Depending on how it is handled the report can further divide the Northern communities or aid understanding
OVER THE coming weeks and months, the Saville report will prove a major test for the two main traditions in Northern Ireland.
Have they matured enough since the ceasefires and the Belfast Agreement to begin to face up to history? Or will ownership of the past continue to be fought over like disputed territory, incident by incident, atrocity by atrocity, as each side seeks to bend the narrative to its own tribal agenda?
Will unionism publicly acknowledge for the first time, without any of the usual contextual qualifications, what it has privately accepted for decades: that there was absolutely no justification for British paratroopers opening fire on unarmed protesters in Derry in 1972? That what happened on Bloody Sunday was, if not quite murder, then the deliberate manslaughter of 14 innocent citizens by an agency of the British state?
Will nationalists resist the temptation to hold Bloody Sunday up as a metaphor for the entire Troubles, and stop talking as though that horrific event explains (if not quite excuses) every subsequent atrocity committed by people from their tribe?
Already, some would have us believe that the Troubles only really began on January 30th, 1972, when in fact 242 people had already lost their lives by then.
None of this applies, of course, to the families of those who were killed or injured on Bloody Sunday. Frankly, given what the relatives have been through, they are entitled to react in whatever way they choose. However, that is not true for everyone, and particularly not for those who never tire of telling us how concerned they are with building a peaceful and stable future. If they are serious, then they must stop treating history as something to be won for their community.
To date, listening to various protagonists squabbling over the past has been like watching the progression of a grotesque game of cards. Enniskillen is trumped by Bloody Sunday and this in turn by Teebane, McGurk’s bar, the Shankill bombing, Greysteel and so on, with no concern for the further embitterment of the already distraught, or how that may manifest itself in the future. The concentration is invariably on the hurt and misery suffered by one’s own tribe, with no more than fleeting lip-service ever paid to the pain endured by the other, and only then when it cannot be avoided. Whatever the words used, the barely concealed message to the other tribe is always the same: “Your community brought most of it upon itself.”
If a lasting peace is to be built in Northern Ireland, then it will entail facing up to the past. This, however, does not mean indulging in an orgy of finger-pointing and picking at old sores such as a so-called “truth commission” would give licence to, thereby setting back any prospect of genuine reconciliation for generations, if not destroying it altogether.
There needs to be a general acceptance that great hurt was visited upon and inflicted by elements from all sides, none of which can be justified. Crucially, it must be clearly acknowledged that neither community shoulders more of the blame for the Troubles than the other.
Unionists have to move beyond taking every criticism of past actions of the security forces as a personal insult, and also accept that pre-Troubles Northern Ireland was not the idyll of their imaginings, but was guilty of serious institutionalised discrimination.
Similarly, nationalists should stop propagating the myth that the only wholly innocent victims of the Troubles were those from their own community, with everything else a sad but predictable result of security force brutality or unionist discrimination.
Just as pre-Troubles Northern Ireland was not as unionists like to imagine, neither was it remotely the apartheid-era Soweto or Jim Crow Alabama that nationalists like to pretend.
That the Saville inquiry cost almost £200 million and took 12 years to report is a matter of some resentment. But if a proper inquiry had been held at the outset, before tribunals became to lawyers what winning the lottery is to the rest of us, it would have been infinitely less expensive or time-consuming.
Moreover, every reasonable person recognises that Bloody Sunday demanded a proper inquiry.
It was fundamentally different, in that 14 innocent people were killed by state agents (and had their names and reputations subsequently blackened to fit with what happened).
But for the relatives of the thousands of ignored victims across Northern Ireland, the pain, sense of loss, and the feeling of impotent frustration is just the same. To loftily dismiss as “whataboutery” any attempt to draw attention to their plight is heartless and foolish.
Depending on how it is handled (or exploited), Saville can be used to further divide the Northern communities or as an aid to reconciliation; the choice is clear.
Imagine the example it would set if First Minster Peter Robinson were to extend his condolences to the Bloody Sunday families, and condemn without equivocation the paratroopers’ actions. And if Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was similarly to address the unionist community on its suffering and loss.
Sadly, given initial tribal reactions to the Saville report, I won’t be holding my breath.