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Archive for March, 2014

Museum of the Troubles

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 12, 2014| 1 Comment »

Unionism has been strangely inept in the face of the confident republican assertion of the value of its tradition.

We saw this in the response to the Castlederg commemoration of the IRA dead and we see it in the discussion about the Peace Centre agreed for the Maze site, which the DUP is drawing back from.

History is now at the heart of political discord in Northern Ireland but nobody is talking about what that history was or what it means.

Republicans argue that there are two narratives and that Unionists just have to learn to live with the fact that the IRA dead are as worthy of respect in this society as the fallen of the Somme.

And Unionism won’t engage with the argument.

We see now the fruits of a hope that history could be forgotten.

To be fair, even John Hume, one of the founders of the Peace Process, envisaged that a line could be drawn on the past.

All funded public art in Belfast now is anodyne, avoiding all reference to history, with the one exception of the Titanic, which seems to represent a feeling that this city has suffered, while avoiding any mention of recent grief and loss.

And in the housing estates we get localised versions of history played out in murals.

Tourist brochures here say nothing of the Troubles and for want of proper investment in Troubles tourism, which could educate thousands every year, we get vivacious amateurs cornering that market. 

In publishing and drama and in broadcasting we get a general avoidance of the Troubles, largely on the understanding that no one wants to read about them anyway or see them on television. Which may be right.

But perhaps they should be encouraged to read about them and talk about them and be nudged out of an apathy about a past which defines us before ignorance about it chokes the political process.

Former IRA gunman and bomber Gerry Kelly is a prime example of a republican who is proud of his past and would repeat that past if the circumstances required it. And presumably he would, himself, be the judge of whether they did nor not. He believes that the IRA has worked wonders in transforming this society for the better. It may have been a slip of the tongue when he told Nolan that the IRA had won us the vote, but no one picked him up on it. It’s as if engaging with the detail of the Troubles would be the most tedious route to take in any discussion.

But if we avoid that discussion, the narratives of the paramilitaries and their marvellous achievements will prevail.

If Unionism doesn’t want this, it should not only be campaigning for a museum at the Maze but getting involved in shaping it.

I would go further and build a substantial exhibition displaying every element of the Troubles.

Not that we should be working to an official version, something Mike Nesbitt seems to want, just the inclusion of every possible aspect of the story.

For the best answer to Gerry Kelly or the sentimental Loyalists is simply the fullest possible audit of the Troubles; an account of who did what. We have the closest thing to this in the book, Lost Lives.

But I am thinking of something like the Martin Luther King museum in Memphis Tennessee which provides a walk through history of racism in the southern states, video loops of newsreels, a bus like the one Rosa Parks refused to get off, posters and letters, leading to the balcony on which King died.

I would have the prison cell with the smeared walls. I would have models showing what a kneecapping looks like. I would have a fearsome paratrooper with blackened face kicking in a door. I would have the tally of actions to show the human complexity, all of which refutes the nonsense that this was a clash of military powers. I would have images of the Shankill Butchers, of the market stalls and counterfeited goods, of the honey trap women who lured soldiers to their deaths on the promise of sex, of the ordinary businesses blown up, the hair dressers and the bars, the taxi drivers killed in ‘dial a target’ operations. I would have the snipers and the bomb makers, the mercury tilt-switch bombs, the pirate radio stations, the letters and magazines and posters, the police and army suicides, the orphans and the ill.

I would play the taped confessions those shot as informers had to make before they died, and highlight the evidence on those tapes that the victims were rehearsed in what to say.

I would show the bombs with their timers nailed down so that couriers couldn’t stop them going off. I would show how half the IRA dead in the first years killed themselves carrying those bombs or with guns that went off in cleaning or training.

I would show what an affliction paramilitarism was on the communities that had to endure it.

I would have the journalism that got it wrong and the journalism that got it right, the smug politicians and the crafty ones, those implicated by action and by inaction. And the churches and the mediators and the go betweens, some with clean hands some not. The tricks of Special Branch and the cynicism.

We have tried leaving the past behind and it hasn’t worked.

Better now to resurrect the whole thing in a museum so that people know what it was that happened here.

And sure, tourists would pay to see it, wouldn’t they?

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Pardon Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

One of the shocks of the last week was that when our politicians are most exercised they are least credible.

It’s is just a fact of life in the new Northern Ireland that people have switched off their interest in the passionate wrangles across the divide. Those who have stopped caring may be naive and hopelessly disengaged, or they may be the hope for the future. One thing is plain though, when Peter Robinson is spluttering, red in the face, and cold eyed Gerry Kelly is chewing a brick, many of us, perhaps most of us, cringe and look away.

One of the most surreal moments of this turbulent week was the switch of themes on the Nolan show on Wednesday night. Stephen magisterially silenced the round table raging about letters to On The Runs to introduce Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno. And a show that had started with portents of imminent political calamity ended up with the corpulent presenter break dancing on the floor.

If the two themes fitted together it could only be from the perspective that Arlene Foster duelling with the Sinn Fein appointed hit man was light entertainment too. And it was.

Arlene was on sparkling form. She has never been seen to rage so grandiloquently, with such verve and speed of riposte. A Bruno type critique of her would say, ‘You were magnificent darling, and your partner in this dance to the death was so sultry and simmering with such suppressed rage. Oh you killer, Mr Kelly. You could fell me with a look.’

This had all started with the collapse of the prosecution of John Downey of Creeslough, charged with murdering soldiers and horses in Hyde Park in 1982. Mr Justice Sweeney ruled that a letter to Mr Downey, telling him, wrongly, that he was not going to be getting his collar felt, was effectively a pardon. He said that it was more important to defend the credibility of the public servants who had signed the letter, assuring him that he was not a wanted man, than to seek justice by proceeding with the charge. And he said it so well that the prosecution declined to appeal.

This was a shock for the DUP and others.

The immediate implications seemed truly shocking, for it was revealed that 187 people had received such letters. These were people who had come forward to say that they were living away from home, out of the reach of the law, on the assumption that the police wanted to arrest them.

Now, if you or I asked the police if they wanted us for a crime, say a murder, we’d expect that to raise their suspicions about us. But if you have been an old provie, it seems more likely to trigger a compassionate response and an impulse to absolution.

The DUP came out accusing the government of lying to them and others, like former Policing Board vice chair Dennis Bradley, emerged quickly to say they had known about the scheme all along and that they understood that the DUP had too.

Peter Robinson said that he would resign if there wasn’t a full judicial inquiry. Arlene Foster over-interpreted this for Nolan as a determination to resign if the letters were not rescinded.

Sinn Fein fielded Alex Maskey and Gerry Kelly to say this was all a fuss over nothing. These letters constituted individual arrangements with the NIO. No one had the right to see them, but they weren’t pardons, as such.

The Downey letter, however, had clearly worked to the same effect as an actual pardon, making a prosecution impossible, but the answer to that was that it had been issued by mistake.

There was another telling media moment when Wendy Austin yesterday spoke to Victims Commissioner  Kathryn Stone and journalist Chris Ryder and others. She assumed this was Ms Stone’s first experience of Stormont being on the brink. The point: it is old hat to the rest of us. For years this was all Stormont did: teeter.

The difficulty for Peter Robinson this time, despite his demand for an inquiry having been met, was that few really believed the substance of his grievance.

Facebook started to throw up evidence of past knowledge of OTR compromises.

The Queen’s mercy had been extended, paradoxically,  to the killers of Captain Herbert Westmacott, fourteen years ago! And the BBC had reported it. Jail breakers Angelo Fusco, Robert Campbell, Paul Patrick Magee and Anthony Sloan were told they wouldn’t even have to complete their two year sentences. The largesse of the government towards IRA men on the run had clearly extended to actual convicts, not just suspects. And everybody knew.

But there was evidence too that other old provies got no bye-ball, like Seamus Kearney, convicted in December of killing RUC Reserve Constable John Proctor as he visited his wife and new-born son in hospital.

There is obviously no blanket pardoning; but it is equally obvious that letters of clarification function like pardons when they are read in court, if they have been mistakenly issued, that is, to someone who is being sought by the police, like John Downey.

At least we will have an explanation of all that in May. It will have to be a good one.

 

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