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For
republicans the 25th of September conjures up one
image - Out Of The Maze, as the late Derek
Dunne was to title his book chronicling the events
of that successful Sunday in 1983. However, there
is little need to be familiar with the work of Jean-François
Lyotard to acknowledge that, as with all dates, their
importance can be as much ethnocentric as eventful
- a la 9/11. The significance attached to them in
one region may be usurped elsewhere. In Paddy Woodworth's
riveting book Dirty War Clean Hands, a short
chapter entitled 'Massacre At The Monbar' details
a horrific event which still resonates throughout
the community from which those targeted on the day
originated and where the 1983 escape from the H-Blocks
is known only to republican aficionados amongst the
Basques.
Two years to the day after 38 republican prisoners
skilfully manoeuvred and manipulated their way out
of the H-Blocks four members of ETA were shot dead
in the Hotel Monabar which is situated in French Basque
territory. Their assassins belonged to GAL, an offspring
of the Spanish Socialist Party, which was specifically
set up for the purpose of murdering, terrorising and
in some cases disappearing those who either physically
fought for or supported the objective of Basque independence.
The names of the dead were Jose Mari Etxaniz, Inaxio
Asteasuinzarra, Agustin Irazustabarrena and Xabin
Extaide. A different date a different place, and they
could as easily have been called John Quinn, Malcolm
Nugent, Dwayne O 'Donnell, each an IRA volunteer,
or Thomas Armstrong, an uninvolved civilian - all
killed on a single evening at the same bar by the
UVF, sections of which were then functioning as a
British state equivalent of GAL.
There
is absolutely no requirement to be sympathetic to
ETA - the group's murder of former comrade Maria Dolores
Gonzalez Catarain (Yoyes) in 1986 as she walked with
her child simply because she refused to genuflect
at its altar of armed struggle was enough to convince
many that Stalinism was poisoning the Basque freedom
drive - to object most strenuously to the manner in
which the ruling Socialist Party in Spain sought to
eradicate it and bounce the French state into aiding
with the Spanish war effort. And while it has been
argued by Jennifer S Holmes in the book Terrorism
and Democratic Stability that Spanish society
was not destabilised to the point experienced by its
Peruvian and Uruguayan counterparts, precisely because
the government did not resort to the wide-ranging
repressive measures utilised by the South American
twin terrorist states, this should not stand in the
way of evaluating the Spanish apparatus which sponsored
GAL as anything less than a demonstratively murderous
entity. Although by Northern Irish standards, the
Spanish state probably regards itself as having conducted
its counter insurgency business in a semi-civilised
fashion.
Governments
everywhere are never what they tell you they are.
As H.L. Mencken contended, almost invariably, the
independent thinker, 'comes to the conclusion that
the government he lives under is dishonest, insane
and intolerable.' Hence the need for structures of
transparency and dissent in every society, for Hilary
Wainwright's 'unsilenceable political force, a persistent
day-to-day focal point in public debate.' As the loyalist
writer Davy Adams eloquently argued on last Friday's
Talkback, dissent is not an optional extra
but a prerequisite to the health and vibrancy of any
society or institution claiming to have democratic
credentials. In its absence society becomes increasingly
repressive and dysfunctional. Governments more than
any other institution have been responsible for human
rights violations - Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the
Gulag, Dresden, Srebrenica, Sabra and Chatilla. Society
has to be vigorously defended against government.
One mechanism ostensibly set up to achieve this end
in our own conflict zone has been the inquiry. But
like most other things here its divisive properties
have not gone unnoticed.
Depending
on which perspective you subscribe to the North of
Ireland today is comforted or infuriated in equal
measure as a consequence of its being enveloped in
an inquiry culture. Whether a soothing silk garment
or an abrasive horse hair shirt, one thing seems certain
- there is a limit to the number of inquiries that
a society can have before the point is reached where
sufficient numbers with no particular axe to grind
begin to conclude that money not spent on present
investigations as a result of being re-channelled
to past cases will produce the effect of live investigations
being treated only perfunctorily. Such pragmatism
will kick in even deeper when Sinn Fein who presently
lead the posse seeking state assassins, decide to
support the police and respond to the imperative of
the immediate. Those who continue to insist on more
inquiries will then face the accusation that they
are leading society into an introspective cul de sac
where improperly conducted present investigations
will give rise to fresh demands in later years for
more investigations into matters that should have
been dealt with today. The spiral is endless. Besides,
how would the appetite of society for news be sated
if current affairs programmes deal only with matters
of history? Despite the assertion by Winston Churchill
- paraphrased by John Ware - that the public inquiry
is the worst form of getting to the truth except for
all the others, Brian Feeney's observation that the
history of inquiries in the North has proven them
to be 'a waste of time and money' will probably gather
pace.
People
have a right to truth, the family of Pat Finucane
every bit as much as the loved ones of Jean McConville.
Both families have been lied to persistently over
the years and they represent only a minute sample
from the range of victims that this conflict has mass-produced.
Yet we know that public or judicial inquiries are
going to address relatively few matters and only those
where it has become politically disastrous to evade
any longer. The power to force some cases onto the
agenda rather than the requirements of justice in
any particular case in itself requires investigation.
Why demand an inquiry into the murder of Pearse Jordan
and not Jo Jo O'Connor? If there is no hierarchy of
victims and no power structure to determine the pecking
order, both cases should be treated equally. Inquiries
in pursuit of truth that are not firmly grounded in
a wider culture of truth will become damage limitation
exercises or opportunities to engage in conflict -
rather than reconciliation - by other means; a way
of poking an opponent in the eye by saying 'it is
now official - your political project brutally transgressed
our political project and we now have the moral high
ground in our battle against you.' How this advances
anything other than sectional interests is difficult
to envisage.
While
useful it is not essential to the process of establishing
truth that officialdom must come on board. More often
than not truth emerges in spite of rather than because
of powerful people in positions of authority. Civil
society rather than the state can play a role and
may inform the public consciousness regardless of
what the state thinks. Was anyone convinced by Widgery's
version of what happened on Bloody Sunday? The very
term 'Widgery' has now become synonymous with cover
up and whitewash.
Paddy
Woodworth's excellent study of GAL murders has drawn
attention to the role played by the media in uncovering
atrocities by the Spanish state. And books like his
in any society shall function as an indispensable
powerful indictment, persuading many that the state
has much to answer for and should have transparency
imposed on its business. Hugh Orde, the present chief
constable, may have a point other than self-serving
in criticising the inquiries that enrich barristers
before they achieve anything else. But it is hard
to see what exactly it is. For Orde cannot have it
both ways. It ill behoves him to depict the barristers
as money grabbing vultures yet at the same time wage
war on those who have the capacity to ensure that
the objectives of inquiries are achieved by other
means. Journalists in the North of Ireland do not
always acquit themselves well, feeling that sustaining
the myths of the peace process are more important
than reporting on its inconsistencies. Anything designed
to reinforce such quiescence is a retrograde step.
If the truth is to emerge, writers and journalists
must be free to pursue it. There are few enough willing
to do it as it stands. Ridiculing the barristers while
raiding the journalists - Hugh Orde's approach to
'closure' is to close down transparency and reinforce
the culture of secrecy by introducing a sinister element
into our already dubious policing milieu. Of cause
for even further alarm is that the assault on transparency
is being camouflaged by a discourse of modernisation
and human rights.
Had
that attitude prevailed in Spain the real power behind
the murderers of Monbar, the Spanish state, might
never have been unmasked. Cui bono?
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