IT WAS a story that Gerry Adams and Sinn Fiin really could have done without. One of the IRA s most revered and photogenic heroines accusing senior party members of intimidating nationalists opposed to the Good Friday agreement.
Almost as significant as the content of former prisoner Marion Price s allegations was where she chose to make them.
With An Phoblacht obediently towing the leadership line and the mainstream media acutely aware of public opinion following the Omagh bombing, Price became the latest recalcitrant Republican to use the platform for dissent provided by New York s Radio Free Iireann.
Set up in 1980 as a response to the first hunger strike, RFI buys 90 minutes of airtime every week from public access station, WBAI, and readily admits to past associations with fundraising groups like Noraid.
The basic premise of the show is to have people on that our government are denying visas to, explains one of the founders, John McDonagh. Us talking to the President of Republican Sinn Fiin, Ruairi O Bradaigh, and Bernadette Sands-McKevitt is a continuation of the policy which in the 80s saw us give airtime to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. We served a purpose when they were banned by RTE and the BBC, and had little or no access to the American networks.
A first generation Irish-American whose parents hail from Tyrone, McDonagh insists that he has as much right to comment on the agreement as someone living in the 32 Counties.
A lot of times people will say, Ah, you guys don t know what s happening over here , yet Radio Free Iireann is having on voices that they ve never heard living just a few miles away from them. And let s not forget, we have a history of involvement that goes right back to 1916 and, indeed, to the last century.
What I find particularly hypocritical, he continues, is Free State politicians coming over here cap in hand every St. Patrick s Day looking for grants and subsidies, and then they tell me I have no right to comment on how they re invested. Whose tax dollars are they? If they want to hold their Fianna Fail dinner dances, fair enough, it s theirs to do with as they please, but if it s coming from the American government or our own fundraising efforts, we re entitled to say how we think that money should be spent.
Funded by their listeners a recent appeal netted $3,000 in under an hour Radio Free Iireann sees itself as part of a broader revolutionary struggle and in the past has broadcast interviews with members of SWAPO and the ANC.
WBAI itself has great contacts within the United Nations, McDonagh continues. They have the ambassadors from Cuba and Libya on all the time, which is in direct contrast to the mainstream media s treatment of them as pariah countries who can only be covered in a negative manner. WBAI were at the forefront of the anti-war movement in the 60s, and are currently campaigning for an end to the bombing in Yugoslavia.
Musically, as well, the station has always pushed back the boundaries. Bob Dylan got his start there, and they play a lot of reggae and third world stuff that you don t hear anywhere else.
While time restraints mean that their musical output is minimal, RFI opens every week with a song written by Black 47 s Chris Byrne, Unrepentant Fenian Bastard . This wearing of hearts on sleeves extends to their new Internet service which operates as Irish Republican Activist Radio.
In Ireland, they ll be able to hear the analysis that s going on here in America, and maybe gain a better understanding of how we arrive at our conclusions, McDonagh suggests.
One of the most poignant features of the site is an interview with murdered civil rights lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, which took place last April.
We had Rosemary on quite a few times by phone when she was defending Colin Duffy and Breandan Mac Cionnaith and various cases in the Lurgan area.
The first time we had her in the studio was when she came over to talk about the death threats she d been receiving. We asked her, What are you doing about them? , and she said, Nothing. What can I do? Even then, those words had incredible resonance.
Relentless as it is in its advocacy of a united Ireland I won t accept British involvement in any part of the 32 Counties John McDonagh denies that Radio Free Iireann is in the propaganda business.
We ve given airtime in the past to such opposing points of view as Bertie Ahern, Peter King and Ian Paisley, who ve we spoken to a few times. We never really bring up religion until someone like him comes along, and then it s unavoidable. Our listenership extends to the black, Polish, Italian and Puerto Rican communities and when he starts quoting from the bible about the Pope being the anti-christ and the whore of Babylon, even they can sense what this guy is all about.
Would they be prepared to talk to someone like Billy Hutchinson who, PUP leading light or not, is a convicted Loyalist terrorist?
Oh yeah, McDonagh insists. We ve never actively gone out and tried to have him on, but if he was to contact us and say he wanted to, we d definitely have him. We re not here to put across a Unionist agenda, though. Billy Hutchinson can come in to this country and talk to whatever media he wants, whereas the people we support now are being denied visas. Their only access to getting on the radio or TV is through us, just like Provisional Sinn Fiin during the 80s.
Their accommodation of Bernadette Sands-McKevitt shortly after the Omagh bombing lead to a howl of protests, not least from an Irish Voice correspondent who described them as a pollution of the airwaves .
We covered Omagh as a tragedy, just like we did Enniskillen and the Shankill Road bombing, McDonagh reflects. It was a tragedy but that didn t stop us having the 32 County Sovereignty people on to give their point of view. It doesn t always make us popular, but that willingness to let people speak is Radio Free Iireann s strength.
Radio Free Iireann 99.5FM can be heard every Saturday in the New York area from 1.30pm, or by logging onto their website at www.iraradio.com which also carries an archive of past programmes.