The Conflict Resolutionists……….they have’nt gone away you know.
Platform for Change, the high priests of “lets get alongerism” held an event on “Dealing With the Past” in the Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast and I went along. The most public faces of Platform for Change, Trevor Ringland and Robin Wilson were in charge.
Trevor Ringland is a man I much admire. His track record is good on Victims. About forty people attended last nights event. Essentially all our local Parties are either hostile or indifferent to Dealing with the Past, so Platform for Change, which is essentially a middle of the road organisation of mostly Belfast academics which seeks re-allignment in our politics is friendly territory for Conflict Resolutionists.
I almost feel sorry for Conflict Resolutionists as they seem to be losing ground in their struggle to force us to deal with our past….on THEIR terms. The British and Irish Governments have dragged their feet on the ambiguous promise made to “victims” in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The Agreement is a triumph of Creative Ambiguity. It is all things to all people. Nobody realistically wants to look at it again. The five Norn Iron political parties are happy enough. The paramilitary groups dont need to be in the spotlight. Nor does the British Government. The past is the Past.
People might claim the Past has been buried alive. Perhaps. But after thirteen years of being buried alive its reasonable to assume that it is now dead. It will be a matter for Historians. The archives and records are already there. There is no point in creating an archive, which seeks the Truth, when the ex-participants and victims are still alive. Truth is not possible when there is still capacity for people to lie. Or at best there will be special pleading.
And this is the difference between Historians and Conflict Resolutionists. The latter want to influence the Future by manipulating the Past. All for the Common Good. In my view a Conflict Resolutionist mis-uses History in the way that an Astrologist mis-uses Astronomy. It is a cod science.
Essentially Conflict Resolutionists lost the argument when the Consultative Group on the Past reported in 2008. Headed by Archbishop Robin Eames (former Anglican Archbishop of Armagh) and Dennis Bradley formerly a Derry priest), the Report outraged a lot of ordinary opinion.
By no means the only suggestion they made…..but the one taken up by Media, Political Parties as well as ordinary folks…..was the proposed payment of £30,000 to the family of every victim. To the unionist population, this meant there would be no distinction between the families of republican militaries and security forces (police and British Army) or indeed passers by or victims of sectarian murder. For ordinary people like myself, there was the feeling that we had all to some extent suffered in the Troubles and many “victims” had already been adequately (financially compensated). Reducing victimhood to a cash sum was crass. Eames-Bradley was fatally wounded and with it any attempt to deal with the Past.
Archbishop Eames has been so wounded by the controversy that he has retreated into private life. Mr Bradley continues to peddle proposed revised versions of the Plan. Frankly the Conflict Resolutionists screwed it up for themselves.
And like Monty Pythons Parrot, there is no realistic prospect of Dealing with the Past. To mix the metaphor that (gravy) train has now left the station.
Last nights event featured a theatrical presentation by five ladies (one via video) from a group called Theatre of Witness. This is the kind of thing dismissed as “Prozac Art” by theatre director Tim Loane at the Culture After Conflict seminar in March this year. I have blogged about this. But Loane was unfair I think.
The five women……a woman in late middle age from Protestant North Belfast……a Catholic from West Belfast who was burned out from her home (age 7) by Protestant mob in 1969 and later the victim of abuse….a woman who had become an IRA volunteer in Derry in the late 1970s (also a victim of abuse)…a Derry woman (via video) abused as a young woman who joined the Police Service in 2005.
Most poignantly the fifth woman was Patricia Gillespie, a Catholic from Derry whose husband was abducted by the IRA and chained to the drivers seat of a car and told to drive to an Army checkpoint. A bomb in his car was detonated by remote control. He was blown to pieces and five soldiers from the British Army waere also killed.
Five remarkable women. Victims. Survivors. But the stories of the Troubles and their own personal journeys are entwined. We all have a story.
Everyone found these stories very moving.But the point was that these were personal reflections…often with the Troubles as a background rather than “central”.
That the women were brave, articulate and empowered was obvious but I saw no direct “evidence” that what was good for them was good for us all.Their stories were stories of ordinary women. And perhaps the shock was that the well heeled, academic audience members were “shocked”. Where have they been living all these years? Well seemingly USA, Germany and England.
I stated that there might be 400,000 people still alive who were adults during the Troubles and that we are a dying breed. Actually a person better able to judge said it was nearer 500,000 but the key point which he acknowledged was that not many in the general community are bothered about the past.
He quoted figures in confidence which he asked us not to broadcast……..
So who actually is driving this nonsense which refuses to just lie down and die. People spoke of the expense of the Truth and was it worth it…… (well of course it isnt!) and I put forward my own preference for Healing Thru Amnesia being as valid a response to dealing with the Past ….if thats what works and tinkering about with the Good Friday Agreement and risking its gains to satisfy the intellectual cravings of academics must be resisted.
Yet there is something which annoyed me. People in the Bogside Derry or indeed the unionist folks along the border areas have been screaming about injustices such as Bloody Sunday or Claudy for three decades. Last years Reports seemingly validated the relatives sense of Injustice……but it is only the “Great and the Good” who refused to recognise the obvious truth. The Truth does not need an Inquiry so that British Government Ministers or academics in Queens University can say “if only we had known about these terrible things”.
Dont try and con me with that nonsense. You knew about it. Perhaps someday in the not too distant future an expensive Inquiry will reveal the “truth” about the Ballymurphy Massacre of 1971. I lived thru it. I saw it before my eyes. I dont need an Inquiry. I dont need an expensive charade to confirm what I already know. Nor do the relatives of the eleven victims who died during those two days. They know the Truth. The Truth can be confirmed tomorrow. It really is THAT simple.
So why the call for Truth Commissions and ever more Inquiries…..into Kingsmill or Tebane… or Bloody Friday…..or Collusion?.
Simple. The big pretence is that this will make Victims feel better. But the reality is that this is to facilitate those who sat behind their doors in leafy Belfast suburbia to come to terms with the fact that they spent decades neither knowing or caring what was happening to their fellow human beings in working class areas like Catholic Ballymurphy or Protestant Shankill.
Aint that the Truth?
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