It has been a tough week for the British professor of journalism, Roy Greenslade, who for some reason decided to commit the literary equivalent of a soldier’s suicide. With what was considered rather strange timing, he popped his head outside the camouflage and into the crosshairs of the many snipers who at the time were not even scanning the terrain for a target, but who nevertheless pulled the trigger the minute he stepped into their sights.
Writing in the British Journalism Review, Greenslade belatedly admitted to having been a supporter of the Provisional IRA’s armed struggle while it was a work in progress. His reasoning: he believed a power disparity to be at play which favoured the narrative of state terrorism and those waging the dirty war against a much weaker adversary.
I have previously written that I took solace from the fact that some British journalists were prepared to at least see things differently. When scribes were flocking to buy the deceptions of the British Army's Lisburn Lie Machine there were others who did not join the queue to receive the daily dung diet. Greenslade went further than most: while managing news editor with the Sunday Times he wrote a column for An Phoblacht/Republican News under the pseudonym George King. It raises ethical questions but at the same time were he to have been out in the open he would instantly have rendered himself unemployable. If he wasn't hiding behind his pseudonym to smear people but was instead using it as an enabler to convey accurately the situation as he read it for the benefit of public understanding, there is no reason that I can think of to be particularly perturbed.
For his delayed candour, Greenslade has faced a barrage of criticism: including the charge that he may have known in advance about an IRA plot to kill a journalist working for him, the late Liam Clarke. These suspicions, while genuinely held, are speculative and Greenslade has denied any such thing.
It is well within the bounds of probability that he is telling the truth. What is indisputable is that he was an agent of influence for at least Sinn Fein. In the service of the party, among those he demonstrably used his elevated status within the world of journalism to discredit were Kevin Myers, Mairia Cahill, Henry McDonald, and Paul Bew, all of whom were disingenuously depicted as fundamentally dishonest and working to an anti-Sinn Fein agenda. The sheer chutzpah of Roy Greenslade causes me to think of the person who kills both his parents and then pleads for sympathy on the grounds of being an orphan.
On a number of occasions, I was on the receiving end of Greenslade’s skewed commentary. I always considered him as free to write what he wanted about me no matter how critical or wrong. Every angle was open to exploration so there seemed no compelling reason for me to want Greenslade silenced. I was more than capable of acerbically returning the serve, stroke for stroke.
In his lambasting of the Boston College project – something he or anyone else was perfectly entitled to do no matter how much it might have irked me - Greenslade relied extensively but not exclusively on three dubious sources: a former chief of Staff of the IRA, a former director of publicity for Sinn Fein; and a David Icke type website. The three were clearly singing from the same hymn sheet: demean, discredit, destroy anyone willing to question, for whatever reason, the Adams leadership. Greenslade added his voice to create a querulous quartet in the hope of drowning out alternative voices.
At the heart of the onslaught in the past week has been Greenslade's working for the Provisional Movement. While true, a wider lens might just be required. The Provos hardly needed the leader of the striking miners, Arthur Scargill, smeared and discredited. MI5 most certainly did. Greenslade arrantly and egregiously obliged.
An habitual feature of Roy Greenslade's modus operandi was that he attacked and smeared those who for varying reasons challenged either the narrative or integrity of a Provo leadership that just so happened to be pushing the republican project towards a British state favoured outcome – unity only by consent. This terminus - or knackers yard, to borrow a term used by Bobby Sands - was 180 degrees from both the methodology and philosophy of the Provisional IRA which was unity through coercion – coerce the British out of Ireland and coerce the unionists into a unitary state.
Writing in the British Journalism Review, Greenslade belatedly admitted to having been a supporter of the Provisional IRA’s armed struggle while it was a work in progress. His reasoning: he believed a power disparity to be at play which favoured the narrative of state terrorism and those waging the dirty war against a much weaker adversary.
I have previously written that I took solace from the fact that some British journalists were prepared to at least see things differently. When scribes were flocking to buy the deceptions of the British Army's Lisburn Lie Machine there were others who did not join the queue to receive the daily dung diet. Greenslade went further than most: while managing news editor with the Sunday Times he wrote a column for An Phoblacht/Republican News under the pseudonym George King. It raises ethical questions but at the same time were he to have been out in the open he would instantly have rendered himself unemployable. If he wasn't hiding behind his pseudonym to smear people but was instead using it as an enabler to convey accurately the situation as he read it for the benefit of public understanding, there is no reason that I can think of to be particularly perturbed.
For his delayed candour, Greenslade has faced a barrage of criticism: including the charge that he may have known in advance about an IRA plot to kill a journalist working for him, the late Liam Clarke. These suspicions, while genuinely held, are speculative and Greenslade has denied any such thing.
I categorically deny passing any information to the IRA at any time. I didn't have any information to pass on. I was an intellectual supporter, not a practical one. I was not privy to any classified information. I was an office-bound executive with no contact personally or by phone with any person from the security services. So, it follows that I didn't pass any such information to anyone.
It is well within the bounds of probability that he is telling the truth. What is indisputable is that he was an agent of influence for at least Sinn Fein. In the service of the party, among those he demonstrably used his elevated status within the world of journalism to discredit were Kevin Myers, Mairia Cahill, Henry McDonald, and Paul Bew, all of whom were disingenuously depicted as fundamentally dishonest and working to an anti-Sinn Fein agenda. The sheer chutzpah of Roy Greenslade causes me to think of the person who kills both his parents and then pleads for sympathy on the grounds of being an orphan.
On a number of occasions, I was on the receiving end of Greenslade’s skewed commentary. I always considered him as free to write what he wanted about me no matter how critical or wrong. Every angle was open to exploration so there seemed no compelling reason for me to want Greenslade silenced. I was more than capable of acerbically returning the serve, stroke for stroke.
In his lambasting of the Boston College project – something he or anyone else was perfectly entitled to do no matter how much it might have irked me - Greenslade relied extensively but not exclusively on three dubious sources: a former chief of Staff of the IRA, a former director of publicity for Sinn Fein; and a David Icke type website. The three were clearly singing from the same hymn sheet: demean, discredit, destroy anyone willing to question, for whatever reason, the Adams leadership. Greenslade added his voice to create a querulous quartet in the hope of drowning out alternative voices.
In pursuit of his bid to sabotage the project he sought to discredit Professor Paul Bew to whom, with malign intent of his own, he fallaciously sought to have similar intent projected onto. While I am certainly seeking no apology from the Guardian, Paul Bew deserves one. Greenslade scurrilously sought to destroy his reputation and have him dismissed with ignominy from his role "as the guardian of ethics for public officials when chairing the Committee on Standards in Public Life."
At the heart of the onslaught in the past week has been Greenslade's working for the Provisional Movement. While true, a wider lens might just be required. The Provos hardly needed the leader of the striking miners, Arthur Scargill, smeared and discredited. MI5 most certainly did. Greenslade arrantly and egregiously obliged.
An habitual feature of Roy Greenslade's modus operandi was that he attacked and smeared those who for varying reasons challenged either the narrative or integrity of a Provo leadership that just so happened to be pushing the republican project towards a British state favoured outcome – unity only by consent. This terminus - or knackers yard, to borrow a term used by Bobby Sands - was 180 degrees from both the methodology and philosophy of the Provisional IRA which was unity through coercion – coerce the British out of Ireland and coerce the unionists into a unitary state.
In this endeavour, which suited the British just fine, Greenslade performed the same role as Danny Morrison and Denis Donaldson, whose underhand methods were identical - using their agency to influence against, by way of smearing, those not in tune with the ultimate British state objective while influencing through flattery and sycophancy in favour of those within the Provisional leadership who were. Eagerly defending Gerry Adams against potential damage to his political career project or peace process as readily suited a British master as it did a Provo one, given that ensuring the Provos acquiesced in the consent principle was the shared objective.
The dovetailing of objectives easily allows for the possibility that the Professor of Smearology and others in the same line of business were simultaneously running with the Provo hare and hunting with the British hound, and all the more able to conceal their dual loyalties because the language of sameness that had come to characterise the peace process helped blur any evidential trail that might lead back to Thames House.
Looking back it is easy to see that Roy Greenslade has crossed the line many times, and nowhere more maliciously than in his 2014 article which sought to influence against Mairia Cahill after she came forward with allegations that she had been a target of rape by a former IRA member. It is not hard to imagine Dodgy Danny whispering in his ear. Dicey Denis had died by this stage. For Greenslade, the way such claims were to be evaluated were not by forensics or good detective work but by the political allegiances of the person claiming to have been raped. If you are a critic of Sinn Fein, there's the door.
Looking back it is easy to see that Roy Greenslade has crossed the line many times, and nowhere more maliciously than in his 2014 article which sought to influence against Mairia Cahill after she came forward with allegations that she had been a target of rape by a former IRA member. It is not hard to imagine Dodgy Danny whispering in his ear. Dicey Denis had died by this stage. For Greenslade, the way such claims were to be evaluated were not by forensics or good detective work but by the political allegiances of the person claiming to have been raped. If you are a critic of Sinn Fein, there's the door.
Guardian editor at the time, Alan Rusbridger might well claim that had he known of Greenslade's proclivity towards the Provisional IRA, he would not have let the malign article proceed. Which really means had Greenslade not have been a Provisional IRA supporter the article was okay. Well, it was not okay or anything within a country mile of being okay. It was a disgraceful slur, the type of smear we might expect to be mouthed by a misogynist filmmaker, or the red tops. Certainly not from within the upper echelons of supposedly serious broadsheet British journalism.
Roy Greenslade RIT - Reputation in Tatters.
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