IT WOULD have been good to start the column with the revelation that even though the Euro-elections had been interminally boring in Britain, in Ireland... But alas it could not be.
Picture lan Paisley erect in khaki-green popemobile bedecked with Union Jacks driving through Ballymena. Sinn Fein must be smashed at the polls! The Shadow of the Sinn Fein gunman lies across the province! Danny Morrison, the incarnation of evil!' Is this the voice of lan Paisley! Well yes, and then again no.
The man of iron lungs has become a victim of the new technology recorder — better able perhaps to repeat the same thing over and over again than a human being.
Another victim could be seen south of the border. Charlie Haughey bemoaning 'me wounds for me country' held out his hand for reporters to show open sores on three fingers, prolonged bout of hand-shaking. Maybe they will invent a machine for that!
With such newsworthy stories, it is no wonder that minor issues like partition, the Forum, jobs, neutrality and the role of the multi-nationals have been forced into second place.
tune contest for the nationalist vote between SDLP sitting Euro MEP. John Hume and Sinn Feiner Danny Morrison. Hume is apparently using his record in Strasbourg rather than the Forum report as the main campaign issue.
Judge Gibson's acquittal of three RUC men and subsequent endorsement of army shoot-to-kill policies, Hume hopes to clinch the seat by winning transfers from the protestant Alliance pariy.
Morrison on the other hand concentrates on the 'double-jobbing' of Hume, the SDLP's record of collaboration with the British. and the 'dolivmixture' packaging of the Forum which answers none of the problems faced by the nationalist communitv. He hopes that the jack of interest in the election will work against the SDLP whose electoral machine is disintegrating as fast as Sinn Fein's is growing.
In the Unionist camp, the jostling for position between the 'triple-jobbing' Official Unionists and Democratic Unionists continues to revolve around just how much of a threat is posed by Sinn Fein. The theory goes turn to the DUP, otherwise they slip back to complacency and the OUP.
In the South, European issues have featured more. On farm policy, a recent report showed thousands of small farmers living on an average of f25 per week. EEC money now almost unendingly into the pockets of the few rich farmers and ranchers. pieuge of the Worker's underground railway and oil refinery in Dublin, neither they nor the Labour Party have extended their verbal defence of jobs and living standards to an assault on partition which has opened up the South to the ravages of the multinationals whose investment policies have broken up traditional industries and led to rocketing unemployment.
Neutrality made a last minute entry into the headlines last Wednesday with the resuscitation of the Western European Union in Paris. sion of the European members of NATO to use meetings of the Euro-parliament as a caucus for their intervention into NATO was bound to raise hackles in a country where 84 per cent of the electorate actively in tavour neutrality and already see membership of the EEČ as a threat to it.
Irish CND have been circulating a neutrality pledge to all candidates which has further exposed Fianna Fail's hesitancy. Labour's Frank Cluskey suggested a referendum on the issue. Sinn Fein has now formally endorsed the despite having to change the names of their candidates so that the words 'Sinn Fein' could appear imperialist camperge in the elections. This ntiimperialist campaign in the elections. been endorsed by Peoples' Democracy, mises to be the sole lasting benefit of the whole — replaced by a mini-cassette sustained in a North, everything hinges around the Failing to comment on that under threat oralists wil seems to flow Despite the last minute an The deciof maintaining aims of CND and This and pro-