Saying one thing, and doing it

BY JIM GIBNEY

Jesse Jackson in front of the Remembrance Quilt with Holy Cross priests Gary Donnegan and Aidan Troy

I've just been through a few months of what is known in this business as 'writer's block'. This happens from time to time and results in one's mind being frozen, unable to produce intelligible thoughts that can be transferred from the mind onto paper.

I hope I am coming out of my fallow zone into a more fertile period, when the creative thoughts will flow again.

It is hard to explain why these blocks happen; they just do. In the past, I took a friend's advice and forced myself to sit in front of a computer and tried to write. But I ended up looking forlornly into the computer screen with nothing happening.

I sat down this week determined to break the mental logjam and I think I might just have.

This past week I've been inspired to write by a mixture of people and events: the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the UDA.

Jesse's revivalism

The Jackson experience was something else. I joined him as a guest of the Relatives for Justice (RFJ) in Beechmount's Leisure Centre last Thursday afternoon.

He was in Belfast to present the annual Aisling awards to people of the city who have made an outstanding contribution to Belfast.

The RFJ wanted him to meet those they campaign for and to see the remarkable quilt made by the relatives in memory of their loved ones killed in the conflict.

There were over 100 relatives in the centre waiting to greet him. They were enveloped on all sides by their quilt, with hundreds of tiny squares carefully crafted, each with a particular design remembering their loved one in a special way that only they can remember.

The atmosphere was a mixture of excited anticipation waiting on Jesse Jackson and sadness as all around us was the immense cost of the conflict for this group of relatives.

Jesse Jackson is an imposing figure. He stands well over six feet and has all the outward appearance of a basketball player who is ageing with considerable grace.

He certainly does not strike you as a rolled into one, civil rights campaigner, evangelical preacher and a confidante of Martin Luther King (he was with King when he was killed), the late Yasser Arafat and a US Presidential candidate a number of years ago.

He was warmly received and perceptively picked up on the sombre mood of the occasion. He immediately transformed this mood by calling on his mission hall training.

He had us on our feet, waving our hands, shaking our hips, smiling and chanting affirmative messages about ourselves and what we believe in.

Intoxicated by his enthusiasm, he led us and we followed chanting loudly and together, "I am somebody", "my mind is a pearl", "it's not my aptitude, but my attitude, that will determine my altitude", "I can achieve it", "I am somebody".

I felt as if I was in the middle of a mission hall revivalist meeting in the deep south of Alabama, where blacks were being urged by their minister to believe in the word of God but seek their deliverance through their own efforts.

Jackson's intention was clear: to give the relatives a sense of their worth as human beings, to legitimise their grievances and to give them hope for the future.

His speech was laced with quotes from the Bible in a way that was inspiring and uplifting. He pushed all the right buttons. He used the right language and you knew listening to him, against the background of his personal history, that this was a man you could believe. He was sincere.

Bertie's socialism

I didn't feel at all like that when I read Bertie Ahern's interview in last Saturday's Irish Times.

The interview marked Ahern's ten-year tenure as leader of Fianna Fáil.

There were two comments which were contradictory and hard to believe.

Bertie claimed he was a 'socialist' and that he was surprised to learn that in inner city Dublin there were children being tempted to go to school in return for a breakfast.

I was alarmed on two fronts. I have met many, many people over the years who made declarations that they are socialists. I have made them myself but unlike the Taoiseach, I and those other adherents have never had the political power to be able to do anything about our socialist outlook.

This absence of political power has meant our beliefs have not been tested in the real world.

The same cannot be said about Bertie Ahern. He not only leads the largest party on this island, he has for ten years been in charge of a government with all the resources you need to make your socialist aspirations a reality.

I know this much; if Bertie Ahern was a socialist he wouldn't have been surprised to learn about children breakfasting in school because it would not be happening.

The equitable distribution of the huge wealth, which has been generated by working people in the South, by a socialist Taoiseach, would have ensured that education, not food, was the attraction for children at school.

So it strikes me it is not just about what you say, it's also about what you do.

UDA's Road to Damascus

Which brings me to the UDA's latest declaration that they are committed to peace. I welcome last week's announcement, although to be honest I have lost touch with the number of 'peace initiatives' the UDA has declared over the last ten years as they carried on their campaign of violence.

I am entitled to be sceptical about the UDA, as are many other people, especially the families of those they have killed and the nationalist people who live in interface areas and have been dealing with sectarian attacks on their homes.

On this occasion, we were spared the insult of their peace gesture being named after an infamous Catholic killer like John Gregg, whose name the UDA used to launch one of their previous peace initiatives, shortly after he was killed in a loyalist feud.

The British Government, in the shape of their Secretary of State, was swift to accept the UDA's word and recognise their ceasefire.

But it will require more than just words from Paul Murphy to ensure the UDA's peace lasts. What is Murphy going to do with his intelligence agencies who run the UDA and have been running them for the last 30 years?

Will they allow the UDA the space to develop beyond their reach, control and direction?

Have the securocrats been reined in at last by their political masters? Has peace broken out inside MI5 and MI6?

Time will tell but if the last ten years of turmoil inside loyalism is anything to go by, then to coin a phrase, 'they haven't gone away you know' - the securocrats, that is.