THE REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF
MICK TIMOTHY BY BRIAN MacDOMHNAILL Former AP/RN writer Brian Mac Domhnaill remembers the revolutionary journalism and editorial policies of An Phoblacht editor Mick Timothy. From 1982 to his sudden death in 1985, Timothy revamped and expanded the paper. He directed the focus of An Phoblacht onto an expanded range of key social and economic issues in Ireland and internationally, while chronicling the electoral growth of Sinn Féin and the intensifying IRA campaign. Mick also ensured a forensic concentration in the pages of An Phoblacht on the British Shoot to kill and collusion strategies as well as the reactionary policies employed by the Fine Gael Labour Coalition of the mid-1980s. I was approached by Mick Timothy at the Ard Fheis in late October 1982 and asked if I was still interested in joining the staff of An Phoblacht/Republican News. The front page of the paper being sold at that Ard Fheis proclaimed Danny Morrison as one of five Sinn Féin candidates
Mick Timothy laid down a marker that change was afoot when, in the first issue of 1983, AP/RN appeared with a red masthead. Since the hunger strikes, a dark grey masthead had been used. Prior to that, following the merger of the two papers in January 1979, it had been green. The change upset some who saw it as a shift towards a more left-wing editorial approach. While such a shift would indeed take place, the colour choice for the masthead had nothing to do with it. When challenged at the 1983 Ard Fheis to explain and defend the change, Mick bluntly stated: ‘I like red’! The real reason was his determination to get the paper onto newsstands, thereby widening
elected to the then Stormont Assembly. With Danny’s election, Mick Timothy succeeded him as editor. The larger than life and apparently gruff Mancunian was already working with the paper, but now he had the responsibility for driving it forward, broadening its coverage and its appeal. In the week that I started working in 44 Parnell Square, the British shoot-to-kill strategy began. Over the period of a few weeks, six people were assassinated. The dead included three Lurgan IRA volunteers (Gervais McKerr, Eugene Toman and Seán Burns), two Armagh-based INLA volunteers (Séamus Grew and Roddy Carroll), and Michael Tighe, a boy who had stumbled upon a disused weapons cache in a shed near Lurgan that was being staked out. Photographs of all six appeared on the cover of the December 16th issue. While the armed struggle ebbed and flowed, it was the Assembly election results and the results of subsequent by-elections at council level that would dominate AP/RN coverage throughout Mick Timothy’s period as editor. By challenging the hegemony of the SDLP, Sinn Féin had become a target every bit as much as the IRA.
anphoblacht UIMHIR EISIÚNA 4 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 4
At a time when it was neither popular nor politically advantageous, under Mick’s editorship AP/RN made clear its support for the right to divorce and sided with those organising to oppose violence against women and the sexual abuse of children
the readership beyond those who traditionally bought AP/RN directly from a local republican activist. Mick’s contributions generally appeared under the name Kevin Burke. An extremely witty man, his satirical ‘Burke’s at the back’ column was a must-read item. Following his untimely death, The Last Word and the Liam Óg column continued this style of satire while I contributed a ‘Jack’s at the back’ column for a couple of years also, but I believe that it’s fair to say that none of its imitators were as consistently entertaining as Mick’s pieces. As a political weekly affiliated to the Republican Movement, articles were written from a republican and socialist perspective. 29
