God save the Queen (from an Irish incident)

COMMENT

SO far, so good. As I write these words, the Queen of England is on the second day of her four-day visit to this country and the event has passed off without a hitch so far. I just hope she gets back to Buckingham Castle safe and well this Friday with good memories of her first visit here.
I am sure the vast majority of the Irish people are glad she came. That, of course, does not make the visit right or wrong. The majority of the Irish people were opposed to the 1916 Rising. That did not make that event wrong.
It was strange to see her lay a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin. This is a memorial to all those who fought for Irish freedom against her country and against the British Army of which she is Commander-in-Chief. I wonder what her thoughts were or does she do those things automatically because she is told to do them and does not have any thought about what she is doing?
I welcomed the visit simply because I see nothing wrong with it and everything right about it. Even Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams didn’t seem to be too bothered about it when he said it was “premature” a few weeks ago. And in the last week, he actually welcomed the visit.
We do have some issues with England still. The issue that comes to most people’s minds is the issue of Partition, the Six Counties, Northern Ireland, Ulster or whatever you want to call that portion of the north-east of Ireland that is occupied by the British Army. The word, occupy, implies an army keeping the people of a country virtual prisoners against their will as the Nazis did in France and other European countries during the Second World War.
However, in Northern Ireland, the majority of the people living there welcome the British presence and pay homage to the British Queen.
The British Government no longer has any strategic interest in maintaining an army in the Six Counties and I believe they will get out of the Six Counties if and when the majority of the people there no longer want them there.
So the question of Partition can no longer be an issue between ourselves and the people or the Government that Queen Elizabeth represents.
I suppose we could talk about the past and about what England did to us down through the centuries as issues. They took our land in the various plantations and banished our people to hell or to Connacht. We could talk about the Penal Laws, the Red Coats in 1798 or the Famine in black ‘47. We could talk about Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and about the Manchester Martyrs. We could talk about Bloody Sunday in Dublin in 1920 and about Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972.
But those are all about events in the past. We remember them but we do not want to avenge them. The British Prime Minister David Cameron has apologised for the last Bloody Sunday. In making that apology last year, Mr Cameron told the House of Commons, “It is right to pursue the truth with vigour and thoroughness. Openness and frankness about the past, however painful, do not make us weaker, they make us stronger.”
Now Justice for the Forgotten, the group formed in 1996 to campaign for the innocent victims of the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, has written to Queen Elizabeth reminding her of those words of her Prime Minister.
It was this week 37 years ago, May 17, 1974, that a series of no-warning car bombs murdered 34 men, women and children in Dublin and Monaghan. It was the greatest loss of life in a single day of the Troubles.
The group are urging David Cameron, through the Queen, to mark this historic visit by opening British Government files that were held from Judge Henry Barron’s inquiries into the bombings.
That is one serious issue we have with the British Government. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice and other matters concluded after reading Judge Barron’s report that they were dealing “with acts of international terrorism that were colluded in by the British security forces”.
That is a matter that must be cleared up and the person to do it is David Cameron and not Queen Elizabeth. However, if somebody close to me had been a victim of those terrible events of May 1974, I too would try and ensure – even through the royal visit – they were not forgotten on this their anniversary.
This, however, is a joyous occasion and by her visit to Croke Park on Wednesday, the Queen of England was paying tribute to all those innocent Irish victims of British forces.
There were, of course, a lot of innocent British people who were blown up by Republican bombs down through the years. But the IRA did not represent the Irish people as the British Army represented the British people. That is a difference a lot of people tend to forget.
Anyway, the presence of the Queen of England among us this week is a sign of the improved relations that now exist between Ireland and England. We have far bigger issues today with countries like France and Germany than we have with Britain. Our whole economy is being crippled by countries we thought were our friends and partners and not by our old enemy.
I will not sing God Save the Queen – I don’t know the words, but I wish her well and a safe journey home.  Slán léi.