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I don't mean to be alarmist...
CHARLIE HAUGHEY - Daily Telegraph, 16th April 1986
I don't mean to be alarmist, though I feel this needs to be said. This country is hurtling towards oblivion on a trajectory that I fear we will not be able to remove ourselves from. As a member of the New York City Council once said many years ago, the sword of Damocles is hanging over Pandora's box.
Now you are probably thinking, hang on Charlie that's overly alarmist and exaggerated. Well let me make it clear, I'm not being needlessly alarmist in this instance. The threat to liberty and general freedoms in this nation is a very real threat, especially under this government. This country has been a variety of traumas over the years, namely the Labour government from 1964 to 1970 and the ensuing Unionist administration which I think we can all agree was severely lacking.
This isn't merely a threat to common decency like the aforementioned Labour government or the grandstanding of the last Unionist government - no this threat is a very serious one that threatens to rip this nation apart. Think for a moment about the various policies that have been instituted under this Labour government. After the current Prime Minister rose to power just under six years ago, he promised that the 'New Labour Party' would create a 'New Britain.' Think about that for a moment; consider the implications of such a slogan.
"A New Labour Party. A New Government. A New Britain. Working For You."
Anyone who isn't quaking in their boots must surely have something wrong with them. This government is proposing to do away with the very freedoms and liberties that made this country what it is today. This country has been ruled since I can remember by either a Unionist majority government or by a Coalition government led by the Labour Party, which received the support of the Irish Party, the Social Liberals, Sinn Fein, and various other groups. The fact that at the 1980 general election we were left with the first Labour majority government in history, was surely a cause for concern.
I recall that evening on the 26th July 1980 very well. Yours truly had retired for the evening and had a nice glass of Jameson for the evening. After the first few results it became apparent that Unionist government was not merely going to be defeat by the Labour - sorry 'New Labour' - opposition, but rather they were going to be well and truly trounced. In old Charlie's seat of Dublin North, we saw the local Labour Party put up their own candidate, only for it to enable a split in the vote with Sinn Fein, allowing the local perennial Irish Party candidate to slither in after several recounts. Now as you all have probably gathered after years of me rambling here, I was a non-voter in that election - why give legitimacy to a set of political parties that do not represent the majority of this great land - the great silent masses who up and down this country refuse to vote for any of the political parties in this country, due to the greed, corruption and general malaise that they bring to the political discourse in this nation.
When the Missus woke old Charlie in the morning, she found a peculiar stain on the wall, as if someone had thrown a glass of a fine blended Irish whisky at a high velocity towards the wall. Funny that. I recall thinking that the events of that even astounding. It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance that Labour had managed to win such a convincing victory under such an authoritarian phoney that now leads this once great nation of ours.
What was promised as a new departure for the United Kingdom has been nothing of the sort - or rather there has been a lot of change, but it has hardly been for the better. I mean it is certainly a new departure when the government decides to introduce a new Broadcasting Act which bans officials from a party which holds seats in parliament from appearing on this nation's broadcasting service. The reporting of acts by this nation's servicemen over here in Ireland now go largely unreported due to various pieces of legislation introduced by this government, which has absolutely no concern over the implications of such actions on this nation's society and the very rule of law that it claims to be protecting in the first place.
Now I'll be the first one to admit that the efforts by the Prime Minister to "cleanse the culture" on this nation's broadcasting, are ones that I very much welcome. That is until you delve a little deeper in and realise that it is a concerted effort by the Prime Minister to shut out voices that he considers to be immoral and anti-British. If we leave the litmus test of what is and is not of this nation to this government, then I think we should be very scared. When it emerged in January that the Prime Minister wishes to use such a law to silence those in the media who disagree with him and publish anti-government letters and editorials; you would have thought that perhaps there would have been a great public outcry.
Alas, that would be the normal thing that would occur in such an instance in any other democratic nation around the globe - but not Britain. Rather the government's supporters in the media, including in the Manchester Guardian, this government's very own Pravda (the newspaper of the Russian SDLP party which many years ago failed to overthrow Wrangel) which argued that such concerns were blowing the issue out of proportions.
I am not making this up - we have newspapers defending government attempts to censor them. Only in this Godforsaken country could such a thing occur.
After the dreadful terror attacks committed in Belfast last weekend, I fear that we are fast heading towards the oblivion that I referred to at the start of this piece. Now in any other civilised Christian nation around the globe, we would see the head of government go out and meet the victim's families and vow to stop such actions occurring again - usually a vague statement that would unite everyone in this country. Yet we had the esteemed Prime Minister of this country come out and respond to a question of whether he would grant further detention powers for the police and security services in this country, despite this being against the professed British liberty that he claims to represent - he responds merely with "just wait and see."
That could mean anything or it could just be the Prime Minister stonewalling the issue, as he frequently does. I fear that with statements such as those, and the blind support of many within the media for this Labour government, the Prime Minister will be handed another majority Labour mandate by the electorate at the next general election, ensuring that the O'Brien regime is finally toppled.
Otherwise, we are very much hurtling towards oblivion. Though don't tell Conor I said that otherwise, you won't be reading from good old Charlie next week.
[1]Inspired by an OTL Crusier column in the Independent.
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