Wigmore - Feb 1984: Fianna Fail, RTE radio, Justin Keating and the SFWP

THE SHAFTING of Ken Ryan has revealed hitherto unplumbed depths of gutlessness in Fianna Fail and hypoocrisy in other places. What did Ryan do wrong? He asked FF members to keep an eye out for wrongdoing and deviousness by opposition parties, to check out any stories they heard and send the results to HQ.

What in the name of Haldeman is wrong with that? He didn't suggest that they invent stories, merely that they report. Fair play to him. It is surely one of the functions of a poliitical party to act as a watchdog against wrongdoing by other politicos. Ryan quite properly indicated that party units should fulfil that role. And his desire to have such stories checked out is a healthy alternative to the usual rumour-m ongering.

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FiANNA FAIL should have stood by Ken Ryan. So rattled is the party by fear of scandal that it abandoned commonsense and loyalty and stuck a knife in Ryan's back. Michael O'Kennnedy's opportunism was reprehensible and should not be forgotten.

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FiANN A FAIL deserved everything they got for their carry-on. However, there is a tendency to cry scandal at every opportunity. It's not that the press is too hard on Charlie but that it's a bit too easy on everyone else. For instance, what is one to make of Garret FitzGerald's attempts to smear Sean Doherty? As the pressure mounnted on Doherty, FitzGerald personally approached two prominent people in the media in attempts to convince them to publish anti-Doherty stories. Can Fine Gael then dare to throw stones at Ken Ryan?

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FINE GAELERS in Roscommon were all too ready to fill journalists' ears with slanders against Sean Doherty and Geraldine Brannigan and stories about the crashed state car in Kerry. Journalists checked out the stories, found them to be baseless and didn't· print them. That didn't stop Fine Gael. A system of checking rumours, so that a party could make allegations if necessary and stand over them and take responsibility, as proposed by Ryan, is an honourable way of doing things.

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IT WAS the Irish Times that got all moralistic about Ken Ryan. One assumes then, that if a Fianna Failer gets a nice juicy story on a governnment Minister and passes it on the Times will turn up its nose and refuse to print it? Like hell it will.

No, on second thoughts, given its recent record, it will, it will.

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GREAT game this, bond washing. Nothing new about it, of course. It's just that the reverend gentlemen who cover the financial scene never told us about it before.

Fair play to the bond washers.

They organised a conspiracy to deestabilise the economy, a conspiracy involving hundreds of millions of pounds. That's the name of the game - grab the money and run. Feck it while you can.

But surely this should be against the ethos of the reverend gentlemen? If it was CIE workers, petrol lorry drivers, nurses, teachers or shop assistants looking after their "secctional interests" there would have been a storm of condemnation. The newshounds would have been sent out to find the Provo or Militant or Charlie Haughey who was behind it.

Not a sausage.

Instead, it was explained how it was all Alan Dukes's fault.

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THE Irish Press headline read: "Keating wins Euro seat". For a second we thought the election had been held when we weren't looking. What they meant was that the latest twist in the scandal of the Labour Euro seats had occurred. We elected four Labour people, but eleven of them shared out the goodies in the most undemocratic rip-off since Caligula (Taoiseach of Roman times) appointed his horse a Senator. The only answer to this is: those anti-democrats who stand in the Euro elections this year, who have seats on a buckshee basis and who were not elected to them, should be boycotted. These are: Brendan Halliigan, Flor O'Mahony, Sean Tracey and Justin Keating.

Now, if Justin Keating gets as many votes as he got viewers for his Sunday TV show ....

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THE RUMOURS around town about the Workers' Party are only ferocious, and this is most unfair. No sooner had the WP finished swearing that their military wing has stopped robbing banks than people were accusing them of forging banknotes and running all kinds of building site fiddles. The WP statement on the matter wasn't much help, being a species of bluster rather than a ringing denial.

Either the rumours are true, in which case the democrats in the WP can use the occasion to bounce out the conspiratorial wing, or they're not. In which case the whole thing is easily resolved by calling a press conference or public meeting attended by all the leading members of the WP, thereby scotching the claims that a "top man" has been on the run since the forged banknotes were discovered.

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RTE is so desperate for listeners for Radio 2 that they have resorted to jamming Radio Nova (they say testing, we say jamming). They are playing a constant whine on Nova's VHF freequency - this is believed to be George Waters's speech on the need for a licence fee increase.

Radio 2 has enough talent - Larry Gogan, Mark Cagney, Ronan Collins, Julian Vignoles, Dave Fanning etc etc etc - to just get on with the job and win listeners through quality. But pettiness rules.

Those of us upset at being deprived of the legendary Mike Moran on Nova VHF are quite happy to twiddle the dial to the right and listen to the people's friend, Paul Vincent, on Sunshine.

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GOO D old Dessie 0 'Malley, always good for a laugh. The state, he says, should set up a paramilitary force. Good man, Dessie, the D Specials, is it?

Just what we need, another bunch of paramilitaries. Perhaps they could plant carbombs outside Provo headdquarters? Or they could burst into the house of some prominent Provo and shoot him in front of the wife and the kids?

Dessie gets £16,413 a year to think up things like that. Plus £7,540 of a pension for having had similar brainnwaves in the past.