Sir, – Please allow me two comments on Prof Kevin Rafter’s review of Shane Ross’s book RTÉ: Saints, Scholars and Scandals, (May 13th).
First, he recycles, without challenge, Ross’s claim that members of the Workers Party in RTÉ were “determining editorial policy on NI”.
As this claim was first made in Magill magazine (whose history Prof Rafter is writing) in connection with Section 31, let me correct the record. Those of us in RTÉ who supported Section 31, which kept IRA spokespersons off the air, could not have been pawns of the Workers Party because that party opposed Section 31.
Second, he accepts Ross’s fantasy that I, a committed Marxist, tried to recruit Ross, a stockbroker, to the Workers Party. Surely a professor of political communication should be more sceptical? – Yours, etc,
RM Block
EOGHAN HARRIS,
Blackrock,
Dublin.
