Diary - Christmas 1983: Human Rights, new technology, welfare

HUMAN RIGHTS: ON MONDAY NOVEMBER 28 a young fresh-faced soliicitor kept wandering in and out of the Magill offices wanting to see an article. The article was the story of Lyn Madden by June Levine and the young solicitor was acting for John Cullen who had been convicted on Lyn Madden's evidence of murdering Dolores Lynch. As Denis Mitchell, who acted for Magill in the subsequent court case, would later say: Magill does not hand out articles prior to publication to members of the public.
Indeed. But this was still Monday November 28 and there was a magazine to be got ready for the press. Magill went to press very early on the morning of Tuessday November 29. Several hours later there was a phone call to the office to say that· a temporary injunction had been granted restraining the magazine from coming out. It was of course a free counntry and people were entitled to phone up magazines and tell these magazines that they can not appear.

The presses stopped rolling.

The injunction came in writting. Hell.

Wednesday 30 November.

High Court. Mr Justice Barrrington. "All we want is the article. Where is the article?" pleaded Rex Mackey, acting for John Cullen. Two photoocopies had been made of the article and they were in enveelopes. That was where the article was.

It was agreed that Rex Mackey and Justice Barringgton could read the article and we would all meet again to have the article judged upon in the afternoon.

Justice Barrington was not long returned to the court when he announced that if he were asked to sit on the Court of Criminal Appeal and

Mr Justice Barrington consider the technicalities of the evidence in the trial of John Cullen he would have to beg leave to say no because he had read this article.

Following this, he then went on to consider the legal arguments put forward by Rex Mackey and Denis Mittchell. He then went on to forbid Magill from printing anything which concerned the guilt or innocence of John Cullen.

Magill decided forth with that it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday December 7 two blokes descended on the Magill offices at seven o'clock in the morning. They collected pages of the magaazine and brought them to Lithoset in Sandyford and Litho Studios in Ballyfermot. These in turn made film of them and sent them to Richhview Browne and Nolan who were printing the magazine. Forty-eight pages of Magill were already printed. Thirty-two, the first and last sixteen, were being held. The printers had two versions of them. One version contained an article on Dolores Lynch by June Levine and an article on the Clondalkin Paper Mills by Gene Kerrigan. The other contained the story of Lyn Madden, the story they tried to stop.

At eleven o'clock the Supreme Court would sit and decide which version would be printed.

There they sat, the three judges: Hederman, O'Higgins and McCarthy. You've read about them in the papers, now ladies and gentlemen here they are in the flesh. Magill made the point that three professional judges connsidering legal technicalities could not be influenced by a magazine article ...

Mr Hederman did not want the word "article" appplied to what was being connsidered. Mr McCarthy menntioned that the word "verve" had been applied to the arrticle. He seemed to think that this was funny. MeeCarthy also said that he had not read the article because of Mr Justice Barrington's remarks.

As Rex Mackey began his submission it was clear that the judges were against him. Hederman pointed out that judges in the Special Criminal Court have to hear evidence every day which is later dissmissed. McCarthy asked: "Is the public to be told that the judiciary is afraid to read a magazine article?"

The judges found in Magill's favour and awarded costs against John Cullen.

Within four hours finished copies of the magazine with the story of Lyn Madden therein were running off the presses in Richview Browne and Nolan.

Magill will be returning to consider the issue of press freedom at a later date.

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PRESS FREEDOM

LAST WEEK THE EDITO- t' rial Committee in RTE met ~ to discuss plans for the fol- ~ lowing week. They noticed .~ that Peter Murtagh was down ~ to discuss press freedom on a ~ radio programme called "On ~ The Record". A protest star- ~ ted about this and was uppheld by such as George Waters, Bobby Gahan and Wesley Boyd, Head of News.

Murtagh, it seemed, had committed a great big sin. Murtagh had been bold. Murrtagh had gone on Radio Nova to discuss the book he wrote with Joe Joyce. Bad Murtagh, agreed the Editorial Committtee of RTE. Murtagh's voice must be kept off the legal airwaves, said they. That migh t teach him.

The programme to be reecorded the following Saturrday morning was cancelled. Better to have no programme at all than have Murtagh on it. Murtagh, isn't he the fellow who ...

"This Week", however, wanted to discuss "The Boss", the book Murtagh had writtten with Joe Joyce. They wanted one of the authors and Ray MacSharry to disscuss it. Ye can't ask Murtagh, he's barred, it was pointed out to them. So they asked Joe Joyce and the programme was broadcast. Wesley Boyd, Head of News knew Joyce was going on the programme.

The only problem was that Joyce had been on Radio Nova at exactly the same time as Murtagh. He too had committed grevious sin. But it was too late for the shower of eejits on the Editorial Committee to do anything about him. He had been on RTE before anyone found out he was on Nova.

So what did they do?

What could they do? They lifted the ban on Murtagh, and "On The Record" about press freedom was recorded four days later.

The moral of this story is quite complex. But it seems to imply that people who go on Nova are barred from RTE, or maybe they're not. Press freedom. Mother Ireland is rearing them still.

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NEW TECHNOLOGY

ON SATURDAY 10 DECEMMber the Editor of the Irish Times phoned the radio proogramme "Saturday View" to tell the listeners that his paper would be running exxtracts from "The Boss", a book about Charles J. Haugghey in government, by Joe Joyce and Peter Murtagh. This was in response to reemarla; made on the programmme by this reporter that the Irish Times had chickened out of publishing extracts the previous Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for legal reasons but also for other reasons.

A hint of what the other reasons were was given on the programme by John

Healy who said that he wouldn't have time to read the book, it was all reported in the papers at the time anyway and he didn't really see any point in it. John Healy is a well known supporrter of Charlie Haughey's.

The Irish Times has made it clear some time ago that it was in terested in serialising the book. Since Peter Murrtagh is the paper's security correspondent and took quite a lot of time off to write the book, the authors felt that they had no choice but to offer it to the Irish Times.

The Irish Times' legal advisers said that the book was in breach of the Official Secrets Act. In the weekend Friday December 2 The Irish Times could not tell the authors whether they intennded to serialise the book or not. The following week they decided they were not going to serialise the book and that was the end of the matter as far as the authors were conncerned.

Imagine their surprise then the following Saturday when the Editor of the Irish Times telephoned a radio programme to announce to the nation that the book will be serialiised in the Irish Times. This was the first they had heard of it.

The following day one of them was contacted by a member of the editorial staff and asked if the Irish Times could serialise the book.

This is a great new way to contact would-be contributors and express one's intentions. This reporter is thinking of adopting this wonderful new method to save time and energy.

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WELFARE

THERE WERE TWO UNIONS involved in the Clery 's strike. The ITGWU members served strike notice and were paid strike pay. The other union however, was the Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks. This union was not on strike and its 118 members who worked in Clery's were

not receiving any strike pay. The strike began on 25 June and on 27 June these memmbers of Clery's staff signed on for social welfare. On 7 July they were told that they had been rejected.

They found this difficult to understand and felt they were entitled to social welfare since they were not on strike but were merely unemployed as a result of a strike. They also had nothing to benefit from the strike as they had made an agreement with management which bound them until 31 May 1984.

They appealed and the appeal was disallowed. No reason was given. They then appealed to the Social Wellfare Tribunal on the basis that they were available for work, not involved in an inndustrial dispute and ready to return to work should Clery's re-open. They also tried to contact the Minister for Health and Social Welfare Barry Desmond, but he was uncontactab1e.

As the months went by and the strike looked as though it would go on for ever, certain Clery's employyees had no income at all: no strike pay, no salary and nothing from social welfare.

The Tribunal heard their case on September 7 but it took five weeks to make a decision. In fact, it didn't make its decision until the strike had ended. It decided against the members of the Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks.

However, two of the 118 got social welfare for the full period of the strike; one man got money for three weeks and then was asked to return it. One woman got £34 but then was asked to return it and was told she would never receive any health or social welfare benefits again if she didn't give the money back. Inefficiency rules OK.

There is no precedent for not giving workers in such a situation social welfare. The members of the IUDWC who have returned to work in Clery's are angry that they were left without any inncome at all for 16 weeks and are concerned that this preceedent may be used against other workers.