Guardian Real IRA story reopens debate on 'oxygen of publicity'

Remember Margaret Thatcher's desire to starve terrorists of the "oxygen of publicity"?

The former prime minister's remark was a precursor to the Tories' broadcasting ban in the late 1980s that prevented supporters of the Provisional IRA in Sinn Féin – or indeed loyalists – from talking freely on the UK's airwaves. The thinking behind this prohibition was that terrorist groups were exploiting the broadcasters, that the enemies of democracy were subverting the system by harnessing a key tenet of democracy – a free, open media.

Of course the ban led to surreal outcomes such as actors' voices replacing the actual voices of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and other key players in the Northern Irish politico-paramilitary world. At its most extreme the ban's absurdity was exposed on the BBC comedy mock-news show The Day Today when Steve Coogan, playing a Sinn Féin spokesman, sucked in helium before an interview in order "to subtract credibility from his statements".

In the aftermath of the Guardian's story on the Real IRA today and the dissident group's bellicose warning to bankers and the banking system, the "oxygen of publicity" argument was resurrected once more.

A reviewer, in fact a favourable one, perusing our story on Sky News late on Tuesday evening, raised the possibility that the report could give the Real IRA the "oxygen of publicity". Although he was fair and objective in his review of the story, others were more hostile in their attitude to our interview with the republican dissident terror group. Some in the media have privately remarked that it has given the Real IRA disproportionate coverage given its size and lack of support within the nationalist community.

Aside from the fact that we emphasised the point that most nationalists support the peace process in the story it is alarming that there is so much self-censorship out there. The reason one suspects that there is may be due to an overwhelming (and well-meaning) desire to protect the amazing gains of the Irish peace process. So much has been achieved as a result of years of painstaking work and dialogue. The end result has been the once-unthinkable sight of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists sharing power together.

However, this does not and should not end in a process where those who oppose that historic compromise are shut out from the debate or censored out of existence. This was one of the key strategic political/PR errors of the British government when the nascent Provisional IRA began to intensify its violence from the early 1970s.

At the time the PIRA was dismissed as everything from an Irish version of the Mafia to simply a gang of mad dogs. One government television advert in the early 70s even compared local PIRA commanders to the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading children towards a disastrous end.

The H-block dirty protests and later the hunger strikes finally shattered that manufactured caricature, and even the British state came to accept that the overwhelming majority of republicans were ideologically motivated and dedicated to their cause.

In underground armed insurgent groups there will always be criminals and opportunists who ride on the back of "armed campaigns" to enrich themselves; in Northern Ireland this particularly phenomenon was a common trait of loyalist paramilitaries. The danger in reporting and explaining the activities of groups such as the Real IRA is that they are dismissed as having no support, no political strategy and as nothing more than a collection of common criminals hiding under the banner of dissident republicanism.

That is why it was important to speak directly to one of the three armed republican groups that continue to carry out acts of violence despite ceasefires, historic agreements and a general war-weariness among the majority of the nationalist population.