Eamon McCann - July 1984: Shane Ross

Shane No More:
The most significant result in the European election was John Noonan's victory over Shane Ross in Dublin. With 14,604 first preferences the Sinn Fein man had a thumping majority of 6,505 over the wasp-waisted flibbertigibbet from TCD, a decisive outcome in this crucial struggle for the soul of the capital city and one which has not been given nearly as much attention as it deserves, probably because the media are terrified to face up to the implications, whatever they are.

Ross's problem was not just that very few people voted for him. In addition, many people voted againstthim. I discovered last weekend that dozens of my drinking companions had gone to the polls for no reason other than positively not to vote for Ross. They were by no means alone.

A big section of the anti-Ross masses just voted for anybody at all as long as it wasn't Ross. I imagine this is why the retired social worker Mary Banotti won a seat. People who didn't much care whom they voted for would be quite likely to vote for Mary Banotti. Others looked down the list of the dozen candidates, wrote "12" after Ross's name and then worked their way up. I have talked to experienced tally persons who tell me that while Ross got fewer number ones than allmost anybody else he had by far the highest total of number l2s. This could be construed as a sort of achieveement. It occurs to me that it's a great pity returning officers and their staffs don't total up the last preferences in these PR elections. Had that been done, I am convinced, we would have proof positive that Shane Ross made elect ural history with the biggest plurality of last preferences since the foundation of this little Free State of yours.

It also seems that a very considerrable number of people wrote 12 after Ross's name and left it at that. These were anti-Ross plumpers. The experience has shown, however, that this style of voting is fraught with danger. The intention can so easily be missunderstood. Counting officials almost certainly misinterpreted many of these as plumpers for Ross. After all, to the eye of the casual scrutiniser there's not much difference between "12" and "1", particularly when your hand is trembling with excitement as you mark the ballot paper, as it would be in the circumstances. Ross's official tally was 8,099. I estimate that 8,000 of these were really antis. That leaves 99 people who actually preferred Ross. I know them all personally .. :

Some of them are misfortunates and social inadequates and it was a choice between voting for Ross and earning the price of a cup of tea and a bun by going into that clinic which tests drugs designed to cure skin rash on chihuahuas by pumping them into Irish victims of Garret FitzGerald's vicious anti-working class government. Others are just drunkards, fools or radical nuns.

Incidentally, all the 6,153 spoiled votes in Dublin were against Ross, many being scrawled with obscene abuse, references to his personal habits and succinct expressions of outrage at his support for the handing over of Dominic McGlinchey to the mad-dog RUe.

Ross was also voted against by thousands of decent trade unionists aware that he is permitted to write a column - in the Sunday Turnip newsspaper despite the fact that he is not a member of the NUl. This is a scandal and an outrage and a direct assault on principles which brave men and women have fought to assert through generations of struggle. I earnestly hope that it does not become necesssary to introduce Orgreave-style pickeeting outside the headquarters of the publication to put an end to this dissgraceful situation. There are literate journalists in this town starving.

The wonderful, welcome news that Joyce McKinney has finally manaaged to track down melancholic Morrmon maenad Kirk Anderson and may be intent on manacling him again into an unmissionary position reminds me of the controversy I tried and failed to stir up back in 1977 over whether Ms McKinney had really told a London court that "I loved him so much I would have skied nude down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose," or Whether, orr-the other hand, it was that she would have skied nude down Mount Everest "with a carnation up my bum." Certainly, it was common chatter in the London pubs in which hacks cluster that reporters in court had agreed among themselves to amend the record in this way because, so they believed, the tabloids would have baulked at printing the quote accurately. There's a half-hearted connfirmation of this in Anthony Delane's fine funny book, "Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon".

I don't suppose this matters much to anybody except pedants like myself who are concerned for the accuracy of the historical record. And someetimes accuracy is important, no matter what the editor of the Evening Herald says. In London a couple of weeks back I heard a reformed socialist attribute the remark that "The Fourth World War will be fought with Sticks" to the demented liberal confusionist and anti-nuclear campaigner E.P. Thompson. A glance at the statement makes it obvious that it was made by a member of the IRSP.

Ms McKinney will be remembered for having splashed summer sunshine across the front pages of the Brit papers in the bleak, grudging win ter of 1977. She had fallen for the wierdo zealot Anderson in a town called Provo in Utah, on the rebound from talentless retard Wayne Osmond, and when Anderson was shipped out to England by Mormon church bosses Joyce followed, hot on his tail, kiddnapped him and kept him chained to a water-bed in a cottage in deepest Devon for three days.

He claimed that during this time she repeatedly aroused him against his will and raped him. To do this she had to remove not only his ordinary clothhing but also his "garment". This turned out to be a one-piece article which all Mormon men wear beneath their trousers to restrain themselves from sins of the flesh. And here there was another shameful example of the unnwillingness of the media to tell the full truth. Although a certain, definable section of the populations of these islands talked about nothing else for a month no newspaper or television programme ever published a picture of a garment or offered a detailed desscription of its shape, size, design or construction or even indicated from what material it was manufactured.

Clearly, since even Mormon misssionaries have to eliminate liquid bodily wastes, the garment could not have operated by restraining the organ from being produced, but must have achieved its object by preventing the organ from behaving in an unruly fashion after having been produced. How on earth did it and does it do this? It must involve some wire or whale-bone or such-like apparatus, possibly also featuring springs and weights or pulleys. In fact definitely pulleys. I forget who it was speculated it might resemble "a cross between a lagged boiler and a tank turret". But we shouldn't have to speculate. We should be told. Were we told, we could make an intelligent assessment of the likely commercial possibilities here in the 26 County area. Has anybody discussed this subject with the Christian Broothers?

One of the reasons we were told next to nothing about the garment is that to picture it or describe it might seem demeaning to the man in the case. A lot of us men laughed at the thought of Mr Anderson in his calico knickers or whatever they were, but it was an uneasy sort of laugh. At least that's how I remember it. And the change in the McKinney quote refleccted the same vaguely-apprehended nerrvousness. The "bum" version is a good, earthy piece of open sexual defiance, and funny with it. "Up my nose" was the confession of girlish infatuation. She could, just, have enunciated "up my nose" with a sigh. Not the other one.

And, anyway, common sense tells us that you can't carry a carnation up your nose.

On Wednesday of last week I went out to RTE to talk to Faye Dunnaway and Pete Townsend. They had undertaken to turn up at quarter to one and when they hadn't shown at one sharp I headed home. I don't have any hard and fast rule about hanging around before I decide I've been stood up but for Ms Dunaway and Mr Townnsend fifteen minutes is my limit.

They were in Dublin to promote something called the World Mercy Fund, which is also tied up with a Sunday Indo competition which offers a prize of dinner with Frank Sinatra.

I'm not about to slag off Frank Sinatra. I don't want to wake up in the morning to find the hamster's head under the blankets at the bottom of the bed. If he's discovered a way to flog more LPs to the Third World, good luck to him.

As I left R TE I passed Ms Dunaway and Mr Townsend arriving in a chauffeur-driven limousine of such size, style and luxury that for a moment I thought I'd happened on the spouse of a Labour Cabinet Miniister nipping down to the shops. My press hand-out told me that they were going in to join Fr Tom Rooney, Mike Murphy, Jessie Kennedy, Maura Clarke, Ken Stewart and Frank Murphy for a "snack" comprising pate and brandy, salmon mayonnaise, strawberries and cream, cheese, chilled Muscadet and coffee.

There is a number of obvious points I could make about this but, since they're obvious, I won't.

The major point is that a movement of a half percent in American interest rates brought about by major banks to protect their assets can and does cause more damage to poor countries than all the efforts of all the agencies like the World Mercy Fund multiplied ten times can possibly hope to offset.

Ah but still and all. Wouldn't we have little to do with our time if all we did was criticise them who are at "least trying to do something?

And wasn't Pete Townsend a real, like, rebel when he was smashing all those guitars? And I thought Faye Dunaway was only terrific in "Silkkwood".

Another good thing about Shane Ross is that he'd make a better leader of the Labour Party than Dick Spring. •