Facts don't feature in the angry life of Brian
Sunday April 08 2007
He once told an audience that the opening section of my book, The Faithful Tribe - which described at length the first Orange parade I'd ever attended - was obviously invented, as the name of the Belfast field where the marchers congregated was wrong. He snorted disbelievingly when I said I'd made a small error, not told a big lie.
Last week, he said in his Irish News column that 'Ruth 'eadly' Edwards' had been let down by all her heroes: "Trimble, the Orange Order and now Paisley." Weary correction: Trimble, whom I admire for his courage and decency, did not let me down; the Orange Order was no more a hero to me than Ballinamallard Knitting Circle; and I've been denouncing Paisley as a bigot and a wrecker for all my journalistic career.
But facts don't bother Feeney. This article was an attack on me, Kevin Myers and Conor Cruise O'Brien for being "fundamentally anti-democratic" by opposing the shifts in opinion of the Northern electorate that have brought victory for the DUP and Sinn Fein. (Eoghan Harris was mysteriously excused as a late convert to arepublican-loyalist deal.) I'll leave my comrades in obliquy to speak for themselves.
I'm in favour of a deal rather than no deal, though I'm gloomy about the prospects of success for a power-splitting arrangement between religious and political bigots which institutionalises sectarianism. But what I enjoyed was Feeney's nerve in implying that to be critical of the way people vote is to beanti-democratic. This from the man who wrote last year that: "To advertise their political dementia to the world, unionists have repeatedly voted for a man regarded as a ranting buffoon to be their tribal leader." Quite, Brian. If you had added that "to advertise their moral dementia, nationalists have repeatedly voted for a hypocrite known to be a terrorist leader to be theirs", we'd be in complete agreement for once.
- Ruth Dudley Edwards
