Prisoners of history

COMMENT

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” – Isaac Asimov.

THOSE in the North of Ireland currently involved in the infliction of atrocity and murder on the lives of people in the province are not a throwback to an older time. They are a new, and ultimately, anachronistic breed. They are devoted not to a reasonable cause. They are merely criminals who make up for their lack of legitimacy with the sole intent of fostering division, bloodshed and hatred.
In the aftermath of the senseless murder of Ronan Kerr, I sat for an hour with a middle-aged man from Derry who I know through a mutual friend. We spoke at length about the aforementioned crime and the changes he has seen in the North since the peace process fully took hold. As a youth he, along with many like him, threw stones at RUC patrols which came to the Catholic area in which was raised. They resented the presence of those symbols of officialdom and expressed their outrage as young men do. He was born a nationalist and raised in an environment which ingrained and reinforced this identity. Despite this fact, he too expressed disgust at the murder. He derided those who carried it out and their attempts to undermine the new era of peace in Northern Ireland. An interesting aside from the conversation was his bemoaning of the fact that there seemed to be a loss of community in the area he was raised in Derry in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement but the sociological reasons for this could be an entire academic paper in themselves. A shorthand explanation would be that people in these areas are now more concerned with getting on with the life struggle imposed on them by their government than unifying along religious or traditional lines.
What I am struggling to understand, since this recent resurgence in violence began, is who these people feel they represent. It is clear, and has been for many years, that there is no appetite for violence among the majority of Irish people on either side of the border. There is terrible superiority built into the terrorism in which these people engage; that they know better than the rest of the population and continue to kill, maim and murder against the wishes of the majority in order to somehow save or liberate them. Given that a nation without its people is nothing more than a piece of land it must be difficult even for them to say they are fighting for Ireland. This breakdown in logic extends even further in the modern age when considered in the context of globalisation and the European Union. Borders are fast becoming a thing of the past in many ways. There are certainly more pressing concerns in these legitimate discussions than in the historical injustices around the division of Ireland all those years ago.
Another interesting aspect of this current crop of murderers is the apparent contradiction in their obsession with borders and ‘nation’ as they perceive it. I was intrigued to read over the weekend that MI5 are currently engaged in a surveillance operation on the west coast of Scotland where the so-called Real IRA are engaged in a recruitment drive. The Scottish Sunday Times reported that the group are actively recruiting and building a support base in the working-class areas on the West coast. I wouldn’t imagine I am alone in finding it a little strange that an army would need to recruit from abroad to boost its numbers because those it seeks to save or liberate have no interest in being involved with it. It again raises the question of how far back into history these people wish to go to justify their actions. Are they now an army of Celts fighting for Hibernia, the Island of Saints and Scholars? This ludicrous thinking may be not far off the mark in many ways. Many of those being observed by British security services travel to Scotland under the guise of attending Celtic soccer matches. At such games, hatred and bigotry are the norm. Where Ireland has begun to move on to a large extent in Scottish football the battle lines of Catholic versus Protestant and perceived historical injustice are alive and well. Particularly when Celtic and Rangers clash, an observer could be forgiven for thinking the Irish Potato Famine happened last week as the terraces buzz with songs of hate. While this is despicable to most reasonable people, it is mostly not an issue when confined to the football crowd and the streets of Glasgow. Let them do as they wish to each other if they want to stay hung up on history. Unfortunately, some now seem intent on expanding on the rhetoric and building it into a full-blown campaign of murder inflicted on those who want nothing to do with it.
While these misguided individuals can be said to be trapped in history, unable to move forward, understand and accept the new era of politics, their actions make us the prisoners of history. Until sectarian violence of the kind we are once again witnessing has been eradicated once and for all, we can never fully move on.
The forthcoming visit of the Queen of England to Ireland is exactly the kind of exercise to move the process on. In reality, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. She is an old woman coming around for tea and cake but the symbolism is important to mark another phase in the political maturity of Ireland. She should have been invited solely to indicate to those who would resort to violence that the day of the bomb and the gun have gone forever and are not missed by anyone.
History has left us with a situation which can and never will be resolved entirely to the total satisfaction of all sides and murder only stands in the way of achieving a viable compromise.