On August 22nd the Sunday Independent carried a number of articles attacking Michael D. Higgins for remarks he had made in an interview in Hot Press. One of these articles was by Conor Cruise O'Brien. I want to comment on it.

O'Brien wrote that "After reading (Higgins') Hot Press interview, I think he is temperamentally unfitted to be entrusted with responsibility for broadcasting, or anything to do with the media." He went on to accuse Higgins of "a crude abuse of power, and an attempted encroachment on the freedom of the press."

As evidence for this accusation, O'Brien quoted what Higgins had said about a number of articles which had previously appeared in the Sunday Independent.

Eamon Dunphy had written a piece referring to Higgins as "a national self-indulgence, a faintly ridiculous caricature of Ireland's vision of itself, the caring nation." Higgins commented in Hot Press: "That was a piece of personal abuse that was very offensive . . . when you read something like that, it's very hard to listen to Joe Hayes (the Independent group's chief executive) making the case for the high standards he and the NNI (National Newspapers of Ireland) are supposed to be about!"

In the Hot Press interview, Higgins gave other examples of what he regarded as low standards of journalism, and went on: "I have those articles on file and I would like when I get my next communication from the NNI for Joe Hayes to go back through all those things that were written and tell me how they fit with what they told me - and I accepted it at the time - about their interest in ensuring standards in the newspaper industry."

In his Sunday Independent piece O'Brien pointed out that, with one exception, "all those things that were written" consisted of references to Higgins himself. O'Brien went on: "I think the reader will agree that the passages I have quoted show that the Minister responsible for broadcasting is using his office to be revenged on journalists who have criticised him personally."

O'Brien quoted further from Higgins' Hot Press remarks: "The NNI pointed out to me that there is no Minister directly responsible for newspapers and I indicated that, should Government decide they want me to deal with all aspects of communications, including the print media, I would be delighted to take on these additional responsibilities."

O'Brien expressed alarm at this. Higgins has threatened freedom of the press in pursuit of "personal vendettas," he argued. That threat would be all the greater were he to be given direct authority over the press. So, far from entrusting him additionally with responsibility for newspapers, the Government ought to remove from him the responsibility he already has for broadcasting.

The case for removing broadcasting from Higgins' ministerial brief was all the stronger, O'Brien argued, given the "Michael D., in this Hot Press interview, writes as if broadcasting were entirely his personal preserve."

O'Brien cited one example only of Higgins' alleged tendency to believe that broadcasting is "entirely his personal preserve." "He tells his interviewer: 'That soap is going to come back. I'm quite confident about that'."

Observed O'Brien: "A Minister who is quite confident about an item of programming, over which he has no statutory powers, ought not to have responsibility for broadcasting, or the vitally necessary democratic distance between Government and broadcasting will be eroded."

Before digging into the dirt-pile of dishonesty on which O'Brien built this case against Higgins, it's worth pointing out that some of the things Higgins said in the interview were, at the least, ill-advised.

However: The suggestion by O'Brien (and a number of other Independent journalists) that Higgins' remarks amounted to "a crude abuse of power and an attempted encroachment on the freedom of the press" was stretching it, and then some. And even if this were not the case, even if Higgins' expression of confidence that a particular soap-opera would return to RTE for another series did indicate a desire to wield totalitarian power over broadcasting, Conor Cruise O'Brien has no right at all to make any negative comment on the matter.

Keeping files, threatening journalists, encroaching on freedom of the press . . . Let's look back to 1976, when O'Brien was a member of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition led by Liam Cosgrave, and held the ministerial office now occupied by Higgins. (The office was known as "Posts and Telegraphs" then, and had a different remit, but the difference is irrelevant to the matter at issue here.)

In September 1976 the New York Times correspondent Bernard Nossiter visited Dublin to report on, among other things, a piece of "emergency" legislation which had been introduced in the Dail by the Cosgrave Government following the assassination by the IRA of the British ambassador, Sir Christopher Ewart-Biggs. The proposed new law significantly increased the powers of the police and to the same extent diminished the rights of citizens for up to seven days without any charge being laid.

Nossiter visited O'Brien in the expectation, as he explained later, that as "a distinguished writer" he would be the Government Minister least enthusiastic about the new measure, particularly about a provision in it which seemed to present grave danger to freedom of the press. In his New York Times piece, Nossiter quoted the relevant section in full:

"Any person who, expressly or by implication, directly or through another person or persons, or by advertisement, propaganda or by any other means, incites or invites another person (or persons generally) to join an unlawful organisation, or to take part in, support or assist its activities, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction or indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years."

Civil liberties groups, newspaper editors, the National Union of Journalists and many other interested parties expressed alarm at the sweeping power this seemed to confer on the State to censor what appeared in newspapers. Two Labour TDs, John O'Connell and David Thornley, defied the whip and refused to support the bill in the Dail. In the Senate, Mary Robinson and Dr. Noel Browne voted against.

The Irish Times commented on the "lamentable absence of regret (by Ministers) for the reduction in civil liberties." The editor of the Irish Press, Tim Pat Coogan, told Nossiter: "We will have to trim our sails, tack and reef, and hope we don't go down." As it happened, Coogan in particular had good reason to worry . . .

Nossiter reported that far from O'Brien being perturbed, he was positively enthusiastic for curbs on freedom of speech. To make his point, Nossiter explained, O'Brien "pulled from his files letters to Coogan's Irish Press," which he offered as examples of the kind of material which the new measure might be used to suppress. A number of the letters - they had been clipped from the Letters to the Editor column - expressed opposition to a memorial fund which had been set up to commemorate the assassinated ambassador. Another had argued that "Britain maintained her grip on Ireland by violence."

Asked by Nossiter whether he seriously wanted to make the expression of these opinions illegal, O'Brien replied: "That is intended. We make no secret of it."

Asked whether he envisaged the writers of the letters being charged, O'Brien replied that he envisaged the charges being aimed at "the paper that gave them space."

Nossiter was so disturbed by what he'd heard that on his way to Dublin Airport he diverted by way of Burgh Quay and warned Coogan in his office of what might lie in store.

This was an attack on freedom of the press of a very different character to the "threat" issued by Higgins in the Hot Press interview, and not just in its directness and in the seriousness of the sanction involved. At worst, Higgins was reacting petulantly to what he perceived as personal attacks on himself, and threatening to report the miscreant journalists to their boss. O'Brien, for political and not personal reasons was threatening to have editors put in prison for up to ten years.

To his great credit - and, as I understand it, against the strongly-expressed wishes of the owners of the Press group - Coogan used a full page of the Press a few days later to re-print eleven Letters to the Editor expressing exactly the opinions O'Brien had told Nossiter editors should be put in prison for publishing.

At the same time, pressure mounted on the Government from individuals and organisations shocked by O'Brien's apparent eagerness to intimidate the press into line. A spokesperson for Amnesty International referred to the revelation that O'Brien had been keeping files of offending newspaper clippings as "one of the most disturbing aspects of the present situation . . . It reminds me of dossiers built up in countries where governments are suppressive of their people. There's a kind of implied threat in that thought-process which scares me." The pressure worked. The measure was never used against journalists.

The relevant point here, however, is that O'Brien wanted it used. O'Brien then, like Higgins now, had responsibility for broadcasting. But O'Brien's interventions in RTE went rather farther than seeming to bring pressure to bear to ensure that a favoured soap wasn't scrapped.

At the same time as O'Brien was looking forward to the opportunity to imprison print journalists, broadcast journalists were learning who was boss. It was suddenly announced that RTE TV's main current affairs programme, Seven Days, which had regularly earned the displeasure of the Coalition Government, was being cancelled. Its editor, Sean O Mordha, resigned in protest. A former Coalition Government Press Secretary was put in overall control of the station's output.

An Irish Press editorial commented: "To a degree we must suspend judgement until the full story of what is happening at RTE unfolds. But it is peculiar, coincidental and disturbing to say the least of it that a shake-up - some might call it a purge - of the magnitude of this one . . . should occur just at the time when the Minister responsible for the television station, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, should find himself in a controversy over his avowed intention in some way to censor press freedom . . ."

There is no need to contrast that set of circumstances with the circumstances which promoted O'Brien to claim that Higgins was unsuitable to have responsibility for broadcasting. It's obvious.

It's obvious, too that Conor Cruise O'Brien is a hypocrite and full of humbug, unfitted to comment on matters affecting freedom of expression and, as a journalist, that he is not entitled to respect.

Pope's Privates On Parade

So Sam Snort, as he confessed in the last issue, dreams of being promoted to Pope and issuing Papal Encyclicals advocating sensible sex . . .

He's just the man. He'd be elected by excited acclamation once the College of Cardinals was able to feast their glassy eyes on the gargantuan Snortian pecker. This is confirmed in recent correspondence in the prestigious New Internationalist magazine.

Not many people know that papal erections are necessary for papal elections. During the ceremony, says a Mr. Guy Lambert of Oxford, who sounds like the sort of fellow who would know about these things, the cardinals are required to take a gander at, which is not to say give a goose to, the prospective pontiff's genitals.

This is in order to avoid a repetition of the disastrous case of Pope Joan, who dressed as a man in order to get classical education in Rome and who proved so incredibly brilliant that she was elected Pope. For seven centuries since - and here I quote directly from the Catholic Encyclopaedia - "all candidates for the papacy had to undergo a physical examination to prove their sex."

Confirmation that the prelate is indeed possessed of the appropriate equipment is ceremonially announced in the form: testiculos habet en bene pendentes. Or, in English, "testicles he has, and well-hung ones too."

Those of us who know what we speak of don't doubt that a glance at Snort's beautifully-proportioned, tasty and well-used appendage would be enough to sew up the election.

Bags I the nuncio-ship.