OPINION:ALMOST TWO-THIRDS of the community in Northern Ireland believe that it must deal with the legacy of the conflict to allow it to move on as a society. That is the key finding of the public opinion survey that the Commission for Victims and Survivors publishes today, writes PATRICIA MacBRIDE
Two years on from the establishment of the Assembly and 15 years since the ceasefires, we’re still trying to figure out how to repair the harm we have done to one another on this island and beyond. We haven’t reached a consensus on how we do that, but we have reached a consensus that we must.
The four key strands to address are truth and justice, victims and survivors, citizens and communities and peace and reconciliation. We as a commission affirm the right of victims and survivors to proper investigation and access to information regarding what has happened to them.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland’s historical inquiries team, public inquiries and inquests are the means used to pursue truth and justice. Yet we disagree about public inquiries and their efficacy – just as the public does. But unless a credible alternative investigation and information recovery process is offered, I support the right of families to seek inquiries into complex and contested events.
The First and Deputy First Ministers have shown their commitment to addressing the needs of victims and survivors through last week’s publication of a 10-year strategy which will target need and assure, through provision of services and development of policy, that those needs are met. The speedy devolution of policing and justice needs to happen so that this piece of work does not get bogged down in political disagreement not of its making.
We must address the needs of citizens and communities by addressing sectarianism, educating young people, and ensuring the economic benefits of peace are equally shared across disadvantaged communities. We need to build capacity within communities to engage in dialogue, participate in truth and justice processes and define the outcomes they seek for themselves and their children.
We have not yet a common definition of reconciliation. For some people it may mean becoming reconciled with the events of the past that have affected them, for others it may mean a communal reconciliation between opposing political viewpoints, and for yet more it may mean society as a whole becoming reconciled to moving forward in a new and inclusive future.
The publication of the Consultative Group on the Past report achieved one thing for victims and survivors. It raised their expectations that something was going to be done to address their needs for acknowledgment, assistance, truth and justice. We have a duty to manage those expectations whether or not there is sufficient consensus about implementing its recommendations. We cannot keep asking the same questions, getting the same answers and not moving the process forward.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster published its report on the group this week, and found there was insufficient consensus on moving forward with its recommendations. It further suggested that the Assembly should fund any future legacy commission and that a fund for victims and survivors be established by the First and Deputy First Ministers’ office. The committee believed any future legacy commission should be chaired by someone from Northern Ireland and it was unclear what role the Irish Government should have. The majority of the public believes a legacy commission should have a joint Irish/British mandate and should draw on international experiences of countries emerging from conflict in setting up and running a legacy commission.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee recommendations propose a largely internal solution to an international problem. We cannot build peace among the community of Northern Ireland and not address North-South or east-west relationships as well. Such an approach doesn’t take account, for example, of the grief and trauma suffered by the family and colleagues of a 20-year-old British soldier, killed in a bomb explosion in west Belfast in 1983. It diminishes the loss of families of those killed and scores injured in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
When my father Frank died in 1973 as a result of a UVF gun attack on our home, his legacy to me was his love of music, his love of the country and an ambition that his grandson and namesake would one day, as he did, lead a Derry football team to championship glory. My inheritance was that, 36 years after his death, I would sit in a room with the UVF and seek agreement on how that organisation could engage in building a new society by addressing the legacy of the past.
In Seamus Heaney’s words, we are still being “careful to test out the scaffolding”. There are many difficult conversations to be had about our complex and contested history and how we address its impact on the people of this island and that of our neighbours to the east, yet we must, above all, develop the courage where “we may let the scaffolds fall, confident that we have built our wall”.
Patricia MacBride was appointed in 2008 as one of four commissioners for victims and survivors. Her father and brother were killed during the conflict