Gay Byrne
Photo: Irish Mirror Fr Andrew McMahon
The opportunity to honour Gay Byrne’s impressive life’s work was exploited to impose a revisionist narrative of 20th Century Ireland, writes Fr Andrew McMahon
In a column in the Sunday Press almost 40 years ago author and critic Desmond Fennell spoke of “the Manichaean notion of the Dublin liberals that our society is divided, radically, between light and darkness”.
He believed it “a powerfully propagated myth” within 1980s Ireland where those advocating what he termed a ‘libertine’ approach on social issues and a British-friendly line on the Northern question did not just challenge but habitually demonised those opposing them.
“It follows that disagreement with Dublin liberals is not, in their view, an occasion for liberal tolerance” Mr Fennell concluded “but rather a sin against the light” while “victory over the liberals by their opponents (the dark, inhuman forces) is a grievous moral disorder”.
This paradigm of ‘light’ versus ‘darkness’ later featured in John Waters’ account of the Dublin in which he worked as a journalist. Exploring that vanguard of liberal advocacy, then characterised by the label ‘Dublin 4’, Mr Waters wrote in 1991 “it wanted no truck with the dark, irrational, priest-ridden place it called ‘rural Ireland’.
Irritation
For ‘Dublin 4’, this place was just a bad dream, a mild irritation on the periphery of its consciousness, a darkness on the edge of town…the new tribe defined Ireland on radio and television, the old listened with growing incomprehension to this strange definition of the country it had imagined itself to inhabit.”
Enthusiasm for the ‘liberal’ agenda within Ireland has long since spread beyond its Dublin 4 origins, and that once identifiable capital-country divide has, in consequence, been rendered obsolete. While by no means the only factors, Irish radio and television have undoubtedly been highly influential forces in this nation-wide development. Media awareness of this was much in evidence when the father figure of Irish broadcasting passed away recently.
It was wholly reasonable that Gay Byrne’s death should engender reflection on the media’s role in modernising Ireland and on RTÉ’s critical position within that process. But it was also predictable that the reflection might be a touch triumphalist given the success of the liberal agenda in recent years and the media’s identification with it.
What appeared less reasonable, however, was the disparaging nature of assumptions made throughout about the Ireland in which RTÉ came to function – with the commentary choosing to revive those concepts of darkness and light which Mr Fennell and Mr Waters had encountered decades earlier.
It was also predictable that the reflection of Mr Byrne’s death might be a touch triumphalist given the success of the liberal agenda in recent years and the media’s identification with it”
Soon after Gay Byrne’s passing on November 4, an RTÉ television special news bulletin appeared to set the tone for the wider reaction which would follow. It contained a brief discussion in which the newscaster, Ray Kennedy, attempted to evaluate Mr Byrne’s significance with the help of the network’s Arts and Media Correspondent Sinead Crowley. Shortly into the discussion, Mr Kennedy proposed: “He shone a light in many dark corners of a very dark Ireland at that time”. Ms Crowley cohered: “He really did”.
Mr Kennedy continued: “He gave people a voice at a time when they were silenced.”
“This is it”, agreed Mr Crowley – adding that women especially had “told him their innermost secrets”. While this was all, perhaps, arguable from a certain ideological standpoint, it seemed remarkably opinionated stuff for a State broadcaster. Who, for example, had deemed the Ireland in which RTÉ had been born to be a ‘very dark’ place? News editors at RTÉ, presumably. Had they conclusive evidence? Could it, therefore, be appropriate comment at a critical and influential moment in national news?
By next morning the Irish Times appeared to have followed suit. Its front page was given over to an opinion piece by Fintan O’Toole who believed that Ireland needed someone “to disarm it into opening its dark places, to make it say in public what it could not even admit in private”.
Mr O’Toole’s core thesis was that Gay Byrne had held the key “to a nation’s locked room of secrets.” What’s more, these themes would not only recur across a variety of media outlets, in subsequent days.
‘Voice for all’
Leading public figures would reiterate them too. President Michael D. Higgins, for instance, would declare that Mr Byrne had “challenged Irish society and shone a light not only on the bright but also the dark sides of Irish life”. For Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Mr Byrne had “changed Ireland for the better in so many ways”.
“Uncle Gaybo,” the Taoiseach elaborated, “provided a voice for all those who had been silenced, or were afraid to speak up, and helped us confront things that needed to be changed.”
It all seemed strong stuff! With secrets, locked rooms, darkness and the ‘silenced’, it would have been tempting to imagine – if one had not known otherwise – that the country, pre-RTÉ, had been something akin to Stalinist Russia.
In this way, the opportunity to honour Gay Byrne’s impressive life’s work was effectively exploited to re-impose a popular revisionist narrative of 20th-Century Ireland. Mr Byrne – we were asked to accept – was the product of a dark, ignorant and uncaring country.
He had somehow managed, nonetheless, to leave behind a new, enlightened and compassionate land. It is hard to identify any other nation – certainly none in the English-speaking world – where its present day commentariat consider it necessary to collectively thrash their forebears, in order that their own pretensions to righteousness might be sustained.
Mr Byrne’s many-sided broadcasting life, meanwhile, was portrayed in that largely uniform fashion so typical of Irish media today. Seldom, indeed, did the print or broadcast media diverge – in either content or analysis – from that account of his career which RTÉ News had promoted on the evening after his death.
Practically every outlet gave emphasis to the same Late Late Show highlights, from ‘the Bishop and the Nightie’ of early notoriety to the undermining of Padraig Flynn near the end of Mr Byrne’s tenure and the exposing of Charles Haughey’s ‘affair’ on his second last show – three cases, notably, in which traditional scourges of Dublin 4 were the public losers.
A common approach was also evident in how items from the Late Late Show were recalled and evaluated. Mr Byrne’s treatment of Gerry Adams in 1994, for example, was invariably described as “controversial”.
Commentators seemed unprepared to admit that it was prejudiced and partisan as well. Holding forth a condom while on air, and illustrating its workings, was hailed indicative of Gaybo’s daring style.
Certain members of his audience, though, had found it crass and objectionable and had told their host as much at the time. Virtually every review, on the other hand, had misgivings about Mr Byrne’s interview with Annie Murphy – reflecting precisely how feminists, liberals and letter-writers to the Irish Times had reacted to it.
It is hard to identify any other nation – certainly none in the English-speaking world – where its present day commentariat consider it necessary to collectively thrash their forebears”
Mr Byrne’s finest radio hour, meanwhile, was generally reported to have been the reading, on his show, of letters from Irish women, forwarded in response to the traumatic deaths of teenager Ann Lovett and her baby in 1984.
Highlighting the plight of women with crisis pregnancies, in such a sensitive manner, was undoubtedly something of immense value. Recollections of this tragedy, however, did not acknowledge concerns that it may have been exploited – reinforcing stereotypes of a benighted ‘rural Ireland’ and furthering related ideological agendas.
Gay Byrne was a remarkable broadcaster, whose skill, dedication and longevity deserve to be celebrated. Leading the way in earlier times, he widened debate in a rather paternalistic and inward-looking culture. In the longer run, though, he seemed to succumb to a newer establishment, increasingly playing to its ever-expanding demands.
Given the environment, Mr Byrne likely had little choice. His passing comes at a time when that establishment appears at the height of its powers, with conformity to its agenda ubiquitous in Irish public discourse.
The very framing of Mr Byrne’s story over recent weeks is further testament to this.
When the time for mourning Uncle Gaybo has eventually passed, this should remain a cause for sadness within the Ireland he has departed.