Over at Typhoo’s Haunt there are readable scans of Malachi O’Doherty’s article in Fortnight magazine on talking, or not talking, about the Troubles and, in particular, whether “we are sleep-walking into quiet censorship of what led us into the troubles”. Go and read the whole thing. Here’s a short extract.
It’s not hard to see why the Troubles are an embarrassment. For one thing, they went on too long. They seemd to represent a society which was incapable of learning from the sensible and mannered intellectuals. The sensible and mannered intellectuals quickly ran out of things to say and concluded, therefore, that the violence was just an embarrassing lapse into barbarism. The North, as far as Dublin was concerned, was the attic in which the mad old uncle might be allowed to drink himself to death. But there is another reason. For although the Troubles went on too long, there is a prevailing idea that they ended too easily. But they ended. And maybe the best thing is not to scrutinise how they ended or test the compromises by which they ended, in case we bring them back.