Eoghan Harris has addressed the controversy that erupted last night after it emerged the former Senator had admitted being involved in the running of an anonymous Twitter account.
He spoke to Sarah McInerney on Drivetime on RTÉ Radio 1 this evening and this is the full transcript of what he said.
Eoghan Harris: I was one of the founders of the site. In recent times, just simply health, I hadn’t the energy for it. I moved to the background and more of an advisor. So, talking to a group of people, five or six people on that site.
Sarah McInerney: Okay, so can you explain to us your involvement then from the start.
EH: Right, well you know I’m a weekly political columnist and my politics are well known but I couldn’t really visit my readers every week with all of the stuff in Northern Ireland I wanted to address. And particularly, I was a close friend of David Ervine and a friend of Gusty Spence and I have very strong views about the Protestant and Loyalist working class, and I felt they had been very alienated. And I wanted access to mostly Loyalists and Unionists to assure them that many people in the republic had no agenda against them, and no designs on them, and no malign intentions about them. And I could do that on that site. And by the way Sarah, there’s a long tradition of anonymous pamphleteering. The American founding fathers all did it, Edmund Burke did it. I had no problem admitting my involvement when I was asked about it. But others in the site were a bit low loath to do so because they’re just afraid of Sinn Féin. And of course that is the context of this whole thing, is my politics. And my strong beliefs. And I felt I needed that outlet. And the site is available to anybody and I think if you go onto that site you’ll see, go back as far as you like, and you’ll see a consistent effort to reassure working class Unionists and Loyalists. And in recent times they’d no choice but to accept the protocol, suck it up so to speak, and try and live with it. It was irresponsible.
SM: So just to be clear then, the people who are involved - actually I might ask you, who are the people involved in this site?
EH: I can’t give if they’ve insisted they don’t want their names mentioned. I’m not going to give their names.
SM: Okay.
EH: But they would be historians and trade unionists and many of them kind of the older generation like of trade unionists and unionists. And business people actually.
SM: Any politicians or other journalists?
EH: No, there’s no other journalists. There’s quite extraordinary number of, I suppose, business people on it like, who have dealings with Northern Ireland, trade dealings and etc. And they would contribute material from time to time.
SM: Sorry, I just want to know what you mean by extraordinary numbers? Sorry Eoghan, I just want to get this clear. You say an “extraordinary number”. I thought you said six people were involved?
EH: About six people yeah.
SM: Okay so when you say “there’s an extraordinary number of business people”?
EH: No I’m saying an extraordinary number of business people are interested in the site, I meant. And of the six, two of them are business people you know? Who have working relations with the North.
SM: Are any of them politicians?
EH: No, no politicians and no journalists.
SM: Are any of the rest of them public figures like yourself?
EH: They wouldn’t be, but they would be people with a lot of experience and knowledge of Northern Ireland. People who have been involved with it one way or another for the past forty years, fifty years maybe.
SM: Okay. And am I understanding you right when I say the reason for being anonymous was that you and the others were concerned about Sinn Féin and the reaction you would get from Sinn Féin. Is that your reason for being anonymous?
EH: Well that’s their reason for being anonymous. I was anonymous because they were anonymous. But when asked about it, I had no problem admitting my involvement. I mean, nobody outed me. I outed myself. When I was asked by my colleagues had I access to the people in the site, I said: ‘I did’. And I had no problem admitting that. But the others in the group, they’re nervous people, they would be nervous of Sinn Féin. They just didn’t want their names mentioned.
SM: Right. I’m not sure anybody listening at home is going to understand still why you felt the need to set up an anonymous Twitter account that was tweeting in many cases abusive tweets at journalists and others in public life.
EH: First of all, as I explained to you, I couldn’t write in my column every week about Northern Ireland. And secondly, I have always named journalists, I have never been afraid to do so. And that is probably one of the reasons why, like this call from RTÉ is so rare to take part. I’m fundamentally a non-person in RTÉ terms. I have very few platforms, and I couldn’t lump down Northern Ireland stuff on my readers every Sunday. So I needed an outlet to address people in Northern Ireland I felt.
SM: Okay. So why not set up a Twitter account under the name Eoghan Harris to do that?
EH: Because I needed the assistance of other people. I just wanted other people to help and assist me in it.
SM: Would it not have been possible to do that, set up a Twitter account under the name Eoghan Harris, and anonymously take their help without naming them?
EH: Well that just didn’t arise for me at the time. We just as a group, we wanted to operate under a sort of pseudonym. That just didn’t arise.
SM: And it is possible that the reason you wanted to operate under a pseudonym is because, as stated by Alan English, the editor of the Sunday Independent, many of the views published by that account, were unpublishable in a national newspaper. And he said: “Frequently went far beyond what I describe as fair and reasonable comment.” Was that the real reason for being anonymous?
EH: No, I mean that’s his view of the matter, and he’s now a partisan in the matter since he terminated my contract. I don’t think that any fair minded person going through that account, would agree that it’s anything but a benign account meant to reassure Northern Unionists and Loyalists. There are very few rough passages in that, and they’re all directed at people well able to defend themselves.
SM: Well one of them - the account has been taken down so a lot of the messages can’t be seen now - but I’m sure you’re aware that Aoife Grace Moore, who is an Irish Examiner journalist, tweets that the account sent her, and I quote: “sexualised messages about whether Mary Lou McDonald ‘turned me on’, the size of my arse and called me a terrorist from the month I started at the Examiner. Since then,” she tweeted, “I’ve had to go to counselling and the guards.” It doesn’t sound like she had a benign experience of the account.
EH: Well there were two posts, one of which said that although she was hiding out, you could still see her backside. You could say that about any male politician who’s hiding his politics that you see his backside. That’s not gendered.
SM: That tweet that you’re referring to, just for listeners I have the text of it here. It says: “Moore thinks she is sniping safely from behind Derry hedges, but she’s actually sniping from an ROI hedge in the Examiner and her Sinn Féin backside is sticking up in the air.”
EH: That could be said about any male politician as well. There’s nothing sexualised. There’s nothing sexually offensive about that. It’s robust and it’s actually more humourous than anything else.
SM: Did you write that tweet?
EH: No, I didn’t. Can we move on to the other thing she finds offensive? Simply because I said that she was “turned on” by Mary Lou McDonald’s speech, she finds that sexually offensive. But sure you could say about me that I was turned on by Micheál Martin’s speech and nobody would think anything of it. It’s a figure of speech.
SM: If you don’t mind Eoghan, we’ll move on from Aoife Grace Moore. How often would you have tweeted from the account personally?
EH: I effectively did most of the tweets recently in relation to the protocol. I do all of the heavy stuff so to speak about protocols, Good Friday Agreements, and all that. I do all that stuff.
SM: And would you have oversight in all tweets that are going out from the account?
EH: No, I wouldn’t. I’d see some of them and I wouldn’t see others. I would see all of them maybe up to a year ago but as my health kind of went, I could only do a fair amount. I couldn't do much.
SM: Were you the person who tweeted from the Barbara Pym account about how an Irish Examiner journalist had liked a tweet that was related to a Sinn Féin TD, and the comment from the Barbara Pym account was: “There had been an imbecile like from an Irish Examiner hack. No, for once, it was not Aoife Moore.”
EH: I don’t remember it, and I don’t have any recall of it. And I don’t remember doing it. I certainly didn’t do it myself, I have no knowledge of it.
SM: Okay. Do you think that was a benign tweet?
EH: You’re extremely well informed. You did a lot of digging. It’s a pity you wouldn’t do that kind of digging into Sinn Féin’s Abú account. RTÉ did not deal with the Abú situation at all until it became a major story. It’s amazing the amount of digging you do with Sinn Féin’s lone political opponent. Because I’m almost alone in Ireland in warning about the danger of Sinn Féin fascism. And RTÉ, which never invites me on, sits down and you do a lot of digging with your researchers, and yet you never do any research into Sinn Féin’s carry-on. It’s a pile on.
SM: Okay. Do you think that is a benign tweet? To call an Irish Examiner “hack” an imbecile, and then mention that for once it wasn’t Aoife Moore?
EH: It depends on what the journalist had done or had written. If they had written some of the stuff that many Irish journalists do, that enables Sinn Féin, that helps Sinn Féin in its campaign, then it was probably justified. But I have to know the context because you’re being coy about it.
SM: Well I’m not being coy about it, I read you out the tweet.
EH: I heard the tweet. But I have to know the context, and the name of the journalist, and what the journalist had written before I say anything about it.
SM: Okay, so there is some context in which it’s okay to tweet from an anonymous account that somebody sent to you?
EH: Hey, I name names every Sunday in my column. I’m not shy at naming names. This is all kind of dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean leí stuff. Bottom line is - bottom line is I’m one of the only journalists in Ireland that tackles Sinn Féin at the hard end. I opened up a new account to deal with them in Northern Ireland. Yes, if I made mistakes it was like, not out of any malice, it was because of my genuine, deep conviction that Sinn Féin is a malign force on this island.
SM: So, do you think Eoghan there is anything in any of the tweets that were sent out by the Barbara Pym account that were abusive, hurtful, misogynistic - any of those things?
EH: Sarah, I do not. I think they were robust political tweets aimed at very tough, political people.
SM: Okay. And the reason you sent them out anonymously is because it didn’t occur to you you could use your own name and get advice from other people?
EH: It certainly occurred to me to use my own name, but I just felt, if I was in a group of people, that I just didn’t want to be sitting there having to consult with them all the time. It was much simpler to do it like this. But I’m not afraid. There’s nothing sort of problematic about anonymity in my view. Anonymity has been the basis of confretarian polemics for centuries.
SM: Are you associated with any other accounts? Anonymous accounts?
EH: I was asked that question by Alan English. Sinn Féin regularly accuses me of being involved with a number of accounts. If I really had and if really and if I really could curate all the accounts that they have suspended on Twitter, that they’re investigating - most of them I think will be found to be okay - I would want to be a Superman.
SM: Sorry, I don’t understand that answer, are you associated with any other anonymous accounts?
EH: You’re accusing me, or you’re saying -
SM: I’m asking.
EH: The answer is no. What I’m adding to that, what I’m saying is that not only am I not associated, but Sinn Féin trolls and Sinn Féin major figures regularly accuse me of being associated with other accounts, and if they were right I would be a Superman.
SM: Are you sorry you got involved in all this?
EH: No. I would have to find an outlet to deal with Northern Ireland one way or another. It is my life. All my life, people say I’m inconsistent. I’ve been consistent all my life in thinking that Sinn Féin is a malignant force which will eventually pitch us into some kind of civil strife unless you stand up to it. And most Irish journalists are not standing up to it. And the reason I’m at the end of a phone here today is the first time I’ve been asked by RTÉ to talk about anything in a long time.
SM: Well you were on this show maybe two years ago.
EH: And that bothers me. A year ago? A year ago, yeah? The first time my column was mentioned in what it said on the papers, would be if I was in trouble. It was the standard joke, if I was on Sean O'Rourke, that if he rang me I was in trouble. That’s the only RTÉ ring me, when I’m in trouble.
SM: Okay. The Irish Times is reporting just in the last couple minutes that Twitter has suspended nine accounts that are linked to yourself.
EH: No, they’re not linked to me. They have suspended nine Twitter accounts which have supported the political line at various times, or retweeted stuff from my thing. They’ve done it clearly in response to major pressure, and I suspect the pressure is coming from Sinn Féin. I think hundreds of Sinn Féin directed agents have
SM: Eoghan, would you stop the nonsense?
EH: Let me finish please here. I believe that they suspended nine Twitter accounts. You just make these wild chargers associated with me. All these accounts ever did was retweet political tweets from Barbara Pym’s accounts, supporting my line. Just to support an anti-Sinn Féin line now is enough to get a Twitter account suspended.
SM: But that’s not all those accounts ever did. I had personal experience of the Barbara Pym account which I had to mute because of the tweets they were sending in relation to me and at me.
EH: Well you’re a strong presenter now.
SM: I am, and I don’t want -
EH: And you're no dying violet like, you know?
SM: No, I’m not, no.
EH: Produce these tweets. There were tweets about you that were not personalised.
SM: They were personalised, which is why I muted the accounts. Because they were personalised and abusive. I’ve been on Twitter since 2009, and I’ve only muted 15 accounts in that time. The Irish Times have also dug out a quote from you in Hot Press in 2008, and in it you were quoted as such: “I have strong views on the abuse of internet boards like politics.ie by political nerds who need anonymity to function. I have always seen them as,” and there’s an expletive there which refers to people, “in a room and hiding behind the computer while they write nasty pieces.” What would you say to people that that’s a bit hypocritical?
EH: I would say that was then, and this is now. That’s before Sinn Féin pulled out that huge vote in the election. That was before we found out Sinn Féin’s media campaign.
SM: Do you apologise to the very many people on social media who are saying in the last 24 hours that they found the tweets from this account to be hurtful and abusive?
EH: I can’t help it if other people are offended, and I’m not apologising to anybody.
SM: You know, I suppose the thing is Eoghan, most people would agree that you have the right to free speech in terms of your views on Sinn Féin, which are obviously very strongly held. And you had the right to express those views every week in a very big Sunday newspaper. You had the right to set up a blog post if you wanted to write about it further during the week. You had the right to set up a named Twitter account if you wanted to write about it further. You had the right to set up a podcast if you wanted to talk about it further. There were many different ways you could have gotten your views across without restoring to an anonymous account which tweeted abusive tweets regularly at journalists and other public figures.
EH: That’s what you say. I would deny that it tweeted abusive tweets. I believe that anybody that goes on to that account - let them go onto that account - I believe that any fair minded person would see that account as a generally benign account that is not tweeting abuse at people. And if it is tweeting criticism at people, they richly deserved it because they’re usually Sinn Féin enablers, or stooges, or pawns.
SM: Just finally then, as well as the various other tweets which we’ve discussed, the Barbara Pym account regularly tweets about how great you are, and how good you are at your job. I’ll give you a couple of examples. “Harris gave us a wonderful talk in Kilkenny on Wellington and O’Connell. He sang, cracked good jokes. He has the character of a happy warrior.” “Harris is a tonic,” said another. “Mary Lou McWaffle is how Eoghan Harris in his article in the Sunday Independent today described the Sinn Féin leader. McWaffle. I’m loving it!” Did you write those tweets?
EH: No, I didn’t. But I have colleagues who think that my Kilkenny speech was rather good - and so did Ronan McGreevy of the Irish Times. And given that I have no platform, given that your organisation bans me - and it does - given that I have so few platforms, my colleagues probably wanted to look after me. I have so little profile, I get so little support from monoliths like RTÉ which keeps me off the air because they know when I get on, I damage Sinn Féin. That’s why you don’t have me on, simple as that. Every time I was on, I hurt Sinn Féin.
SM: Are you advising Micheál Martin on Northern issues? There’s been some speculation around that. I don’t know if that’s true.
EH: I categorically am not. I had hard words with Micheál Martin only recently about his comments on Alan Rusbridger, so I’m not doing that.
SM: We’ll have to leave it there Eoghan, thank you very much for joining us.
EH: Thanks Sarah.
