FORMER minister Conor Cruise O’Brien’s forthright style saw him accused of many things during his long and distinguished career but few would have blamed him of facilitating communist infiltration in RTÉ.
However, this was the accusation contained in a letter sent to Taoiseach Jack Lynch in early 1978.
Writing on March 20, 1978, Joseph O’Reilly of Achill Island, Co Galway, wrote that he wished "to draw [the taoiseach’s] attention to the news coverage by RTÉ particularly on television, of the French elections".
A disgruntled Mr O’Reilly pointed out that "such terms as ‘landslide for Communist party’ were used when in fact the left alliance only got 0.5% majority in the election".
He continued that an RTÉ news broadcast had stated "the hopes of a leftist participation are gone". Mr O’Reilly asked: "Whose hopes? Not the French hopes obviously".
Worse was contained in an hour-long broadcast by the Irish language current affairs programme Féach.
According to Mr O’Reilly this was devoted to the "Communist party and although in Irish there was nothing except red flags and hammers and sickles on the screen".
Mr O’Reilly said that "since Fine Gael joined up with the left wing of the Labour party" his family had switched allegiance to Fianna Fáil. With this in mind he wished to draw the taoiseach’s attention to the source of RTÉ’s "red problems".
"I happen to know that Mr Cruise O’Brien was a member of the Communist party in this country. It is quite clear that he has been responsible for the infiltration of people with similar views into the various departments of RTÉ. This is evident not alone in the strong leftist bias in news reports but also in the number of short features imported from communist sources," he wrote.
Mr O’Reilly concluded that he wanted a response signed personally by the taoiseach "otherwise I shall have to devise some way of bringing this matter to your personal attention as my feelings in it are shared by quite a number of my friends both in Achill and Dublin".
Unfortunately he only received a response from a B McCarthy, private secretary at the department of posts and telegraphs as Mr Lynch was away at the funeral of former president Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, though the letter did state "the taoiseach has taken note of what you say."
Conor Cruise O’Brien had been Labour’s minister for post and telegraphs in the coalition government of 1973 to 1977. The main controversy which surrounded his period in charge was strong support for Section 31, which precluded those attached to groups promoting the use of political violence from being broadcast.
At no stage in a career which saw Mr O’Brien elected a Labour TD and in the 1990s run as a candidate for the Unionist party is he believed to have been a member of any communist organisation.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, January 01, 2009
