It is an old Belfast “joke”….that in the event of an accident…….and a small but (for legal purposes) exaggerated pain….it will all get better when the cheque from the insurance company arrives. Every injury has a price tag.
In my retirement, I sit watching television. It is dominated by three types of advertisement “do I need a payday loan?”, “have I been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance?” and “have I had an accident at work?”.
In one of the “accident” advertisements, presenter Andrew Castle walks down the street and bumps into a man going the other way. They both say “sorry” and Andrew tells us that “sometimes sorry is enough” but he goes on to say that sometimes we need more.
More directly another “accident” advertisement tells us “if there is Blame…there is a Claim”. We all know that now. A few months ago we had a small incident on the road outside our house. We COULD have made a claim for compensation….and chose not to….because no harm was done.
Of course these advertisements are comparatively “new” in Ireland and Britain. Solicitors were not allowed to advertise…and we used to laugh at American lawyers and dismiss them as “ambulance chasers”. We have now caught up.
Indeed early next year, I will be in the United States. It would be nice if Russell Crowe threw his cell-phone at me and I got $1 million for my trauma. But I suspect that would be as likely as winning the Lottery.
For “ordinary” people, Compensation is a form of winning the Lottery…….but there is the inconvenient fact that sometimes our pain has to be pretty genuine. Nevertheless small injuries and minor inconveniences do carry a price tag.
If only we had known that…..in the early years of the Troubles…..when minor injury (and indeed major injury) ad minor/major trauma were commonplace. Not to mention False Arrest or ill treatment by the forces of Law and Order. At some point…..maybe around 1980…..we (prompted by lawyers) realised that it was no longer good enough to just “thank God” that we had avoided a serious injury by being close to a car-bomb…..there could be compensation for our trauma. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the improvement in security force behaviour after the 1970s probably owed something to advice from THEIR lawyers. Every push or shove or verbal insult in (say) 1983 was likely to get a finacial recompense that it would not have got in (say) 1973.
And of course the levels of violence were much higher in the 1970s. Frankly some families of victims were hopelessly under-compensated with derisory amounts. And frankly in recent years some people (in comparison) have been over-compensated. The Troubles began and ended when cultural attitudes to compensation were different.
The problem is that 1970s victims……and a lot of people were “passive” victims, the Troubles were all around us…..feel bitter about “losing out”. I am no different.
I think I can say that I only once had a near death experience. Without going into details…..this involved a gun being shoved into my mouth and a threat that my “f***ing head could get blown off”. Subsequently I was tied up.
The incident happened at my work place. At lunch time. The offenders were (as it turned out) members of the Official IRA. This perhaps account for my animosity towards the “Stickies”. The RUC investigated the incident in a “good cop….bad cop” kinda way. One was sympathetic and the other just stared at me.
The sympathetic one went on to be a very senior RUC man. But my employer did not even send me home early. And that evening, I arrived home as BBC Newsreader Larry McCoubrey was announcing this very news”. My mother asked me if I had heard about it. “Mammy…..that WAS me”.
The culprits were arrested. The RUC showed me a photograph. “Can you identify them? “……..er No. Im not that stupid. Did they get the right guys? Yes of coure they did.
The next few months were rather uncomfortable. It was likely I would be a witness in the court case. I gave up my job and was unemployed for a few months. The only time I have been unemployed. I never “signed on” for benefits and even today thats a four month gap in my pension contributions. Like I say, I never claimed benefit but until a few years ago, I got a letter from the Pensions people telling me my pension would suffer and would I like to make good the loss…….well no I wouldnt.
As it turned out, the family decided to move to Dungannon. As it turned out I did not have to appear in court as the Stickies pleaded guilty. To a catalogue of offences. And the RUC accepted the fact that the gun in my mouth was a replica……to my dying day, I will know that gun was real.
Now heres an odd thing. For a catalogue of offences, our two Official IRA men received a very light sentence. Obviously a deal was done….and strangely back in my new home in Dungannon, that did not make me feel any better.
Of course…..everyone has a Troubles story. This is mine. Indeed others have many stories and much much worse. But ultimately in the 1970s we just put it down to experience. No compensation.
Fast forward to 1984…….and I am a married man with a child and a mortgage. And I mention this incident some years before. And someone says…..”you should have got some compensation for that” and they tell me about this Agency in Upper Queen Street in Belfast. And I phone them. No compensation. There is a time limit on making claims. As I recall it was 14 days in respect of Property and 28 days in respect of Injury. I can still hear the guy at the other end of the phone laugh.
Perhaps it is no surprise…or just sour grapes…that I am skeptical about our compensation culture. Ex-members of the discredited RUC received massive compensation just to leave it….so that the new police service PSNI could be set up. And a few years ago the Eames-Bradley Commission investigating how to deal with “victims” was seriously damaged by its recommendation that the families of victims receive £30,000 each.
The Eames-Bradley Commission did not fly……….not just because unionists opposed the notion that the family of a IRA man shot dead was “worth” the same as the family of an “innocent” victim or the family of a RUC officer or British soldier. In my view there was a groundswell of opposition to any form of compensation from people like myself……people best described as “And what about me?”……..people who feel we have missed out on the Compensation Lottery.
So why am I writing about this today?
Well this morning I was in our local shop, thinking about buying the “Irish News”. The headline was that Danny Morrison has been offered a six figure compensation sum.
I did not buy the paper and can only speculate on the reasons.
Danny Morrison was interned as a Provisional IRA man in the early 1970s and became Gerry Adams’ right hand man as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin….the IRAs political wing. He held that position until 1990 and his arrest and imprisonment until his 1995 release.
Danny Morrison is credited with the phrase “a ballot box in one hand and an armalite in the other hand”, which defined the Sinn Fein-IRA Strategy in the 1980s. His arrest and imprisonment for five years was for “falsely imprisoning and conspiracy to murder” an IRA man alleged to be a British informer. The “informer” was dramatically rescued from an Andersonstown house and his alleged captors arrested.
Danny Morrison maintained that he was there in his capacity as Director of Publicity and was going to oraganise a Press Conference, where the “informer” would reveal his British handlers.
As a consequence of spending 1990-95 in prison, Morrison who had been a Member of the Stormont Assembly from 1982 to 1986, missed out on the “talks” which led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Since then he has made a career as a journalist and author. A few weeks ago he was at the Amnesty Seminar on Journalism and Human Rights ……part of An Féile in West Belfast…….a report of this seminar was published on this Blog.
Four years ago, Morrison successfully appealed his conviction. The “six figure” sum of compensation is probably in relation to this case.
Has Morrison hit the “lottery” jackpot? Well of course unionists will be outrage. Eventually this will provoke synthetic outrage on “liberal unionist” message boards such as Slugger O’Toole. But false imprisonment on trumped up charges is something that a lot of Republicans would be familiar with in the 1970s. The RUC did not always tell the truth in evidence and would happily have seen known IRA men decommissioned in Long Kesh. I expect the majority of IRA men ……even thirty-five years on …….would have regarded it as an occupational hazard of their lifestyle.
The synthetic anger of unionists can be ignored. The opinions of Danny Morrison’s peers will be more interesting. Not to mention the majority group of people …..like myself…..resigned to know that there is a whole gravy train we never got to board.
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