Guest writer Martin McCleery with his perspective on the the contentious question of the past. Martin McCleery is a research fellow with the School of Politics Queen's University Belfast.
The nationalist/republican community point towards the undeniable injustices that existed in Northern Ireland since its inception whilst unionists/loyalists point towards the campaign of violence that was carried out by republican paramilitaries. The British state has for a long time portrayed itself as the neutral party caught in an impossible position. One is reminded of the school playground and the ‘You started it, No I didn’t you started it!’ mentality. However the longer ‘the constitutional war’ continues in this vein the longer it will be before our community can truly be reconciled.
A major part of this political point scoring unfortunately has centred on the issue of ‘victims and survivors’. If progress is ever to be made on this issue we maybe need to look at these two distinct groups under a new light. A separation of the ‘victims’ defined as those who lost their lives or were physically injured in the conflict from the ‘survivors’ the relatives of those murdered or injured in the conflict is desirable. Before addressing the issue of ‘victims’ it has to be recognised that the ‘survivors’ have too often been hijacked by political parties and by some people who will never be able to forgive and forget. To them their pain and grief is greater and somehow more worthy of recognition than ‘the others’. This can never be the case.
Although unpalatable perhaps some understanding of this position can be found in the fact that the unionist side clearly won the ‘military war’ that raged for decades. Of course Sinn Fein would dispute this but the fact is that today the state of Northern Ireland is very much still in existence and will be for the foreseeable future. For almost three decades the Provisional movement held the ‘Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’ mantra aloft. Nonetheless their declared aim of a united Ireland won my military means was not achieved. So many unionists believe that they have been vindicated and they were right all along. Consequently their dead were ‘innocent victims’ and by default their grief is somehow greater. This is an obstacle that needs to be overcome.
I write this not from my ivory tower but as someone whose brother was murdered by former republican paramilitary comrades in 1996. A multitude of thoughts and feelings go through my head as I write this blog. What would people think of me? Would they think I was just looking sympathy? Would they think my piece even worthy of consideration? Feelings of guilt that I was writing about something so close and personal but trying to do it in a dispassionate way. Indeed many people will say that my older brother got what he deserved because of the choices he made in life.
Obviously on a personal level I would never be able to agree with those of this opinion especially when I Iook now at my eighteen year old niece who never got the chance to get to know her father and my loving mother and the pain she has carried all these years. I know well the effects that a relative’s murder can have on thought processes, emotional feelings, relationships with loved ones and interactions with other human beings. These same emotions, thoughts, and feelings of unbearable grief and pain have been experienced by too many people. The families of all those murdered in ‘The Troubles’, whether they be members of the security forces; paramilitaries; feud victims; informers; civilians, share the same loss.
As Malcom Gladwell suggests in his new book which admittedly has some dubious conclusions, David and Goliath, sometimes good can come out of adversity. All that many survivors want is that no one has to go through the same grief again. This is not always appreciated. I remember well listening to an academic giving a paper when she was making a correlation between the high approval rates of ‘victims’ of ‘The Troubles’ for the peace process and the amount of money that had been spent on ‘victims’. She just couldn’t see that this high approval rate almost certainly came from the desire of most ‘survivors’ to make sure this would never happen to anyone else again.
A small step in the right direction can be taken when the political posturing over ‘survivors’ ceases and everyone accepts that there is no ‘Hierarchy of Pain’, then maybe the issue of the ‘victims’ of ‘The Troubles’ can begin to be addressed. If this can be agreed upon then, to borrow from Churchillean phraseology, this would not be the end not even the beginning of the end and not the end of the beginning but we may have made a start on a beginning.
There is one undeniable fact that we should all be agreed on no matter what the rights and wrongs of the situation in Northern Ireland, it was not worth the life of one single human being.
Your right,What was it all for.As the dark came off with.Got Fuck All.
ReplyDeleteMarty a good post a cara and I agree with the sentiments,however like everything about this fucked up place all the disputes over victims, "flegs", marching,policing or the lack of it, to me are a distraction to keep the communities apart to make sure the sectarian carve up called the GFA buys time for the real culprits to the disaster that norn is,the governments of the republic and Westminster allowed this powderkeg to become volatile and as we now know that social climber Paisley played the sectarian card and relight the smouldering fuse that kicked of this round of "troubles"that are and have been a source of misery in our long history with perfidious albion, we need to address the cause of the illness here before we can seek a real and effective remedie a cara,everything else is just tinkering around the edges .
ReplyDelete.
Martin,
ReplyDeletethoughtful piece. Thanks for submitting it.
I agree with Marty, there'll never be a meaningful peace until you remove the cause of the conflict - the British presence
ReplyDeleteThat being the British sovereign claim as opposed to the Unionist community
ReplyDeleteMarty McCleary-
ReplyDeleteThat read like it came straight from the heart-
" It was not worth the life of one
single human being "
I would not go that far-whilst life is sacred we were invaded-they asked for it nothing more nothing less-
I am sure the invaders were asked nicely at the start to leave but that never worked out-then when the people took to the streets they got beat by the batons-and so the invaders were killed and the war was took to the invaders
home streets and now there is a working-[mostly]Peace Process up and running-
Being a invader class the enemy then went to other lands and a invader was killed yesterday by the afgan people-bet those rebels who killed him believes it was worth it even if you don't-
Very good read. The politicising of victims and point scoring dished out by the differing religious political power blocks, is basically in my opinion as rotten as the actual event that resulted in someone becoming a victim in the first place. A victim for what gain springs to mind, nobody gained nothing.
ReplyDeleteTalk about running to stand still, what a waste, horrific.
Victims as political footballs, is in my opinion an act of sectarianism itself.
There should be no hierarchy on who suffered most during the thirty odd years of conflict, when in reality everyone was touched directly or indirectly.
Sectarianism is not only institutionalised here, on the street, workplace, club, school, pub, etc. The MLA'S are conveying this message every time there is a so called crisis. it has basically become a top - down sectarian strategy. Something of a daily soap opera in the executive, with manufactured crisis, after crisis. But wait, there is rumour knocking about.
Pisst, here, wait to you hear.
I am going to let you into a secret, don't tell anyone. But, "there is no crisis in the Executive", it is far to handy for the so called public servants that pretend to work there to in any way upset the apple cart, most of them have nowhere else to go and the opportunity it far too great where they are.
For example, becoming an MLA is guaranteed four years employment, without the treat of losing your employment all you have to do is follow the party line.
It is handsomely paid, expenses, priviledge a plenty, you do however need to feel comfortable lying, being deceitful, and able to articulate the party's point of view without any emotional or moralistic feeling, no matter what.
It is really a scam, and the electorate are basically slaves by consenting to it.
This is done by daily, weekly, monthly activity of finding religious/political point scoring scenarios to copperfasten religious mindsets and entrench tribal division all with the purpose of being re-elected to maintain the status quo.
Its the best vote winner in town, and on this occasion the issue of "victims" will get us through to the flags issue in December.
It would be personal suicide for the MLA's to bring the executive down, this is just playing on peoples fears and anxieties, to distract the fact that not a whole lot of work can be accounted for in any transparent auditing. Most of the work is done by civil servants, political researchers then handed to the MLA's as the visual front men.
We need to introduce a "fit and proper person test" to become a MLA here, as the original job description of MLA acting as a public servant, somewhere along the track went skew-whiff to personal self fulfilling servant.
For a really short period of time for the executive to be up and running, the MLA's are either quick learners or they are being schooled day and night by the small army of west minister senior civil servants in the useage and abusage of political power and privilege.
I was under illusions on how the DUP would ACT in government, none at all. They are the fundamental religious right, something similar to the "tea party" or the republican part of the USA.
SF on the otherhand have outdone the "four faced ole clock" in their terms of governance. They have become the person or relative that no one could listen to a word off or trust.
Was the whole thirty years of the Provisional leadership geared to obtain power and out do "British" in term of implementing tory policy.
The SF leadership only started referring to themselves as leadership around 1998 when the institutions are merely an embro.
Every resident here is on the path to become a victim without the bodycount through social and economic repressive legislation in order to balance the books for the financial and political morally corrupt elite.
The hierarchy of pain chapter two awaits.
I would agree with some of what James wrote.
ReplyDeletePoliticians in Stormont really only pay lip service to the victims of the troubles. I have heard the DUP bang on about innocent people killed and how such and such should be done to help them. I have family who were murdered during the troubles. He was a young man, shot dead by " mistake " as Catholics were suppose to be there. A few friends watched their Father being shot dead in front of them, of which none of them have recovered from such horror. Yet not one Unionist politician has ever came near them to offer any kind of help.
Nothing but cheap lip service to get people to vote them back into their nice jobs were they literally do nothing. I have never voted and doubt I ever will.
Excellent post. Thank you, Mr McCleery.
ReplyDeleteFrom Larry Hughes
ReplyDeleteMartin, that's a very emotional read. Don't think anyone who reads it could remain unmoved.