28 January 1999 Edition
Time to leave victimhood behind
By Mary Nelis
There were eighteen people in the small room, in the silent house, on that January day seven years ago. The sense of pain and grief was visible, though not a tear was shed nor a word spoken.
It was written on the faces of the men and women, deeply etched lines, eyes darkened with a suffering that was born out of generations of being defined as non people in their own country.
Many were the survivors of loyalist death squads, whose murder campaign against Catholics has its origins in the sectarian unionist political establishment. Some others had experienced the sorrow and the pride that their sons and daughters had engaged in armed struggle to defend the rights of the Irish people in the north when peaceful change was shot off the streets on Bloody Sunday by the British army protecting the rights of unionism. Whatever the circumstances, all those gathered in the home of the McKearney's in Moy, Co Tyrone, were there to share the grief of parents, whose son had just been murdered as he carried out his work in his father's butchers shop. All had been through that door, all had lost someone they loved.
In today's terminology, on foot of reports by academics, social workers, and British civil servants, those gathered in the McKearney's home are described as victims, and even the word victim is qualified by some as ``innocent'' victims.
Those who talk of innocent victims usually mean those people, mainly involved in the security forces, who were killed by nationalist insurgents. These same people constantly assert that the Six Counties is a democracy, that the killing of Catholics is justified, that the state can only be maintained by keeping them in their holes and that Unionists collectively are all innocent victims of republican violence.
So when the British government resort to summary execution as they did at Loughgall, Gibraltar etc, these people would argue that those killed got what they deserved and their relatives have no right to be included in the victims category, as outlined in the Bloomfield report.
This was the picture presented by the media when the Loughgall relatives met Adam Ingram, who as security minister surely owes those who met him at least an explanation.
The relatives were met by the Families of Innocent Relatives group (FAIR) led by the equally ``innocent'' members of the DUP.
The issue for the relatives of those massacred at Loughgall, like all the other nationalists killed in this long war, is simple justice. They want to know the truth.
They want to know why their loved ones were shot down by undercover professionally trained assassins, when they could have been captured.
They want to know how loyalist death squads were given safe passage into nationalist areas to carry out their murder missions, they want to know the role of British Intelligence and the collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the UDR, Ulster Resistance, and all the pseudo gangs involved in the many unexplained deaths of both Protestant and Catholics over the past 33 years.
Most of all, they want to know why Sir Kenneth Bloomfield has produced a report which categorises victims on the basis of whose finger pulled the trigger.
No matter how they square the circle, those victims involved in FAIR and their mouthpieces in the DUP were not standing outside Stormont out of any sense of justice, or empathy with those Loughgall relatives who, like them, stood over the graves of those they loved.
The woman whose photograph of her son, a member of the UDR killed by the IRA, is as deserving of all our sympathy as the Kellys are for their brother killed by the SAS.
But her son chose to join a highly trained, highly paid unit of the British Army, whose role when it was set up by the British government to replace the disbanded B Specials was to protect key installations. In essence, it never stepped out of its ``special'' shoes, and for nationalists coming into contact with it, meant a terror-ridden trip ending in murder, assualt, theft, collusion, and sectarian harrassment of people solely on the basis that they were Catholics.
Over four hundred of its members, those actually caught, have been convicted of criminal offences, and their notoriety included being part of the ``Shankill Butcher'' gang, the death squad responsible for the Miami Showband.
Certainly those members of the UDR and all the security forces do not deserve the label innocent. Nor are they victims. Those left to mourn them in death may be innocent victims, not of the IRA, but of Britain's dirty war in Ireland, which has claimed the lives of so many of our best and brightest, from both political and religious dividers.
We all, through accident of birth, have been put into positions of taking sides, for whatever reason.
In this respect, all deaths have demeaned us and we all have been deprived of the basic human dignity of consoling each other in our time of greatest need, when we suffer the loss of a loved one. If we continue to accept that some are more guilty than others, if we refuse to admit that there were wrongs on all sides, if we think as if we are in ghettoes, then we are victims and our torture is self inflicted.
It is time to leave victimhood behind and begin an honest appraisal of how we can share this island in agreement. It is time to become survivers of the conflict.
There were eighteen people in the small room, in the silent house, on that January day seven years ago. The sense of pain and grief was visible, though not a tear was shed nor a word spoken.
It was written on the faces of the men and women, deeply etched lines, eyes darkened with a suffering that was born out of generations of being defined as non people in their own country.
Many were the survivors of loyalist death squads, whose murder campaign against Catholics has its origins in the sectarian unionist political establishment. Some others had experienced the sorrow and the pride that their sons and daughters had engaged in armed struggle to defend the rights of the Irish people in the north when peaceful change was shot off the streets on Bloody Sunday by the British army protecting the rights of unionism. Whatever the circumstances, all those gathered in the home of the McKearney's in Moy, Co Tyrone, were there to share the grief of parents, whose son had just been murdered as he carried out his work in his father's butchers shop. All had been through that door, all had lost someone they loved.
In today's terminology, on foot of reports by academics, social workers, and British civil servants, those gathered in the McKearney's home are described as victims, and even the word victim is qualified by some as ``innocent'' victims.
Those who talk of innocent victims usually mean those people, mainly involved in the security forces, who were killed by nationalist insurgents. These same people constantly assert that the Six Counties is a democracy, that the killing of Catholics is justified, that the state can only be maintained by keeping them in their holes and that Unionists collectively are all innocent victims of republican violence.
So when the British government resort to summary execution as they did at Loughgall, Gibraltar etc, these people would argue that those killed got what they deserved and their relatives have no right to be included in the victims category, as outlined in the Bloomfield report.
This was the picture presented by the media when the Loughgall relatives met Adam Ingram, who as security minister surely owes those who met him at least an explanation.
The relatives were met by the Families of Innocent Relatives group (FAIR) led by the equally ``innocent'' members of the DUP.
The issue for the relatives of those massacred at Loughgall, like all the other nationalists killed in this long war, is simple justice. They want to know the truth.
They want to know why their loved ones were shot down by undercover professionally trained assassins, when they could have been captured.
They want to know how loyalist death squads were given safe passage into nationalist areas to carry out their murder missions, they want to know the role of British Intelligence and the collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the UDR, Ulster Resistance, and all the pseudo gangs involved in the many unexplained deaths of both Protestant and Catholics over the past 33 years.
Most of all, they want to know why Sir Kenneth Bloomfield has produced a report which categorises victims on the basis of whose finger pulled the trigger.
No matter how they square the circle, those victims involved in FAIR and their mouthpieces in the DUP were not standing outside Stormont out of any sense of justice, or empathy with those Loughgall relatives who, like them, stood over the graves of those they loved.
The woman whose photograph of her son, a member of the UDR killed by the IRA, is as deserving of all our sympathy as the Kellys are for their brother killed by the SAS.
But her son chose to join a highly trained, highly paid unit of the British Army, whose role when it was set up by the British government to replace the disbanded B Specials was to protect key installations. In essence, it never stepped out of its ``special'' shoes, and for nationalists coming into contact with it, meant a terror-ridden trip ending in murder, assualt, theft, collusion, and sectarian harrassment of people solely on the basis that they were Catholics.
Over four hundred of its members, those actually caught, have been convicted of criminal offences, and their notoriety included being part of the ``Shankill Butcher'' gang, the death squad responsible for the Miami Showband.
Certainly those members of the UDR and all the security forces do not deserve the label innocent. Nor are they victims. Those left to mourn them in death may be innocent victims, not of the IRA, but of Britain's dirty war in Ireland, which has claimed the lives of so many of our best and brightest, from both political and religious dividers.
We all, through accident of birth, have been put into positions of taking sides, for whatever reason.
In this respect, all deaths have demeaned us and we all have been deprived of the basic human dignity of consoling each other in our time of greatest need, when we suffer the loss of a loved one. If we continue to accept that some are more guilty than others, if we refuse to admit that there were wrongs on all sides, if we think as if we are in ghettoes, then we are victims and our torture is self inflicted.
It is time to leave victimhood behind and begin an honest appraisal of how we can share this island in agreement. It is time to become survivers of the conflict.