BOMB THAT UNITED THEM
Bomb that united them
New mood follows an onslaught on all of us
Maurice Hayes
THE character Marian in Stewart Parker's play Pentecost, in committing herself to build a new life out of the ruins of sectarian strife, memorably described the victims of the Northern conflict as predators.
They owed the life they never had and never knew, and now to be paid, through others, the survivors, the fullest life for which they could have ever have hoped.
In many ways, Omagh has the potential to be a pentecost of the Northern situation. What strikes home most is the very ordinariness of the victims people in all walks of life, from all traditions, doing all the innocent things, struck down by an arbitrariness which knew no logic, no discrimination.
By no stretch of twisted ideology could they be transmuted into enemies of the State or of the people, colonial oppressors or intransigent rebels, members of a war machine, sectarian stereotypes or hate figures. They were not any of these. They were all in their deaths "one of us''. The attack on them was an onslaught on all the rest. Nowhere was John Donne's famous metaphor of death as a tidal force diminishing all and leaving no individual untouched more fully exemplified.
Omagh, too, exhibited the futility of the sort of patriotism that requires people to be blown to pieces so that there could be a better life for all. On this occasion, more than any previously, the alternative of politics was available. Indeed it was the sense of the gains made through politics having been endangered, of the whole thing being put in jeopardy and of the fear of plunging again into the pit of uncontrollable tit for tat killings that has so outraged public opinion.
It may well be, as cynics would have it, that Omagh is just another false dawn. They will point to the peace people, thousands on the streets in spontaneous protest and the double Nobel Peace Prize, to atrocity after atrocity after which, it seemed, wickedness could go no lower, which had to be the turning point away from violence, the threshold of a new era of peace and tolerance.
Omagh, they will argue, will go the same way. And yet, who is to say that the human emotions raised by each atrocity in turn were entirely wasted, that there was not a general, if slow accretion of faith in the community, cemented and fortified by their ability to come together in sorrow and despair and to suspend vindictive judgment.
IT MAY not all be easy. In most grieving processes after death there is first a period of shock, of numbness, of passivity which passes for acceptance. When this wears off there is often anger and rage and a desire to strike out, a need to understand, to confront, to bring to justice.
This will be a testing time for the families and for the people of Omagh and for the wider community in Northern Ireland which will require all the resources of pastoral care, of friendly concern and of practical public support and of civic and political leadership. It is too easy for the survivors to be forgotten when the captains and the kings depart, when the media circus moves on.
And yet those 40,000 people on the streets in Omagh on Saturday must mean something and the tens and hundreds and thousands in towns and villages across Ireland meeting briefly to pray linking themselves with the people of Omagh. The Omagh people, a spokesperson said, were reclaiming their town from evil, remembering the dead, recognising the sacrifice but pledging themselves to build a new and better future together the pentecost of Parker's play. In the same way, the people of Ireland were perhaps reclaiming their politics from the men of violence. They were articulating what was implicit in the referenda - that the war is indeed over that the way forward is the way of democratic politics.
The corollary to that is that the arms should now be got rid of. Decommissioning, self-destruction, handing over, disablement, it matters little as long as they are got out of circulation. Arms, even if unused, can get into the hands of dissidents, can be used for more conventional crime, can indeed be turned on the peacemakers.
More important still, and this is where Omagh is significant, is the decommissioning of mindsets, the anathematising of violence as a means of achieving political ends, a break in the transmission mechanisms which recruit idealistic young people into paramilitary organisations. It may indeed be the appropriate time, in public myth making, to end the fliration with the physical force tradition which has bedevilled Irish politics for the past 200 years.
Omagh removes or should remove once and for all, any tawdry glamour that still clings to the smell of powder. There is nothing very glorious in the stench of blood or in dismembered bodies or the screams of the wounded and the cries of the bereaved. The real patriotism now is to build anew on a sense of common purpose.
WHAT Omagh did was to show that the ties that bind a community (even a divided community in a divided society like Northern Ireland) are stronger than the forces which try to blow it apart. These ties are found in the local churches, the hospital and medical services, the police, ambulance and fire services, local council and social services and a range of voluntary charitable organisations. These people are the real heroes and should be recognised as such.
Even though the INLA ceasefire was under discussion before Omagh, like that of the LVF, and may owe more to pressure from the prisons than any other factor, it is welcome nonetheless. It may indeed go some way towards justifying the importance given to the prisoners issue in the Agreement. For any group to stop killing is a bonus. Cumulatively, it increases the forces that are prepared to embrace politics and isolates and weakens those who continue to refuse to do so.
The republican movement is made up of highly fissionable material and there will continue to be splits from splits and sporadic, perhaps even intense moments of violence. But the trend is diminuendo. It will be lost in the crank of gears as people get down to the real work of practical politics. The ceasefires also give the governments some breathing space on security and in preparing new legislation. Few will argue that terror is not as much of a threat to society as drugs or organised crime and requires no less of a response. Indeed, the experience of other societies is that some political terrorism often degenerates after the peace into organised crime. The changes in the law remain necessary, but the detail will be the better for being framed in a calmer atmosphere. Above all, Omagh should turn the minds of politicians on all sides to the task defined by Lincoln as "binding up the nation's wounds''. The centre of Omagh and the condition of the victims remain as a powerful symbol of the need of society to recreate itself by rebuilding the lives of those who have suffered most.
New mood follows an onslaught on all of us
Maurice Hayes
THE character Marian in Stewart Parker's play Pentecost, in committing herself to build a new life out of the ruins of sectarian strife, memorably described the victims of the Northern conflict as predators.
They owed the life they never had and never knew, and now to be paid, through others, the survivors, the fullest life for which they could have ever have hoped.
In many ways, Omagh has the potential to be a pentecost of the Northern situation. What strikes home most is the very ordinariness of the victims people in all walks of life, from all traditions, doing all the innocent things, struck down by an arbitrariness which knew no logic, no discrimination.
By no stretch of twisted ideology could they be transmuted into enemies of the State or of the people, colonial oppressors or intransigent rebels, members of a war machine, sectarian stereotypes or hate figures. They were not any of these. They were all in their deaths "one of us''. The attack on them was an onslaught on all the rest. Nowhere was John Donne's famous metaphor of death as a tidal force diminishing all and leaving no individual untouched more fully exemplified.
Omagh, too, exhibited the futility of the sort of patriotism that requires people to be blown to pieces so that there could be a better life for all. On this occasion, more than any previously, the alternative of politics was available. Indeed it was the sense of the gains made through politics having been endangered, of the whole thing being put in jeopardy and of the fear of plunging again into the pit of uncontrollable tit for tat killings that has so outraged public opinion.
It may well be, as cynics would have it, that Omagh is just another false dawn. They will point to the peace people, thousands on the streets in spontaneous protest and the double Nobel Peace Prize, to atrocity after atrocity after which, it seemed, wickedness could go no lower, which had to be the turning point away from violence, the threshold of a new era of peace and tolerance.
Omagh, they will argue, will go the same way. And yet, who is to say that the human emotions raised by each atrocity in turn were entirely wasted, that there was not a general, if slow accretion of faith in the community, cemented and fortified by their ability to come together in sorrow and despair and to suspend vindictive judgment.
IT MAY not all be easy. In most grieving processes after death there is first a period of shock, of numbness, of passivity which passes for acceptance. When this wears off there is often anger and rage and a desire to strike out, a need to understand, to confront, to bring to justice.
This will be a testing time for the families and for the people of Omagh and for the wider community in Northern Ireland which will require all the resources of pastoral care, of friendly concern and of practical public support and of civic and political leadership. It is too easy for the survivors to be forgotten when the captains and the kings depart, when the media circus moves on.
And yet those 40,000 people on the streets in Omagh on Saturday must mean something and the tens and hundreds and thousands in towns and villages across Ireland meeting briefly to pray linking themselves with the people of Omagh. The Omagh people, a spokesperson said, were reclaiming their town from evil, remembering the dead, recognising the sacrifice but pledging themselves to build a new and better future together the pentecost of Parker's play. In the same way, the people of Ireland were perhaps reclaiming their politics from the men of violence. They were articulating what was implicit in the referenda - that the war is indeed over that the way forward is the way of democratic politics.
The corollary to that is that the arms should now be got rid of. Decommissioning, self-destruction, handing over, disablement, it matters little as long as they are got out of circulation. Arms, even if unused, can get into the hands of dissidents, can be used for more conventional crime, can indeed be turned on the peacemakers.
More important still, and this is where Omagh is significant, is the decommissioning of mindsets, the anathematising of violence as a means of achieving political ends, a break in the transmission mechanisms which recruit idealistic young people into paramilitary organisations. It may indeed be the appropriate time, in public myth making, to end the fliration with the physical force tradition which has bedevilled Irish politics for the past 200 years.
Omagh removes or should remove once and for all, any tawdry glamour that still clings to the smell of powder. There is nothing very glorious in the stench of blood or in dismembered bodies or the screams of the wounded and the cries of the bereaved. The real patriotism now is to build anew on a sense of common purpose.
WHAT Omagh did was to show that the ties that bind a community (even a divided community in a divided society like Northern Ireland) are stronger than the forces which try to blow it apart. These ties are found in the local churches, the hospital and medical services, the police, ambulance and fire services, local council and social services and a range of voluntary charitable organisations. These people are the real heroes and should be recognised as such.
Even though the INLA ceasefire was under discussion before Omagh, like that of the LVF, and may owe more to pressure from the prisons than any other factor, it is welcome nonetheless. It may indeed go some way towards justifying the importance given to the prisoners issue in the Agreement. For any group to stop killing is a bonus. Cumulatively, it increases the forces that are prepared to embrace politics and isolates and weakens those who continue to refuse to do so.
The republican movement is made up of highly fissionable material and there will continue to be splits from splits and sporadic, perhaps even intense moments of violence. But the trend is diminuendo. It will be lost in the crank of gears as people get down to the real work of practical politics. The ceasefires also give the governments some breathing space on security and in preparing new legislation. Few will argue that terror is not as much of a threat to society as drugs or organised crime and requires no less of a response. Indeed, the experience of other societies is that some political terrorism often degenerates after the peace into organised crime. The changes in the law remain necessary, but the detail will be the better for being framed in a calmer atmosphere. Above all, Omagh should turn the minds of politicians on all sides to the task defined by Lincoln as "binding up the nation's wounds''. The centre of Omagh and the condition of the victims remain as a powerful symbol of the need of society to recreate itself by rebuilding the lives of those who have suffered most.
Further Information
Publisher: IRISH INDEPENDENT
Ref: II/104
Published Date: 24-Aug-98
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