Dealing with the Past – Page 5 – Slugger O'Toole

Neither Catholic nor Protestant they are “Northern Irish dead” and we owe them all, not just some…

Mick Fealty on January 12, 2018, 5:47 pm

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Reconciliation statue Photo by Amanda Slater

It says everything about our inability to deal with our past that we have almost everything – up to and including cynical manipulation of narrow political interests – short of a public acknowledgment of the distress and the need for help common to all… Noel Whelan in the Irish Times today writes: There is no reason why we should feel the need to segregate the victims of the Troubles into Protestant and Catholic like their killers did. Those killed in the …

Crucial court ruling today on Loughinisland report will have a major impact on dealing with the past

Brian Walker on January 12, 2018, 11:02 am

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Mr Justice McCloskey is due to rule today on whether the police ombudsman’s findings of police collusion in the Loughinisland murders should be quashed. His earlier ruling that the findings were “ careless, thoughtless and inattentive . . . in . . . language and structuring” and “quite unacceptable by any standard” was greeted with satisfaction by the retired police officers’ association which had brought the action, but dismay among human rights activists and not least, the Loughinisland relatives. Belief …

Sinn Fein’s MP for West Tyrone “apologises” for taunting Kingsmills victims…

Mick Fealty on January 6, 2018, 1:09 pm

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Andrew described SF’s outreach as that of a baby and a cat. If Barry McElduff’s tweet is anything to go by there’s little innocence in the way SF actually see unionists. Barry has now rather implausibly claimed that it was unintended. This Twitter exchange in Irish, I had this morning, I think covers all probable bases on that: Samhlaigh, le tamall anuas tá scéal na coscartha ar an nuacht. Chuaigh sé isteach i siopa le cara, roghnaigh sé arán le …

“…poetry, the opposite of propaganda, should encourage people to think and feel for themselves”

Mick Fealty on January 3, 2018, 2:23 pm

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Pete mentions Michael Longley in one of his holiday period posts and that powerful thesis of his about what peace is and what it isn’t. For my money, Longley’s attempts at poetic legislation are among the most lasting and resonant. The New Statesman has published his PEN Pinter Prize Lecture 2017 in which he makes important observations on the degree to which actual process of peacemaking compares to the more pliable and politically tractable Peace Process™️… He notes… …from the …

“…the policy he was so central to for so long was toxic to public morality.”

Mick Fealty on November 29, 2017, 5:01 pm

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Just putting this here because I think it tails nicely with Diarmuid Ferriter from Saturday and Newton Emerson last Thursday. It’s Colm Keena on Gerry Adams… The career of the politician and republican activist Gerry Adams has shown an almost unerring capacity over the decades to get the important things wrong. This marked capacity is as true of his time as a leader of a movement committed to the use of killing and destruction in pursuit of its aims, as …

The postwar ID requirement between Northern Ireland and Great Britain

Brendan Heading on November 23, 2017, 8:36 am

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Reading through some old Wikipedia articles pointed me to an interesting exchange in the House of Commons, back in 1948. Ulster Unionist MPs Conolly Gage and Major Samuel Gillmor Haughton rose during an adjournment debate to complain about the requirement for a permit or passport to be presented for travel between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Mr Gage opens by highlighting the inconvenience of this arrangement : As everyone knows, Ulster is as much a part of …

Amnesty for security forces foreshadowed in the DUP deal

Brian Walker on November 22, 2017, 11:08 pm

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Just a footnote to yesterday’s post on the government’s floating of an amnesty for security forces. The Irish News follows up predictably enough with angry responses to what they rightly report as the adoption of the recommendation of the Commons Defence Committee report just before the general election. The committee, which includes DUP MP Gavin Robinson, said that the pursuit of members of the crown forces was “wholly oppressive and a denial of natural justice”. “It can be ended only …

A plea to Gerry Adams from a Falls Road boy

Brian Walker on November 22, 2017, 9:45 am

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In recent times we often hear the narrative that has been orchestrated so carefully by apologists for Sinn Fein – namely the huge personal risks that Adams and Mc Guinness took for peace. I do not believe that such an argument is credible. The people that really took the risks for peace down the years were those in the northern catholic community (and indeed outside it also) who defied the IRA and whose political and moral courage often cost them …

The government need to come clean urgently on their bungled proposal for a security forces amnesty

Brian Walker on November 21, 2017, 8:22 pm

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After Sinn Fein held their meeting with Theresa May this afternoon, Gerry Adams diverted from the apparent failure to make progress on restoring Stormont with a genuine issue: a potential amnesty from prosecution for security force members who served in the Troubles is to be floated by the British government. The Irish News carries the fullest version of the story by the PA. What’s being floated is a statute of limitations in a fundamental and unilateral amendment to the 2014 Stormont …

Home truths for Sinn Fein on sectarianism from Pete Shirlow

Brian Walker on November 21, 2017, 5:12 pm

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Pete Shirlow the director of the School of Irish Studies in the University of Liverpool made a guest appearance at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis last week.

The reception for the Loughinisland documentary No Stone Unturned shows that legacy issues will stay marginalised

Brian Walker on November 16, 2017, 10:59 am

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The low key reception given to the documentary No Stone Unturned, the film documentary on the UVF murders of six randomly selected Catholics in their local Loughinisland pub in 1994 which is currently being given a brief screening at the Queen’s Film Theatre, is the latest example of how presumed familiarity with the underlying problems of Northern Ireland has produced if not quite contempt, at least widespread deadening indifference. Warm congratulations nevertheless go to The Detail team especially their reporter …

Policing and Nationalism: “It’s too soft and it needs to be stronger. You need to be firmer.”

Mick Fealty on November 10, 2017, 3:12 pm

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There’s been some fascinating comment on the Peadar Heffron interview that our new blogger “Pluto” mentioned yesterday. The interview was published nearly two weeks ago, and yet the issue seems to be reverberating still. The position of nationalist policemen and women (and Heffron was certainly that) has been given little public consideration. After an empty formula of platitudes, it appears they’re just routinely abandoned to their fate. It’s another sin of omission that’s become commonplace in the current simulated hunger games routines that passes …

Story of Peadar Heffron’s ostracisation should mark a turning point for NI and the GAA…

Pluto on November 9, 2017, 8:35 am

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Taking in the air of the men’s changing rooms in 1980s Dungiven gives a man some perspective, and nobody could have written up that interview with Peadar Heffron quite like Joe Brolly. The story that Brolly had to tell was, of course, that of his interviewee but it came with an authenticity that was as much to do with Brolly’s own lived experience as it was to do with his skill in setting out a narrative. He didn’t have to …

Real work to restore the Executive has yet to begin. For the public to make an impact, proposals and pressure from the governments are essential

Brian Walker on November 8, 2017, 11:51 am

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As a comparative outsider I’m struck by how most commentators are obsessed with speculating about political positioning and identity narratives. This has produced numbing negativism and despair rather than the energy needed to approach the daunting but practical problem of trying to restore the Executive. Being case hardened and calloused, they endlessly refine their own explanations for obvious failure. They accept the parameters set by the DUP and SF too readily. To be fair, this is often the default caused by a …

Belfast man sentenced in Germany for 1996 Provisional IRA attack on army barracks

Pete Baker on October 25, 2017, 2:22 pm

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A timely lesson from the German authorities on dealing with Northern Ireland legacy issues… Having successfully extradited 48-year-old James Anthony Oliver Corry from the Republic of Ireland in December last year, the Belfast man has now been convicted and sentenced for his role in the Provisional IRA mortar attack on a British army barracks near Osnabrück, Germany, in June 1996. From the Irish Times report A Northern Ireland man has been convicted in Germany of attempted murder for participating in an IRA attack on a British army barracks in the …

More delay over a return to the Assembly needs challenging by the two governments

Brian Walker on October 16, 2017, 12:46 pm

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So the target date for either direct rule or an agreement to revive the Executive has slipped for another week at least. What a surprise! We were told by the two governments yet again that ” progress” had been made, but this has been slapped down by the DUP. Sinn Fein’s agenda as far as I know it is not inherently unfeasible. The problem is that it’s Sinn Fein who’s running with it. Crafty old Gerry for false-footing the DUP? Or …

Editing the Past

Soapbox on August 22, 2017, 6:02 pm

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David Capener is a writer based in Belfast, an Editorial contributor at Archinet and a reporter for World Architecure Community. He blogs at www.futurecrowds.com All history is biography. It is the story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world; our place in it, and, those we share it with. Stories shape our world and the storyteller shapes the story. One of the ways our stories find expression is through the manifestation of symbols — flags, images, colours, statues. By …

Breaking the logjam on legacy issues – Discussion this Friday as part of Feile an Phobail…

Fr. Martin Magill on August 1, 2017, 11:14 am

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Dealing with our past, never mind healing its wounds, has been an ongoing challenge since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement nearly twenty years ago. So far our politicians have not been able to form a consensus on how best to address the past. In the absence of any formal political agreement, it’s crucial to keep the conversation going and to provide platforms for people from different backgrounds to offer their perspectives on the issues, and to challenge existing …

“Terrorism’s true face has been masked at the expense of a fine police force…”

Mick Fealty on July 28, 2017, 11:55 am

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Interesting and provocative piece from William Matchett, who’s recent book on the RUC has been getting rave reviews, at least on the Unionist side of the fence. He doesn’t like to pull his punches: The Troubles were due to a failure in politics, not a failure in security. No nationalist, or unionist, party is blameless. Neither London nor Dublin comes out of it well. Of Hume’s SDLP, Gerry Fitt complained that it got too close to the Provisionals. Conscious of …

A new approach to deadlock in Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on July 2, 2017, 3:38 pm

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A unique coincidence of events Standing back, it’s easy enough to see why the latest Assembly crisis is the longest and most intractable for over a decade. Unusually in recent times and in sharp contrast to the heady days of the Good Friday Agreement, this breakdown is set against background of momentous upheaval which typically, the local politicians rushed to exploit for their own causes. For the DUP, Brexit revives the prospect of a physical border which in whatever …