Jonathan Sale on the ban which led to a boom for Northern Irish actors


Oxygen of publicity H


aving heard the sound of the Old Bailey bomb thudding across Fleet Street in March 1973, and having a colleague who nine years later escaped the force of


the Hyde Park bombing by only a few car lengths, I appreciate that there are not many laughs in the IRA’s terrorist campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. Even if we were both working on the jovial Punch magazine at the time. To Margaret Thatcher, who narrowly escaped with her life in the Brighton bombing and had two of her closest colleagues assassinated, the virtual civil war in Northern Ireland was far less of a joke. And the peaceful protestors shot by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday did not feel their ribs tickled either, except by bullets. Yet it was Thatcher who accidentally gave us the most darkly humorous moment of the Troubles: the 1988 broadcasting ban, which lasted until September 1994, a quarter of a century ago. Her aim was to deny to terrorists ‘the oxygen of publicity’ but it soon became the hydrogen of hysterical laughter. This bizarre form of censorship prohibited broadcasting the words of spokesmen for Sinn Fein – except it didn’t. The words could still hit the airwaves – as long as someone else uttered them. Compared to the life-and-death decisions


being made all the time, “it seemed almost farcical and funny”, declares broadcaster Stephen Nolan, a teenager in Belfast in the late eighties and presenter of Radio 4 documentary Being Gerry Adams. Thatcher’s weapon was not new legislation but


the employment of the innocent-sounding clause 13 of the BBC Licence and Agreement and section 29 the Broadcasting Act 1981. These allowed the relevant minister to require broadcasters “to refrain at any specified time or at all times from sending any matter or matters of any class”. The home secretary just filled in


12 | theJournalist “The broadcasting ban is the first and, so far,


the only use of this power in peacetime directly and overtly to rule out a whole class of political viewpoints,” are the considered words of Professor David Miller, who wrote the exhaustive chapter on “the media and Northern Ireland” (Glasgow Media Group Reader, Volume II). By contrast, “Get in here now!” were the first


words uttered by the BBC staffer in Belfast on the phone to Danny Morrison in the hours before the notice actually kicked in, summoning Sinn Fein’s publicity director in for what might have been a last, rapid interview.


The Home Office Broadcasting Department kindly spelt out the real meaning of clause 13 to


OF ALL THE grounds for banning a punk rock song, such as lack of musicianship or excess of obscenity, the oddest was that it breached the 1988 broadcasting ban aimed at the IRA. Shane McGowan of


Irish band The Pogues may not have been fully conscious of the finer points of clause 13 in the relevant legislation (he was not fully conscious of anything for much of the time, to judge by interviews he


baffled broadcasters: “The Notice permits the showing of a film or still picture of the initiator [presumably the Sinn Fein spokesperson, to pluck a name out of the blue] speaking the words, together with a verbatim voice-over account of them.” A case of seen not heard or indeed Hurd. So who should voice the voice-overs? Clause 13 turned out to be lucky for some: “All of a sudden actors’ phones started ringing,” says Nolan. “Fifty pounds a hit! If you were lucky, you’d get


the matter he had in mind. On October 19, 1988, Douglas Hurd issued a notice prohibiting the broadcasting of “direct statements by representatives or supporters” of 11 Irish political and military organisations.


a couple a week,” enthused one thespian. “I stumped up for an answering machine.” One actor was doubly lucky, according to David Miller: he was the voice of both Sinn Fein and the anti-terrorism ads of the Northern Ireland Office. Occasionally, actors were not called in as


subtitles were used. More rarely, they were not needed because – demonstrating the full lunacy of the broadcasting ban – it was sometimes deemed permissible to use the actual recording of the politicians who had uttered the words in the first place. The BBC could broadcast a full half-minute of Gerry Adams speaking in his very own voice about jobs in West Belfast. This was permitted because he was ‘initiating’ the words as the MP for West Belfast rather than the Sinn Fein (heaven forbid!) MP for West Belfast. There was an even more fiddly arrangement


when the Media Show transmitted the genuine voice of Sinn Fein councillor Jim McAllister in which he discussed his part in the Ken Loach film Hidden Agenda; this was absolutely kosher because he was speaking as an actor – even though his acting role in the film is that of a Sinn Fein councillor.


ITN pioneers Pogues as dub music


gave during the group’s heyday), when he wrote the haunting track Streets of Sorrow/ Birmingham Six. Beginning


uncontroversially by regretting the deaths in ‘the Troubles’, the song went on to denounce the framing and convicting of the (subsequently cleared) Birmingham Six for the crime of “being Irish in the wrong place”. The IBA declared the sorrowful song itself


could not be transmitted but it still allowed the words to be heard, if voiced by someone else. ITN reported on the


banning of the song from the airwaves; its cheeky solution was to show a clip of The Pogues in concert, accompanied by the lyrics spelt out as captions on the screen. Plus the ITN reporter read out the forbidden words at the same time. On the album, the


lyrics are as clear as a bell, apart from the


section denouncing the fit-up of six innocent men, which switches to a wild, rocking screech. These ‘illegal’ lines are incomprehensible – but not to ITN viewers, who could read and hear the words in the ‘censored’ broadcast.


WENN RIGHTS LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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