Despite the righting of wrongs by Saville, there are still many enemies of historical truth in Northern Ireland, writes FIONNUALA O CONNOR
ONE OF the weakest of truisms is that truth must out. It has fierce and stubborn enemies. History is rewritten in subtle, and not so subtle, ways, day by day. The argument about dealing with unresolved crimes, and the burning sense of injustice they leave behind, travels in a perfect circle. There is no Northern agreement on dealing with the past because agreement does not exist on what caused the Troubles in the first place.
When South Africa tried to exorcise its past, the most memorable scenes caused powerful emotions, including dismay. It was hard to witness the saintly Desmond Tutu, normally a joy to behold, urging the mother of Stompie Moeketsi Seipei to hug Winnie Mandela – convicted of kidnapping the 14-year-old though acquitted of having him killed. Did the hearings establish truth and promote reconciliation? Some found bleak satisfaction, even consolation, in discovering how their lost relatives spent their last moments. Some gained forgiveness. It was a mixed picture, with mixed lessons.
The amnesty granted to South African killers is rejected out of hand in Northern Ireland. Without immunity from prosecution, nobody is likely to tell a fraction of incriminating truth. But when a truth and reconciliation commission is broached, as it was again after the publication of the Saville report, the prospect of a blanket amnesty draws the first outrage. The only volunteers to date have been republicans, claiming they will tell all – if other “combatants” do the same. At that point the barriers slam, since unionists, and both governments, will not have state forces equated with paramilitaries.
Since the figurehead of republicanism maintains he won his status without ever serving in the IRA, and Martin McGuinness admits to senior rank but for a short time only, there is derision at the concept of republicans telling the whole truth. This is matched by scorn – renewed by Saville’s confirmation of wholesale army lies and judicial whitewash – about unionist insistence on the virtue of “official” combatants.
Still the idea keeps coming around. Saville brought the discussion of truth-telling, with all its downsides, into the light. Wise elders got some things absolutely right. The elegant Maurice Hayes thought the badmouthing of Saville in advance by the DUP’s Gregory Campbell reflected “the sad state of politics, in which one man’s vindication is another’s condemnation and where any retrospective censure of the security forces opens up an appalling vista”.
The Hayes fear was that the findings, and reaction to them, would put unbearable stress on Stormont’s structures just as the awkward-squad executive must make common cause on George Osborne’s cuts.
The unionist/nationalist divide on public spending will not be disguised. But in time, even Campbell found the line that Bloody Sunday was “a dark day”.
The will to make Stormont work, or at least to maintain their place in it, carried DUP Ministers to some extent through the first reflex of rejection. Peter Robinson’s acceptance of Saville dealt smoothly with the finding that Deputy First Minister McGuinness was probably in possession of a sub-machinegun on Bloody Sunday. To move forward it was necessary to recognise certain realities, he said. But there should be a public record for the stories of “victims” and paramilitaries “must ’fess up”. How and where he did not say.
Garret FitzGerald wrote with a lifetime’s optimism behind him that David Cameron’s Westminster apology would “go a long way to completing reconciliation between the peoples of our two islands”.
He was right about the impact of Cameron’s graceful speech. The obstacles to reconciliation are still considerable. Short-sighted officialdom is one; a cloth ear for history another.
Chief Constable Matt Baggott, still new to the North, has just delivered some unnerving remarks. Saville hands the PSNI responsibility for possible re-examination of the findings, with a view to advising on prosecutions. Baggott worried out loud about how he can deliver more inquiries into the past as well as present-day policing. But he added that the Patten “route-map” was becoming “counterproductive”. When he went on to say that officers must be given “freedom rather than being constrained”, it sounded alarmingly like impatience with the 1998 Patten report’s identification of human rights as the core of reformed policing. (Baggott’s predecessor Hugh Orde never wavered on Patten. But then Orde arrived first to investigate security force wrongdoing.)
There was grace, by contrast, from the brother of a UVF man, shot 21 years ago by undercover soldiers just after he killed a Catholic. Rab Robinson called for postponement of the annual parade in honour of his brother Brian, in the interests of “peace and reconciliation”. Two men died on the same day, he said: two families grieved. He spoke with the dignity and generosity shown so often by those who suffered most.