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Sinn
Fein and the Loyalists complain that the International
Monitoring Commission has abused their human rights.
For stating the obvious, that the IRA and UVF are
still engaged in violence and criminality, the IMC
stands accused of subverting democracy or simply being
unfair. In response Sinn Fein is taking the IMC to
the European Court of Human Rights while the UVF has
started killing people again. In the inverted moral
universe of Northern Ireland's peace process, the
perpetrators have become victims, the truth-tellers
treated as slanderers.
Jack
Holland would have savoured the delicious irony of
all of the above. He was, after all, like Orwell endlessly
fascinated by the way political leaders bent language
and logic to suit their own propaganda. He was also
the first person to show me that there was more to
Orwell than 1984 and Animal Farm.
I
rewind in my memory to a hot day on the balcony of
Jack's holiday home north of Rome, the sunlight shimmering
on Lake Bracciano and an assuring, restful silence
enveloping the ancient cobbled village of Trevignano,
a human settlement from Etruscan times. After lunch
Jack disappeared downstairs into the shuttered darkness
of his living room and returned a few minutes later
with a battered brown-cover copy of volume one of
George Orwell's Letters And Journalism.
He
took a last few sips of a dry white wine and then
retired to bed, urging me to take a siesta in the
guest room given the oppressive July heat. So I spent
the afternoon in the attic of a bedroom built into
the rock of a medieval church dipping in and out of
Orwell's constant literary battles to speak up for
truth and plain language in the face of 1930s. Although
that was 17 years ago I still recall the almost immediate
impact Jack's counsel had upon me. Putting down the
volume, rolling over to try and sleep, I was reminded
of Immanuel Kant's famous remark about his first encounter
with David Hume, the philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment.
On reading Hume's sceptical reflections on the external
world, causation and the existence (or non-existence)
of God, Kant confessed that he was suddenly 'awakened
from my dogmatic slumber'.
Like
any credible writer and commentator Jack did not sing
for his supper even in the normally sentimental, Celtic,
misty-eyed world of Irish-America. While he never
forgot the injustices the unionist regime of pre-1972
Stormont inflicted on the Northern Catholic minority,
nor the role British military heavy-handedness played
in pushing the nationalist working class into the
Provos' arms, Jack refused to play up to the Noraid
gallery. He maintained cordial warm relations with
IRA gunrunners like George Harrison or former INLA
leaders like Harry Flynn but he still clung on to
the belief that despite the historical roots of violent
republicanism the 'armed struggle' had become a futile
cul de sac, from which they must reverse.
Jack
was of course delighted to see the end of the IRA's
armed campaign ten years ago. He left Belfast for
New York once more in early August 1994, just weeks
before the Provos announced their historic cessation
of violence. Yet he could not and would not subsume
the truth in the interest of any 'cause', even the
'cause of peace'. Unlike many journalists and commentators
of his generation he believed there was no 'duty-to-process',
no imperative to be 'helpful' for peace.
He
was one of the few Irish correspondents whose reportage
highlighted ongoing IRA cease-fire abuses as well
as the criminal activities of the loyalists. None
of this ingratiated him with the powerful peace-process
lobby in politics or the media. The vitriol directed
at him from pig-ignorant, Irish-American quarters
didn't seem to bother him either. In fact he laughed
most of it off. When an Irish republican supporter
on a New York radio station dubbed him 'Union Jack
Holland' my co-author and cousin was tickled. 'At
least they haven't forgot me,' he quipped. Yet he
spoke up for the plight of retired republicans who
had gone to the United States to build a new life
for themselves but now faced deportation. One of his
last stories concerned the campaign to allow the McAllister
family to stay in the United States despite attempts
by the American authorities to send them back to Belfast.
In a cruel twist of fate the wife of former republican
prisoner Malachy McAllister, Bernie, died in the same
week Jack passed away.
I
have many fond memories of happy times with Jack:
wine-fuelled discussions by the fireside of the Holland
home in Belfast's North Parade; pints in Dublin's
Palace Bar with Jack and I 'interviewing' former INLA
members and lunch in a Parisian Brasserie near Place
de Clichy, the two of us guzzling chilled Côte
de Rhone on a bright July afternoon at the beginning
of a summer holiday in 1995. But the fondest of all
is of that blistering hot summer day in Trevignano
when a sound piece of advice changed the direction
of my life.
·
There will be a memorial service in Belfast dedicated
to Jack Holland next month.
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