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Having
went along to an IRPWA protest on Saturday in support
of better conditions for republican prisoners, it
was impossible not to have my memory cast back to
1981. People excluded from the establishment’s
seductive benefits, nepotism and patronage - the big
brown envelope that the Good Friday Agreement came
in - and who march in support of jailed republicans
always conjure up the image of 1981.
It
was a bad year, remembered more for the 'celebrity'
deaths of IRA and INLA volunteers on hunger strike
than for those of 'ordinary' people. Whether we will
it or not there is a hierarchy of victims and who
goes to the top is very much a subjective matter fought
over on a pitiless, amoral battleground where advantage
is gained by one party or the other as a result of
who pretends better than the others that for it alone
there is no hierarchy. It is really just a new way
of scoring a hit on the 'other side'. And then they
tell us not to be sectarian!
Quite
often the hierarchy takes the form of those worth
collective remembrance and those who are not. Who
can recall the circumstances in which Eric Guiney
and his son lost their lives as a result of rioting
only hours after Bobby Sands died and who have rarely
been heard of since? Non-combatants, a father in a
milk van accompanied by his 13 year old son, they
were the innocent victims of May the 5th 1981. The
death of Bobby Sands was horrendous and still gnaws
at republicans who never accept that Thatcher had
no alternative other than to finish him off. But Bobby
was a combatant and knew the score. We republicans
rightly honour him and for the most part forget the
others who died from injuries sustained during the
frenzied response to his death - two civilians and
a member of the RUC.
There
really is no other way. We think our cause was more
noble than that of the RUC man so we can hardly be
expected to honour him in a manner equal to Bobby
Sands. As for the Guineys we would rather forget them
because it is a source of embarrassment to our cause,
the nobility of which is so sacrosanct, that for us
the 5th of May 1981 is the date on which a horrific
injustice was perpetrated against us alone. All the
talk, therefore, by each of the parties about avoiding
hierarchies of victims is sanctimonious waffle designed
to get the nose in front.
Mitchel
McLaughlin, yesterday, appeared to confirm that there
is no getting away from this. In a pitch aimed more
at sliding his party towards embracing the structure
of the RUC than it was with concern for the bereaved
of Omagh - he stated that ‘Sinn Fein does not
run any campaign dissuading people from giving information’
about the bomb which four years ago today took the
lives of 29 innocent people.
One
wonders what the families of the dead informers over
the years have to think of that? So powerful was the
republican campaign of dissuasion that execution was
employed to deter people coming forward with information
pertaining to the deaths of innocent civilians or
anything else. Two years ago within hours of myself
and Tommy Gorman having called for a public community
inquiry into the killing of Joe O’Connor two
green shirts arrived at my home. The less cerebral
but more threatening of the two chanted monotonously
but menacingly ‘are you demanding an inquiry
into the IRA?’ We certainly were not advocating
that anyone should consider going to the RUC. And
had anyone suggested doing so we would have tried
to dissuade them. But that was academic to the green
shirts whose sole objective was to dampen public discussion
of the matter.
Is
Mitchel McLaughlin now saying that people should no
longer be dissuaded from coming forward with information
about all killings or only some? If for example, someone
has information about both the Omagh bomb and the
killing of Joe O’Connor would they not be dissuaded
from coming forward? Or are they supposed to think
that some killings are good and that others are not,
divulge what they know about the bad and stay silent
about the good? A case of let us reward the killings
of our friends and punish those of our enemies.
If
the mass slaughter of innocent civilians is always
wrong should people be dissuaded from coming forward
with information about the Enniskillen bombing? Or
is a new Stormont supposed to be the basis on which
we excuse Enniskillen and condemn Omagh? Are the relatives
of those killed at Enniskillen supposed to settle
for an IRA apology yet be excluded from the ‘benefits’
of Mitchel McLaughlin’s ’no dissuasion’
clause? Is that what the moral worth of republicanism
has been reduced to?
If
so this is creating the very hierarchy of victims
that republicans so often hit out against. Mitchel
McLaughlin would do well to remember that there are
no separate moral universes inhabited respectively
by ourselves and those from the Real IRA. They were
brought into this world in our own stable - peas from
the same pod. Uncomfortable as it is to remember it,
and ‘unhelpful’ as it is ‘to the peace
process’ - why that should be so is never fully
explained - the alternative is to claim citizenship
of what Gore Vidal once termed the United States of
Amnesia.
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