Friday, December 07, 2007

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1. Turgon, Jo,

   I think we all understand each other.

   The issue of repentance is an important one. The other important one, which seems to receive less attention, is forgiveness. In danger of invoking Godwin, consider the crimes of Nazi Germany; and then consider where Germany was 10 years after the war - back on it’s feet, rebuilding, with the full support of the western Allies - albeit with it’s wings permanently clipped in military terms. You can’t sit and dwell on the past, waiting for some kind of satisfactory repentance before you move on.

   I am wondering if this is one of those differences between prods and taigs here, perhaps slightly less subtle than the way the letter “H” is pronounced. I remember canvassing in the mid and late 1990s whenever the UDP and the PUP had a high profile in the press, during that wonderful fresh wave of optimism that occurred after the ceasefires in 1994. On many occasions, in the soft nationalist areas, a lot of people would say to me that they respected what the PUP/UDP were trying to do, that fellas like Ervine and Hugh Smyth were articulate and came across well, and they deserved to be given a chance, that they should have a seat at the talks, etc. This was at a time when unionism was still refusing to even talk to Sinn Fein (seems like such a long time ago). This made me think of the differing perspectives on forgiveness and repentance.

   The other story I’ve always been fascinated with is that of the Bobby Baird, who lost his wife and daughter at the fish-shop bombing on the Shankill Road. You might expect that if anyone was qualified enough to refuse to countenance talks with republicans or Sinn Fein in government, it would be him. Instead, he seems to have devoted his life to cross-community reconciliation. I believe I read a while ago that he had actually gone to meet with IRA members; and when various IRA statements were being read, he was to be heard expressing hope for the future. What’s the difference between Bobby Baird and Jim Allister, other than that one is a victim and one is a person claiming to speak for victims ?

   Posted by  on Dec 09, 2007 @ 12:59 PM

2. Nevin:

   Jo, if we vote for fascists and/or mafiaists then we shouldn’t be surprised that they tolerate thuggery - and worse. The scum of society have a cheek to demand respect (for their mandate) - but that would be one of their lesser failings. London and Dublin will ‘happily’ embrace these thugs in the hope that they will contain their barbaric and other debased activities to here; it’s an expression of nimbyism.

   Nah, this tolerance of thuggery occurs everywhere. I remember a while ago, The Sun had a column from that “loveable old rogue”, “Mad” Frankie Fraser, who used to pull out people’s teeth with pliers. I also saw the TV news footage of the Kray funerals, with hundreds of people following to pay their respects.

   Posted by  on Dec 09, 2007 @ 01:01 PM

3. “What’s the difference between Bobby Baird and Jim Allister, other than that one is a victim and one is a person claiming to speak for victims ?”

   Cheap shot. Michelle Williamson lost her parents in the Shankill bomb and she is opposed to the Belfast Agreement. While Bobby Baird’s attitudes are to be admired, the outrage and hurt felt by those who feel justice has been denied to them and their relatives, a few months in jail for each of Michelle Williamsons parents, shouldn’t be ignored.

   The recent murder of Paul Quinn; with the unwillingness of the British and Irish governments, the PSNI, Garda and mainstream politicians (with the honourable exception of Lord Laird) unfortunately voices like Jim Allisters are needed to highlight the plight of those who are an inconvience to the peace process (much like the hundreds of people who cannot live in this country due to terrorist death threats have been forgetten about).

   Posted by  on Dec 09, 2007 @ 01:40 PM

4. Comrade Stalin,

   I am afraid I am with Richard James here. Gordon Wilson so famed for his statements of forgiveness later said he thought maybe internment should be reintroduced.

   Some relatives of victims support the agreement on the grounds that they do not want the same to happen to anyone else. I entirely respect this analysis but I do think there is in it a danger of giving terrorists what they want in exchange for them being so good as to not murder people which could be seen as giving in to blackmail.

   People may be prepared to forgive the terrorists, some require that such people ask for forgiveness, others do not. Forgiveness is, however, not the same thing as giving the violent people what they want. It also does not necessarily mean not wanting the guilty to be punished.

   I am in no position to claim to speak for any such people. I can only observe what the few I know say (and in fairness I try not to bring up such issues in conversation; for obvious reasons).

   Honest people may have many different reactions which I do not think are wrong before God or man and forgiving others does not necessarily mean accepting the current political dispensation in Northern Ireland.

   Posted by  on Dec 09, 2007 @ 03:23 PM

5. Cheap shot. Michelle Williamson lost her parents in the Shankill bomb and she is opposed to the Belfast Agreement. While Bobby Baird’s attitudes are to be admired, the outrage and hurt felt by those who feel justice has been denied to them and their relatives, a few months in jail for each of Michelle Williamsons parents, shouldn’t be ignored.

   My point was that politicians who claim that their political perspective comes from sympathy with the victims are not necessarily speaking for the victims.

   Michelle Williamson’s point of view is understandable, but I don’t agree with it. When WW2 came to an end, we didn’t deny the Germans the right to have a democratic government and participate and trade internationally (Christ, I’m in Godwin overload today) because of what they did they did.

   The recent murder of Paul Quinn; with the unwillingness of the British and Irish governments, the PSNI, Garda and mainstream politicians (with the honourable exception of Lord Laird)

   Unwillingness to do what ? Say what you want them to say ?

   They’re scared that reactionary people like Allister will use the murder to destabilize the political arrangements. I do not agree that the failure of certain sections of the IRA to get with the programme means that the rest of us should be made to suffer. That said, if it is established that Sinn Fein knew anything about what happened to Paul Quinn, the people involved are obviously going to have to be removed from the party. I’m sure Jim Allister would accept this, given that he joined a party where the expulsion of George Seawright was deemed as a sufficient measure to disassociate the perspective of that person from the party.

   unfortunately voices like Jim Allisters are needed to highlight the plight of those who are an inconvience to the peace process (much like the hundreds of people who cannot live in this country due to terrorist death threats have been forgetten about).

   Jim Allister’s crocodile tears do not fool anyone.  Do you think he’ll visit Crossmaglen to show solidarity with the Quinn family ? What sort of a reception do you think he’d get?

   Turgon:

   I entirely respect this analysis but I do think there is in it a danger of giving terrorists what they want in exchange for them being so good as to not murder people which could be seen as giving in to blackmail.

   I’ve got two points. The first thing is that the chuckies have a mandate. You can’t just airbrush them out of the picture because they don’t meet your standards. You might have a mission of getting away with that if unionism didn’t have it’s own failings, but given that it has plumbed the depths of quasi-fascism itself it is hardly in a position to do this.

   Secondly, remember that the creation of the Northern Ireland was done at the behest of a threat of violence. Carson drilled men in the grounds of Belfast Castle and openly threatened the British government, an act which would otherwise be considered treasonous. If you’re going to say “anyone who uses terrorism should be excluded”, you’re putting unionism as well as nationalism out of the picture.

   People may be prepared to forgive the terrorists, some require that such people ask for forgiveness, others do not. Forgiveness is, however, not the same thing as giving the violent people what they want. It also does not necessarily mean not wanting the guilty to be punished.

   It does not take a great deal of insight to observe that conceding to Sinn Fein in power is not giving the men of violence what they want. The IRA did not fight a 25 year campaign in order to secure the reinstatement of Stormont within a legally copperfastened partitioned state, in a local parliament which has recently been suspended several times by the British government. They did not throw away their lives in order to sit on the Police Board or the DPPs with the Chief Constable telling them that they are going to use tasers and that they will have to lump it. The current political arrangements amount to a humiliation for physical force republicanism; the Irish people rejected them and their methods and sided with the unionist view of consent.

   The trouble with you guys is that you don’t know when you’ve won. The men of violence did not get their way, and they still have not.

   Posted by  on Dec 09, 2007 @ 10:26 PM

6. You, Comrade, certainly have tocuhed a nerve - one of excruciating boredom. Indeed, it’s the same one that tingles for most of us every time an APNIer smugs his way about one of these threads, sanctimoniously doubting the moral bona fides of everyone else, whilst simultaneously, smugly proclaiming his own unimpeachable sense of self-righteousness. [Incidentally, has there, in some morally vainglorious sense, ever been a truer Ulsterman than your average Yella Fella - boastful, loud, prone to chuntering, incapable of listenting to, still less crediting the truth of what anyone else is saying to him? anyway . . .]

   Why on earth are you asking me what DUP members are or are not doing? I’m not one, so what in the name of God does it have to do with me? As for you’re especially spacerish effort:
   

   There’s words, and there’s actions . . . When the UDA were shooting police officers in Carrickfergus, where was Jim Allister ? Where were you, for that matter ?

   Well doh, where do you think we were and what do you think we were doing? Perhaps we were wearing lycra and fighting crime as a dynamic duo, under cover of our secret identities, Tradboy and QCman? Though come to that, what were you doing? Oh wait, that’s right - you were doing *exactly*, I assume, what we were doing? Repining the crime, repining the blatant inaction by the police, and the (comfortable, unaffected) political class that restrains them, and seething at the complicit, tame non-reporting by the equally untouched (by this sort of cime) local press.

   But obviously, you grade A absurdist, you’ve got me - neither Jim A nor I were, oh, actually shooting or pipe-bombing eg drug dealers on loyalist housing estates, any more than you were. We’re all, differently, advocates of constitutional politics. But then of course, you know better than we do what it is we actually believe in, so you keep on telling us how we’re actually not bothered about terrorism tout court, whatever it is we’re foolish enough to think we think or say we’ve said. That’s an impressively rigid Ulster mindset you’ve got going there Comrade, and as an avid student of impenetrably sealed hermeneutics I’d hate for liberal bigots like you to become extinct any time soon.

   Posted by  on Dec 10, 2007 @ 04:58 PM

7. From Comrade Stalin on Saturday evening:

   “You don’t give a damn about Paul Quinn. If Quinn hadn’t been murdered your view would be the same.”

   Yes, my view would have been the same because I have been utterly consistent in my position: namely that criminal groups can’t strut around as democrats without being called to account.  I’m not going to apologise to you for that.  And I’m totally non-sectarian on the subject, see the way I took the UUP to task for its dealings with Davy Dictionary.

   The Quinn murder is important because it is ongoing evidence that the IRA intends to continue policing its “own” areas, no matter what the SF politicos would like to tell us. 

   Get off your sanctimonious high horse, Comrade.

   Posted by The Watchman on Dec 11, 2007 @ 08:08 AM

8. Oh and by the way Comrade Stalin,

   “As if unionists don’t have friends getting up to things that they don’t like to think about. If Allister had principles, how could he join a DUP which did not satisfactorily explain the appearance of Billy Wright on a podium with Willie McCrea ? If you’re going to bitch about other people avoiding the tough questions, then you need to answer that one.”

   I have never been a member of the DUP and have never even met Jim Allister, so shouldn’t you be asking him?  Although, since you want my opinion, I think Wee Willie should have kept well clear of King Rat and the DUP should have admitted that it had all been a massive mistake.

   Posted by The Watchman on Dec 11, 2007 @ 08:15 AM

9. Ahem,

   Thanks for your latest impotent, and rather sadly misdirected, anti-Alliance rant. There’s nothing for me to respond to in your latest contribution, it’s so laden with abuse and ad hominem. I suggest you take an anger control class.

   Watchman,

   Yes, my view would have been the same because I have been utterly consistent in my position: namely that criminal groups can’t strut around as democrats without being called to account.  I’m not going to apologise to you for that.  And I’m totally non-sectarian on the subject, see the way I took the UUP to task for its dealings with Davy Dictionary.

   All very noble, with the major serious problem that all four of the large parties have members who, in the past, have either actively been involved in criminality/terrorism, or have a history of links with other people who are. Your rules mean that it is impossible to have any kind of government elected here which is representative. People get the representation they elect, and if that includes crypto fascists like the DUP as well as militants like SF, then so be it. When it starts sounding like “the people aren’t capable of electing anyone fit for government”, that’s when we’re in real trouble - but that seems to be what your message is.

   I have never been a member of the DUP and have never even met Jim Allister, so shouldn’t you be asking him?

   No, I’m asking the people here who are talking about supporting him. I’m sure you’ve never met Gerry Adams but I bet that probably isn’t necessary for you to come to your own point of view about his outlook on life.

   Typically, this “I oppose all terrorism and refuse to allow anyone with links to terrorism in government” position is a unionist one, and it’s usually carefully framed in a way which overlooks unionism’s links with terrorism while punishing those of nationalism. I’d freely concede that I might have jumped the gun by assuming that this position was yours. But at the end of the day there are only two possible takes on this situation that you can have; either “only the chuckies meet the definition of what ‘terrorism’ is while unionists are ignored”, or the one where there can’t be government because the electorate won’t vote in anyone sufficiently squeaky-clean. Both are non-starters.

   Get off your sanctimonious high horse, Comrade.

   I’ll get off mine, if you get off yours.  Both the unionist and nationalist electorate have more sympathy for people with links to terrorism than you do. So who exactly are you representative of ?  Nobody who actually wins any votes, by the look of it.

   Posted by  on Dec 11, 2007 @ 08:57 AM
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