BOOK LAUNCH The BBC’s ‘Irish Troubles’ Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland

    ***Author Professor Robert Savage is available for interviews in advance***

Friday, May 29th, 6pm

Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin

The BBC’s ‘Irish Troubles’ Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland, by Robert Savage, Professor of the Practice of History at Boston College, uses recently released archival material from the BBC and a variety of UK government archives to explore the contentious relationship between broadcasting officials, politicians, the army, police and civil service from the outbreak of violence through to the 1980s.

Professor Savage completed the new publication while a visiting research fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute in Trinity College Dublin. The book will be launched in Trinity Long Room Hub at 6pm on Friday, May 29^th, 2015.

Focusing on the incessant wrangling between political elites, civil servants, military officials, broadcasting authorities and journalists about what should and should not be featured on the BBC's regional and national networks, Professor Savage considers how the BBC’s broadcasts complicated the ‘Troubles' by challenging decisions, policies and tactics developed by governments trying to defeat a stubborn insurgency that threatened national security.

In many cases the anxiety and controversy created by these political skirmishes challenged the ability of the medium to accurately inform citizens of important events taking place, thereby undermining the BBC's role as a public service provider, according to Professor Savage.

The book illustrates that as the ‘Troubles’ escalated, the BBC was attacked, threatened and bullied, by a variety of actors but did its best to stand its ground and maintain editorial independence and journalistic credibility.

Key Points:

·         In spite of the infamous broadcasting restrictions put in place in 1988, professional staff remained determined to provide the public with informed news and information about the conflict. Broadcasters resisted government efforts to silence voices that, although controversial, were critical to comprehending and eventually resolving a long and bloody conflict. The broadcasting ban was seen as despotic by many broadcasters who, with the support of senior staff, cleverly worked around it by using sub-titles and then hiring actors to read the words of Sinn Féin politicians. Reporting on ‘the Troubles’ became somewhat surreal as talented actors including Stephen Rea and Ian McElhinney found work dubbing the remarks of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

·         The BBC in Northern Ireland slowly evolved to become more independent and less deferential to the Unionist Government at Stormont. By the late 1960s  its managers and editors understood the need for an independent editorial posture and became more critical of the politics, policies and pronouncements of the Unionist Government.

·         Labour and Conservative Governments alike tried to pressure, censor and bully the BBC both in Belfast and London. These governments were convinced that the BBC coverage of the turmoil in Northern Ireland undermined their efforts to defeat terrorism.  These governments were acutely aware of the power of television to damage the image of the United Kingdom at home and abroad and struggled to succeed in winning the ‘propaganda war’.

·         The national network knew little about the complexities of Northern Ireland until the beginning of the campaign for civil rights began to gain traction in the province. By providing informed, critical coverage of events the BBC helped undermine a regional parliament that had long governed without consensus.

Professor Savage commented: “Throughout the conflict British governments tried to shape the way in which television depicted the struggle against paramilitaries, especially the Provisional IRA. However, its relentless presence undermined government efforts to present a simple picture of the forces of law and order trying to defeat savage terrorists hell-bent on a campaign of murder and mayhem. All those involved in the conflict hoped to produce a narrative for both domestic and international audiences to justify their role in an increasingly bitter and violent struggle.”

“The propaganda war that ensued created much consternation for officials in London, Belfast, and Dublin who understood the conflict presented a real and immediate threat to social order. Rules, regulations and policies that tried to suppress, shape or ‘spin’ coverage of the conflict were intended to marginalise extremists. Governments were acutely aware of the power of television to encourage sympathy or support for the very organisations they sought to destroy.”

Professor Jürgen Barkoff, Director of Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute commented: “The Trinity Long Room Hub is proud to have supported, through its Visiting research Fellows programme, such a groundbreaking book. Professor Savage’s stay at the research institute was an enriching and highly stimulating experience for everyone involved and we are particularly pleased that new collaborations developed out his time with us such as the special edition of the journal Éire/Ireland, co-edited with Professor Christopher Morash from the School of English.”

Media Contact:
Fiona Tyrrell, Press Officer for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College Dublin | tyrrellf@tcd.ie | + 353 1 8964337 and + 353 87 6169056

Jack Dunn, Director, Office of News & Public Affairs, Boston College| jack.dunn@bc.edu | + 1 617 552 3350

About Robert Savage:

Robert Savage is Professor of the Practice of History at Boston College. He completed his latest publication while a Visiting Research Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub in 2012. Other publications include A Loss of Innocence? Television and Irish Society 1960-1972

(2010), Sean Lemass: a biography (1999 revised and expanded edition 2014), Irish Television: the Political and Social Origins (1996). He is currently co-editing a special edition of the journal Éire/Ireland with Christopher Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity, and is writing a chapter on film and the broadcast media for the four volume Cambridge History of Ireland edited by Thomas Bartlett.

Making oneself at home: domestic life in the colonies of the British Empire

By Dianne Lawrence

The people over the road are moving out, the whole kit and caboodle: the chairs and beds, the IT paraphernalia, cat-basket, books, tele’ and lawn mower. In the year I’ve lived here I’ve been aware of at least half a dozen such moves. Once an aquarium left and a drum kit moved in, though thankfully that was at the other end of the street. No sooner will this lot of  vans and over-loaded cars drive away than the incomers will show up and carry in a set of belongings that are at one and the same time identical to the outgoings items and yet, utterly different.  The items may be the same, but the assemblage and its meanings will be unique to that household.

I use the word ‘belongings’ in the preceding paragraph because I think that most accurately describes   our relationship with our ‘stuff’. To speak of ‘possessions’ suggests it’s a one way arrangement, and fails to make due allowance for the power we grant to our objects, particularly those in our homes. They are an expression of our subjectivity, but because we set them within a mesh of associated practices they have agency in constructing our identity. They perform a mediating function in the circumstances of our lives, but they’re not impartial in that mediation.

It was an interest in such processes of domesticity that prompted my investigation into the home-making practices of a specific sort of British women living in colonies of the British Empire (Genteel women: empire and domestic material culture, 1840-1910).  The women concerned were members of social elites, who adhered to a set of values, a highly nuanced form of knowledge known as gentility. Such individuals deemed themselves to be in a position of superiority, elevated above those around them, who were, by definition, considered to be ‘vulgar’. Genteel values were expressed through modes of behaviour in conjunction with material means. Put simply – they were accustomed to having access to, and using, a lot of ‘stuff’. Their ‘belongings’ were critical in negotiating the circumstances of their lives. How, I questioned, had such women not merely survived, but actually prospered when faced with the rigours of and, by their terms of reference, material deprivation of colonial life?

I wanted to see how their physical environments impacted on their cultural landscape. I identified genteel women who lived in the temperate zones of Aotearoa/New Zealand, south Australia and southern Africa and in the sub-tropical and tropical regions of northern Australia, India and West Africa. Selecting the geographical and temporal range – c1840-1910 -  permitted inclusion of women living in long-established British communities in India, the expanding and consolidating colonies of southern Australia and New Zealand and in newly emergent settlements of northern Australia and West Africa.

All the women I wrote about had relocated to set up homes in the company of a man to whom they were related by either blood or marriage. Their menfolk were working ‘out in the colonies’ – be it in a military, commercial, administrative or agricultural capacity – and one of the women’s primary functions was to support the men in their endeavours. Certainly his successes or failures would have been hers, but so too her contribution could develop and extend – or, horror of horrors, actually undermine their joint enterprise.

With so much hanging on their domestic management how had these women gone about not just setting up home, but actually making themselves feel at home? Where did they source all that complex material culture they held so dear? I chose to investigate their dress, living rooms, gardens and food management because they were the four areas seen by contemporaries as being the quintessential elements of genteel womanhood.

I started with such questions as: how did they get hold of a new corset, a set of dinner plates, living room curtains or seeds for  the garden, when a thousand miles or more and an ocean away from the retail riches of nineteenth century Britain, and what strategies evolved when one simply could not get hold of such items? The answers proved illuminating and a complex picture emerged, with gentility – both its ideology and expression – proving to have been responsive and adaptable to the many environmental changes it encountered. The women not only brought to bear a whole range of cultural competences acquired in their previous homes, they also developed different forms of genteel behaviours and practices as befitted their new location. Most striking of all, it’s evident that many women didn’t just become competent in the colonial site they developed a ‘sense of self’ in situ and became firmly attached to their new homes.

Perhaps it’s because the Spring sun is shining on my own garden that my thoughts turn to the work I did on the colonial women’s gardening practices. Initially I had my doubts as to whether I would be able to locate sufficient traces of this area of their homes, for by their very nature the gardens are long gone. My anxieties proved groundless, for the women so relished their gardens that they wrote about them constantly, and in great detail, in their letters and journals. Sarah Courage, who lived in New Zealand for 26 years, wrote ‘Whatever the employments of the day, I always contrived to find a little spare time for the flowers’ and Adela Stewart, who had been a complete novice on her arrival in the country subsequently reported ‘At the end of our 4^th year I had become an enthusiastic gardener, and so continued, finding far more pleasure in growing flowers, vegetables and trees than in any other occupation.’ In addition to the women’s personal writing I was able to draw on seed and plant catalogues from Britain, Australia and India, gardening manuals from India and South Africa, memoirs from Nigeria and paintings and photographs made in Australia, India and New Zealand. There is ample material to underpin the argument that the spaces and practices of the women’s gardens had agency for the expression of gentility, and were highly significant in furthering these migrants’ attachment and sense of being at home, though far from ‘Home’.

I’ve become aware that the street is quiet once more, so perhaps I’ll leave this employment and ‘contrive a little spare time for my flowers...’

Dianne Lawrence is an Independent Scholar and the current holder of the Meryl Huxtable Bursary, as awarded by the Wallpaper History Society.

Genteel women: Empire and domestic material culture, 1840–1910 is now available in paperback.