Political instrumentalisation of the media - examples from Serbia, France, and Slovakia

Using ethnic conflict for political self-interests - Northern Ireland in the French communist press

Maurice Goldring

The set-up
In 1981, the Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland went on hunger strike in order to obtain the status of political prisoners. Ten of them died and this movement caused an international uproar.

The case
In France, the Communist Party launched a high level campaign, a committee was organised with communist militants and left-wing catholics. An appeal to Margaret Thatcher circulated among intellectuals. Telegrams were sent, deputations to the British Embassy, street demonstrations and public meetings organised, city councils named streets after Bobby Sands. The film ''Patriot Game'' was shown and circulated.

The first theme of the campaign was the fight against ''British colonialism''. ''The British governments have behaved and still behave as real colonisers terrorising the whole of the country'' (Comité de défense des libertés, 1980). Northern Ireland was the ''last colony in Europe'' (Yves Moreau, l'Humanité, April 20 1981). The call for the demonstration in front of the British Embassy said: ''Mrs Thatcher and all English colonialists have their hands covered with blood... Down with British colonialism! Freedom for the Irish!'' (May 6 1981). In reply to a message from Tony Hughes, a prisoner in Long Kesh and the brother of Francis Hughes, one the hunger strikers, the French Communist Party wrote: ''In front of the picture of Bobby Sands, we swore to carry on and to develop our fight against English colonialists, for your rights, the freedom of all Irishmen... we shall stand by your side till victory!'', l'Humanité, May 9 1981).

If Northern Ireland was the last colony of Europe, the British troops were an occupying force and the IRA waged a war of national liberation. People might not have been aware of it, but others in France knew better. ''It is a fight against colonialism, even though it takes the form of a fratricidal war between two communities'' (Richard Michel, Révolution, May 1 1981). Sometimes, the anti-colonial war became a ''class war'', ''even though the conflict is concealed in a religious war, even if the victims are willing to stick to this false issue'' (George Girard, Révolution, May 1981). The message was clear: ''We, in France, are going to tell you, in Ireland, what you are really fighting for''.

The second theme of this campaign was human rights. "Ireland is one of the countries in the world where discrimination and brutal methods of repression are condoned by a police state" (Henri Alleg, l'Humanité, April 15 1980). ''The rights of men are violated by governments who claim to defend them'' (Comité de défense des libertés, December 15, 1980). ''Let us imagine for a minute a car of the Polish army crashing into a demonstration and shooting young people. What headlines! What horrified comments!'' (Jean-Emile Vidal, l'Humanité, April 21 1981). In the call for the May 6 demonstration: ''The supporters of the so-called free world...refer to human rights only for certain countries. Imagine that in some capital without capitalism a dissident goes on hunger strike for 66 days...'' (André Wurmser, l'Humanité, May 7 1981. To understand those elements, one should bear in mind that in those days, the French Communist Party claimed its allegiance to the Soviet bloc and denounced a campaign against socialism based on the human rights theme. Last but not least, in the political situation in Spring 1981, the French Communist Party, after a long period of alliance with the Socialist Party of François Mitterrand, decided to split up in order to regain lost ground on a ''hardline'', leftist policy. Anything that went towards proving that the Socialists were betraying their left-wing programme was welcome. Northern Ireland was used to ''prove'' that the Communist Party was the only party to fight British colonialism and the violation of human rights. So, at the European Parliament, ''conservatives and Socialists voted together to prevent any discussion of human rights in Northern Ireland'' (Jean-Emile Vidal, l'Humanité, December 20, 1980).

l'Humanité made it an important point that only the Communist Party and the Confédération Générale du Travail seemed to care, while everybody else in France including the two candidates for the second round of the presidential elections, offered no comment. The two candidates were Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand.

When Bobby Sands died, l'Humanité accused the Tory government of murder and the Labour party as an accomplice to bloodshed.

On May 10, 1981, François Mitterrand was elected president. The result was considered as a success and the French Communist Party decided to be part of a left-wing government. The change was immediately visible in the wording and in the tone of the Communist daily. On May 13, the leading article on Northern Ireland centred on the hunger strikers' demands only. There was no further mention of Mitterrand's silence, or of his party either. The blame for passivity was placed on the press (''In France, with the exception of l'Humanité, what paper is moved by the death of Francis Hughes?'') and on foreign labour parties: ''Helmut Schmidt has just spent two days with Mrs Thatcher in a relaxed atmosphere''. The direct demands or appeals to François Mitterrand and the Socialist Party disappeared overnight.

Various of the hunger strikers died during that month. The deaths were reported about, but no demands to the French government were made. The British Labour Party had utterly faded out. On May 29, Lord Carrington came to Paris. l'Humanité published an ''open letter'' to the Foreign Minister asking the British to meet the five demands of the Republican prisoners. The climax came on the same day: Lord Carrington met with Claude Cheysson, the French Foreign Minister, l'Humanité published without the slightest comment the final statement: ''Between France and Britain, there is a series of common fundamental elements: one of them is the respect for democratic values''. Obviously a leaf had been turned and the French Communist Party had taken seriously the entry of four of its members into the government of François Mitterrand. There is no need to add that the solemn promise ''We shall stand by your fight till your victory'' turned sour. As far as the French Communist Party was concerned, the national war of liberation and the ''class war'' were over.

Analysis and interpretation
One might say that this is a blatant example of instrumental use of a foreign conflict for internal political purposes, so clearly obvious that it borders on caricature. But the most extreme examples may be revealing of more subtle and more profound attitudes.

One is struck by the fundamental selfishness of political interpretations of foreign conflicts. France is culturally and historically a catholic country. Britain has been its arch enemy for centuries and the reverse is true, too. So the spontaneous reaction is to blame the British and to sympathise with the catholic minority in Northern Ireland as exploited and victimised by the English and their ''agents in the North''. The Committee for Ireland, a pro-republican organisation in the eighties, stated that it ''was not satisfied with the coverage of the conflict by the French press'', but added that ''a strictly pro-British point of view is hardly ever presented by the media'' (Comité Irlande libre, 1980). Even the right-wing paper Le Figaro assumed an anti-British and pro-IRA stance, and Bernadette Devlin, in her moment of glory, was often compared to Joan of Arc (June 23 1969). The protestants were regularly presented as a minority. Northern Ireland was seen as a place where an occupied country fights the troops of British colonialism. A protestant majority did not fit the image. Consequently it was ''reinterpreted'' as minority. It was more satisfactory to have the colonisers fighting the colonised. The picture was false, but clear.

When Bobby Sands died, the only adverse reaction came in a short provocative article by Delfeil de Ton in Libération who wrote an article entitled I'm sick of heroes. There was such a wave of anger by readers that the journalist had to leave the paper. During the hunger strike, I tried to explain that Bobby Sands had not been arrested for stealing a bar of chocolate in a supermarket. I lost a few friends then. My articles were refused, not only in the Communist press. Who was going to go against the general sentiment in the media, ready to lose not friends, but customers, for a principled stand?

Maurice Goldring is history professor at Université Paris VIII, Saint Denis, France.

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