Sunday, August 12, 2007
“the first step is to act with good authority by telling the truth to your own tribe”
Interesting piece in the Sunday Independent from newly appointed senator Eoghan Harris on his appearance at West Belfast Talks Back. He takes issue with his introduction by the BBC’s Martina Purdy but the point to note, I’d suggest, whilst others march for half-truth, is something picked up briefly in Malachi O’Doherty’s audio diary on Sunday Sequence. Namely his challenge to his own tribe for some self-examination.
Forty-one years ago, this weekend, I travelled to Maghera, Co Derry, with Dr Roy Johnston of the Republican movement’s think tank, the Wolfe Tone Society, and Cathal Goulding, chief of staff of the IRA, to attend a secret meeting of assorted academics, communists and IRA leaders, which was held at the fine farm of Kevin Agnew over the weekend of August 14-15 in the golden autumn of 1966.
Although I was not a member of the IRA, Eamon Maille’s book The Provisional IRA correctly records that at the Maghera meeting, I read out the comprehensive plan, drawn up by the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society, for setting up the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), which Goulding hoped would both achieve civil rights and lead the Republican movement away from a narrow nationalist agenda.
While that peaceful project was thwarted by Unionist politicians like William Craig, and later by the equally bigoted nationalists like British-born Provo IRA intransigent Sean Mac Stiophain, there is no truth in the People’s Democracy claim that sectarian violence was inevitable. The Provisional IRA willed that worst scenario.
Back in August 1966, however, neither Roy Johnston nor myself dreamed that the noble dream of NICRA was doomed to be diverted into the sterile struggle of the Provisional IRA. Above all, as I told my audience, if I myself could have seen 12 years ahead, I doubt whether I would have continued to support even the civil rights struggle.
Because 12 years later, in Maghera, on February 28 1978, William Gordon, a part-time member of the UDR, together with his 10-year-old daughter Lesley, were blown to bits by a car bomb planted by Francis Hughes, who later died on hunger strike. And while Hughes, as I told the West Belfast meeting, might be one of their local heroes, to me, as a Wolfe Tone republican, he seemed a sectarian murderer.
In spite of this, and in spite of the sectarian mind-set of many Northern nationalists, the dream of Wolfe Tone’s benign Republic of minds and hearts never died in my heart of hearts. And, as I told the audience, far from changing my mind on this core issue, for the past 41 years I have consistently tried to show my tribe the two sides of that Wolfe Tone coin.
Pete Baker @ 01:36 PM
Dawkins
I agree with you, i think its just a case of Shin Fein being first of the post, more will follow.
there arnt too many partys that will be able to march for both sides, i think maybe the SDLP can be one of them, but it leaves you open to attack on both sides of the divide.
its not SF marching for truth im against, its the fact that they are doing why totally ignoring thier part in the conflict,
indeed Gerry Adams saying that republicans, “were paid, balckmailed to work with the british forces” is like him saying, aww republicans were free and just, and it was the british that made us do evil thing, we were just and right.
im sure im not the only voter seeing this and turning me off Shinn Fein, and to be honest i hope i not!
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:01 PMPE,
At risk of ignoring my own advice, what exactly are you referencing when you say this: “I have a mother-in-law like that. She makes something up, repeats it often enough that her narrative soon becomes fact”.
There’s a tendency here to kick the man rather than do the leg work to find the weakness in his arguments.
It seems to me that Harris is proffering a form of Moral absolutism. “There is at least one principle that ought never to be violated.” Using that priniciple, he connotes the IRA’s campaign as profoundly unpatriotic, particularly insofar as it targeted other Irishmen who chose not to accept the dissent from the Sinn Fein project.
This need not be the last word on the matter. But the intellectual lethargy that arises from the tedious application (and reapplication) of the ’Don’t listen to him, he’s a bollix‘ gambit, is missing a trick. Moral objectivism, is thus described:
“There is a fact of the matter as to whether any given action is morally permissible or impermissible: a fact of the matter that does not depend solely on social custom or individual acceptance.”
Vincent Browne in this month’s Village and this week’s SBP argues that Harris is inconsistent because he has switched party allegiances so often. What Harris offers here is a defence that both his motivation and object were consistent all along: opposition to what he believes is Sinn Fein’s anti Republican agenda.
Whether you think he’s right or wrong, there is a working out that can be dealt with in terms of intellectual ball, rather than viseral man.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:06 PMIt’s like the ‘Irish Act’ where unionists are also working hard to put themselves in the wrong. The point is not that a majority demands inquiries. It will be enough to prove that there is a demand for truth and Brussels can act.
There is a demand for support for the Irish language as shown by the number of marches and an Irish Act will come. That policy has already been decided at a European level.
Similarily there are ways to enable the way the law is and has been applied in NI to be scrutinised. The first step is to prove that legal and political remedies don’t work on a national level and that step what is now happening.
The continuation of local cover-ups now just means that the revelations will get more publicity later, but we’re only finding out what went on in Kenya in the 50’s now. This won’t take anywhere near as long.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:07 PMDawkins,
I don’t think a march for victims is what should happen at all. It’s highly insensitive in what is a deeply sensitive issue.
Also I think your wrong about no group standing up for all victims.
The SDLP make no distinction between victims and no hierarchy of victims. A victim is a victim is a victim. Whether killed by the state, provos or loyalists murderers, they were a needless, pointless and tradgic loss.
The Police Ombudsman can investigate state murder, the H.E.T. will investigate all murders during the troubles. I should mention that these where fought for, amoung other things such as a truth and rememberance forum, by the SDLP and gained. While SF concentrated on prisoner releases!
The problem is that it just isn’t good enough.Currently the British government are squeezing the Ombudsmans office and the HET to the point where they will become more and more ineffective.
If SF really want to help they should be challenging that injustice. But do they really want the truth? According to one of their MLA’s (their youngest) they don’t need to challenge this because policing and justice powers will soon be devolved. ‘The british connection will be broken’.
At what cost? When they are devolved they will be without resources and the mechanisms to deal with the past effectively. Thats SF’s logic - very profound and comprehensive!! Just like their policies. Break the British connection at any cost. A Joke.
There are good people who do work with victims and for victims but there are also those who want to see this washed away. To Forget about the past and the pain. Unfortunitly for them, there will always be victims, children and grand children and one day they will have to face up to that.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:07 PMMatt,
“Also I think your wrong about no group standing up for all victims. The SDLP make no distinction between victims and no hierarchy of victims.”
I sincerely hope you’re right and I’m wrong in this. I do, however, take Cuchulainn’s point that the SDLP could find itself taking flak from both sides were it to decide to march for the entire community.
That said, it’s time for truth and there’s no time like the present.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:25 PMmaybe its moving into a time were, it doesnt matter what your view is, justice is justice, viticms are viticms.
i believe the SDLP are one of the few partys that can really look this issue in the eye and talk about it, they didnt cause deaths, they didnt cause grief.
Alex maskeys comment to declan oloan was again a case of them saying they were the only viticms.
there is hurt on both sides and its time there was a march for all truth in belfast, both nationalist and republican, and the party that does that will soon and very quickly get the peoples support, the SDLP have it in thier power to do it, and with 40 years of civil rights coming about next year, there isnt a better time to seek the real truth!
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 07:45 PMEoghan Harris. Variously, a supporter of the IRA, David Trimble, Soviet Union, via the WP, Bertie Ahern (in some of his latest rantings). The only thing that amazes me is why anyone gives such mavericks the slighest attention, when their contribution to Irish politics has been less than zero.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 08:47 PMGaribaldy
OK - I appreciate that he has at no point supported people who have engaed in sectarian murde. However he has supported plenty of violent causes up until the present day.
Essentially - I am doubting he is a republican of any stripe - I think he is saying that to strengthen his anti-provo argument.
He even advised the ulster unionist party at one point - does he think Wolfe Tone would have approved of that?Mick - Harris here claims consistency, as Frank pointed out in one of the earliest posts, purely for his unstinting opposition to the provos. Fair enough at that, but a wee bit of a narrow ground for consistency.
Its like Billy Leonard claiming he has been consistent as he always disapproved of the UVF.
In short - I think he strains credibility.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 08:50 PMAndy - have any of the mainstream participants maintained any consistency over the past 40 years?
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 08:54 PMAndy,
Fair point on the narrow basis of his consistency. Interesting comparisons might be drawn between Harris and other former left-wingers, such as Hitchens, who can claim to be consistent in supporting both the Vietnamese against the Americans and the US in Iraq.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:00 PMCruimh
Not ones with any political support!
I was purely adddressing Mick’s point summarising what he saw as one of Harris’s argument. I am not personally obsessed with it, as I don’t think consistency is the absolute holy grail of politics. Keynes said something that if evidence arises to contradict long held positions then he ws prepared to change his mind. Fairly admirable as it goes.
I don’t want to defend Vinvent Browne but I would imagine his problem with Harris is the extent of his inconsistency - which is pretty extreme - with the one exception being his opposition to the provos - which apparently is unyielding, seemingly oblivious to their change in tactics, strategy, level of support and senior personnel.Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:03 PMHi Garibaldy
Interesting point with hitchens. I think he defends it on the grounds that Vietnam was in the middle of nowhere and no threat to anyone… whereas Iraq was about to take over the world. Or something.Quite a few of the neo-cons were ex-marxists. Presumably they would have had fairly negative views on super-powers invading developing countries in their youth.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:13 PMMuch as victims are an important discourse – before comments just focus on this – can I point out that this is not what this thread is really about.
There’s a voice from history suggesting we’re approaching ground not seen since 1966. Is the movement to take the sectarianism out of our democracy that was a concern then too far from our minds now?
Has the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society’s notion of equality espoused in ’66 and later hijacked now returned? It should have – but it doesn’t seem we’re ready.
Where is the notion of persuasion? Where are the efforts to reach out across the divide to generate a truer understanding of what we’ve been through and how we might move on? Where is the compassion for the fallen? For Wolfe Tone - where are republicans explaining the liberties they propose?
What we have instead is … well … hmmm … what!?
A march for some victims – but not others. A demand for truth from one party to a finished conflict – called for under a flag of immunity from having to abide by the same rules.
Apparently, this is fair - “‘cos it was the state that was supposed to protect us that done it”. Is this the same state that a war was declared on?
It’s clear that SF ‘republicans’ want truth and will sacrifice the principles of republicanism for it. There is neither liberty nor equality in leaving the relatives of your foes without what you yourselves demand.
If there’s no way to square this circle then the demand is counter-productive.
The truth is that we’re not ready for the truth. There is no remorse, no out-reach, no persuasion, no identification of liberty and a better future – just a self serving demand for justification of dreadful wrong-doing.
At least the loyalists are clear in their craven self-serving demands and don’t pretend otherwise.
So, from 1966 to 2007, we’ve a few football fields full of graves, innumerable victims and ‘republicans’ sanctimoniously demanding half-truth, loyalists demanding, “giv us the money gov – or else …” and the Brits declaring “no interest”.
Wolfe Tone must be turning in his grave!
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:17 PMSorry, just read this piece by Harris and none of the responses, but does anyone know if the Dr. Roy Johnston referred to is the same one who is now a prominent member of the Green Party?
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:27 PMSame guy prolefodder - I’m reading his book - see review linked - at the moment.
http://www.phoblacht.net/SOM020107.html
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:30 PMWho said that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”?
The north’s nationalists who support the Shinners have been consistent about one thing: they don’t care one iota about those they inflicted suffering on, because they weren’t from their tribe. Ergo, the likes of Francis Hughes can be elevated to icon status within that community despite being a sectarian child murderer. If that is pointed out, they’ll just excuse it as, “Oh, well… he wasn’t planning to murder the child, just an Irish protestant man...err, I mean a member of the UDR, the forces of oppressive British occupation… wee Francis never thought he’d use his car to drop his kid to school. So, he wasn’t sectarian murder even though it was a murder...err, killing of an Irish protestant by an Irish Catholic. And anyway, sure wasn’t Francis an OIRA man? Nothing to do with the Shinners.” Any excuse to avoid seeing sectarian murder for what it was.
The Shinners, however, have been less consistent than Harris in what they opposed: no support for elections, then support for elections; no decommissioning, then decommissioning; no return to Stormont, then a return to Stormont; no support for the police service, then support for the police service; no support for an internal settlement, then support for an internal settlement, etc.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:38 PMprolefoder:
Here’s the last para of Harris’ article:
“So I was filled with hope for the future of the North. Finally, 41 years after Maghera, Dr Roy Johnston (now a member of the Green Party) and myself are meeting again. We are trying to figure out how his Green policies and my Senate platform can be combined to help break down barriers between the two traditions in the North.”
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:47 PMButnotforlong,
“...their contribution to Irish politics has been less than zero.”
Harris surely has some claim to fame as one of those who:
“Eamon Maille’s book The Provisional IRA correctly records that at the Maghera meeting, I read out the comprehensive plan, drawn up by the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society, for setting up the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA)”.
That, surely, gets him (a bit) of a footnote?
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:55 PMAndy,
The ex-Trotskyist neo-cons are a supremely weird bunch. But such people do help understand people here who were formerly on the left and have moved to the right like Harris. Harris is seen here as unique, but in fact is a local variant of a common species worldwide.
Rubican,
Alas I think the possibility of taking sectarianism out of our democracy is still extremely far away. The Wolfe Tone Society aimed at replacing our communal identities and divisions with a new conception based on our common interests as people, and our common rights as citizens. As I see it, our politics is still about difference, but now about being nicer to the other side. Until we replace the belief in the other side, Wolfe Tone’s vision is as far away from completion as ever.
But who knows, maybe in another 200 years. In the interim, one step at a time.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 09:57 PM“In the interim, one step at a time.”
Stages one might even say ;)
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 10:00 PMCruimh,
Nice one.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 10:03 PM“The truth is that we’re not ready for the truth. There is no remorse, no out-reach, no persuasion, no identification of liberty and a better future – just a self serving demand for justification of dreadful wrong-doing.” - Rubicon
I think you may correct there. There was never going to be a Truth & Justice Commission, as disposal of the concept of justice was one of the concessions granted to the murder gangs (with loyalist and republican gangs alike demanding that their members receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card). A Truth & Reconciliation Commission always seemed a bit gay, really - Danny Morrison and his ilk wasn’t going to hug & kiss Johnny Adair and his ilk, and the rest of society didn’t want to be forced into some manufactured merger of Unionist and Nationalist into Normalised Citizen which they’d all find a bit uncomfortable. So, that just left a simple Truth Commission. And as you say, such a commission may not have any purpose beyond the truth itself (or, at least, a discovery of facts and testimony). Divorced from any other purpose, I think we nonetheless need such a mechanism of discovery. But the present status quo (where all sides can project their own meaning via their self-serving narrative) suits all the main players. It’s a total crock of shit, of course. The past isn’t owned by the present players and shouldn’t be hidden just to protect them. But you elect amoral sociopaths and this is what you get - society run by degenerates, slowly reforming its values to incorporate their vanities. The longer we leave it....
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 10:10 PMBy the bye, the fact Harris regards himself as belonging to one of the tribes here shows that actually he has regressed into a sectarian identification of the Irish people, rather than a democratic republican one in the tradition of Tone.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 11:13 PMGaribaldy,
I wonder if you’re not attributing motives to Tone that he perhaps never had.
Tribal divisions in Ireland in his time were certainly more marked than they are today, and Tone never lost sight of his tribal roots. His vision of a “republican democracy” owed less to a wish to unite the tribes as brothers than a wish to break the economic and political stranglehold of London.
He needed Catholic muscle for this, as they needed the Irish Protestants on side; it was a very uneasy alliance.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 11:41 PMGaribaldy, I’m not sure what you mean. Most folks belong to one or other tribe; and I don’t see how classifying one’s self thusly is sectarian - where a tribe is predominantly Nationalist/Catholic and Protestant/Unionist. It isn’t a transgression against political pluralism to be either Unionist or Nationalist unless you don’t regard both as being entitled to equal political rights under a flag, be it a Union Jack or a Tricolour. By that logic, anyone who identifies himself as a republican isn’t a republican. He did, however, say that he was not a nationalist. In that, I agree with him, since you can’t be both a nationalist and a republican in the Irish context. I’m a Hungarian Jew born in Ireland, so I wasn’t ‘defaulted’ into either tribe. :)
While it’s kicking the shin rather than the ball, I really don’t see Harris as being anything other than a vulgar propagandist.
Posted by on Aug 12, 2007 @ 11:58 PM
