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Excuse Me I'd like to Ask You a Few Questions...Source: Fortnight, No. 110 (Sep. 12, 1975), pp. 13-14Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25545505 .

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FRIDAY 12th SEPTEMBER/13

Excuse me I'd like to ask you a few questions . . Our academic correspondent forecasts the initial proceedings in the People's

Assembly which may or may not

materialise in 1976.

Jan. 1, 1976. The new People's anti British Provisional Government, born from unanimity in last year's Northern Ireland Convention, today rocked

Europe with its first piece of

legislation, the Termination ot Researchers Bill.

Moving the Bill, the UUUC leader announced to rapturous applause: Hon. Friends, today we are united in

a common cause. Eight years ago, a

plague was sent to blight the fair face of Ulster; when the Adam and Eve of one parasitic species first set their sandalled feet upon our shores, to breed and multiply like the very vermin in our sewers. Yea, verily was

Ulster's extremity their opportunity. Today we have the chance to drive these locusts from our midst. Friends, you know to whom I refer, for we have all suffered from this plague. I have a book in my hand. It is not the good book. It is a very bad book, it is a book that has made me a man of wrath/

SDLP leader: 'Sir, may I interrupt to support this Bill. In 1969 we had

only one Irish?or British?or Ulster

problem. Now we have 5000 theories, 10 million problems and 68 infallible

solutions subject to endless permuta tions. These have to go. God knows

things have been complicated enough for people like myself to deal with as it is. Do we want to keep a class of

parasites in business another 20 years? What we need is a tlykiller?'

Ballymurphy people's representa tive: 'Mr Chairman, sir, I wish to set some facts before this House. With the aid of my electronic calculator

(groans) . . . confiscated during our internment swoop I have ascertained . . . . that since August 1969 the

members of this House have spent 25.74% of their time answering

interviewers and fending off biogra phers. In Ballymurphy alone, 765 research students were sighted on one

clear morning in 1970. Sir, where once

the streets of our district gleamed with

garbage and old bedsteads, now they are knee deep in questionnaires. For

Mrs. Philomena Brady, labelled The

Typical Ballymurphy Housewife* in some American rag in 1971, the stream of these gnats tapping on her window day and night has not from that time ceased. In the words of my

Hon. Friend, the SDLP P. Rep (Andersonstown)?*

Andersonstown P. Rep: The F . . .

ers have had it.' A member: 'You wrote a book/ Andersonstown P. Rep.: 'Sod off/ UPNI leader: 'Sir, we have heard

much talk about the "Protestant

backlash", less about the "guinea pig backlash", but I tell you the time has come when the people of N. Ireland will no longer tolerate their role of zoo

animals, clockwork toys or laboratory

specimens under the gimlet eye of some bespectacled zombie from

Cleveland, Ohio, or Borussiamunch

engladbach. Personally speaking, my own life has been so shattered since that dumpling Boil purloined his filth in the market place that 1 have been forced to engage a Yank psychiatrist. Indeed, had it not been for the

generous rectification of the tacts by the Hon. NILP P. Rep. opposite-er'

A member: 'He's interned. Wrote books.'

Alliance P. Rep.: 'Sir, I do not wish to raise problems, but if this

legislation is passed no prison here could contain the influx. A Shankill

minister informs me that in his area

> alone, 74 researchers passed through Tennent Street last month searching for the authoritarian personality. Secondly, the majority of offenders now lurk outside the country: how are

they to be brought to justice?' Vanguard P. Rep.: 'My proposals

have the simplicity of genius. In these

days of UDI and eating grass, Ulster's

unemployed can be set to building the new Alcatraz, funded in part by the

millions saved by the elimination of the Election Prediction Machine, with its myriad hangers-on and button

pushers/ A member: 'Now we can go to bed

on election nights.'

Vanguard P. Rep.: \ . . secondly, disciplined commando squads organ ised by the military minds in our midst

will search out and destroy data banks in alien lands and recover any socialist science types lurking underneath them.'

DUP P. Rep.: 'Praise the Lord.' Small voice: T don't agree.' Andersonstown P. Rep.: 'What silly

++++ was that?' Small voice: 'Nobody ever spoke to

me till I met Klaus Henzelberger!' The Bill was passed by 99 votes to

one.

An amendment calling for rht termination of W D Flackes was

defeated.

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14/FORTNIGHT

Jan 7, 1976? News oi the new

legislation brought rejoicing crowds onto the streets of Bogside, Falls, and

Ballymurphy, the areas hardest hit by the academic epidemic. Locals danced around bonfires of community studies and computer printout. Father Seamus OTlaherty commented: 'We dor: l mink these bloodsuckers have done any permanant psychiatric damage, but the problem is we have

nobody to find out for us now.' Around Queen's University, how

ever, all was silent tension punctuated by the furious rattle of bin lids as armoured cars raced up the avenues. In the basement Gents' of the Social Sciences Building, a masked and hooded professor told our reporter:

'This is no joke. Board up your windows. We are heavily armed academics dedicated to the Cause.'

Other academics defiantly sported sponges in their lapels with the

inscription: 'proud to be a parasite.' At Belfast Airport a spectacular

scoop was made early this morning with the capture of the legendary Prof. Richard Knows, who first enraged the

province with his observation that

nobody in Ulster could agree about

anything. 'This fulfils my sixteenth

prophesy for N. Ireland on page 205 of

my book' he claimed before being hustled away. A policeman com

mented sarcastically: 'we all agree about him?'

Meanwhile, messages of support for the new legislation poured in. In a

surprise joint statement, the UVF and

People's Democracy proclaimed 'a new era for the tormented people oi Ulster/Six Counties.' A UVF spokes man explained afterwards: 'The Hand of God and our Protestant ancestors has dealt another blow to the twin forces of Communism and Republi canism' while PD spokesman and sole

remaining member Fergus Au Pair commented: 'at last the legions of

imperialistic lackeys and counter

insurgency experts have been removed from the backs of the sorely tried anti Unionist population struggling under the jackboot of Orange Fascism.'

Meanwhile, outside the Institute of Irish Studies, notorious Researcher

Terminator Finger'em Daily danced

ecstatically to a very old Irish folk tune.

Jan. 14, 1976:?Disturbances in Long Kesh. ?In a smuggled statement

(headed: 'Agree with it. Disagree with it. But for God's sake read it!), Trendy

Radical Chic's commander, Dorita

Sweet-thing, complained to the

Sunday News:

*Oh my God! It is madness to mix men like mine with the imperialist hacks of the Research for Policy

makers Brigade . . . we demand

nothing less than TOTAL SEGRE GATION and 200 fags a week and if

my people had talked to your people to

my people 300 years ago I might never be here. Oh God!

Meanwhile, inmates of Compound 19 begged for the removal of verbose

historian O. D. Backwards, and tarnished globetrotter "Congo" C.

O' Boring, for incurable verbal diarrhoea. 'Even the rats have been driven away' said a spokesman desperately. In Significance of the Conflict Cage, the Education Officer

protested strongly at the policy of

allowing in only books written by inmates. 'There are many subtle forms

of torture and deprivation' he declared. 'We are writing to Amnesty International/

Meanwhile Potted History Cage demonstrated vigorously at the

provision of computer printout for

toilet paper. We are now forced to stand up tor our rights' the commander declared.

These disturbances were cast into

insignificance by tiie spectacular escape of notorious American profes sor Gene Poole and renowned

'psychologist on the run' Miss Mona

Squeal. Poole, whose infamous theory about inbreeding and madness in Ulster brought insane rage to the

province last summer, was later found in a barn with a local girl.

At dusk, an alert patrol of Fianna Tontons Macoutes spotted a white fur hat and blue suede coat bobbing about in Leeson Street. Drawn by its cries of T care, I care', the patrol finally apprehended Miss Squeal in a

nearby cul-de-sac. T am out of my mind' she declared calmly. 'Please take me to Pettysburn.'

Last words on recent events were

spoken by the Andersonstown People's Representative (SDLP) who snorted: 'If the ++++s don't like it, they can

always write a f+++ing book about it.'

MacMoney

Ulster Workers Cry Rape Rape is topical but unpleasant. Sym pathy immediately goes to the victim whose version of the events is usually unquestionably accepted. So when

Sandy Scott of the Confederation of

Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions action committee alleged last week that members of Wilson's government had beguiled and raped thousands of

shipyard and aircraft workers, the rank and file of Ulstermen were all ears.

The action committee's resolution, which was passed unanimously by a mass meeting of over 10,000 workers, demanded that Westminster bring to an end the continuing uncertainty and the divisive and disastrous social, economic and political strategy which it is at present pursuing in relation to

Northern Ireland. The workers fear that Harland & Wolff, Shorts and RAF Sydenham will not be included within the scope of the National

Enterprise Board and that any future

finance for these establishments will be deducted from the monetary subventions to N. Ireland.

Their concern must be set against the background of rising unemploy

ment, the collapse of I.E.L., and

reports of cutbacks in labour at STC,

Olympia Typewriters and many other firms.

A Special Case? Since the days of the Hall Report in

the early 1%0's N. Ireland has been

regarded by Westminster as a 'special economic case'. Stormont was able to

give the highest and most extensive

range of incentives to incoming industry of any other UK region. In

addition, huge subsidies have been

continually pumped into the shipyard and Shorts. To this extent the six

counties benefitted economically from

being a self-governing province in that in practice it was the Government and

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