I used to be an armchair republican - you know, one of those people who talked about Northern Ireland in the pub after a few pints, feigning great wisdom on the subject and offering unworkable solutions.
My indoctrination began at the age of seven when my grandfather called me into his back garden in Cork during one of our family excursions to his house. When I went out to where he was standing, he knelt down beside his gooseberry bushes to clear a thick mat of dead leaves and reveal a large trapdoor.
He lifted the lid and then dug deep with both his hands. When he stood up again, he was holding the guns he had kept since his old IRA days. He had buried them decades before, like many other old IRA men involved in the War of Independence.
My mother, who had seen most of what had happened through the kitchen window, came out to the garden and gave him a verbal roasting that turned his ears red. (He put the guns back.) Afterwards, she was careful to explain to me that Granddaddy had been in the IRA when it was "respectable" to be in it. After asking my grandfather a few discreet questions, I became hooked on the republican fantasy.
Border campaign
Granddad had been picked up in the swoop with de Valera and many others. He even served time in jail in England but nobody came to help him escape because he was never as important as the Long Fellow. Granny had put a rock in one of Granddad's socks and swung it at a Black and Tan. One of their sons, my uncle, had fought in the Border campaign of the late 1950s. He was shot in the shin by the RUC and he often displayed his wound at the tail end of weddings and other special occasions.
There was no escaping the republican fantasy when I later discovered that my father had been brought up with his brothers and sister in the house where Sean MacCurtain was shot. Though the family had no involvement in the IRA, they were so caught up in the fantasy themselves that they never papered over the bullet marks in the wall because they were a good talking point with visitors.
For years, this family folklore was a badge of pride to be used in pubs whenever republicanism or Northern Ireland arose in conversation. I felt I had the advantage over others when confronted by a good counter-argument, because I could always mention Granddad to show my republican credentials.In discussions about the IRA and republicanism, there was never any mention of the morality of guerrilla warfare: for example, do ends justify means?
No, most of the dialogue centred on the romantic notion of a united Ireland and how wonderful it would be if it ever came to pass. The practicalities of such an arrangement were beyond our comprehension and how unionists would fit into the rosy picture was never really considered. "Send them back to where they came from" was the usual flippant solution.
Romantic notions
It took a few things to happen before my head finally cleared of all romantic notions about a united Ireland. The Omagh bombing was the first. The second was actually meeting a friend of one of the victims at Omagh and discussing the realities of the violence for the first time. Imagining the hundreds of lives devastated - the victims, their families, their friends - put things into a realistic perspective.
Since then, I have tried to evaluate the way I, and some of my friends, have approached the problems in the North. Have we, the armchair republicans of the 26 counties, impeded the progress towards peace and reconciliation? Has our ignorance of the realities over the years (and some Irish politicians might be included here) helped to prolong the agony?
Peace process
Many people are bored by the peace process. They think it has dragged on too long. They want it to end so they don't have to hear more news bulletins about delays and new deadlines in Northern Ireland. The complexities of the situation are beyond them. Impatience is setting in.
Recently, I heard an armchair republican say that the solution to the problem in Northern Ireland was "to put everyone who wants to fight into a big field, then let someone blow a whistle and let the shooting start." He went on: "When the sound of gunfire stops, there should be a head count to see who has finally won the war." He was betting that in such a scenario the republican side would "win".
This is probably the kind of talk that encourages the Real IRA and Continuity IRA to keep going. If the man in question actually met some victims of political violence, perhaps, like me, he would see the folly of his facile gibberish.
This armchair republican is no more.
SIOBHÁN MULCAHY