STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS? BY HILDA Mac THOMAS Happy 50th birthday An Phoblacht! I am old enough to have been involved with you when you were born in your current all-Ireland form, as An Phoblacht/Republican News. In 1979, I was asked to write some book reviews (under another name), and left pretty much to decide which. Two pieces I remember particularly; a survey of the so-called ‘thrillers of the Troubles’ - mostly anti-republican, sexist, and racist trash and a review of ‘The Women’s Room’ by Marylin French. In 1981, I was part of a team who wrote extended pen portraits of the prisoners as they embarked on hunger strikes. A heart-breaking and solemn task. In 1982, then Editor Danny Morrison was looking for someone to write what he described as a weekly look at the political manoeuvrings of unionists, the SDLP, and the London and Dublin governments in relation to the struggle. The brief was to gather what the various players had said, analyse them, and comment from a republican viewpoint. All the more important as this was a time of censorship. The asymmetrical propaganda war was full on, explicitly by law, such as Section 31 in the south, followed in 1988 by a British ban on republican voices (remember “his words are spoken by an actor”!). And this despite, or
In times of war, pen names were used for obvious reasons, and so there was always this sense of my words not really belonging to me indeed because of, the growing endorsement of republicans at the polls. But, I digress. I cleared my study a couple of years ago and shredded notes taken in longhand for my early articles and carbon copies of typewritten articles; the top copy being sent to Dublin with other pieces on the Wednesday morning, the carbon copy kept for a phone conversation with the Editor if changes were needed. Printouts with the recognisable narrow font of an Amstrad PCW, and 3.5 inch discs that travelled from me to the Northern Editor
and back. A hidden history of technological change. Today, I sit at my computer, with a search engine open on the desktop, yet feeling the familiar excitement and remembering the many Tuesday all-nighters of frantic writing, with the week’s press cuttings scattered over the room. No ‘cut and paste’ then, you young wusses! But enough nostalgia. This weekly piece was given a pen-name of Hilda MacThomas (a tale for another day), and became known as ‘the Hilda piece’, with a small following of faithful readers. In times of war, pen names were used for obvious reasons, and so there was always this sense of my words not really belonging to me and taking a life of their own once the paper went to print, the writer being merely a small cog in the media machine. And so, I feel free to speak about Hilda in the third person, even though I have been secretly very proud to know it was me. Many key events I remember covering and many more have got lost in the recesses of my ageing memory. The dramatic entrance of Sinn Féin onto the electoral scene in 1982 with the assembly elections, giving voice to a hitherto silenced and demonised section of the population. 1983: Gerry Adams MP! And Danny Morrison missing being an MP by 78 votes in mid-Ulster!! (Sorry Danny, I couldn’t help
• Hillsborough Agreement of 1985 and Unionist protest
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ISSUE NUMBER 4 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 4 anphoblacht
