THE current issue of Phoenix claims the Sunday Independent is going soft on Sinn Fein. They wish. We long ago learned that middle Ireland strongly supports newspapers which stand up to Sinn Fein.

In media, as in politics, middle Ireland prefers pluralism to tribal polemics. It prefers the Sunday World to the Sunday Business Post and Bertie Ahern to Charles Haughey. As I keep saying: the national question is the only game in town.

Most major Irish political stories have some connection, no matter how slight, with the national question. As I shall now demonstrate by taking the two top political and cultural stories of the past week - the Mr 'A' rape case and the Ken Loach film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley .

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We need not dwell on the details of the Mr 'A' case. The victims have every right to feel angry and betrayed. Although it is ridiculous to regard it as a resigning matter, the Minister for Justice, the DPP and the Attorney General's office have blundered badly.

But it was a bigger blunder to rush through legislation that leaves the loonier aspects of the 1935 Act in place. Most parents of teenage sons, when they calm down, will see why Michael McDowell wanted to reform the law. No normal parent can think it right that a teenage boy, who has consensual sex with a girl a couple of years younger, should be charged with statutory rape.

But when the Joe Duffy media mob takes to the streets common sense is the first casualty. Only the trainee solicitor Edel Kennedy (who first blew the

'When the Joe Duffy media mob takes to the streets common sense is the first casualty'

whistle), and the writer John Waters held their heads. Kennedy stressed that the Supreme Court ruling would protect young men from being charged with a criminal offence. Waters reminded us young girls were not at the mercy of rapists and that "having sex with a minor was still an offence".

Behind the media mob, gangs of greenies were trying to settle scores with the minister who flushed out Frank Connolly. So it was surprising to find Jim O'Keeffe of Fine Gael coming to Connolly's defence. Frank is no friend of Fine Gael.

But it was no surprise when Finian McGrath, having consulted with like-minded colleagues, wanted McDowell's head. Why doesn't Finian just be done with it and submit to the Sinn Fein whip?

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But The Wind that Shakes the Barley has more legs. Behind the hype lies the huge hinterland of the national question. And those who lost in life can win on film.

Like most Irish people, I have not seen Ken Loach's film. Given that he is a gifted director, working with a brilliant Irish cast, I have no doubt it will pack a filmic punch. Loach himself, however, would be the the last person to argue a film should be judged solely on its artistic merits. He explicitly sets out to make what he calls political films and what I would call propaganda films.

But while I cannot comment on the aesthetics and politics of a film I have not seen, I can certainly comment on (a) Ken Loach's public statements about the film and (b) the politics of how the film is promoted.

Loach openly laid out his political approach to The Wind that Shakes the Barley in an increasingly bellicose series of public statements in the past week.

Significantly he chose Daily Ireland (which is to armchair republicans what the Daily Mail is to armchair conservatives) as his principal forum.

Loach told Daily Ireland that "partition had failed", and that "the unionist veto on change must be removed". This is strikingly similar to the language and politics of Sinn Fein. But it contradicts the democratic desire of the Irish people who have put partition aside in the cause of peace.

Loach is no political innocent. He must know that his diatribe on Daily Ireland can easily be used as propaganda by the Provos. That is why I hope that decent actors like Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham do something to distance themselves from Loach's neocolonial line.

And I do mean neocolonial. The director of any movie decides its total aesthetic and political approach. Ken Loach directed The Wind that Shakes the Barley . Ken Loach is British. So at some level The Wind that Shakes the Barley is serving British interests. Looking at Loach's public statements it is specifically serving the interests of the British left.

Neocolonial attitudes are not confined to Colonel Blimps of the British right. Neocolonial attitudes can also come from the Comrade Kens of the British left, be they Ken Livingstone or Ken Loach. Indeed, there is a long tradition of British luvvies using Irish issues to settle internal British scores. Doing so also involves giving a soft ride to the IRA and distorting the democratic desires of the Irish people.

In his public statements on The Wind that Shakes the Barley Loach has not claimed the film is anti-war or aimed at promoting peace in Ireland. Instead he has used it as a platform to settle scores with Tony Blair about Iraq. Leaving aside the leftist posturing I find this attitude profoundly patronising.

Ignoring Ireland's real interests in order to promote a leftist line in British politics is neocolonialism by any name.

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Let us be frank, Loach has form. This is his second film about Irish politics.

His previous effort, Hidden Agenda (1992), had a hilariously saintly IRA commander. But the politics were far from funny. Loach's film painted the Provos as idealists - which was pretty rich from a professed socialist when the Provos were behaving like fascists, fomenting civil war between Catholic and Protestant workers.

British luvvies on guilt trips have long been a familiar figure on the Irish film landscape.

As I see it, Loach is leeching on Irish history to settle scores in British politics. Against that background I have no great hopes that The Wind that Shakes the Barley will help heal the wounds of the Irish working class.

But surely that should be the primary political aim of someone who calls himself a socialist?

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Finally, can I beg the barley shakers to stop calling Loach's film "controversial"?

How can it be "controversial" when everybody in the Irish establishment is ecstatic about it - especially those who were deemed worthy of an early copy.

Controversial? John O'Donoghue loved it, Ryan Tubridy went rabid about it, Diarmaid Ferriter gave it two fulsome reviews in the same week.

Call it what you like, but please don't call it controversial.

But if you really want to see a controversial Irish film, commissioned by RTE, directed by an Irish director, and alert to the needs of the peace process, tune into RTE One on Tuesday and watch Murder on Main Street, Gerry Gregg's grim, but redemptive, documentary on the life and death of Det Garda Jerry McCabe.

As a director of Praxis Pictures, which produced this programme, I can sincerely say that while Murder on Main Street may not shake the barley it will certainly shake the sneaking regarders. That's what I call

controversial.

Eoghan Harris 'True Lives - Jerry McCabe: Murder on Main Street'

RTE One, Tuesday, 10.15pm

- Eoghan Harris