Dealing with the Past – Page 9 – Slugger O'Toole

How can we rid our society of our sectarian shackles? Guest post by Fr Martin Magill…

Fr. Martin Magill on August 19, 2015, 11:49 am

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Recently Rev Dr Lesley Carroll and I were interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence on the issue of sectarianism. Over breakfast together afterwards, we both acknowledged there were things we would like to have said had there been more time. This article includes some of those things I would have said. The interview came on the back of a riot in North Belfast following the stopping of the anti-internment rally. I witnessed at first hand that riot which left me …

Abe: “We have the great responsibility to take the lessons of history deeply into our hearts, to carve out a better future”

David McCann on August 14, 2015, 12:28 pm

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Sometimes it’s easy to think that Northern Ireland is the only place trying to deal with a painful past. But Japan also wrestles with similar issues. If any of you have been to Japan or studied the history, it is a very proud and strong-willed nation. In 2015, the country’s politicians still wrestle with how to deal with Japan’s role in the Second World War, but today the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe reflected on the anniversary the country’s surrender …

In dealing with the past, both the state and its legal critics should stop playing games

Brian Walker on August 4, 2015, 1:55 pm

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“The UK is still in breach of international law for failing properly to investigate unresolved killings, especially and most controversially where state agents might have been involved”. So states Brian Gormally the director fo the legal lobby group the Committee on the Administration of Justice, quoting the UN Committee on human Rights, No doubt Nuala O’Loan agrees. The UK government does not take kindly to lectures from this committee. More potent pressure may come from the “ hooded men” case against the …

Conversations about the future require candour, not platitudes

Brian Walker on July 12, 2015, 2:48 pm

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Because of a clash of commitments I’m having to miss out on the Westminster launch on Tuesday of Uncomfortable Conversations: An Initiative for Dialogue Towards Reconciliation edited by the Sinn Fein chair Declan Kearney. It will follow a similar launch in the Linenhall Library in Belfast which Sinn Fein covered on YouTube in April. It is also the second bite of a cherry first produced as long ago as October 2012.The words “trust”, “genuine “ and “dialogue” figured prominently but specific …

After RTE’s Prime Time on collusion, will the Irish government dare to put pressure on the British?

Brian Walker on June 16, 2015, 1:05 pm

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One of the frustrations of the TV market in these multichannel days is that we’re a long way from “open skies” broadcasting for viewing on demand. This applies to BBCi Player if you live in the Republic and the RTE Player if you live as I do in Britain. This means I don’t get to see the RTE Prime Time documentary on Collusion. People in the Republic are much more likely to access the two BBC documentaries on Britain’s Secret …

Henry Patterson is half right, but dealing with the past must be broadly based

Brian Walker on June 6, 2015, 12:42 pm

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. Henry Patterson, a historian of high repute from the unionist tradition has entered the debate sparked by the Panorama on collusion, Britain’s Secret Deals. He laments what he sees as unionism’s “parochialism and defensiveness “in failing to challenge the republican narrative of the Troubles as a struggle for freedom and justice in common with similar struggles elsewhere. The recent publication in the News Letter of a graph detailing deaths caused by paramilitary organisations and the state (showing that deaths by the state …

Stakeknife is in the Police Ombudsman’s frame, but has he the tools to do the job?

Brian Walker on June 2, 2015, 11:39 am

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One of the casualties of the failure to implement the Stormont House Agreement is I presume, the extra £150 million due to have been allocated over five years for dealing with the past. Although I know of no details of how the funding was to be shared out, some of it would have been apportioned to the Police Ombudsman, an office whose reputation has been revived by the redoubtable Dr Michael Maguire. He issued a warning last year of the consequences of budget …

Panorama on collusion: Does Trevor Ringland support coverup?

Brian Walker on May 30, 2015, 8:06 pm

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Trevor Ringland’s criticism of Darragh MacIntyre’s Panorama on collusion for rewriting history with a political slant is misguided. The documentary gave examples of a spectrum of collusion ranging from loose handling of informers to covering up agents who were multiple repeat killers, sometimes with the foreknowledge of their handlers. Much of the material is in the de Silva report, the published Stevens reports and elsewhere in the public domain. As he hinted in the programme, Denis Bradley was given brief privileged access to …

“Shopkeepers were being killed, only sons were being killed, isolated farmers were being killed…”

Mick Fealty on May 21, 2015, 9:46 pm

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I haven’t seen this film, which was commissioned and produced by the Orange Order, but I am told it is very quiet and very powerful. This trailer contains just a few stories that are being told of the loss of a community, that might otherwise go untold… Lest we be too careful to hear some stories and too careless to hear others… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on …

McGahon case: “This stuff keeps resurrecting and it’s not going away.”

Mick Fealty on March 13, 2015, 10:50 am

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As John O’Dowd pretty much took a hammering from everyone on BBC’s The View last night, it was not a great deal better on RTE’s Prime Time. Here’s some extract Fran McNulty’s film at the beginning of the programme: Denis Bradley: Just hold up their hands and say this happened it shouldn’t have happened this was the context, it shouldn’t have happened. And therefore we accept responsibility for that. Most of these actions just can’t be defended. And Sinn Fein …

The Role of History & Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement #ImagineBelfast15

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 11, 2015, 4:48 pm

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Today’s lunchtime debate in the UU’s Belfast campus was the best attended of the week – so far – and also the most fractious. Grainne Kelly chaired a panel of Adrian Grant (historian), Cillian McGrattan (politics) and Susan McKay (journalist and writer) who discussed the Role of History and Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement. Adrian Grant started by looking at definitions of history (objective truth? or an artform based on narratives of the past?) …

O’Loan calls Stormont House Agreement ” an insult” as Labour promises a Pat Finucane inquiry

Brian Walker on February 25, 2015, 11:32 am

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Amnesty International are not alone in finding the resources allocated in the Stormont house Agreement inadequate for dealing with the past. At a meeting of RightsWatch in Westminster last night, the first Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’Loan was scathing, describing the allocation of £150 million over 5 years to deal with all the issues of the past, as “a joke and an insult to the people of Northern Ireland.” The Historical Investigations Unit was “totally inadequate”. She also said Attorney …

After the Stormont House Agreement, will the latest initiative to bring state actors to account become the one that succeeds?

Brian Walker on February 18, 2015, 4:26 pm

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The UK government stands accused of continuing to cover up state misbehaviour in a humdinger of a Report just published by the legal experts of the Committee on the Administration of Justice. The report is the supporting analysis for renewed pressure on the authorities who have pledged to set up “ new mechanisms” in the form of an Historic Investigations Unit under the Stormont House Agreement. The CAJ report adopts a sharper tone and levels more direct criticism at the government …

Making haste slowly in dealing with the past

Brian Walker on February 3, 2015, 1:57 pm

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In the words of the old witticism, in dealing with the past there’s no Northern Ireland equivalent to the Spanish mañana that has quite the same sense of urgency, despite the £30 million earmarked for legacy issues by the Stormont House agreement. Or is that too bleak a view? Patricia Bell (67), is seeking to challenge the estimated 2025 target date for a Police Ombudsman report into the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Patrick Murphy was shot dead on his 63rd …

The PSNI’s latest move against the Boston archive is unintelligent

Brian Walker on January 25, 2015, 12:14 pm

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Henry McDonald in the Observer has picked up on the PSNI’s latest incursion into Boston tapes morass. There is a blinkered police logic to this that contradicts the stated expectations of the law officers of the low likelihood of future prosecutions. Pursue the Bloody Sunday paras and give Gerry Adams lousy food in Antrim Police station for a couple of days. If the PSNI go after the Army and the Provos they have to go after the loyalists, don’t …

Lessons from Chilcott apply to dealing with the past

Brian Walker on January 22, 2015, 11:56 am

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Why is it when the search is on for instructive examples, that Ireland is seldom looked at by British movers and shakers? Over the behaviour of militantly anti-austerity parties when the focus is on Greece, an alternatively financed health service, the behaviour of coalition governments, what a constitutional convention might achieve, Ireland has a wealth of experience good and bad, to draw on. I suspect the reasons for ignoring Ireland is rooted in a mixture of British guilt and its close …

Time for other parties to break Executive ranks as Sinn Fein sacrifices northern interests for southern ambitions

Brian Walker on December 18, 2014, 5:56 pm

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Following on from Mick, let’s begin by making the best possible case for Sinn Fein, the party which seems the most intransigent in the inter- party talks. The Conservatives’ strategy for the next five years to a produce budget surplus of £23 billion by 2019-20 is probably unsustainable, unless the rate of growth picks up dramatically. Why tamely accept it? By contrast Labour’s plan to balance only current expenditure would result in a continuing deficit of £25 billion over …

Martina Anderson: The days of the British State granting impunity to its own are coming to an end

Soapbox on November 10, 2014, 5:00 pm

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Following on from a conference organised by the University of Ulster on victims and dealing with the past, Sinn Fein’s MEP, Martina Anderson writes for Slugger arguing for a new focus on the British states involvement in the Troubles and how it deals with victims. On the 27th and 28th Feb 2014 I invited a delegation of victims of state violence to Brussels to discuss with MEPs the impact of state collusion under the heading ‘Britain’s Dirty War in Ireland’. The deep …

Ivan Lewis: I have made it clear that I want to stay in NI until the election and beyond

David McCann on October 28, 2014, 5:00 pm

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On Monday night I caught up with the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Ivan Lewis MP to get his views on welfare reform, the Secretary of State and his own future as he marks a year in the job. I began by asking him, how he thought the Secretary of State was handling the current talk’s process that is on-going at Stormont? Ivan began by welcoming the fact that the government had finally moved to engage with the political process in Northern …

The Lords held the wrong debate

Brian Walker on October 24, 2014, 12:56 am

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There was quite a lot of noble handwringing in that Lords debate that needs unpicking. Dealing with the past was confused with dealing with the present impasse. There is of course a link but they are really two clean different things. It was odd to hear Paul Bew, a historian who has dedicated much of his life’s work to creating credible accounts of the past out of opposing positions, to dismiss so dogmatically the prospects of dealing with our most …