FRANCES Shanahan's documentary about forgotten victims of the Troubles, The Vanished and the Banished (RTE Radio 1, Wednesday), was made during the period of ostensible peace, but it was a grim, necessary reminder that what might be called "war by other means dragged on beyond the ceasefire's.
Produced by Colin Morrison and accompanied by an appropriate moody instrumental version of Christy Moore's Ride On, the programme consisted principally of interviews with those effectively banished from Northern Ireland by either the paramilitaries or the security forces. Only Maurice Henly's awful story of IRA interrogation could have been called familiar material - Healy used the media, indeed, to get his banishment lifted.
Nancy Gracey of Families Against Intimidation and Terror told Shanahan that some 300 people are still in exile. She also claimed that people have been expelled simply because someone in a paramilitary organisation wants their house - though no story in the documentary sustained that suggestion.
Amid some terrifying tales, one story of republican bureaucracy at work was a source of some black humour. Seamus McEnery spoke of his efforts to get Sinn Fein to help find the body of his mother in law - and of several other missing people. The party promised him an inquiry.
"They returned about a month later to inform us that the perpetrators of all these disappearances were now dead themselves. Which was one hell of a coincidence," he said.
"We told them that we knew the identity of quite a few of the perpetrators and they were still walking about Belfast." After another inquiry, he was told the IRA "would be willing to assume blame, but not in all cases - whatever that means." McEnery's group, Families of the Disappeared, now has links with groups in Argentina, where 33,000 people vanished. "Here it might be only 14, but the numbers aren't relevant."
A nationalist couple con the run" in the Republic told of the pressure from the RUC to turn informer that led to their flight south - and of their disillusionment with the State they found. . The husband told a tale of friends and neighbours approached by the Garda: "The Irish Special Branch have given me more hassle and harrassment in a sense... than what the British did."
I THOUGHT I'd missed my chance, to write about Take That, and the sickeningly patronising reports of the group's demise. It's a fortnight since the deed was done and the likes of Aidan Leonard on his late night 2FM programme fielded calls from distraught fans.
"You sound like you're not too upset about it," he kept telling them. "It's gonna be fine, isn't it."
The tendency to treat a subject like this as if it were a suicide watch is understandable, I suppose. But it didn't leave much room for acceptance that the group's records and gigs will be genuinely missed - nor for probing what Take That were pulling when they "promised" fans they'd stay together "as long as they were wanted". (Maybe it was their version of the suicide watch to ensure there would be anger at their betrayal rather than dangerous grief at their passing?).
I'm on about it this week because RTE's po faced, "responsible", parental posture was in evidence again in covering the Boyzone related ructions in Dublin on Friday. And because in monitoring the run up to that group's appearance in Grafton Street, I heard a refreshing alternative.
No, it wasn't one of the youth oriented pirate stations, which would be too cool for Boyzone anyway. It was the temporary station from Griffith College, and a "breakfast show" fronted by three incredibly brazen young fellas; that pre broadcast libel seminar obviously went in one ear and out the other.
Sadly, the Irish Times seminars on libel were more effective, so the only comment from that team about various celebrities that I can relay is the suggestion that Dustin, "allegedly", is not a real turkey. (The lads seemed to reckon that the word "allegedly" protects one from solicitor's letters. Such blessed innocence.)
Now, these aspiring radio stars had a fairly adolescent line in humour (e.g. playing on the word "bent"), but their very "immaturity" meant that they discussed Boyzone, Take That & Co - for a time with a female colleague down a telephone line - in terms that teenagers might recognise. For this glimpse of what is otherwise only a mirage, free speech youth radio, I thank them.
