1994), watching interviews on British news channels, I tried to guess which actor was doing dubbing. I was in Dublin at the time and this was the time when Mrs Thatcher's swift presence became apparent. I wondered what purpose she thought those voiceovers served other than to bring joy to the nation. For example, did she listen to Stephen Rea play Adams? Among all the actors, Ree stood apart. Because he was married to a former IRA terrorist, there were objections to his presence on air. But the real problem was that he could embody any role he took on with unrivaled and uncanny skill. On stage he played Lord How-How (who spoke on behalf of Hitler); he played Brendan Bracken, Churchill's propaganda minister; he played Clov in Samuel Beckett's playFinal“; he played Oscar Wilde. He was now one of Adams' voice actors. Sometimes he even sounded better than Adams – less smug and sanctimonious. As Adams himself notes in Prohibition, Rea's performance “was a great improvement on my monotony.”
