Opinion

Brian Feeney: Sinn Féin councillors make eejits of themselves over cartoonist

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Artist and political cartoonist Brian John Spencer
Artist and political cartoonist Brian John Spencer Artist and political cartoonist Brian John Spencer

Sinn Féin’s Belfast city councillors made complete eejits of themselves last week. It wasn’t only that they tried to stop a cartoonist – Brian John Spencer – drawing them, stupid and offensive though that was.

To add insult to injury they tried to defend their indefensible position by coming out with laughable attempts to justify it, remarks that sounded like something out of a Monty Python sketch without the irony.

In case you missed the story, Spencer had applied for permission to sketch the council chamber and January’s monthly council meeting. This would have entailed him being in the chamber some hours before the meeting began and then having a bird’s eye view from the VIP gallery during the meeting. You see, Spencer doesn’t only draw cartoons, he paints as well, as you could see from his Youtube series featuring Irish counties. Sinn Féin voted down his request at the relevant committee meeting but when it came to the full council UUP Councillor Jeffrey Dudgeon saw an opportunity to embarrass Sinn Féin by putting down an amendment to permit Spencer to sketch the meeting. All parties except Sinn Féin – not in the least embarrassed – voted for the amendment.

It turns out that Sinn Féin didn’t like a cartoon Spencer had drawn last year about Sinn Féin’s response to the Barry McElduff Kingsmill loaf controversy. At the time Spencer received a barrage of criticism from Sinn Féin but he replied: ‘The job of an artist is to observe events and point out hypocrisy and wrongdoing wherever it exists.’ True, and hard luck if you don’t like it.

What you don’t do, and what a political party should never do, is to try to censor an artist’s work, especially if it’s political. Even worse is to try to blacklist an artist and then, in vapid remarks to justify it, talk about ‘democratic rights’ while denying them.

The remarks which provoked most mirth came from Sinn Féin’s Arder Carson. Carson is not a man burdened by the weight of his intellect, a fact confirmed by his contributions last Monday week. Refusal to be portrayed by an artist Carson elevated to ‘a democratic right’. He then announced in a priceless piece of codswallop that if the council voted to permit Spencer to paint, that would deny his, Carson’s, democratic right ‘in a democratic chamber’ and that he would therefore have to leave and therefore – therefore? – the council was censoring him: breathtaking bunkum.

Now, Carson will never be mistaken for Demosthenes, so, as you’ve gathered by now, his absence from the chamber would hardly be a loss to oratory never mind democracy. Obviously it never occurred to Carson, or indeed anyone else in the Sinn Féin group, that they were interfering with Spencer’s right to freedom of expression, or indeed defying the majority vote of a democratically elected council. Sinn Féin’s group leader, Ciarán Beattie, added to the general merriment by announcing that regardless of the vote Spencer would not be given permission to draw Sinn Féin councillors.

It didn’t seem to occur to him that this statement is like announcing you intend to stop the west wind blowing on you. There’s nothing to stop Spencer, or thankfully any other cartoonist, from drawing cartoons to demonstrate the absurdity of the position Beattie adopted and draw any or all Sinn Féin councillors as grotesque caricatures. That’s what cartoonists are for.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this sorry tale of idiocy is that Brian John Spencer is happy to describe himself as an Irish artist, a unionist who is working his way round all 32 counties drawing and painting scenes both famous and mundane. However, he doesn’t share the world view of Sinn Féin’s Belfast city councillors.

If there was any logic in the rubbish they came out with last week it’s the opposite of what they thought and unfortunately is as follows. We don’t agree with your political position on a series of matters and the way you portray it, so, although it means making eejits of ourselves, we’re going to do our best to prevent you portraying anything about us, starting with images of us. That says more about Sinn Féin’s Belfast councillors than about Brian John Spencer.