IT WASN'T SEAN WHO WAS MAD
Ruth Dudley Edwards toured the United States with the reformed IRA
killer —pursued by idiots
OLLIE NORTH, of Contra, Iranian- hostage-deal and beautiful-blonde-secre- tary-shredding-documents fame, reminded me of our very own David Mellor: dis- graced one day, bouncy, confident media star the next.
His cheery braggadocio has won millions of listeners for the Oliver North Radio Show, which was for me the most amusing of all the dozens of media events focusing on Sean O'Callaghan, the IRA terrorist- turned-informer with whom I've just completed a three-week, seven-city, IRA- bashing tour of America. In all that time, the only occasion on which I saw Mr O'Callaghan dodge a question was when — apropos of his criticism of Jean Kennedy Smith (US ambassador to Ire- land in theory, Irish nationalism's ambas- sador to the US in practice) — a listener phoned in and asked, 'Why are the Kennedys pro-IRA when they're trying to take the guns away from the patriotic mili- tia at home?' Even 011ie realised this was a no-win question and signalled to Mr O'Callaghan that he was dealing with a nut. Mr O'Callaghan for once took a mildly men- dacious way out: 'I've been in jail for eight years, so I'm afraid I don't know much about militias.'
011ie was palpably delighted with Mr O'Callaghan, for he identifies with celebri- ties who are also men of action: he spent much of his programme metaphorically slapping his guest on the back. Mr O'Callaghan was still new to the frisky enthusiasm of Americans, so the souvenir of this tour that I most want is a copy of the photograph of 011ie shaking hands exuberantly with a dazed-looking O'Callaghan.
The next most entertaining event involved another energetic publicity- hound, Congressman Peter King, whose support for the IRA recently garnered him a peace award at a Freedom for All Ire- land dinner. King has a secure place in the 'God, just look at this queue! We'll be here for ages I don't have time for this ... ' IRA's pantheon of useful idiots: in the National Review he recently compared Gerry Adams to George Washington and Sean O'Callaghan to Benedict Arnold, which so amused the editor, John O'Sulli- van, that he instigated a King-O'Callaghan public debate on Capitol Hill under his magazine's auspices. King obediently read out the most recent Sinn Fein briefing on Mr O'Callaghan (mentally deranged agent of British imperi- alism) and added a coda of his own: an IRA prisoner had told him, he explained, that in jail O'Callaghan had been observed eating light bulbs. The British ambassador, Sir John Kerr observed helpfully after- wards that British prisoners were not allowed to eat light bulbs: more prosaical- ly, Mr O'Callaghan points out that for obvious reasons prisons do not in fact have light bulbs. Even the Sinn Fein organ An PhoblachtlRepublican News, which in a recent hysterical attack has accused Mr O'Callaghan of everything short Of break- fasting on sautéed Republican babies, balked at that.
The trouble with those who allege that Mr O'Callaghan is a fruitcake is that he comes across as sane and they come across as mad. King's cheerleaders were no exception. Although beefed up by the chap who explained that he was Jewish and believed that the Irish too should have their homeland, they were mainly typical of the malcontent fringe of Irish America — a daft breed I know well since I did an East Coast lecture tour in the mid-1980s. I still vividly remember Julia, Ann and Big Al, who would rise after every lecture to drone interminably and irrelevantly about colonial oppressors, Saxon yokes and the historic suffering of the heroic Irish people under the British jackboot. In conversation with the trio, I learned that they had never been to Ireland, though I expect by now they'll have done the Noraid tour, which takes coachloads of American gullibles on a Northern Irish scenic victim-trail replete with what many Years ago Conor Cruise O'Brien christened opening-of-the-wounds ceremonies'. For less than $1,000 the crazies experience such delights as a visit to the site of Bloody Sunday, a reverential excursion around mawkish heroic murals, a blast of rebel songs in the Felons' Bar and a fork supper with Gerry Adams.
The motif of the tour is that which dis- tinguishes Republican ghetto thinking — accurately summed up by the historian Liam Kennedy as Mope (Most Oppressed People Ever). I am sometimes driven to admire the chutzpah with which the opera- tives in the Sinn Fein factory of grievances tirelessly churn out Mope propaganda about the brutal Brits as they merrily draw the dole and occupy public housing that the inhabitants of Liverpool would kill for.
Irish-American loonies have an almost touching belief in British ruthlessness and derring-do: many of them believe that to maintain Mr O'Callaghan's cover SAS hit- men were despatched to Boston ten years ago to murder an American citizen. When Mr O'Callaghan pointed out on Radio Free Erin in New York that this would be rather a risky action by a government that valued the Special Relationship, his host responded breezily that the Brits were quite capable of it: 'Didn't they send an army over here in the 1700s?'
Rather to my disappointment, for I rel- ish absurdity, we mostly steered clear of Irish America this time, for the thrust of the tour was to talk to sensible people about what is really happening in North- ern Ireland, and to set up a counter-ter- rorist group, Friends of Peace in Ireland, which will counteract the flood of disinfor- mation in favour of Noraid and the Friends of Sinn Fein. But in the midst of all the serious discussions with editorial boards and think-tanks and priests and journalists and broadcasters, there was always a moment that amused me when someone would ask, 'Isn't your life in danger?' 'Sure,' Mr O'Callaghan would say, 'but I don't lose any sleep over it.'
Of course in Britain and Ireland people ask that too, but not with such horrified fascination. Americans have become so compulsive about staying healthy and avoiding risk that it is almost beyond their comprehension that someone might take the prospect of annihilation lightly. There is reliable intelligence that a few weeks ago the IRA Army Council decided to prioritise the rubbing out of Mr O'Callaghan. They might bear in mind that there are now several million Ameri- cans who have heard him say on televi- sion, 'Yes, the movement of which Mr Adams is a leader would like to have me murdered.'
America being America, if the IRA do for Mr O'Callaghan, every news bulletin will run that clip and the dozens of chat- show hosts and journalists who interviewed him will recount their memories of him breathlessly. Even the Arrnani suits, the folksy Aran sweaters and the Grecian 2000 which Adams applies so assiduously would not save him from an American media dis- aster. What's more, 011ie North might decide to intervene.
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