OMAGH HORROR EVOKED A COMMUNITY RESPONSE
Omagh horror evoked a community response
Kate Fearon On Saturday
Kate Fearon is a member of the Women's Coalition. James Kelly is on holiday.
AT last I got a real voice on the end of the line. A real voice that confirmed what I was watching on satellite TV in a room in the Europa Hotel.
I had noticed earlier in the afternoon that my friend's car hadn't been at his house in Belfast, and had assumed that he had gone home for the weekend.
What I didn't know was that a few hours later I would be in a queue with thousand of others trying to get through to friends or family.
For an hour I dialled repeatedly, hearing only the automated voice telling me that demand for the number I was trying to call was too high. Try again later.
When I did get through, through tears of frustration and fear of what I could be told, there were more tears, of relief, and guilt (somebody, not too far away was getting the opposite news): the people I cared about were all OK.
One of them was not at home. He had, like many other off-duty medical staff, gone in to give a helping hand. It was after midnight when he got home.
During the week, as the full impact of what had happened began to be appreciated, and they returned to Belfast, we did what we usually did whenever the troubles touched us in some way.
We went out and had a lot to drink. (It was the same over the past few marching seasons, only you can't really go out. And pubs shut early anyway. The only businesses to make money are video stores and off-licences.)
For the rest of us, exposed to all of the emotion, but on the periphery there was a feeling of some helplessness - of wanting to help, but not knowing quite how.
Should we raise the subject? Should we never mention it? How should we remember it? And how should we remember other victims of the conflict, those that we have known, and those that we have never known?
Several of the victims of the Omagh bomb have been remembering and reflecting on the process of their lives since this time last year during the week.
Their public contributions have been characterised by their courage, their commitment both to remember the past and look to the future.
And they have remembered beyond their own grief - there has been thirty years of victims, they said, not just one day last August.
And all of the relatives of these people constantly remember.
Those who have been injured live everyday with the physical pain.
At one recent gathering there was a youthful looking man accompanied by his wife.
He was obviously in great pain, constantly shifting position in search of relief.
Neither his crutches not the painkillers that he persistently pressed his partner for appeared to bring any.
The pain was so obviously great, we assumed that he was the victim of a recent punishment attack.
But we learned that he had been attacked almost 20 years ago.
Dealing with that level of pain requires enormous emotional reserve, and resolve, not just from victims, but also their families, and friends.
And the TV cameras are not there to record the indirect deaths - those relatives who die of a broken heart a year or two after losing a son, daughter, or sibling.
For many years individual victims, survivors and their families have coped either on their own, or have been helped by small groups in their local communities, operating on a shoestring budget, or with no money at all.
At a policy level, it was as if victims didn't exist: the compensation process was slow, and fraught with bureaucratic obstacles; the impact on children who have lost parents or siblings was virtually ignored.
The political rehabilitation of victims began to happen in response to a growing voice from victims' groups, a voice heard particularly clearly after the cease-fires, and one that has grown louder as the political process has advanced.
It is as if the changed political context has opened up and cultivated space for people to tell their stories, giving licence to and legitimating their experiences.
Some of the stories may be difficult to listen to, but they need to be heard if we are to move on and put the conflict behind us.
And people do want to tell their stories. Individual victims have only found their voice in the wake of the Good Friday agreement.
Organisations like WAVE report that there are adults coming forward now to tell tales of what happened to them when they were children, in the early seventies.
The compelling BBC series Legacy is further witness to this. But there are also a sense that, as the political process stalls, that space shrinks, and people retreat back into themselves.
Many people in Northern Ireland have been directly affected by the conflict. But more have not been.
It has been argued in some quarters that part of the problem has been that perhaps political progress would be quicker if more people had been directly affected.
The climate of political progress was enabling people to talk, and others to be exposed to them, to listen, and to hear, so that they became closer to the conflict, even if they had never been directly affected.
The Omagh bomb, in assaulting both individuals and a community, made logical a community response and community remembering.
It accelerated the process of remembering collectively and propelled us to a place where we as an island-wide community had rarely been since the beginning of the troubles.
Even if the Omagh bomb did not affect us directly, even if our only trouble was waiting to get through a phone system jammed with anxious callers, it affected us as a community, and we should remember it as a community, as we should remember all the other victims of our troubles as a community.
Kate Fearon On Saturday
Kate Fearon is a member of the Women's Coalition. James Kelly is on holiday.
AT last I got a real voice on the end of the line. A real voice that confirmed what I was watching on satellite TV in a room in the Europa Hotel.
I had noticed earlier in the afternoon that my friend's car hadn't been at his house in Belfast, and had assumed that he had gone home for the weekend.
What I didn't know was that a few hours later I would be in a queue with thousand of others trying to get through to friends or family.
For an hour I dialled repeatedly, hearing only the automated voice telling me that demand for the number I was trying to call was too high. Try again later.
When I did get through, through tears of frustration and fear of what I could be told, there were more tears, of relief, and guilt (somebody, not too far away was getting the opposite news): the people I cared about were all OK.
One of them was not at home. He had, like many other off-duty medical staff, gone in to give a helping hand. It was after midnight when he got home.
During the week, as the full impact of what had happened began to be appreciated, and they returned to Belfast, we did what we usually did whenever the troubles touched us in some way.
We went out and had a lot to drink. (It was the same over the past few marching seasons, only you can't really go out. And pubs shut early anyway. The only businesses to make money are video stores and off-licences.)
For the rest of us, exposed to all of the emotion, but on the periphery there was a feeling of some helplessness - of wanting to help, but not knowing quite how.
Should we raise the subject? Should we never mention it? How should we remember it? And how should we remember other victims of the conflict, those that we have known, and those that we have never known?
Several of the victims of the Omagh bomb have been remembering and reflecting on the process of their lives since this time last year during the week.
Their public contributions have been characterised by their courage, their commitment both to remember the past and look to the future.
And they have remembered beyond their own grief - there has been thirty years of victims, they said, not just one day last August.
And all of the relatives of these people constantly remember.
Those who have been injured live everyday with the physical pain.
At one recent gathering there was a youthful looking man accompanied by his wife.
He was obviously in great pain, constantly shifting position in search of relief.
Neither his crutches not the painkillers that he persistently pressed his partner for appeared to bring any.
The pain was so obviously great, we assumed that he was the victim of a recent punishment attack.
But we learned that he had been attacked almost 20 years ago.
Dealing with that level of pain requires enormous emotional reserve, and resolve, not just from victims, but also their families, and friends.
And the TV cameras are not there to record the indirect deaths - those relatives who die of a broken heart a year or two after losing a son, daughter, or sibling.
For many years individual victims, survivors and their families have coped either on their own, or have been helped by small groups in their local communities, operating on a shoestring budget, or with no money at all.
At a policy level, it was as if victims didn't exist: the compensation process was slow, and fraught with bureaucratic obstacles; the impact on children who have lost parents or siblings was virtually ignored.
The political rehabilitation of victims began to happen in response to a growing voice from victims' groups, a voice heard particularly clearly after the cease-fires, and one that has grown louder as the political process has advanced.
It is as if the changed political context has opened up and cultivated space for people to tell their stories, giving licence to and legitimating their experiences.
Some of the stories may be difficult to listen to, but they need to be heard if we are to move on and put the conflict behind us.
And people do want to tell their stories. Individual victims have only found their voice in the wake of the Good Friday agreement.
Organisations like WAVE report that there are adults coming forward now to tell tales of what happened to them when they were children, in the early seventies.
The compelling BBC series Legacy is further witness to this. But there are also a sense that, as the political process stalls, that space shrinks, and people retreat back into themselves.
Many people in Northern Ireland have been directly affected by the conflict. But more have not been.
It has been argued in some quarters that part of the problem has been that perhaps political progress would be quicker if more people had been directly affected.
The climate of political progress was enabling people to talk, and others to be exposed to them, to listen, and to hear, so that they became closer to the conflict, even if they had never been directly affected.
The Omagh bomb, in assaulting both individuals and a community, made logical a community response and community remembering.
It accelerated the process of remembering collectively and propelled us to a place where we as an island-wide community had rarely been since the beginning of the troubles.
Even if the Omagh bomb did not affect us directly, even if our only trouble was waiting to get through a phone system jammed with anxious callers, it affected us as a community, and we should remember it as a community, as we should remember all the other victims of our troubles as a community.
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0315
Published Date: 14-Aug-99
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