Leggoland - PHILMACGIOLLABHAIN AND THE BBC-Exclusive

[ian1964 10,626]

Thursday, 1 December 2011

PHILMACGIOLLABHAIN AND THE BBC-Exclusive

 

THE BBC is being urged to let Philmacgiollabhain loose on the airwaves to peddle his anti-Scottish pro IRA views.

 

The new move comes after the controversial Philmacgiollabhain revealed that BBC Scotland had paid him from the licence fee to travel from his home in the Republic of Ireland to Glasgow act as an advisor for their Bombs and Bigotry documentary last spring.

 

Not surprisingly that programme was heavily slanted against Rangers supporters. Now someone else whose job is paid for by taxpayers money, has launched a campaign for Philmacgiollabhan to be given even more influence on the BBC and more money from the public purse.

 

I can reveal this after a letter, alleged to have been written by Tom Gallagher. Emeritus Professor of Politics at Bradford University and sent to the head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland, John Barrowman, has come into my possession.

 

It is an astonishing document which urges BBC Scotland to marginalise any view contrary to the one spouted by the Green Brigade, which is that Celtic are victimised and that Scottish society demonises all Roman Catholics, and in particular those of Irish descent. Dated November 21st Gallagher’s letter says …

 

 

“Dear Mr Boothman,

“I would like to put on record my concern about the policy of your department of the BBC in Scotland towards the community of Irish descent in west-central Scotland. It is a community whose identity has been forged in the face of lengthy institutional discrimination and which has expressed itself in a range of secular and religious ways, not least identification with Glasgow Celtic football club.

 

“Celtic has been a channel in which people from this ethnic background have been able to identify with symbols of Irishness . This of course has been problematic for the official Scottish culture even when its parameters have been broadened to proclaim that a new nation is arising comprised of ‘One Scotland but many cultures’.

 

“The construction of Scottish- ness takes place naturally through the print and electronic media. Editors, producers, and sub-editors have found it difficult to find a place in which to insert Scots who are culturally Irish in at least part of their identity. This has become glaringly obvious during the greater part of 2011.

 

“Some sections of the media continue to be implicated in the reproduction and sustaining of sectarian, values and beliefs. By ‘sectarian’ I mean expressing sentiments that are antagonistic or disparaging of the ethno-religious rivals in the long-term socio-religious fracture that has marked west-central Scotland. This has been well-documented by the journalist Phil McGiolla Bhain.

 

“The Offensive Religious Behaviour bill is the most controversial piece of legislation ever to come before the Scottish parliament. Arguably, it is part of a concerted effort to re-frame the image of Scotland and energetically use the state to outlaw a form of ethnic and religious particularism that is seen as an impediment standing in the way of the march of a nation towards statehood.

 

“But there has been huge concern about it; 5 of the 6 parties in Holyrood oppose it as do those groups and individuals associated with Celtic and Rangers and who have sought energetically to banish the uglier partisan aspects from the game ; arguments have been made that it is dangerous to free speech, that it is not only divisive but stands a high chance of sparking off new and worse forms of antagonism; that it is unnecessary in view of existing laws; and that a danger exists that it will be open up a new era in which institutional biases are directed against disparaged sections of the Scottish population.

 

“I would put it to you that these and other concerns have only infrequently been aired on BBC current affairs programmes .

Most of the time, the media prefers to treat the issue in a very cursory manner, failing to draw on the community voices and academic expertise from different points in the ethno-religious spectrum in west-central Scotland.

 

“Quite remarkably, there has been a preference for using one individual,a respected senior academic as an intermediary who can explain the perspective of Scotland’s most awkward minority (Catholics of Irish descent) .....without frightening the horses. This, if I may dare to point it out, is the same approach that colonial overlords used when trying to manage an unruly set of natives – the selection of an intermediary who can be relied upon to operate within the cautious official narrative on the subject.

 

“This I think shows that for most of 2011 the BBC in Scotland has failed to properly represent the diverse cultural strands in Scottish society even though the Corporation is a byword for promoting multiculturalism in other dimensions.

 

“Yesterday, I attended a symposium on the Offensive Religious behaviour bill organised by the University of Stirling’s Law Department. Few, if any speakers, or audience members were able to provide a defence of it. Some speakers warned that the chances of new fronts involving heightened conflict between rival supporters groups or between them and the state or even political forces opening up , were in fact quite high.

 

“If what I believe to be a crude attempt at altering the public space in west –central Scotland does indeed backfire, how well-placed will the BBC be to analyse and explain the phenomenon given your clear reluctance to energetically provide broad coverage to the controversies surrounding the Offensive Religious Behaviour bill and indeed the build-up to it?

 

“You may well point to a documentary that was shown by BBC Scotland this spring shortly after a number of Old Firm flashpoint incidents. But it was, i thought a very bland and sketchy overview that could easily be seen as the BBC doing some brief heavy lifting so as to show the world that it was addressing the issue of communal conflict as expressed through the prism of football before parking it safely for an indefinite period.

 

“I know at least one organisation (that, because of its weight in Scottish society the BBC deals with on a regular basis) which has suggested both myself and Dr Joseph Bradley of Stirling University (among others) might be approached in order that our academic experience be utilised to help the BBC in its mission to inform on inter-communal conflict or mistrust shaped around discordant religious identities. But no such approaches have ever been made (at least to me, and it is in a personal capacity that i am writing to you) even though I live a mere 25 minutes walk from a major BBC studio in Edinburgh. Both of us have numerous single-authored texts (published by university presses and reputable publishers) on the subject. Similarly, Phil McGiolla Bhain has never been heard (at least by me) on the BBC.

 

“So I am bound to ask myself what has happened to the BBC’s mission to explain sensitive and important contemporary issues in a broadly-based and probing manner? I think in reaction to the issues thrown up by the 2011 bill and the wider place of people belonging to a Hibernian cultural tradition in Scotland, the mission has simply been discarded. What has substituted for it is a very evasive, low-brow and grudging examination of the underlying problems arising from sectarian issues in Scotland. As long as this approach persists, i fear it will bring the BBC in Scotland BBC little credit or indeed those responsible for its current affairs output.

 

“I would welcome a dialogue with you on the matter since I firmly believe that a review of the BBC’s policy on the broad cultural , religious and social context in which football controversies arise in west-central Scotland is long overdue.

Yours Sincerely,

 

Tom Gallagher

Emeritus Professor of Politics

University of Bradford

 

“PS I originally assumed that this letter would reach you through a Romanian-based Scottish academic, Dr Ronnie Smith (someone who ran one of your election campaigns when you were a student politician). In Romania, if the approach of state television (TVR1) to an issue of such sensitivity had been so banal, then it would have become an issue of public concern some time ago. It so happens that I know your counterpart in TVR1 Mrs Rodica Culcer and when I see her, hopefully in the New Year, I will certainly ask her if she has any thoughts on what are very contrasting approaches of two national broadcasting stations to ethno-religious and nationalist concerns.”

 

The letter appears to me to be breathtaking in both its arrogance and bias, as well as being extremely sinister in its effort to add further bias to an organisation, BBC Scotland, which, despite its neutrality being demanded by its charter, is already left-leaning, anti Rangers and biased against the cultural background of 4million of Scotland’s population of 5million.

 

As for Gallagher’s call for BBC Scotland to employ Philmacgiollabhain? You couldn’t make it up.

 

http://leggoland2.blogspot.com/2011/12/philmacgiollabhain-and-bbc-exclusive.html

Edited December 1, 2011 by Zappa

[der Berliner 3,568]

You wonder who have to be adressed to stop these people from pushing this through. Of course, as a license fee payer, one might be inclined to stop paying it, as the use for the money might be regarded as discimination of 4/5th of the Scottish population. Maybe such extreme viewpoints have to be raised to make the powers at the BBC (beyond Hadrian's Wall) take note.

[Guest Dutchy]

I don't know? I thought I lived in Scotland and all this dragging up the past inequities of Irish catholics is indeed in the past.

 

It may be useful for the author of that letter to take into account that the catholic church still seeks to transform this country into an child of Rome once again and so happen to be using Irish nationalism to that end. Sectarism is hardly what it used to be, but if it is as bad as claimed, why indeed don't the said Irish decendentants not just return to their homeland.

 

I have Irish decendancy, from my mothers side, but I have no inclination to return their. None whatsoever!

[GovanAllan 0]

They wont be happy till "no Protestants " becomes a reality.

[der Berliner 3,568]

On a sidenote, do Atletico Bilbao fans sing songs in praise of ETA? I know that no German supporters sing songs in praise of the RAF (i.e. Rote Armee Fraktion), a German terror group - not even the St. Pauli hordes. That what essentially is what the Hopped Horrors are doing ... and if this is not regarded as religious sectarianism, it is political sectarianism.

[Guest Dutchy]

Not only that, but I heard a report today that the Lord Mayor of Belfast, shin fein member, refused to present a duke of Edinburgh award to a 15 year old girl because she was a member of the Army Corps.

 

Maybe these academics should take a longer look at hatred and where it raises it's head, because it's clearly not all from the one side.