In my previous post, I mentioned that the late Fr Denis Faul’s name had turned up in an Army Information Policy document from 1971.
I have uploaded a PDF version of the file, which is entitled Public Opinion and the Northern Ireland Situation, a note by the Colonel GS (Information Policy) HQ Northern Ireland.
The relevant extract reads as follows:
IRA Propaganda Organisation
7. IRA propaganda has its base in Dublin where both factions run their own information centres, both with the title "Irish Republican Publicity Bureau." Each has a full time staff and has subordinate directors in Belfast, Londonderry and elsewhere. The campaign is pushed by numerous front organisations and by Republican sympathisers who, having themselves been taken in by the propaganda, are willing to spread the word. These organisations include:
a. The Association for Legal Justice (which has been the principal agency for co-ordinating the campaign alleging brutality during internment and interrogation).
b. Republican Clubs (which have always been fronts for the Sinn Fein political party and which now help to disseminate the propaganda of whichever faction they have chosen to support).
c. The Belfast Central Citizens Defence Committee (once given a cloak of respectability as representative of the Catholic population of the city, but now heavily involved in promoting IRA interests).
d. The Irish News (a newspaper that has long represented Republican opinion in Ulster and is now an organ for printing IRA propaganda).
e. Catholic Ex-Servicemans Association (is becoming increasingly involved with the IRA as a front organisation).
f. NICRA (Directed by Kevin McCorry)
g. Various Relief and Action Committees in Catholic Areas.
h. Minority Rights Association.
j. Various regional Citizens Defence Committees working to the CCDC.
k. SDLP.
l. PD and other "New Left" organisations.
m. Vigilante or street comittees, who organise allegations and fake damage, etc.
n. University groups and teachers.
o. RTE and newspapers in the Republic to varying degrees, with the Irish Press particularly active.
p. Committee for Truth (Fr Denis Faul – brutality allegations vehicle).
q. Association of Irish Priests (Ulster Branch) (Secretary Terrance O’Keefe, Coleraine University)).
r. A number of RC priests, but Frs Brady, Faul and Egan are prominent.
8. Thus IRA propaganda can be compared with Esso’s simple and successful "Tiger in your Tank" advertising campaign by which thousands of motorists were prepared to carry Esso advertising on their cars at almost no cost to the firm. So long as it appears to the majority of Catholics that the British Army is a threat to their community by acting as an "instrument of Stormont" and is believed by many as being an obstacle to their political aspirations they can be expected to believe most of IRA statements; and as long as they believe they repeat. The indigenous Irish, once convinced that their cause is just, possess a breath-taking ability to lie with absolute conviction, not just in support of something they believe to be true, but to put across a story they know very well is untrue. In this way, convincing witnesses can invariably be produced at a moment’s notice to sell whatever line the IRA consider to be to their advantage. Members of the IRA and their supporting propaganda agencies have good contacts in high places in thevarious media newspapers, radio and television, who can guide them over publicity at short notice. The Irish are also remarkably adept at picking up and repeating propaganda points they hear being expounded by their leaders, both political and IRA, on the radio and television.
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