THINGS TO look forward to in 1997 . . . number one, the re-run of the Albert Reynolds versus Sunday Times libel trial.
My heart didn t know whether to sink or sing with joy when word came through just before the holidays that the discredited ex-Taoiseach had asked for a re-match. This time, for safety s sake, let us approach the event carefully. There are those who didn t handle the last hearing well.
This isn t to deny that, as previously mentioned in this space, others among us found the first trial a fairly happy experience. We could relax, knowing from the outset that Albert Reynolds and Rupert Murdoch couldn t both win which, when looked at from the other side of the class divide, meant that plain people like ourselves were certain of something to celebrate.
The Sunday Times points victory at the first time of asking was disappointing in that Murdoch s crowd could afford to smile. Against that, the scowl on the face of the Reynolds contingent was a hoot. Fair enough, I thought. You can t have everything. Two cheers anyway for judge and jury.
What concerns me about this year s scheduled return bout is that that wasn t the response at all to the Old Bailey verdict of what we might call the New Patriotic Tendency. There are indications already that this NPT is readying itself for Reynolds appeal and intends to present it as another clash between perfidious Albion and the Shan Van Vocht in which no proper Irish person can be non-partisan.
The NPT are the people who, at the close of the last case, formed an orderly queue for the cameras and their Indo-Times columns to complain that the jury decision had been perverse . In fact, it had been one of the least perverse judgements issued by a British jury in any high-profile Irish case for years.
Slip-shod Murdochian hackery had damaged Reynolds reputation, they decided: but, they went on to find, Reynolds reputation wasn t worth tuppence. I was struck at the time by the rare wisdom of this finely-tuned verdict. Had such juries been on hand in years gone by, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Patrick McLaughlin and others would not have been wrongly convicted.
But the New Patriotic Tendency takes an entirely different tack. They suggest that in some inexplicable (or at least unexplained) way, Reynolds had been representing us when he used his vast wealth to bring the case. The reasoning seems to be that to call a Taoiseach, or ex-Taoiseach, a gombeen-man is to insult the office of Taoiseach, and thereby the Irish nation as a whole.
Reynolds himself seized eagerly on this notion, and in a series of interviews managed to portray himself as the personification of an oppressed people making a stand against imperial arrogance. In not one of these interviews that I read, saw or listened to was the bizarre assumption underlying this presentation of the matter challenged. And we are about to hear it again. And again. And yet it is nonsensical.
At the time of Reynolds downfall as Taoiseach, there were many expressions of Irish opinion at least as negative towards him, personally and politically, as anything contained in the Sunday Times article. Indeed, those of us who followed the proceedings and read the (albeit pussy-footing) report on the Beef Tribunal had thought it something of a miracle that Reynolds had survived as Taoiseach until the still-unexplained misbehaviour of the Attorney General s office in the paedophile priest affair finally drove him out in November 1994.
To attack Reynolds record and reputation is not to attack the people of Ireland.
And anyway, if I were to say now that John Major is an unprincipled little twerp who bought the votes of bigots to stay in office, would I thereby insult the people of Britain?
If I drew attention to the fact that Bill Clinton had had a mentally-retarded man killed in order to sew up the support of sick racists, would I be saying anything at all, good, bad or indifferent, about the generality of the people of the United States?
No, I would not. Readers would treat with derision any suggestion to the contrary. And yet, last year, exactly this approach to the comments on Reynolds which led to the libel case was not just accepted but canvassed and advocated by columnists and commentators, including some from surprising quarters.
John Waters suggested in the Irish Times that the outcome of the case had been influenced not only by anti-Irish but also by anti-Fianna Fail sentiment. David Norris puffed himself up with splendid indignation before delivering a passionate endorsement of Reynolds on Questions And Andrews. (Indeed, wafted aloft on his own hot-air eloquence, Norris associated himself also with Reynolds Limerick mannikin, the indecipherable Willie O Dea.)
None of this need trouble us overmuch now, were it not that we are imminently in danger of it happening all over again.
Reynolds appeared on Marian Finucane s Liveline programme before Xmas, announcing his decision to appeal the Old Bailey verdict. Ms Finucane cooed in response about Albert being the great man altogether to risk more money in the British courts, then clucked approvingly as Albert suggested that sure it was for honour, integrity and Ireland that he was doing it.
At no point in an extended interview did Ms. Finucane put it to Reynolds that there might be another view of the matter.
Thus did Marian Finucane lend her considerable journalistic credibility to the risible notion that Albert Reynolds will be carrying a cross for Ireland when he sets off for the English courts again. As I say, there ll be a lot more of this stuff before the year is out.
The beginning of the year saw a raft of reviews of 96, in which the most consistent themes were the modernity of the southern Irish state, the success of the Celtic Tiger economy, and the positive impression made on the international community by southern Irish ministers and officials during the six-month EU presidency which ended with the new year.
Much of this has been contentious, to say the least. The economic commentaries in particular have contained a great deal of wishful thinking presented as hard fact.
But all these glowing reports on the state of the nation are contradicted anyway by the simpering approach of many of the same people to the Reynolds case. People who confess that they themselves feel insulted when insults are aimed at Albert Reynolds seem to me not to be worth listening to on any serious subject.
To demand that the rest of us should also feel insulted is positively perverse and indicative not of national self-confidence but of sad insecurity.
When and if during 1997 the Reynolds case is re-heard, I ll enjoy it again, whatever the outcome. But in view of the climate of opinion generated at home I ll find it more difficult this time to maintain strict neutrality. On balance, this time I think I ll be rooting for the Sunday Times and hoping that Reynolds takes another hammering.
Join me. Other considerations apart, it ll be more fun my way. n