The Four Horsemen – and taking offence

An Irishman’s Diary: about Messrs Adams, Campbell, Delaney, and Barney Devlin

Recent events in both jurisdictions of this island has borne uncanny resemblances to the "odd one out" round of that satirical BBC current affairs TV show, Have I Got News For You?

As presented on the latter, they would be summed up in four photographs of Gerry Adams, Gregory Campbell, John Delaney, and a 96-year-old Derry blacksmith named Barney Devlin – all of them Irish and all associated with incidents that caused offence, somewhere or other.

After the usual comic turns from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, the misfit in the quartet would finally be identified as Devlin: who is the only one of the four not to have had to apologise for, or at least explain, his recorded utterances.

On the contrary, it was the BBC that felt the need to explain him, when he was interviewed for the agricultural TV series Countryfile. Fearing his Derry accent would be unintelligible to viewers in Britain, they added subtitles.

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The blacksmith was also the only one who didn’t cause or take offence himself. According to the BBC, he had no objection to them using subtitles. Instead, the offence was taken for him, by local politicians. That’s their job.

Countryfile's interest in Devlin stemmed from the fact that his family forge was the inspiration for a Seamus Heaney poem, The Forge, which as well as describing a blacksmith's work (observed when Heaney was a schoolboy) may also be read as a metaphor for the work of a poet.

So as they hammered red-hot horse shoes into shape on their anvil more than 60 years ago, Devlin (and his father) helped to spark the imagination of a future Nobel laureate. And yet, despite this and the fact that he was speaking English while simultaneously pointing to the visual props Heaney had mentioned, the BBC thought his words should be accompanied by a transcript.

Still, maybe the Beeb’s insensitivity produced some good. Devlin was also unique among the quartet in that his case inspired cross-community outrage. Sinn Féin MP Francie Brolly and the DUP’s Peter Weir were at one in their offence-taking. It’s not every day that happens in a part of the world where grief is usually the only thing in which communities are said to be united.

Apart from anything else, the Countryfile controversy made me wonder at the illogicality of the same English language, in which the work of the "forge" is a symbol of everything true and authentic, as tested by fire, while a "forgery" is more or less the opposite.

It’s a parallel etymology, apparently, and Old French (via the verb “forger“) is to blame. But in any case, as a hardy nonagenarian, Devlin seems to be the epitome of his trade, and the word’s higher meaning. Clearly, he was too authentic for the BBC.

As for the others, they all needed a bit of forge work – in one sense or other – after their various broadcasts. Adams’s main crime was to be caught calling his opponents “bastards”. But his description of the equality agenda as a “Trojan horse” was also later found to be lame in the hind-quarters and needed re-shoeing.

Then there was that human bellows, John Delaney, who showed himself to very good at creating a fire, but not so good at putting it out afterwards. Better wind control needed in future. And then there was Gregory Campbell.

Unlike the other two offenders, he didn’t feel the need to issue an apology for his words: not even an apology of the half-fat “if I caused offence” variety. The best he could do was to say that he hadn’t meant to insult the Irish language, per se, only the way Sinn Féin politicised it.

Then, still delighted at the hilarity of his original pigeon-Gaelic lampoon, in which greetings sound like food items, he reprised it at his party's conference, this time with the addition of pictograms (including a pot of yoghurt). So although he wasn't among those to proclaim public offence at the Countryfile insult, the incident would seem to have had a particular lesson for him.

Indeed, even though Northern Ireland is not short on offence-takers, I would like to think that Gregory too was privately upset at the Countryfile report. I hope that, deep down, he was at least a little insulted at seeing a fellow Derryman (oh all right, Gregory — Londonderryman), speaking the Queen's English, but given subtitles by the UK's national broadcaster.

@FrankmcnallyIT