Grave Desecration

By AM Sunday, February 20, 2011

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The monument was quite a significant piece. It was made of solid granite and would have taken considerable force to do that type of damage. Whoever did this must have come armed with a sledge hammer or something similar. So it appears to have been a very deliberate premeditated act – Terry Hughes.

I have long thought that those who attack graves or other memorials seem to spend their time in a bleak cultural milieu where pathological hatred or mindless moronity govern their actions. Whether it is the anti-Semitic destruction of Jewish graves in a Hungarian cemetery, or the violation of the resting places of the late members of Lynyrd Skynyrd there is always something morbidly disquieting about it. Others might say revolting and we would be hard pressed to disagree.

When a granite bench in honour of the late IRA volunteer Brendan Hughes was destroyed early last week barely days after it had been put in place by family, friends and comrades in the Cooley Mountains, it at first suggested a visceral hatred on the part of those responsible for the destruction. On later reflection I considered that it might have been the calling card of local thugs whose minds are so tiny that there would simply not be enough room to squeeze hatred or any other emotion in. I still don’t know what lay behind the attack. Mindless vandalism might, I suppose, be less riling than the hatred that accompanies wilful and thought out desecration.

The past history of Brendan Hughes might not be to the liking of a majority of people in Ireland. He was a long serving member of the Provisional IRA, an organisation that represented a minority viewpoint and which had more than a fair share of opponents and critics. Many in that category were less than tempered in their often blistering critiques. That Brendan remained uncompromising in defence of the IRA’s armed struggle hardly endeared him towards them. Yet few of them would make it their mission to charge though the Cooley Mountains intent on destroying a memorial bench in his honour simply engraved with little more than his name and the dates of his birth and death. They have moved on like most others. The destruction was either the handiwork of a mindless vandal who did it because it could be done or a mind so warped by perennial hatred and for which there is no palliative, that it could find no outlet other than an explosion of destructive rage.

Were the families of the 18 British soldiers killed in an IRA attack not far from the Cooleys to erect something in memory of those lost, it would never strike me that honouring loved ones was something so offensive that it would give rise to an overpowering urge to desecrate and destroy their monument. Yet there is nothing new in this type of desecration. The republican plot at Milltown has been subject to attack and destruction, the perps widely suspected of being thugs with a long standing grievance against republicanism. The grave of the IRA volunteer Joe O’Connor in the City Cemetery has also attracted the attention of morbid marauders.

The war is over and people should be free to remember or even forget as they wish. Leaving a monument alone does not imply acceptance of the perspective, views or actions of those being remembered. It merely means an acknowledgment that those who died left behind family and friends who loved them and grieve them to this day. Those who don’t share their grief should at least leave them alone to handle it in their own way.

Brendan Hughes carried out many actions in his day that led to the loss of life and property. But those who knew him understand very well that he was neither mindless or hate filled. He is remembered as much for his compassion as his military actions. The idea of anyone creeping around in the dead of night wrecking graves or destroying monuments no matter to whom they were dedicated, would have appalled him.

Not able to lace his boots they could always wreck his bench. Hardly the benchmark of meaningful lives.