THE PRESS
Fallen idol
BILL GRUNDY
A fishing inn on a salmon river in Merion- ethshire, while it has its compensations, isn't perhaps the best place in the world when you're trying to keep up with the news. For one thing, if the papers arrive at all, they tend to arrive by a none-too-fre- quent bus from the none-too-near market town, with the result that, by the time you do get round to reading them, they have a distinctly none-too-newsy look about them. But the detachment this imposes has its advantages. It means, for example, that in a week like this the events in Ulster can be absorbed at a rate that doesn't numb the senses, and the distance from which the events have to be contemplated means that one or two things can be noticed that the smoke of immediacy might otherwise obscure.
I suppose that one of the less important activities of the week has been what the young lady who is MP for Mid-Ulster has been up to, yet quite predictably she got a lot of press coverage. I found the coverage very revealing; not about Miss Devlin, not about Ulster, but about newspapers. Miss Devlin may seem to you to have been always with us. Not so. It was only last April that she began to peer at us from every paper in the land as she talked about
'my people' and their problems. But the fact that Miss Devlin rapidly became the biggest bore in Britain was not her fault at all. It was the fault of the newspapers.
The Sun even went so far, in those far- off days, as to let Miss Devlin sound off in a column of her own. But now.,. well, last Thursday we had Noel Whitcomb, in an article headed 'Pious "frauds- who revel in anarciy*, say ing: 'Some of the younger politicians, notably Miss Bernadette Devlin, MP, are showing total irresponsibility in this crisis through lack of experience. Miss Dev- lin's behaviour yesterday, when she stood by the Bogside barricades shouting about knives and stones and inciting Catholics to let her lead them like a Joan of Arc into invasion of the weary police ranks, was more than childish. It was unbalanced'. Oh what a fall was there, my countrymen.
Mr. Whitcomb was supported in his dis- illusion by the Daily Mail who also once were bowled over by Bernadette. Last Thursday saw Miss Rhona Churchill re- porting from Ulster 'on how Miss Devlin is stirring up hatred'. The piece was headed 'The sad story of Bernadette' and it does not spare the young lady. 'She has proved herself no better than a rabble rouser. She has fancied herself as the champion of the underdog here in Londonderry. She has called on the people to bring petrol bombs to the barricades, and to hurl them. She has joined in breaking rocks to serve as stones to hurl at the police'. All of which sounds distinctly naughty and worthy of repri- mand. As Miss Churchill says: 'Those who have watched her closely during the past two days, including former well-wishers, feel she is now behaving irresponsibly'.
The Mail leading article that day also singled Miss Devlin out: 'The madness of it. the pity of it, were caught in a snapshot of Bernadette Devlin poised to shatter a massive lump of stone'. Two things occur to me about that. One, just how 'massive' was this famous piece of stone? Miss Devlin is a very tiny young woman indeed. and unless she's been doing weight train- ing on the sly, I wouldn't have thought it could have been all that much of a mono- lith. And the second point is was she smashing the rock 'to serve as stones to hurl at the police' as Miss Rhona Churchill and many other people would have us believe? Or was she smashing it up to make it harmless, as the Sunday Mirror sug- gested? This alternative view came up in two captions: the first, under the now- famous picture, said 'Millions of people saw this picture of Mid-Ulster MP Berna- dette Devlin about to hurl a big rock during last week's street fighting in Bogside'. Im- mediately underneath it was another pic- ture which said 'And this was the passive sequel to the aggressive-looking incident pictured above. Miss Devlin throws away the pieces after smashing the heavy rock that might have become a lethal weapon'.
Since, as I pointed out earlier, I am in Snowdonia and not in Showdonia, I don't know what Miss Devlin was trying to do with that lump of stone. But that's not the point. The point is that once you've decided you're against something or somebody, ahy stone will do to smash them with. And the papers are gunning for Miss Devlin. They are gunning for her because they are in the position of Mary Shelley's Franken- stein; they have created a monster which doesn't seem to do what they want any more.
It's not the first time it's happened; ask the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The
popular press needs heroes. The trouble seems to be that they've got to be arche- types. But that leads inevitably to arche- type-casting, where the actors have got to play the roles the newspapers have given them. But as Miss Devlin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and all the others weren't consulted about the roles the press was casting them in, it's not surprising that they now seem to be so disappointing. Back to Miss Rhona Churchill, of the Daily Mail. The article I've already quoted from
started: 'Young Bernadette Devlin, has let herself down badly during the past two days'. I don't agree. I think Miss Devlin's crime wasn't letting herself down: it was letting the newspapers down. And she won't be forgiven that for a very long time.
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