Accompanied by David McIlveen, a Free Presbyterian clergyman and major dude in the Save Ulster From Sodomy campaign, Ian Paisley headed for Cameroon. As the pair's trip was being filmed by Jon Ronson, here, at last, was a chance to observe Paisley outside of news and current-affairs soundbite culture. Perhaps a sensitive, less dogmatic, more tolerant Paisley would show himself. Maybe out of Africa would come his tacit recognition that his tar-barrel theatricality is not best suited to television.
Maybe a herd of elephants would put on a performance of Riverdance. Witness: Dr Paisley, I Presume didn't just confirm most people's impressions of Paisley. It showed him as being almost incapable of conversation except on his own terms. "I feel I'm being sucked into a whirlpool of obsequiousness," said Ronson near the end. Paisley, it is clear, has the type of personality that makes most people decide that being ingratiating is an abasement worth suffering sooner than even risk incurring his wrath. Talk about walking on eggshells!
Since the late American evangelist and academic-degree salesman, Bob Jones, asked him to visit Cameroon fundamentalists 12 years ago, Paisley has returned annually. Leaving Belfast, after the opening of a new church which records "the 12 ages of Ian Paisley" in its windows, the big man ordered Ronson not to ask him about the North's peace talks. Following an eight-hour flight from Heathrow, Paisley began to preach immediately after getting off the plane.
Three times a day he bellowed his blood and thunder gospel at the locals. He likes, he said, nothing better than working up a good "pulpit sweat". Ronson, meanwhile, decided it was time to try to bond with Paisley. He mentioned that he is Jewish. So, for the rest of the week, Paisley referred to him as "the Jew" or "the Israelite" or "our Jewish friend". With the evangelists and the crew travelling between fundamentalist outposts in separate jeeps, they kept in contact by walkie-talkie.
"Germany calling, Germany calling," a sniggering Paisley announced to Ronson. It might have just been a light-hearted snippet of boredom-battling banter. But, then again, it might not. Either way, "Germany calling, Germany calling" was hardly the most sensitive joke to "the Jew". As the week passed, Ronson recognised that "I found myself eager to please him all the more and I wondered if that's what makes him such a powerful leader". It is. Paisley is good cop/bad cop in one and even though the good side is no bag of laughs, the bad is infused by the tone and images of the Biblical hell.
Ronson described Paisley as "volatile". It was fair, for the permanent threat of verbal nitroglycerine is Paisley's chief controlling tactic. Even the black preachers tried to imitate his intimidations. The grand irony, of course, is that Paisley stressed "humility" as the cardinal virtue. "I am a man of the grassroots," he said, which is all very well, except that he insists that those around him should be that bit more humble. If he is grassroots, it is their duty to recognise themselves as unworthy weeds.
In Paisley speak, people around him were rendered just that little bit less than themselves. He referred to them as "the Jew" or "the Flower Man" or even "the Poor Imitation". There were, it is true, wisps of humour in some of his nicknames. But principally, the nicknames seemed designed to exclude; to focus on others, not quite as people, but as bit-players in a drama directed by him; to demean them. And always he could avail of the disingenuous safety net that if they objected, they, not he, were dry and humourless.
McIlveen had described Paisley as having "a tremendous heart of compassion", being "very generous in spirit" and with "a tremendous sense of humour". It was difficult to decide if Paisley was being compassionate, spirited or humorous as he repeatedly humiliated his translator, Joseph, for arriving one hour late one morning. Joseph was forced to confess his "sin" in front of every subsequent congregation. Compassionate, spirited or humourous didn't sound quite as accurate as "bullying".
In white Panama hat, with shades (not clip-ons) worn over his usual glasses, Ian Paisley cut a strange, anachronistic figure in Africa. He presented himself as a martyr, who had endured prison for his beliefs. He railed against liberals and ecumenicals. "Hell," he said, has "fires and torments" but "heaven is a great city, its length, breadth and height all the same". Cube City! "With gratitude and humility, we behaved just as he wanted," said Ronson.
This was the heart of the matter. Though prepared, at a whim, to intimidate and humiliate others, Paisley appeared to be beyond confrontation. The normal give and take of conversation does not register with him. Even when Ronson, desperately trying to bond, playfully suggested that he and Paisley were perhaps a modern Stanley and Livingstone, Paisley had to play one-upmanship. "Livingstone opened Africa; Stanley, as a journalist, took all the glory." He wasn't being humorous either. He was quashing an attempt to establish a common, equitable humanity. He was saying "no" to life itself.
Watching the members of Aosdana say "no" to Maire Mac an tSaoi's attempt to have Francis "Germany Calling, Germany Calling" Stuart expelled from the club was like seeing Irish McCarthyism fail. The club is, of course, a self-perpetuating elite, suspiciously fond of its self-generated gravitas and cod symbolism. But, that aside, Undercover's portrait and analysis of Stuart's controversial life and work was engaging, even if some contributors groaned their constipated profundities with irritating solemnity.
Not having read Francis Stuart's novels, I do not have any opinions on either the existence or the extent of his alleged pro-Nazi, anti-semitic leanings. But David O'Donoghue, author of Hitler's Irish Voices, insisted that, after extensive research, he "could not find any evidence of anti-semitic or anti-Soviet propaganda" in Stuart's wartime broadcasts. Pro-IRA, at least as a young man, Stuart, it would appear, has become a focus for anti-republicans and anti-nationalists keen to stress ideological links between Irish republicanism and Nazism.
Clearly, some elements of the IRA - perhaps almost as much as significant elements of the British royal family and extended aristocracy - supported Hitler. End-of-war revelations about genocide and death camps naturally induced memory-loss in almost all of Hitler's early fellow-travellers. Many American tycoons, for instance, eagerly hoped that the Nazis would do the awkward job of defeating Bolshevism for them. In a sense, they did, for the Soviet Union never quite recovered after the second World War.
Anyway, Undercover portrayed Irish literary and political life as a story of great, privileged families - the Gonnes, the MacBrides, the Cruise O'Briens, the MacEntees - remote from the common herd. Stuart's relationship with and marriage to Iseult Gonne, though he was "badly off" and "badly educated" (at Rugby) saw him take trips to Munich and Vienna and live in Laragh Castle. Poverty, in such circles, is relative.
Perhaps the highlights of this documentary were the old photographs and films of Stuart. He has always seemed old (almost 96 now) so to see pictures of him as a young man made him seem much more dynamic. "I am not neutral on the question of extreme republicans," said Maire Mac an tSaoi, adding that she would not be surprised if Francis Stuart had looked favourably upon "similar thugs in SS uniforms". She made no mention of Black and Tan uniforms.
As for Francis Stuart? Well, this documentary will not have defused the controversy. Adopting the role of isolated artist, he has allowed space for ambiguities to thrive. His detractors insist that this is a clever ploy, designed to give him room to hide. His supporters argue that it is proof of his great artistic integrity. There are, of course, agendas on both sides. Having quite successfully colonised RTE (despite repeated and demented claims to the contrary) the pro-partitionists were routed at Aosdana. Sometimes "no" can be the most positive answer.
Extreme republicanism featured on I gCillin An Bhais, which remembered the IRA and INLA hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981. Assembling former prisoners, who survived the strikes, this was solid, oral history, even if little new was added to previously published material. It was a pity, perhaps, that no defence - even as Bearla - of the British government's decision to allow 10 men starve to death was included, not that it could be easily found. Legitimate political martyrdom or extreme emotional blackmail? People took sides then and most will not have changed.
It's a ghoulish story, of course, and one which continues to have powerful resonances. Certainly, republicans were renewed by the sacrifice, even if they now differ on its appropriate legacy and reward. Beside Ian Paisley's "martyrdom", this was, whether people believe it to have been utterly heroic or morally wrong, the real thing. Old footage of "blanket men" on "dirty protest", though all of us have seen it many times, still has the power to shock, indeed to chill to the bone.
It may indeed be that Catholic conditioning to guilt is not replicated among Protestants; that personal responsibility is a more insular, less communal matter, among most non-Catholics. Whatever, this was brinkmanship in which Maggie Thatcher won the battle and, in the process, greatly strengthened the republican movement. Seeing Gerry Adams, with a beard almost as trenchant as those of the Christ-look-a-like, dirty protesters, reminded you that the North was a place of more obviously feral politics back then.
Descriptions of the dying Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell were harrowing and uncomfortable. Yet TnaG was right to commission and screen this documentary. It wasn't an incitement and if loyalist prisoners were ever to go on hunger strike - in, say, the event of a united Ireland - their story should be told too. We lived for too long with the censors and self-censors of Section 31 to know that propaganda never comes from one side only.
Finally, Hidden Treasures. Splendid archive footage of lost crafts - methods of fishing, basket-weaving and boat-building - set to an informative, if slightly too busy, script by Theo Dorgan is a decent idea. But one hour is too long for such a programme. An RTE halfhour (i.e. 26 minutes with three minutes of ads and one minute continuity) would have been better. Still, just to see the 1935 film of a Boyne coracle, justified a lot. Dorgan is, at times, arguably too reverential about the past. But with television schedules drowning under garish crap and air-head presenters, he's probably right to be.