There was a time when the sound of bangers going off in August was akin to hearing the first cuckoo of spring: it heralded a new season, the early influx of pre-Halloween fireworks allowing sundry tykes to annoy their neighbours from autumn’s onset. Now, however, this already irritating tradition has mutated into something more sinister, as Joe Duffy learns on Monday’s Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays).
The host hears from Jim, who recounts how a salsa dancing event for families in Grand Canal Square in Dublin was disrupted by a group of teenagers throwing bangers. After initially being chased away, the marauding teens returned, this time aiming fireworks directly at the dancers, narrowly missing them. Another confrontation ensued, with one of the dancers getting punched in the process. Understandably, Jim still sounds shaken: “For the whole day I’ve been speechless and angry about it.”
He’s not the only one. The property developer and local resident Harry Crosbie calls in to express his shock at the incident, adding that antisocial behaviour in the area is getting worse. “If I’m intimidated, that’s a problem,” says Crosbie, who thinks that poor lighting has encouraged gangs to loiter. Duffy isn’t so sure, pointing out that the fireworks incident occurred during daylight. “I want to find out why these gurriers are attacking the group,” says the host.
The following day’s show brings an answer of sorts, as another local, Mary, nervously describes her frequent run-ins with the teen gangs. “Because they’re underage, the guards can’t do anything – and the kids know it,” she says glumly.
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If these stories of random violence are upsetting, they’re also familiar. As surely as the seasons change, so Liveline will feature tales of rampant crime that play on the audience’s worst fears of societal disintegration. And, sure enough, some callers are suitably outraged, seeking to punish parents for their children’s activities. “You take responsibility or we will do you, we will lock you up,” says Marie, who thankfully has no personal experience of crime in the urban dystopia she evokes, though, perhaps tellingly, she’s a regular Liveline listener.
For all that, a consensus emerges among Duffy’s contributors that crime and delinquency have increased in Dublin since lockdown, along with a prevailing air of menace. “You feel under threat,” observes one woman caller. “It’s just unpleasant.” It’s certainly a downbeat end to the summer, though amid the gloom Duffy floats some practical solutions, such as the Garda being allowed to confiscate mobile devices from offending minors. “They’re powerless without a mobile phone,” he says, “We shouldn’t give in to these thugs.” As ideas go, it’s not entirely cuckoo.
Duffy sounds happier on Wednesday, when he covers the news of Nell McCafferty’s death. The host hears anecdotes about the late journalist and feminist campaigner from Marian Finucane’s widower, John Clarke, who recalls how McCafferty told him to stop drinking, and the campaigner Adi Roche, who poignantly recounts visiting her as she lived with Alzheimer’s disease in a Co Donegal nursing home.
But while the convivial stories capture McCafferty’s indefatigable spirit, there is surprisingly little talk about her role as a pioneer of the Irish women’s movement, at least until her fellow veteran activist Rosita Sweetman reminds Duffy that McCafferty endured a hard time for her fearlessness: “She paid a really high price for being so outspoken,” such as being dropped by newspapers and broadcasters.
Only then does Duffy get serious, noting that McCafferty libelled a politician during a Newstalk interview in 2010: “Nell was wrong in those remarks.” It’s jarring to draw attention to this detail while largely gliding over her other achievements: Duffy is lucky that McCafferty isn’t around to upbraid him, though, in fairness, he’s aware of this. “Nell didn’t suffer fools gladly, including your host,” he says. “I got the whip of it a few times.” That this sounds like praise rather than criticism is tribute enough. Clarke’s emotional valediction is even pithier. “I don’t like her dying.”
As it is, there’s plenty of testimony to McCafferty’s trailblazing legacy elsewhere, such as the vivid description by the feminist activist Ailbhe Smyth on News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays): “She was the firebrand of the Irish women’s liberation movement: when she came on board, the patriarchy was unsafe,” she tells Rachael English. But McCafferty’s seismic effect on the lives of Irish women is perhaps best captured by the host’s passing remark about first hearing her in the 1980s, when she pointed out that all Irish authority figures were men. “I remember coming home from school and she’d be on the radio, doing her reporting from the Kerry babies tribunal, and I remember being blown away by her work.”
Over on The Ray D’Arcy Show (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) the host pays tribute to McCafferty in more unorthodox fashion, replaying clips from her stint as a judge on the TV talent show You’re a Star, in which she berates contestants for singing in American accents. “A delicious human being,” D’Arcy chuckles. If nothing else, it illustrates McCafferty’s gloriously singular personality.
D’Arcy deals with contemporary struggles for justice when he talks to the All Ireland-winning former Dublin footballer Michael Darragh Macauley about becoming chief executive of Sanctuary Runners, which seeks to integrate refugees into local communities through track sports. Host and guest discuss the hostility asylum seekers face – “There was a random man screaming at people in tents, saying get the eff out of our country, and I was, like, when did Ireland become this?” says Macauley – and the factors behind such racism, from disinformation and ignorance to competition for limited resources in deprived areas.
The tone is fumblingly sincere rather than forensically certain, but it is somehow more impactful for that. As with Liveline, it presents an apparently downbeat picture of Irish life, but Macauley is ultimately optimistic, remembering the words of one refugee runner: “I got my dignity back.” Nell McCafferty would surely approve.
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