Editor's
note: This article was originally
written and published in April, 2002, but given
current events, is still relevant today, and worth
reprinting.
At
one time on this island there existed a discourse
which remained in permanent overdrive as those who
shaped it worked with singular determination to
ensure the IRA were demonised, banished, banned
and regularly called liars. Those of us in the organisation's
ranks were subjected to such pejoratives as 'terrorists',
'criminals', and 'gangsters'. The demonology dictionary
seemingly 'required reading' for conflict writers
and establishment politicians. But now, that Peace
Process is here to look over us - Big Brother-like
in its pervasiveness, monitoring our every word
and action lest we say something that 'is not helpful
to the peace process' or behave in some manner which
is 'opposed to the peace process' - there has been
a considerable discursive twist. And it is nowhere
more pronounced than in nationalist circles. So
fearful have we become of upsetting Peace Process
that we tend to appease it, feed it on a diet of
its own myths and tell it nice things about itself,
even when it is nonsense. We are all expected to
act as a mirror for Peace Process in which it is
only ever allowed to see its own deceitful intellectual
image tarted up as truth. 'Yes, Peace Process, you
are the most exemplary of all peace processes'.
And
when the mirror dulls down and its ability to reflect
peace as distinct from a mere process is called
into question, there is no shortage of word cleaners
to come along with new products which explain to
us that the dullness is in fact a shine, merely
turned inside out; that we need to think strategically
and avoid being mesmerised by the tactical manoeuvring
of the moment to fully understand it. How else are
we supposed to conceptualise the great language
of our day such as 'constructive fudge' and 'creative
ambiguity'? Without this ability to 'get our heads
around it', we could never rest at peace with ourselves
having tasted the forbidden fruit, unsuspectingly
handed to us by a leading Irish participant at a
1998 Oxford conference on the need for a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission: the Good Friday Agreement,
all were warned, is 'a delicately balanced compromise
which can be destroyed by truth ... honesty and
straightforward talking must be avoided at all costs.'
And
nowhere is the evidence of this more substantive
than it is within the political leadership of establishment
nationalism. Referring to talks between the IRA
and the de Chastelain disarmament commission, John
Hume once commented, 'the most important thing about
the guns factor and those who have used them is
when they have said they have stopped that they
are telling the truth.'
Gerry
Adams - well he would wouldn't he - informed his
audience in June 2001 that 'the one thing about
the IRA, they accept what they have done even when
it is unpopular.'
If
matters were just restricted to these two minor
partners in the nationalist body politic the myth
about Peace Process would not be so oppressively
encompassing. But when the hegemonic element, represented
by the leader of the country, puts his shoulder
to the wheel of fiction it then becomes totalising.
The regime of truth is established, not constituted
by the facts but by all those with the dangerous
power to, in the words of Eric Hoffer, 'make their
lies come true'.
Speaking
after Fianna Fail's annual Easter Rising commemoration
at Arbour Hill, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, echoing
Hume and Adams, made the following comment in relation
to the Castlereagh theft: 'down the years when the
IRA say they were or were not involved in something,
however horrific, it is usually factual. That has
been the experience. The Republican Movement said
from the start that it had no involvement in this
particular incident and I've no reason to disbelieve
them.'
It
is very possible that Mr Ahern has every reason
to believe the IRA when it says it was not involved
in the break in at Castlereagh. After all, the British
have neither record of nor reputation for honesty
throughout the past thirty-three years. Sunday Tribune
reports (21/4/2002) that the British are once again
moving to conceal their involvement in the 'dirty
war' - this time by blocking a proper investigation
into the Dublin/Monaghan bombings should serve as
a reminder that what they say about Castlereagh
need not be absorbed like a sponge. And over the
years their persistent lying to cover up what took
place in Castlereagh interrogation rooms became
so ridiculous, it at times sounded like they were
being tongue in cheek. In the mid to late 1970s
few in the nationalist community would have raised
eyebrows if the following statement were to have
been released by the British: 'Last night another
six prisoners beat themselves up in Castlereagh.
One officer who intervened to prevent a suspect
attacking himself had his fingernails broken by
the suspect's eyes'.
Moreover,
even less than the at best scant evidence than has
been produced in the Colombian case - none in fact
- has been forthcoming that would suggest republican
involvement in the break-in. The British state has
relied on the inevitable innuendo and speculation
that would generate as a result of the arrest of
a prominent right wing republican with media-alleged
leadership connections. If the public can be conditioned
to presume the guilt of the arrested party, then
it is only a small step to make in terms of public
perception in order to implicate the republican
leadership. Consequently, a moral panic is created
which may have little basis in real terms.
But
any historian, rather than a revisionist, of the
conflict would instantly recognise Bertie Ahern's
comments as nonsense. While his judgement may be
right about Castlereagh - the jury is still out
on that one - it seemed not to strike the Taoiseach
that his sense of timing was going to leave him
open to allegations of insensitivity. In the week
when the deaths of two gardai brought to public
mind the fatalities the force sustained over the
past three decades it shall hardly be seen as opportune
to forget that the death of Garda Gerry McCabe was
a killing carried out by the IRA and immediately
denied.
The
IRA's history of doing exactly what Mr Ahern claimed
it doesn't is long. Even at the earliest stage of
its bombing campaign the organisation remained silent
about its involvement until one of its volunteers,
Michael Kane was accidentally killed bombing an
electricity transformer at Newforge Lane, Belfast.
This practice of remaining mute was resurrected
on at least two further occasions; during the sectarian
war of 1974-1976 when the IRA killed numerous Protestants;
and during its campaign in the mid-1990s against
drug dealers when the cover name 'Direct Action
Against Drugs' was employed.
But
remaining silent or using cover names was not the
only stratagem employed. In a number of cases the
IRA resorted to outright lying. For decades it told
the relatives of Jean McConville that the organisation
was not responsible for her fate, whatever that
may have been. In May 1972 rather than accept responsibility
for its involvement in the Anderson Street explosion
in East Belfast which led to eight people dying
including four of its own volunteers, the IRA pointed
the finger at loyalists or the SAS. It lied about
the Claudy bombing of August the same year in which
nine people died; Sean MacStiofain, the then chief
of staff saying an internal IRA inquiry had established
that the organisation was not involved. In November
1974 it denied being responsible for the Birmingham
bombings. Months later it denied the attack on the
Bayardo Bar in 1975 in which five people died. One
of those convicted went on to lead IRA prisoners
in the H-Blocks during the 1981 hunger strike. In
April 1981, the organisation was again lying when
it denied killing census collector Joanne Mathers
in Derry. This time the finger was pointed at those
who were 'frantically attempting to discredit the
election campaign of hunger striker Bobby Sands'.
In today's language, 'securocrats'.
In
November 1987 the IRA blamed British Army electronic
measures for having detonated the device that killed
numerous civilians at the Enniskillen Remembrance
Day ceremony. By 1995, according to David McKittrick
and Eamon Mallie, IRA sources 'admitted that this
''explanation'' was just nonsense'. In December
1987 the organisation again lied about having accidentally
killed Derry man Gerry Doherty in a bomb blast.
In October 2000, the IRA was found to be lying in
relation to the Ballymurphy murder of Real IRA member
Joe O'Connor, even going as far as to cynically
offer condolences to his family.
Eddie
Holt surely got it right when he claimed that 'the
language of war, like the language of advertising,
political ideology and corporations, is a jumble
of jargon, euphemisms and downright lies ... - a
sanitising operation, designed to disguise the reality
of butchery'.
The
litany of lies is far from exhaustive. But that
lies are officially manufactured to conceal other
lies demonstrates that the peace process is intellectually
fraudulent and morally bankrupt. Perhaps if his
advisers were to have provided Bertie Ahern with
the Irish Times more often he may just have noticed
that as early as May 2000 the paper was commenting
that 'frequent assertions that the IRA are models
of truthfulness are not borne out in all circumstances'.
It
is perhaps to be expected that the IRA, like all
other parties, will peddle its own myths. But for
those of us who support the peace but are not beholden
to the process because of its counterfeit composition
it seems bizarre that others do. From the point
of view of Fianna Fail's own self-interest Ahern
seems to have lost the plot in ensuring that the
sun shone so that others could make hay. There seemed
to be little strategic sense for the party leader
to be crediting the Provisional IRA with a general
honesty it does not possess at a time when the other
side of the house, Sinn Fein, is making a claim
to be a party of integrity in a sea of corruption.
The
South African writer Nadine Gordimer's observations
may yet come to haunt the Fianna Fail leader: 'to
serve your society best you have to be honest and
frank'. And historians may ultimately ask if this
was the turning point at which Bertie Ahern failed
to turn?
