 |
IRA Apologises
Anniversaries provide us with a particular focus on past events outside of the daily preoccupation of simply living and getting on with our lives. For many people who have lost loved ones in a conflict situation they are highly emotional occasions and relatives are particularly wrought and sensitive at these times.
The conflict in the North didn’t simply start as a result of a split in the IRA in 1969 and the formation of what the media called ‘The Provisional IRA’. The violence was fifty years in the making, if not centuries. What responsibility had the unionist businessmen whose discrimination against Catholics fuelled the eventual emergence of the Civil Rights Association? Did unionist supporters really fear (and mistakenly) that the CRA was a front for the IRA, as Stormont government ministers claimed? How much did state repression, especially from 1969 onwards, contribute to the decision by the IRA to restart, or provide the context for it to restart its campaign? How much did IRA actions, such as Bloody Friday or the killing of RUC and UDR men and women (viewed simply from within their own community as Protestants defending their British way of life) spark a backlash, in addition to the loyalist sectarianism that already existed?
Clearly, there will never be agreement on the cause of the conflict, of what might have been done to avoid it, or how to apportion blame.
Last Tuesday’s statement from the IRA, apologising to the families of those people, non-combatants, innocent bystanders, running into many, many hundreds, was issued, appositely, a few days before the thirtieth anniversary of Bloody Friday, when nine people were killed by IRA bombs, and dozens more injured. Some of the relatives of the dead welcomed the apology; others were, understandably, lukewarm or hostile.
The IRA also acknowledged the grief and pain of the relatives of those whom it considered combatants (including, presumably, members of the establishment - judicial and political - who were involved in the campaign to repress republicanism or who were cheerleaders of the dirty war) and whom it wilfully killed. Some commentators have taken exception to their exclusion from its apology when, clearly, the IRA, whilst regretting the loss of life, feels that no apology is required. IRA Volunteers took risks on operations understanding that the consequence could be imprisonment or death and the British soldier knew that one consequence of occupying Crossmaglen or the Creggan could be death (but rarely imprisonment, even when they murdered unarmed civilians, as on Bloody Sunday).
Of course, most unionist representatives, whom no republican can ever please, bar converting to unionism and accepting total responsibility for everything that has happened, once again spurned the IRA gesture and said that the statement was not enough. Yet no unionist has ever apologised to the nationalist community for fifty years of social and economic discrimination. One can hardly call Trimble’s observation that the North was ‘a cold house’ for Catholics an apology. After all, he quickly forgot it and is once again threatening to pull down the executive if Sinn Fein, the majority nationalist party, is not put out of government. No unionist has apologised for the RUC attacks on the Civil Rights Movement, the deaths by of Francis McCloskey or Samuel Devenney as a result of RUC beatings in early 1969, or young Patrick Rooney at his home in Divis Flats, to mention but a few.
Under a unionist government the nationalist community experienced the pogroms of August 1969, the Falls curfew of 1970 when children, women and men were gassed in their homes, internment and the torture of detainees, and Bloody Sunday.
No apology and don’t expect one.
On a visit to Africa in 1998 US President Bill Clinton apologised to African nations for the slave trade and the suffering and death it caused. Apart from one Church of England minister a few years ago, who said that he prayed Ireland would forgive England for all the misery it inflicted on its people, not one person in authority has thought it fit to say sorry for Britain’s numberless malevolent deeds in Ireland.
No apology and don’t expect one.
The IRA has apologised to the relatives of the people it accidentally or carelessly killed. It will not bring back the dead, it will not ease the suffering, it will not be the last word, but at least the words ‘we are sorry’ have been spoken, and it means that the Republican Movement and republican supporters are facing up to the consequences of their actions.
It is another move towards closure of conflict, another indication of the republican commitment to permanent peace and a desire never to go back to those dark, deadly days.
[ back ]
© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison