It Occurs to Me: War, Peace and Pat McArt

We're all familiar with the phrase warts and all. It looks like a Letterkenny man has ensured a new one in the print lexicon ... McArt's and All!

The accompanying photograph from the back cover of Pat McArt’s enthralling memoir, War, Peace and The Derry Journal sums up the young Pat perfectly. It says: “I don’t care what you’re trying to tell me or sell me, but I know it’s bullshit!”

He’s the last of the journalistic editorial giants who worked in the print industry, and more’s the pity. The fact that a young Donegal man became the editor of The Derry Journal at the height of the Troubles, and did a tremendous job in the circumstances, has never really been properly acknowledged by his peers.

This memoir will go a long way to cementing his deserved legacy. I recall meeting him on many occasions in the Delacroix on the Buncrana Road on a Thursday night after the Friday Journal had been sent to the printers. Over a few pints with his newspaper colleagues, the usual slagging and banter with his Derry muckers would predominate, but always bubbling under was that little frisson which warned: “Who’s going to read the headlines tomorrow… and then read the Riot Act?” His beloved Rosie usually collected him and that was when Pat began to wind down…for a few days at least. (Those days were often interrupted)

To quote Pat: “She was there in the good times and the bad times. She took a lot of flak on occasions simply for being the wife of the editor of the Derry Journal, but not once did she ever complain or let me down. For that I owe her and my three sons - Shane, Aaron and Paddy - everything. I am not abashed to say they, literally, mean the world to me.”

Publisher Garbhan Downey, who cut his teeth in the Journal and subsequently became the editor of the Derry News, sums up Pat’s achievements succinctly: “As a boss, McArt was a strong leader, who inspired confidence in his staff. He always stood up for his women and men, no matter how tricky or high-ranking the opponent. But, if necessary, he was affable and diplomatic enough to trim your sails and rechart your course without it becoming an issue.

He was fair and open-minded, rarely if ever held agendas, and was a master at handling the many monster egos that crossed the Journal threshold. He worked on the theory that an editor’s job was not to be the smartest person in the room but was to work out whomever might be the smartest person in the room at any given moment – and to listen to that person. And yet for all that, McArt was, himself, very often the smartest person in any room he went into, not that he would ever let on.”

The beginning
As a young cub reporter with the then Derry People (Donegal News) in the 70s, Pat met many legends who were to become friends and make a big impression on the young Letterkenny man. He recalls “chain-smoking, coffeeholic Liam Gallagher, of the Donegal Democrat, had been a medical student in Dublin but left after being involved in a serious road crash. He suffered extensive head injuries and lost the ability to do the heavy duty concentrated study required for medicine. The College of Surgeons’ loss was journalism’s gain.

“He was a total one-off with a unique approach to reporting in that he rarely ever had a notebook and was often seen in court taking notes on the back of Major cigarette packets. Despite being a teetotaller and having an ‘official’ office on Letterkenny’s High Road his principal workplace was the Cottage Bar on Main Street where he, quite literally, spent hours drinking cup after cup of coffee while trying to decipher the smallest handwriting in history - his own. Academically he was a genius. He could quote poetry, speak Latin, play the piano but getting him to sit still for ten minutes could be difficult.

“John McIntyre, of the Donegal People’s Press, was the reporter’s reporter, a man who would disappear for days on end to go playing bridge or off fishing. Then he would work almost 30 hours straight, only napping when the occasion demanded. He was an absolute whirlwind at turning out copy. His typing was on a par with any top secretary in the country and his shorthand was so good he frequently was asked to act as a court stenographer when on occasions the official one didn’t show. While he never got the work-life balance quite right he sure got the life-life balance correct.

“However, the man who had the biggest influence was my old boss Sean Curran, one of the most decent people I was to meet in a long career. What you saw was not what you got. Behind a mask of quietness and shyness there resided one of the sharpest, funniest minds imaginable, and I was to prove a massive beneficiary of that, in that anything I learned in journalism I learned from him.”

RTÉ and the Journal
In 1978, at the tender age of 24, Pat McArt became the editor of the Derry People…possibly the youngest in Ireland?
After five years of getting a lift with Justice Larkin himself to cover the court in Dungloe (he remembers the experience as ‘great craic’) Pat was now in charge of four reporters, a photographer, various correspondents, freelancers, and advertising staff.

Two years later, he made the big leap to RTÉ in Dublin, and as he recalls: “My one major claim to fame during my RTÉ career is that I was the ‘early’ sub on the news desk the day John Lennon was shot. So, the words read that morning informing the Irish public of the momentous news that the former Beatle had been murdered were mine.I was also heavily involved in the Stardust fire coverage in that Barney Cavanagh (news editor) told me to keep on top of all the various reports coming in and to write overall intros for the newsreaders.”

Pat admits that he thought he was in RTÉ for the long haul, but fate had other plans. Rosie’s uncle was getting married in Carndonagh, and at the wedding, the famous and colourful Derry Journal photographer Larry Doherty approached Pat and said there was a job going as chief reporter with the paper, but, he explained, the real carrot was that it was a bit of a ruse - they were actually looking for an editor.

As Pat recalls: “The current editor was, if I was picking up the vibe correctly, showing outward signs of being unhappy with the job. Would I be interested?

“I waited for about a week, discussed it with Rosie and we finally decided that going home had more pluses than minuses for us. Thus, my short career as a national broadcaster – who never did broadcast during that period – was over.”

Monsters and egos?
Whatever about Garbhan’s reference to monster egos, Pat dealt with many monstrous occurrences during his tenure at the Journal, all the time getting to know the chief protagonists and peacemakers and trying to gauge their egos and personalities. The major players were all in Derry…John Hume, Martin McGuinness, Eamonn McCann and Bishop Edward Daly. Pat writes: “Bishop Daly used to make all his major statements on Mondays and Thursdays to ensure coverage in the next day’s Derry Journal. It was a good strategy. I never discussed it with him directly though I would presume he knew it only too well that the IRA used to do the same.

“The Journal was bought by just about every Catholic/nationalist family in most of the northern half of the huge Catholic diocese of Derry, and also circulated widely in the Inishowen peninsula in north Donegal. In terms of media penetration, it was unrivalled.”

Pat had no honeymoon period on the Buncrana Road. One day, a very distraught mother, whose son had been executed by the IRA as an alleged informer, came to his office.

“Her first comments were, basically, this: ‘My son was shot on Thursday so his death could be a big headline in your paper – you are all disgusting.’ In the statement the Journal had obtained in regard to the execution of this young lad, the IRA said he was a member and had been acting as an RUC informer for almost four years, and had been receiving regular payments. Clearly, the central thrust of her argument was right. The Journal did know what was going down before it actually happened. We might not have known the details – the name, where he was being held when he was going to be shot – but we did know that it was going to happen. The young lad was shot dead as an example to others, and the IRA was sending a message to anyone they considered an informer. We were the messenger. That was the reality.”

A year earlier Pat had had another encounter with a parent destroyed by the death of a child – also labelled an informer. “‘Hey Pat’, said this man with an intensity in his eyes that blazed, ‘would you put in that paper of yours that I want to go to Hell to meet the bastards who murdered my son. That’s where them f……s are going!’”

The straw that broke the camel’s back for Pat was a Sinn Féin press conference where a young lad was going to admit to being an informer, and to which he sent a young reporter. Later that night, she rang Pat in tears saying the IRA had subsequently shot the lad.

“She had, she told me, just learned his body had been found not far from her own family home. She was really, really upset, claiming we had been used to justify a murder of a young family man. What was worse was that not only did she know this man and his family but that particular day she had been the only reporter at the press conference. The outing of so-called informers was so regular then that it was hardly news. Had the other news organisations reported it she wouldn’t have felt so isolated. And the sickening feeling that had been at the pit of my stomach didn’t get any better as the day wore on with the front page of the Derry Journal being used in all the broadcast media coverage. Indeed, ITN’s national news gave real prominence to the Journal’s front page to explain the ‘savagery and brutality’ of the guerrilla war that was being fought on the streets of ‘a British city.’

“I knew we had been used, and I raged internally that I had behaved so naively as an editor. We had definitely been used by the Republican Movement to justify publicly what, I believe, they had always planned to do privately – shoot the man dead.
“In the coming days I made my views known to various republicans that we would never again be party to a press conference like that. We were not going to be used to justify executions.”

In time, he got to know Martin McGuinness very well. They became friends, and Pat stresses: “I can only state that in all my dealings with him over twenty-five years he was never less than honourable. In my dealings with him he was neither a thug nor a bully.

“Many were the heated arguments and debates I had with him and not once did he raise his voice or lose his temper. That’s a fact, something I, personally, can stand over. Other people, obviously, have very different opinions.”

Hume the enigma
Pat’s relationship with John Hume was fascinating…and he doesn’t pull any punches. “For some reason that I have never got to the bottom of, we never quite clicked. I didn’t really get on all that well with him. I don’t know if it was a clash of personalities or whether I didn’t see the world from his perspective, but we were to be tuned to different frequencies on many issues, both political and social.

“In terms of being editor of the Journal, the smart move on my part would have been to ensure I was in his inner circle, to keep on his right side – but in truth I never made much of an effort. I needed that distance from Hume, as I was of the opinion the paper had almost crossed over from reporting to hagiography when it came to coverage of him.

“As far as I could ascertain, Hume was God in Derry. It seemed to me that many people were accepting his judgements and opinions without question. Long before my first year as editor was out I had told Hume, during a somewhat heated discussion, I wasn’t putting the same statement in each time simply because his name was on it, even if he was delivering it for the first time at the White House, the European Parliament or wherever.

“Despite my best efforts to explain that I had totally legitimate journalistic reasons for my decision – virtually the same story in time after time was a total non-runner – he was having none of it. He was the local MP. He was the leader of nationalism. He demanded that he be given prominence. He left very angry.”

Knowing Pat as I do, I actually laughed at this encounter between a ‘thran’ working class buck from the Church Lane in Letterkenny, and a Derry Caesar, in whose house I once was when he excused himself and said: “Sorry, Bill Clinton is on the line”.

Pat adds: “As for Hume, in later years we sorted ourselves out and worked reasonably well together. He mentioned this phase of our relationship on several occasions, and he went out of his way on those occasions to tell me he hadn’t complained to the proprietor or his family, but I have little doubt that he did.

“If he was complaining so vociferously not only to me but also to many others, it’s inconceivable he wasn’t complaining to them. In retrospect, Hume and I worked with each other on a professional level, but we were never going to be best friends or drinking buddies though, to contradict myself, I did go for a drink with him on several occasions…He’s gone now, and the world is definitely a much poorer place for his passing.

“I have no hesitation in saying he was an absolute political colossus. For his intellectual genius and heroic courage, he deserves every plaudit under the sun. He was a true one-off, the central figure who devised the strategy that eventually gave peace to Northern Ireland.

“On my final day as editor of the Derry Journal, Hume landed down in the office trying to hide a present clearly visible under his coat. Out it came, a bottle of very rare whiskey from a specially distilled cask given to him in honour of his having won the Nobel Peace Prize. This was a very, very limited-edition whiskey and much sought after. It was very, very decent of him. He often hid that decency, that kind of generosity, under that prickly personality.”

War, Peace and the Derry Journal is a wonderful memoir and is published by Colmcille Press in Derry and costs €25.