The Minister in his opening speech, introducing this Bill, I suppose with certain justification, certainly widened the possible scope of the debate very considerably by his long dissertation on the functions of the liberal democratic state, the function of the press, the function of journalists, the origin and historical justification for violence in our society and the special role of television and broadcasting in our special circumstances. I criticised this rather narrow focus taken up by the Minister in introducing this very important Bill. I know all Bills are described as being particularly important but in discussing television and radio one is entering a totally new era of communication. It is a platitude to say that but it will be momentous in its implications for society. For that reason society is particularly frightened of it because it has no idea where the road will lead once the liberation of visual literacy supersedes the literacy of the printed word. I quoted the last day the fears of the great Greek philosophers, writers, intellectuals and academics at the damage which would be done by the development of the printed word. Of course they were right, because no doubt a totally new society, a new style of living, has been created, destroyed, recreated and destroyed again—a continual evolution towards we know not what. On top of this marvellously liberating influence of literacy we now have the enormous power of television and radio and the electronic developments associated with scientific advances in the use of television which, within ten or 20 years, will bring developments which we hardly dare imagine.
It is for that reason that I find this Bill so disappointing—because we had the advantage of a Minister having a particularly acute mind, who is wonderfully well honed by his own educational and professional experiences throughout his life and with a special knowledge of the great literary arts. For that reason one did not really expect the very mundane recapitulation of what was obviously a very advanced assessment of the function of television 15 or 20 years ago when the last Bill was introduced.
Essentially, this is a standstill piece of legislation; it is very much the Bill of an imitator; it is not the Bill of a creative mind; it is not the Bill of an originator; it is a Bill brought in by a man who has completely missed a marvellous opportunity to give the Seanad a discussion document, full of originality with new ideas and proposals, which would provide some kind of stimulus for those Senators interested in these developments and aware of the remarkable advances taking place in social science generally.
This Bill in its essence reminds one of the 1936 Censorship of Publications Act. It has about it that kind of Mrs. Grundy-Mary Whitehouse fearful apprehension, the sense of the dangers which are imminent for the uninitiated and the ordinary people—they are frequently mentioned in the Minister's speech—and the need for protection of the public interest, in respect of which so many appalling things have been done throughout history.
This Bill conveys all the time this arrogant presumption that the Government, the creators of the Bill, have some sense of supercilious disdain for the wit and intelligence of those they govern. This sense of disdain down through the ages has been the hallmark of the benevolent or paternalistic dictator.
This Bill has for me the strange implication that either the Government believe or the Minister believes that they have some kind of God-given omniscience, a balance or sense of comprehension or, alternatively, that because of the excellency of the Minister's education, background and cultural surroundings he has derived this omniscience through the experience of his life. Anyway, without a doubt, the content of this Bill puts the Minister above the rest of men; what he can be trusted with is not really suitable for anybody else. I give as an example the Minister's and Senator Halligan's mock-horror condemnation of Henry Kelly's article about Cathal Goulding and how relieved they were that it only appeared in The Irish Times—an élitist minority publication was, I think, the general implication. It was safe with them because they are some of us, they can be trusted with this kind of information and it could not do much damage there. But, Heaven above, if it had appeared in the Independent or The Irish Press or—horror of all horrors—if it had been broadcast on the radio. Above all, say one of the interviewers had exposed Cathal Goulding to the full glare of the cameras on television. We were all assured that the result of that would be armies of men and women would be marching to join the Republican movement, heading towards the Border, streets running with blood, civil war and calamity. The absurdity of this kind of insolent assumption of the intelligence of the ordinary public. Was it not clear at the end of that article— I do not know if Henry Kelly wished it to be clear or not—that the impression was that Cathal Goulding was a particularly unfeeling person and not a very successful politician? Most of us derived different impressions from it but did any of us feel like turning towards Cathal Goulding, or to the organisation he represents, and seeking to join it? Why should we have done that? Why should anybody have done that?
One of the most disturbing things about the Minister and this Bill surely is the comparative ingenuousness of his uncomprehension of this whole question of communication and opinion-forming and mind-changing and the influence of television and the newspapers. It is common knowledge that, in fact, newspapers are extraordinarily uninfluential. At the moment they are operated and controlled in the interests of the wealthy minority in our society and in socialist countries they are equally controlled by the State. There has been an enormous amount of research into the question of how minds are changed, how minds are formed but the commonly accepted truth is, first of all, newspaper influence is relatively unimportant. The Labour voter in England reads The Daily Express but he still votes Labour. Similarly, all the Independent readers do not vote right wing and the readers of The Irish Press do not necessarily vote Fianna Fáil and The Irish Times readers vote any way they want to. It is not the case, as the Minister seems to think, that if Cathal Goulding is confronted with the camera and a compliant broadcaster he will set the country on fire with a fiery speech. Sometimes I wish it were true, because sometimes I can make quite fiery speeches. But the simple truth is that people's opinions are not changed that easily. It is a much more complicated and intricate process and it is a wonderful thing that it is so. But it is not simply a question of confronting the cameras or the radio with a voice and the result will be that indicated, or that desired by the broadcasting system.
This is not to say that change does not take place; of course, change takes place as a result of people looking at television of listening to the radio of reading the newspapers. But the change is not the change looked for. What is likely to happen is that somebody, as a result of listening to a debate or a discussion, will change. They may begin wondering and questioning and they may begin to consider what their point of view is. A discussion on "7 Days" or some other programme may lead people to begin talking about mining, or gas, or oil or whatever it may be, or contraception or any other subject. They do not necessarily take the point of view which was put forward on television. It is very much more complicated than that.
Broadly speaking, the position of the radical is that if he is exposed in discussion whether with Henry Kelly or Brian Farrell on television or John Bowman on radio, in fact, they are the masters most of the time. They can create whatever end-product they wish to create. I do not know whether Henry Kelly wanted to create the particular end-product he did about Cathal Goulding but certainly that was the impression I was left with. We know quite well that in the organisation of a discussion questions are asked of particular people and not asked of other people; the manipulation is endless, not only in newspapers and on radio but also on television. We all know that there is no objective reporting in either the socialist countries or in so-called free, democratic countries. I suppose the only broad difference between the socialist countries and the western democracies is the puritanical austerity of the socialist countries where one is given the surveillance of the society, the news, the commentary on the news and a very considerable amount of culture in the broad sense as well as in the specific sense in relation to music, opera, theatre or whatever it may be. So, while there is not serious democratic use of television in either the socialist countries or the western democracies, probably the person who finishes 20 years of watching television in the Soviet Union would in my terms, which are not necessarily correct, be a more cultured person, a more educated person, a person with a better understanding of the arts, literature classics and of music in particular.
Is that a good thing or is it not? It is debatable—one has a right to decide whether this is the kind of end product society will be, the one that I decide it shall be.
This is essentially what the Minister is trying to do in this Bill. He is appointing a body and then he is providing a very definite authority or censorship power to manipulate this body in the way he thinks is desirable. Anybody in Telefís Éireann listening to the Minister in his many speeches, and particularly in this one, would be a brave man to go into Telefís Éireann and to do any programme he wanted to do; a pro-Provo programme, for instance, or a pro-Official programme, even if he thought it had a good interest value, or, in cultural matters, something that was, say, pro-Fianna Fáil, something that was clearly in direct conflict with what the Minister has laid down in words of one syllable in this speech. This is the kind of way in which the directions are given in our society, in our culture. Most journalists and most reporters know quite well what editorial policy is. They know the people who are "in" and the people who are "out".
I remember a journalist friend of mine once telling me about a very distinguished Senator whom the Minister regards very highly indeed, the late Senator Sheehy Skeffington, who used to fight the most lost of lost causes with marvellous courage. This journalist told me that as soon as Senator Skeffington rose to speak— in those days he was speaking on very unpopular causes—journalists simply put down their pencils. This was blanket censorship of Senator Skeffington—he would not have minded that—but what was worse, of his fine, liberal ideas. This was not any kind of great finality on the part of the journalist, simply recognition of the fact that Sheehy Skeffington simply was not acceptable and the views that he had were not acceptable.
If you take the socialist side, this is one of the defects that I find in the socialist countries. At the same time, if I had to make a choice between the kind of material which we get on our television, which I find, beyond the news comment and political comment and discussions and so on, very little value in—it may be a defect in me more than anything else —I suspect that of the two, I would prefer the kind of material put out in the Soviet Union rather than in the Western democracies. I do not know, I have no experience of it.
We then come to another aspect of the Minister's approach to this problem, which is quite shocking because he is a man with considerable talent and intelligence, that is, his strange assessment of this business of violence, the origin of violence and the begetter of violence. Violence, like the question of communication, is a particularly complicated question. Nothing is farther from the truth than that this is the responsibility of the broadcaster. There was a phrase in the Minister's opening speech about the love affair that the broadcaster has and the attraction:
The broadcaster's professional instinct inclines him towards exposure of what is exciting, even sensational, and to regard possible social effects of such exposure as conjecture and outside his sphere. It is for this reason that the public interest has to be protected.
That business of the public interest having to be protected is something I find very difficult to accept from anybody. I dislike very much the idea of the talking down to the public or the talking down about the public. I cannot understand this because whatever about myself who is very much an outsider politically in relation to public support in a minority in this country, that is not true of the Minister. He happens to be a Minister and has considerable backing from the public.
I have never been able to understand why a person who has so much support from the public should have so little faith in their capacity to pass judgment. Does he really feel that they are unwise in their decision to treat me as a minority and to give him their majority support. Have they misjudged the situation and should they change their minds and make me Minister and put Deputy Cruise-O'Brien into the back benches? Is their judgment faulty? Can it be trusted? Is it unreliable? Can they make dangerous decisions? Have they made a dangerous decision in relation to Deputy Cruise-O'Brien? I slightly suspect they have. That is another question altogether. This idea of him making a decision as to what is in the public interest is remarkable. It is remarkable how common this is.
This is precisely what happened to Prokoviev, Khachaturyian and Shostakovitch in the Soviet Union. They were accused of discounting the social role of music. For that reason they were made to write a different kind of music. It must be very difficult for them.
The Minister wants to do exactly the same thing with the broadcasters. He used practically the same words: "The broadcaster's professional instinct inclines him towards exposure of what is exciting, even sensational and to regard possible social effects of such exposure as conjecture and outside his sphere." In other words, they really did not appreciate the social implications of their function as broadcasters. This is essentially completely impertinent. I could understand it from, say, the Fianna Fáil Party, if they do not mind my saying so, a party which are not noted for their broad liberal conception of the function of politicians in society, or even Fine Gael, if they will equally forgive me for going back over their record and not seeing them as a particularly enlightened, expansive liberal influence in public life in our society.
This Minister happens to be a member of the Labour Party, a socialist party, James Connolly's party, Connolly who had such faith in the worker and the people. The people are the revolutionary influence and the workers are the revolutionary class in society. The Minister will not trust them with their television knobs because they may see Cathal Goulding or Tomás Mac Giolla and so on, who may do terrible things to them. This Tomás Mac Giolla one is particularly interesting because we have all been told of the dangers of this exposure to these people.
Senator Halligan began batting the ball back into the Minister's court and I am sure the Minister will deal with it in considerable length and that poor Henry Kelly will have pink ears tonight when he is finished about this monstrous piece of liberal journalism —getting this man onto the middle page of The Irish Times. This is a marvellous tribute to the paper, this idea that one should not expose Tomás Mac Giolla or Cathal Goulding.
This exposure is a particularly good example of the Minister's intolerable arrogance. He does not seem to be capable of any kind of mitigation whatsoever. I know I am wasting my time talking to him and talking about it, but I suppose that is what this place is for.
Take the case of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and this question of Henry Kelly, and The Irish Times, and Cathal Goulding. I recall well that we in the Labour Party, with Official Sinn Féin, took over the Aula Maxima. There was a public meeting and as far as I recollect the radio people were there. I am not sure about the television people. The important thing was that there was a debate between the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and Tomás Mac Giolla who, as you all know, is President of Sinn Féin. I have no objection whatever to Tomás Mac Giolla. It is his own business if he is President of Sinn Féin. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has the strongest objections, as you know, to Cathal Goulding and Tomás Mac Giolla because they are members of the Sinn Fáin Party. As the Minister has to a boring extent repeated to us, they have a political arm and a military arm and for that reason they are a bogus political party, a fraudulent political party.
He said in his speech that in spite of the fact that they continually deny having this military element in their organisation, the truth is that they are a military, pernicious and dangerous organisation, an organisation which must be suppressed and kept off the newspapers. In The Irish Times there is a scandalous extravagance by Henry Kelly and the Editor in putting in Cathal Goulding. These people must be kept off the radio and, above all, off the television.
Yet the Minister chose to arrange for a public discussion and debate with the same Tomás Mac Giolla in which we discussed all sorts of terribly dangerous subjects. At least Deputy Cruise-O'Brien and Tomás Mac Giolla discussed the influence of the gun in Irish politics. Many of us, although we did not know it, were in very dangerous company. All sorts of things could have happened to us on the way home from that meeting. I did not join Official Sinn Féin and I suspect many other people did not join them either. In fact it made no difference to us. It probably reinforced me in my belief that Sinn Féin are not the party which are likely to achieve a united Ireland.
The Minister sees nothing wrong in his consorting with those people and in giving them publicity. They got publicity because the Minister was kind enough to attach his distinguished name to the meeting. He drew many people along to listen to Tomás Mac Giolla. I think that was a very unwise thing for the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to do, feeling as he does about Tomás Mac Giolla, Sinn Féin and violence.
However, that is not really the question which I am concerned with. It is a much more important question—the naïve innocence of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in his belief in the origin of violence or the ease with which one adopts violent causes. It is a complete slander on the broadcaster to say that he is responsible for the violence on the screen. The truth is that the broadcaster simply cannot put violence on the screen unless it will be looked at. This is the important difference in relation to the danger of whosoever is put on the screen by the broadcasters.
The Minister is completely mistaken in believing that if he shows somebody on the screen who preaches or displays violence of one kind or another it will motivate people to violence. It does not happen like that at all. The tragic truth is that violence exists in all of us ab initio, from birth. We are all born essentially and necessarily with a certain streak of aggression in us. Thereafter the development of that aggression and the way in which it develops, how partially or how strongly, is to a greater rather than a lesser extent an environmental one. There are environmental detriments in relation to the origin of violence in people.
Our culture is a violent culture. Right from the earliest years we are taught violence. The sole nexus between the child and the parent, the child and the teacher and the child and its church is an excess of violence, punishment, retribution, anger, rejection and denial of love. This is essentially the ethos of Irish society. This is where violence originates. It is in us in varying degrees. The obviously disturbed people, the parentless children and so on, have excessive degrees of this kind of thing. The producer on television knows that we want violence and that we must have those dreadful detective things—the cowboys killing, the hunting and brutality. These are continually on the screen because they are continually watched. Television does not create the violence. We must have the violence. This is the great tragedy and the great sadness.
If the Minister is seriously concerned with violence—the origin and genesis of violence—in society he has to look elsewhere than to the broadcaster. He is completely mistaken in his views on this question. I suspect that he knows his mistake and that he is deliberately using the broadcaster as a whipping boy. If the Minister wants to test this he should recollect —I do not know to what extent he is hung up on violence like so many of us are—how many times he would look or whether he would choose to look at a bull fight or a boxing match or a wrestling match or a killing detective story. Is he interested in these things? I suspect he probably is not. I certainly am not.
It is into the lives of the people who are interested in these things that a Minister of State should be looking and not this absurd narrow-focus preoccupation with whether Henry Kelly writes about Cathal Goulding or Brian Farrell talks to Tomás Mac Giolla about the Convention elections.
The Minister is completely mistaken in his views on this. He knows he is mistaken and he is deliberately using the journalists' profession, and the broadcasting people in particular, for the reason that the Minister knows quite well that the young IRA man did not simply appear out of a cloud. It is not simply a question of a virgin birth, an appearance there where he was not before. He is the product of a culture. He is the product of home; he is the product of parents; he is the product of schools and, of course, of his religion. All of these things the Minister knows as well as I do because I happened to have heard him discussing these questions.
He knows quite well, by hearsay; I know because I am a product of these schools. I have said this before and I am saying it again for the benefit of the Minister: if he had been to the Christian Brothers and to the Marist Brothers, as I have been, he would know that it was there that we learned about the activities of the British over seven centuries. It was there we learned about their cruelties, about the appalling things they did to our people, of the imprisonment, the Famine, the whole litany which everyone knows very well.
It was from our teachers, it was in our schools, that we learned about this violence. It was there that we learned to hate the British. It is as simple as that. "Hate" is the correct word. It is a long time since I was in school but there is no doubt that I left school with a very deep hatred of the British and of all that they had done in Ireland to our people. I learned it from my teachers who were Christian Brothers and Marist Brothers. This is the truth, and the most interesting thing is that the Minister at one time used to give vent to this belief, used to express the belief that that is where we learned about the terrible things that have been done in Ireland, that is where we learned to hate. We did not learn it from the broadcasters. We did not learn it from the television.
In hunting the broadcasters, in hunting the Henry Kellys, the journalists, the Minister is being the petty, cowardly, bully-boy poltroon which he expressed so much contempt for. He knows quite well that what he should be doing is asking "What is going on in our schools now? Who made us into the gunmen, the bombers? Are they still doing it?" If they are still doing it, what is he going to do to stop it? A section in a broadcasting Bill is an easy way of doing nothing whatsoever because he said in his speech that the broadcasters could avoid it, they could get around his silly section and his silly Bill. If he had any serious concern, if he was not afraid of the domestic consequences in terms of domestic politics of really dealing with this subject he would go to his Minister for Education and tell him that this had led us into civil war in the North, to the edge of civil war here in the South and in God's name do something about it. He is afraid to. It is as simple as that.
Flog the broadcasters, accuse them, they are the whipping boys and they certainly cannot do him any damage electorally. He is a cowardly man essentially. One of the facinating things about people who condemn violent people so completely is that they themselves have resorted to violence in their own time. We know that. The Minister has believed in the gun—has he not? I remember a picture of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, I think in his pyjamas, in a troop carrier during the bombing in Katanga. It was politic to be a soldier then, a man of violence then. I do not object to him doing whatever he did then. It was not very clever, apparently, but it weakens the case of an individual who spends his time indulging in sentiments and sanctimonious homilies to these other men of violence who are men of violence for a very good reason— because they were educated to be men of violence.
I do not know whether the Minister secretly and behind closed doors— presumably he will not do it in public —would be prepared to examine this position, what the position is at present in the schools. It is a very much more powerful influence than the occasional broadcast on television. I have a young grandson who tells me of the terrible things that the British did to us. He is going to school in Connemara. The Minister has young sons going to school. What is happening to them? Are they playing with guns? Are they learning about guns? Some day would it not be a dreadful thing if one of us—myself or the Minister—were to hear a Minister, a thoughtless, callous Minister, describe my son or his son as a murderer, a product of these places, simply because we did nothing to stop it happening? That is all these youngsters are, but we taught them to do it. What have we done about the history books?
Is it not a fact that the reason these young men feel that the only way they can achieve their objective of a united Ireland by violence is the failure of politicians of all parties? There are political solutions. There are Bills we should be discussing here. I have mentioned them many times: divorce, contraception, marriage Bills, the organisation of society to provide for full employment, political solutions to the problem of the North, preconditions to the solution of the problems of the North, all of these things. The Minister knows quite well that the most serious setback, I would imagine, to the whole cause of Northern unity occurred here or in the other House when the Taoiseach and Deputy Burke, the Minister for Education, supported the defeat of the Contraception Bill, not in relation to the issue itself but in its implications, the total failure of the Government to initiate the steps towards pluralism in society.
What marvellous opportunity the Minister has in relation to broadcasting? Should he not have seized the opportunity of using the whole mechanism of broadcasting to educate our people into acceptance of different standards, attitudes and values which would make it possible for them to see that if they want to see a united Ireland they must make concessions, difficult concessions for them? The more I listen to Senators speaking on these delicate, sensitive issues, the more I appreciate how genuinely sincerely concerned people are. But they are totally wrong if they believe we could move towards unity with the obscurantist views we have about these very important issues. Above every other medium, the television could have been one of the most important in its educational function. It could have made a really serious contribution towards enlightenment of our people in preparation for acceptance of the various legislative proposals which should have been introduced by this Government but which they have failed to introduce due to their simple cowardice, failure, their refusal to face the demands without a doubt implicit in politics in the Republic. But this high sounding, high-falutin' sermon which the Minister goes on with ill becomes him in the light of his and his Government's complete and consistent hypocrisy on these issues.
One continually hears of the uncompromising Northerners. There is nobody more uncompromising than the southerners. They make no concessions. The Minister gives a long sermon on the question of the liberal state, the democratic state, and the right of the democratic state to protect itself. That would be all right if it were not for the fact that in his time the Minister has said the most dreadful things about the undemocratic, illiberal quality of our society.
The Minister is astonished that people should not accept this as a democratic state. Only two years ago on a Bill which went through the Dáil and has not been repealed, he said: "This Bill is a fraud. It is not needed for the purposes it purports to be needed for. These laws are now a mockery and an unnecessary encroachment on our ordinary lives... does not support law and order but in fact brings it into disrepute, because it obliges the court to convict people without what is regarded as evidence in common law" and so on. Only two years ago, he thought this was a very illiberal, undemocratic state, and he is there on the record to prove it. This continual talking with so many tongues is very confusing. It is obvious that one cannot really believe anything the Minister is saying at any particular time because it changes so rapidly and so unpredictably, that it is something which depends simply on the expediency of the moment.
I do not know as much as I would like to know about it, but perhaps the Minister could tell us in his concluding speech about Holland and the system that is in use there. I understand that the broadcasting facilities are available and all sorts of people with controversial, conflicting ideas are allowed to make a film and then allowed the use of the studio facilities in order to put their point of view across. That strikes me as being a wonderful idea. Of course, Holland is notoriously advanced in its views and is a very civilised and enlightened community.
There are two small pinholes of light in that way here in Ireland. One of them is Bob Quinn in Connemara. He has a small telerecorder and he is able to go around and make films of different issues, a dispensary, or house, or someone's fishing problem or whatever it might be and it is possible for him to show the recording in a club, pub or hall. That is one small toehold in democracy in relation to television in Ireland. The other, of course, is Ballyfermot where they hijack the cable system and are allowed to put over their programme for an hour a week. This is of extraordinary significance. I wonder whether the Minister has either missed its significance or recognised its significance. I would like to know, because this really is the beginning of the full implications of what broadcasting will be 20, 30 years from now.
This attempt by the Minister and by the Soviets and other people to impose censorship cannot be done. It will not be done. There are no methods known to man in which you can continue to censor or suppress. Because of the advances in telecommunications it is not going to be possible simply to say: "You may not show this programme and you may show that one." It is very like the 1936 Censorship of Publications Act. Looking around the shops now is it not remarkable the wonderfully varied choice of books available to all of us by every author under the sun. We can read anybody we want to now. Those of us who have been any time at all in public life recollect the absurdities of the Censorship of Publications Act in which there was hysterical suppression. This is still true in some of the socialist countries and it is true in some other countries. However, the fact that we have improved our technology and expanded industry, presupposes literacy, so that people can learn to become electricians, cabinet makers, engineers and so on; and because there is literacy, that is the end of the intellectual captivity implicit in censorship in the 1936 Act which is now in the wastepaper basket.
The Minister is a real Mrs. Grundy, or Mary Whitehouse. It is astonishing really for a man with the liberal pretensions of the Minister that he should allow his name to be associated with the proposals in this Bill. He should understand the revolutionary changes, inseparable from the expansion of telecommunications, in understanding people. The miniaturisation of the equipment, and the advances that allow you to carry 200 channels in the one cable will make big nonsense of the Minister's attempt at censorship. The sad thing is that he has not given the advantage of the enormous amount of information which must be at his disposal in order to tell us about these things.
Unless I am mistaken—and I know Senator Robinson referred to it as well —section 17 is going to stamp on this tiny little shrinking violet of expansion of liberal thinking on attitudes in Ireland because section 17 will make it impossible—unless I am wrong and the Minister will, I hope correct me if I am wrong—for these private television stations to operate. This is censorship again. This is the appalling, oppressive censorship, the fear of Socrates that once they get to read, Heaven only knows what they will start thinking. All of these dangerous socialist and communist ideas, liberal attitudes, subjects like therapeutic legal abortion, homosexuality, contraception, divorce, pluralist societies, will have to be discussed. They are not discussed due to this total suppression upon our television. They do not exist, as we all know. They are invariably discussed in very tight blinkers, but they will come to be discussed.
The Minister is suppressing this development instead of encouraging it, because it is of course a dangerous thing. People like myself have dangerous beliefs which fortunately are sweeping through most of the countries in the world, Asia, Africa, and so on, and which will eventually filter through the Emerald curtain. The public will get access to them, because the only thing that is stopping the public, in my view, accepting them is the fact that they are not allowed to hear them. They will eventually be allowed to hear them, but not if the Minister stamps on this very delicate development in relation to personal, private television. This is really like the prevention of the development of printing presses, the prevention of the printing of books, papers and so on.
The Minister is full of illuminating illustrations as to his private mind and his public mind. Sometimes they are one. Sometimes they are not, but this is another occasion in which they are one. For instance, on his way to talk to us about the liberal ethic here and democracy the other day on the Second Reading, he took the trouble to vote in favour of the expulsion of a group of people who are running a small little leaflet called The Liaison Bulletin in his own party. Again all it was doing was putting out a different point of view to the Minister's. This is something he felt should not be tolerated. It was only a few hundred but at the same time it was dangerous. This kind of intolerance—which one hopes he did not pick up from his sojourn with Nkrumah and will not have a lasting impression on him—is something which is rather frightening, because the liaison document is relatively unimportant. The important point is this kind of intolerance of the dissentient point of view. I was interested to hear Senator Halligan's dissertation on democracy and the liberal ethic too. It was appalling humbug, because he was in the process of doing the same thing, stamping on this particular little document and also responsible for running a conference in which the dissentient voice is given two minutes and the others are given as long as they like.
This, I suppose, is common form in political parties. It can be particularly dangerous if the Minister abuses the enormous power he has, especially in the times that there are now in which I am sure, as things become more and more difficult, he will become more and more tempted to impose these kinds of strictures and sanctions.
Then there is the broadcasting scheme in Ballyfermot. Senator Robinson was worried about this point, too, and I have great respect for her beliefs on these things. Would the Minister clarify that point? Will it be necessary for other communities like the Ballyfermot community group to pay enormous sums for a licence in these circumstances? It would be very retrograde if that was the case. It would be just like the strictest of strict censorships. I cannot believe, in the final analysis, that it would be effective.
I believe that a broadcasting authority should be appointed and thereafter allowed to run the enterprise, and I do not think I am being unreasonable or unrealistic—that delightful word of the hard-headed politicians. I find it difficult to understand why a broadcasting authority cannot be permitted to accept responsibility and to leave it at that. I can understand the Minister appointing one or two civil servants to the board, but thereafter I do not see why the Minister, as a politician, should continue to hold responsibility in this way. I did not take that idea just out of the air. No doubt everybody on the board will be scions of the Establishment, reliable, reputable people of the Establishment, and have bona fides beyond question.
I have had occasion to deal with different but all very costly schemes, something in the region of £20 million or £30 million, £120 million or £130 million, I suppose, now. I took this particular approach with the various bodies which I established: the Blood Transfusion Board, the Cancer Association, the Rehabilitation Board, the BCG Board, the Mass Radiography Board, St. Loman's Hospital Board, the Meath Hospital Board, and so on. Many of them worked without interference. We had civil service representatives on the board. We drew up their articles of association, we gave them the authority, gave them the money and let them get on with the job. They all performed their functions extremely well. Some of them have gone out of business because they accomplished the task for which they were established.
I do not see why the same procedure cannot apply in relation to broadcasting. This is the way I would have gone about the task, but with the added proviso that the members of the board responsible for television should be nominated from different representative groups, the trade unions, universities, public authorities, and not by safe place men nominated by the Minister. The various groups, the professional bodies, journalists and so on, should, in an attempt to introduce democracy into the television service, be given the right to nominate their representative on to a governing body for television. This would achieve some measure of evolution of the over-centralised authority which the Minister seems to favour so much.
I do not see why the Minister could not adopt a scheme of that kind and thereby lay the complicated and difficult task of running a broadcasting system on the shoulders of those various people. There is virtue in the fact that, first of all, there is the responsibility of the individuals concerned and, secondly, that these people know what the public want and like. They do not have to depend on the university don sitting back in his chair and from time to time, tut tutting about what they are having or are not having. The origin of power would come from the people. Surely it is time that we did more than pay lip service to the whole idea of democracy, instead of this long speech which one gets from some poor young lad who has been through all the authorities, penned it and then got his girlfriend to type it out. All these platitudes, clichés and great names and wandering through the world of telecommunications are totally irrelevant. I must confess that I do not think the Minister applied his sharp mind to this question. I wonder if this is the same speech as the man read to us 15 or 20 years ago when he was introducing the same Bill except the rude words about journalists and the Provos—I suspect they were not included.
I hope the Minister will think again about section 17 and be careful on the question of allowing community television services to develop. It is excellent certainly in Connemara and I am sure Senator M.D. Higgins and Bob Quinn will know that; the same can be said about Ballyfermot. It is a wonderfully unifying force and is extremely stimulating and exciting for the community. Obviously television will develop along these lines.
However the board, like the rest of the proposals in the Bill, is totally unimaginative and mundane. Old Queen Victoria or the Vice Regal Commission could have produced something similar. I do not know what the position is within the Cabinet but I suspect the Labour people have very little power, but once upon a time we talked about the virtues of the democratisation of these great institutions, and there was nothing more exciting or more fruitful in its repercussions on our society than this particular institution.
I am astonished about the proposal on BBC 1. I cannot see why we should facilitate BBC 2 around the rest of the country. If BBC 1 wished to be seen around the rest of the country, let them get on with it, but for a national television service to take over, in toto, the television service of another country and transmit it is the most remarkable proposal I have ever heard from a Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. He comes up with the most bizarre proposals from time to time. One would like to know the rationale for this extraordinary proposal.
What on earth have these people in common with our people? There are obviously some very fine programmes in BBC 1. There are also very fine programmes on the French, Italian, Czechoslovakian, Russian and, above all, Irish radio—Radio Telefís Éireann. Radio Telefís Éireann produce very good programmes. They suffer from a shortage of money, but that is not their fault; it is the Minister's fault. The technicians are there; the technocrats, the professional people are there; the artists are there. Anybody who watches Telefís Éireann knows that.
It seems extraordinary that the Minister should lash the unfortunate broadcasters in Telefís Éireann for their love affair with violence when it has nothing to do with them at all. It is like saying that the advertisers have a love affair with violence. Why do the advertisers who want to sell soap powder or some other commodity like detective pictures? Because people like to look at these dreadful detective films. It is the people who need to be examined when we study this question of violence, not the broadcasters. The Minister's attack is totally misplaced. He is completely misinformed in his allocation of blame in this respect.
The odd thing is that the Minister appears to be prepared to facilitate BBC 2 programmes going out all over Ireland completely uncensored. What is going to happen our censorship? Why should he censor Radio Telefís Éireann? We shall have to debate this one of these days. Why should he censor Tomás MacGiolla or Cathal Goulding, or worse still, both of them together? The absurdity of it; it is quite ludicrous. However, this is what may happen one day. The Minister would send his ukase across. Telegrams would flash out all over Ireland. We would all be brought back from our various summer resorts. We would have to come here to debate this appalling sin of commission by the broadcasters. They had shown these terrible people on Telefís Éireann; they had spoken to them quietly and listened to their replies. As a result of this broadcast, we had the corruption of the community. Then there is the poor Minister for Posts and Telegraphs attempting to mop up the disastrous consequences of the exposure of the community to ten minutes of this kind of viewing.
What happens with BBC 1? What happens if Mary Holland gets a job in BBC 1? Suppose she decides she would like to talk to Ó Brádaigh, or Daithí Ó Connaill or Cathal Goulding or even myself? I might even get on from time to time. What happens then? The poor Minister would sit in frustrated impotence in his Cabinet office or in his ministerial room watching this frightful stuff—much worse than he would see in The Liaison Bulletin, the Ballyfermot Community Service or Bob Quinn in Connemara. There would be dreadful stuff coming in from BBC 2— Mary Holland talking to all these people and putting terrible ideas into the heads of poor Irish simpletons, the ancient and historic Irish people and he not being able to do anything about it. Should we put a section in this Bill which would allow us to call Parliament together should Mary Holland get a job on BBC and ask for her removal so that we do not have this exposure to seditious and subversive groups on our television?
What is the Minister going to do about this? We cannot be sure that the BBC will stay as it is. If Enoch Powell becomes Minister, anything can happen. The Minister, I am sure, is very surprised to see himself where he is. Anything can happen in politics; that is the marvellous thing about it. Suppose he becomes all racialist and says the Irish are all Paddys and Micks and should go home. Suppose this is what we get out in Connemara, Limerick or Kerry or wherever it may be, what is the Minister going to do about it? It is a very dangerous step to hand over authority to a foreign country to shower our people with anything they want to produce on dangerous subjects such as contraception, therapeutic legal abortion, divorce, free love, pluralist societies. What is the Minister going to do about all that?
It is not very logical for the Minister to behave in this extraordinary way. The interesting thing about BBC is this, as I said last week. Sir John Reith made it quite clear that BBC was an institution within the Establishment. When there was any trouble, there was no question of anything except the conventional attitudes of the English Establishment getting across. I am sure the Minister knows that and does not have any illusions about it. I am also sure he does not believe for one moment that the BBC is a democratic or liberal institution. It is the most hidebound, rigidly conventional right wing establishment of all the television establishments.
As a Labour man, a socialist and a trade unionist, the Minister might like to know that there is no democratic control within the BBC. It is very much an elitist, middle-class, bourgeois establishment in its control and in its operation. No attempt whatever has been made to get any kind of democratic control in television in Britain. The ACTT, the television and cinema operators' trade union, is attempting to do something about that. At present it is very hard to know why the Minister should lean out from our shores and pluck out of the air this television service at great cost. Some other Senator dwelt on the point of what it will cost. It will be an enormous sum for what I consider to be a very mediocre fifth rate service. That is merely my judgment and it may not be a good one.
The Minister is going to do this. What are its merits? What has it to offer? In January, 1971, the ACTT were worried about both ITV and BBC. Mary Holland apparently was at fault on that occasion from the union point of view. They monitored a certain period when they were fighting the Industrial Relations Bill. I am sure everyone remembers that. The texts of the protests, the strikes, the lock-outs, the pickets and so on and the commentary by the commentators were monitored, recorded and analysed in terms of content and language. This was motivated by their earlier experience of similar strikes when the power workers were involved. They came up with the unsurprising conclusions that the newscasts had been used to produce an emotional bias against the workers by concentrating on interviews with doctors using kidney dialysis machines, incubators and so on. There was no attempt whatever to give a fair coverage to the trade union and workers' side of the story. One could make the same charge about the programme on tanker drivers the other night. The unofficial people should have been on that programme but I suspect they refused to appear. It was a very good programme.
The ACTT found that this is a very partisan television service. And this is the television service—BBC and ITV —which the Minister proposes to make available, in spite of the fact that we have the most highly talented writers, artists, cameramen, producers, announcers in the world. They are first class people. They went away and learned their jobs. All they need are more opportunities to make more programmes, and they will do it with pleasure if they are permitted.
Our broadcasters are simply ordinary people. Although many of my left wing friends do not agree with me, I think we are rather lucky here. For various historical reasons we have a classless society. I know they are doing their best to try to create one but broadly speaking this is true. We are all first generation peasants. We all had an ordinary education through the national schools.
The same criticism cannot be made of Irish broadcasting as of BBC broadcasting. BBC broadcasters are mostly public school people and middle class. Without meaning to be, they are hostile to workers' interests. This is what they learned in their public schools. I know because I was in both public and national schools. I know every side of the story. They were educated to believe that the worker is always wrong. Whatever the reasons for it, this is the truth. The Minister is now proposing to give us this kind of a service. I do not see why he should go to the trouble or expense.
The Minister should give Telefís Éireann the opportunity of going around the world, not just Europe, and getting a block of the finest programmes from the States, the socialist, African and eastern countries, and above everything, telling our own people to maximise the home content and giving them the money to do it. Above everything, do not squander on imported programmes the money which is in such short supply.
I must apologise to Senators for having taken up so much of their time. I happen to be particularly interested in this subject because I consider this medium of broadcasting and television to be potentially the great determinator for the future character of culturist societies.
I am disappointed the Minister did not give us an opportunity to discuss the technical possibilities as well as the intellectual and cultural opportunities of giving a lead, even in this component of our society, to other countries. In common with virtually everybody else, except the Dutch, he has a fear of the people, a fear of democracy, this pitiful use of words like the "preservation or the protection of the public interest", "concern for the public interest" and "the public welfare", which essentially is preservation of their own position within society, their sense of insecurity, their inability to recognise that the public is much more capable of advanced and enlightened thinking than they gave them credit for.
That could have been acceptable in the old days when the level of illiteracy in our society was very high. For that reason one had to appear to be the father figure, pat people on the head and tell them what was and was not good for them. That is no longer so and is completely out of place with the Minister, who purports to be a member of the Labour Party. He shows a reluctance to discuss this. I referred last week to the general failure of the Left throughout the world to try to come to terms with the fearful challenge of television and broadcasting generally. This has been dismissed as a rationalisation of their own fear—the fear of the Left—that they are dealing with something beyond their capacity to handle. This is a powerful force with a multiplicity of differing ideas which in some way have to be controlled. We have seen attempts made by different countries to introduce socialism—the eastern bloc countries, central European, middle eastern, African and Indian countries. Relatively speaking— perhaps this is something which may take centuries—they failed to give the people the real power to control their own destinies.
This was an opportunity for the Minister to allow us to discuss the possibilities of creating a democratic type of governing authority and to try to let go the power he is retaining to himself. It was there in the old Bill and was acceptable at that time when he was dealing with a different people, society and culture. Standards and values have completely changed, largely because of the influence of television. It will be changed even further in the years ahead. It is complenty retrograde of him to have attempted to keep this enormously powerful medium tethered.
I will conclude with one remark. Man knows himself only as much as he knows the world. He knows the world only within himself, and he is aware of himself within the world. Each new object truly recognised opens up a new organ within ourselves. This is what Goethe says. The true meaning of the enormous power of television is implicit in this comment. It is sad that the Minister failed to recognise it.
