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From International Socialism, No.67, March 1974, pp.30-31.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Political Murder in Northern Ireland
Martin Dillon and Denis Lehane
Penguin Special, 45p.
A Society On The Run: a Psychology of Northern Ireland
Rona M. Fields
Penguin Education, 50p.
PENGUIN’S TWO latest books on Northern Ireland have caused a great deal more fuss than they are worth. Dillon and Lehane’s book on assassinations has become the subject of one or two court cases, several controversies about factual evidence, and has at the time of writing still not been put on sale in Northern Ireland. Rona Fields’ book on the psychology of Northern Ireland has, according to its author, been tampered with by the publishers, and has been withdrawn from sale temporarily.
Whatever the charges made against them, or their authors, Penguin can’t be unhappy about the fuss-they aim to sell 200,000 copies of the Dillon/Lehane book. If and when the Fields book is put on sale again, they can be sure that the publicity it has received will help boost it too.
I cannot recommend either of these books – in spite of the very obvious dearth of books on the North and the understandable hunger among socialists for new, reliable material. I cannot recommend them precisely because they are not reliable, and not all that new. Commercial considerations have been to the very fore in the publication of the two books – and literary, political and editorial considerations have suffered severely as a consequence.
Rona Fields wrote her book on the basis of five interrupted months spent in the North. Dillon and Lehane had been in the North less than a year when their book appeared. Rona Fields had a three week self-briefing before coming to Ireland – even British Army officers get more intensive preparation than that. These facts about the circumstances in which the books were written, along with the authors’ naive methods and assumptions, ensure a consistent superficiality.
What you will get from both of these books is a slight ‘feel’ of aspects of life in the North – from Rona Fields because she reproduces statements of internees about torture which have already been published elsewhere, and from Dillon/Lehane because they narrate drily the known facts about a whole series of brutal assassinations.
Dillon/Lehane ascribe the main blame for the sectarian killings to the loyalists, but they do so in the most understanding of all possible ways: frustration, betrayals, and continual let-downs had so demoralised and divided the loyalist community that it saw no other outlet for its anger. The language they use to deal with the Catholics and the IRA, is notably less sympathetic; 50 years of institutionalised violence directed specifically at the Catholic community apparently don’t weigh much in the balance.
The book’s most damning bias is its whitewash of the British Army. In the first place the authors chose to exclude from the heading ‘assassinations’ killings carried out by the Army, and known to have been done by them. In the second place, they attempt to argue most reasonably, and absolutely wrongly, that the British Army has had no cause to be involved in undercover killings.
The authors support the efforts to de-sectarianise the Northern situation, without ever daring to look at the motives behind them. Thus they support British initiatives, as well as the ‘non-sectarianism’ of the Official Republicans and the more responsible elements of the far-right loyalist organisations. In so doing they manage to blur every single important line of distinction in the political scenario – and, by the by, win polite approval from the British Army and from the Official Republicans, who have reviewed this book favourably in their publications.
Rona Fields’ book demands to be taken on a quite different level. It aspires to be a scientifically founded study, written by someone who reportedly has a considerable reputation in her discipline. It is, in fact, a collection of impressions, documents, and the most outrageously misguided judgments – a lot of it written in gobbledegook.
These are two books any socialist library can afford to be without.
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