16th October, 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan
Speakers:
Roger Bradley (Education Committee, Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland)
David Richardson (Lodge of Research, Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland)
Gordon Lucy (Chairman, Ulster Society)
Dominic Bryan (Researcher, University of Ulster)
Chaired by John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
Contents:
Roger Bradley: Introduction
Gordon Lucy: Historical aspects
David Richardson: Religious aspects
Dominick Bryan: Orange parades
Questions and comments
Closing words
INTRODUCTION:
John Clancy welcomed everyone to the first Autumn talk of the Meath Peace Group for 1995, the 18th in the series. On behalf of the Meath Peace Group he thanked the speakers for coming to address the group on the subject of “The Orange Order Today”. He mentioned the fact that there are c. 3,000 marches a year in N.I. and well over two thirds of these are Orange marches. “I think it is very timely also to mention that it is 200 years this year since the founding of the Orange Order in Armagh… it is particularly brought out in this quarter’s issue of History Ireland by Jim Smyth where he discusses the origins of the Orange Order. One of the most telling points he makes is that at the time of the foundation of the Orange Order there was a lot of politicisation of the whole structure of Ireland as a result of the French Revolution, and we must look at the formation of all of those bodies at that time and the Orange Order in the context of a pan-European ferment as a result of the French Revolution. It is important to bear that in mind – though no doubt the longevity of the Orange Order is based much more in the roots of Ulster. ”
ADDRESSES OF SPEAKERS:
1. Roger Bradley (Education Commitee, Grand Orange Lodge): Introductory words
“First of all I’d just like to say that we’re very pleased to be here. Since we were asked to come down we have talked amongst ourselves and have been looking forward to coming. I should stress that we are here in an individual capacity – we’re not authorised to actually represent the voice of Orangeism itself, so I would stress that point. I’ll introduce the speakers that we have – Gordon Lucy is Chairman of the Ulster Society, a society that was formed 10 years ago to promote Ulster/British heritage and culture. He is a member of the University Shield of Refuge which is a reasonably new Orange Lodge, formed just a few years ago, which draws its candidates from the universities of Ireland and also a broader field as well. He is an historian and author and I think I should mention that he has a book coming out next week on the Great Convention of 1892, so that is the commercial over. Anyone interested in Unionism during the Home Rule period I think would find the book interesting. Then we have David Richardson, a former schoolteacher who recently gave up teaching temporarily to do a Ph.D. and he’s taking John Miller Andrews as his subject, who was the second P.M. of N.I.
“David’s a member of the Rising Sons of Killegar which is a Leitrim Lodge so we actually have a representative of Southern Orangeism, perhaps some would say a rare breed. He is a member of the Grand Lodge Education Committee and a member of the Lodge of Research. I’ll just make a few short comments about myself – I work as a public servant and have done so for the past 20 odd years. I’m a member of the Cross of St. Patrick which was formed in 1968 and the primary aim of the Lodge was to promote the heritage and teaching of St. Patrick, so he is a figure who, certainly in my lodge, we hold dear. I’m also a member of the Grand Lodge Education Committee and a member of the Lodge of Research.
“I just want to explain in brief the form that we will speak in – I am going to make some opening remarks in general terms about Orangeism and then Gordon Lucy will follow to speak about the history of Orangeism and how it has evolved up to the present time, and he’ll also speak about the developments of Orangeism and some notable members of the Order.
“David Richardson will speak then on the spiritual and religious aspects of the Orange Order. Usually the stereotyped image you would have of the Order is of a bunch of skinheads with a “blood and thunder” band and that is the image that everyone has of Orangeism – in fact that is very much a minority view. I apologize to Dominic Bryan – I have omitted to say what he will be speaking on. As you know, Dominic is a graduate of Coleraine, University of Ulster. He holds a Masters Degree from Cambridge University and is now currently doing his Ph. D. in anthropology. He will speak about the marching tradition of Orangeism – in fact the perceptions that are held within the group of Orangeism and outside the group – so a sort of insider/outsider view of Orangeism and the actual parading tradition, and after that we’re open for questions.”
Orangeism: “If I could just start by making some general comments about Orangeism. As I’ve said there is a stereotyped image of Orangeism which does give quite a false impression. I’ll just start by explaining the structure. There are actually 3 distinct organisations which are completely separate although linked: the Orange Order itself operates a 2 Degree system – the Degree of Orange and the Degree of Purple.
“When you advance to the Purple Degree, you can advance to the Royal Arch Purple Chapter, which is the second distinct organisation, and it is basically a passport organisation to the Royal Black Institution of which there are 11 Degrees. I’m not going to say anything about the degrees because that is going to be David’s territory, so I don’t want to steal his thunder.
“There are many types of Orange lodges – and again I want to emphasise that we’re not just the very narrow type of organisation which you would see represented on your TV screens when they’re out on parade. There are lodges which are associated with a particular trade or craft and many of these types of lodges have come out of particular industries such as aircraft, shipbuilding, linen etc., and quite often the images on the banners would give you a clue as to the origins of the lodge.
“For instance, a lodge formed from the shipyard would depict shipbuilding, and so forth. Also, lodges have grown out of individual churches, so you would have banners which would depict the church where the lodge was actually founded, and there would be a tradition that members of those lodges would come from these particular churches. There are of course many examples in Belfast of lodges of that nature. If you move outside Belfast, to the country and rural areas, you will find that there are lodges which have a particular tradition with a certain locality. There would be a tradition where farmers and their sons would actually join with a lodge in their district, whereas a lodge such as I am in draws its membership from a very wide geographical area. In fact, we even have members outside of Ireland who belong to my lodge, so you can get quite a varied set of Orange lodges.
“You can also have lodges that would be associated with a military tradition – you would have lodges that were actually formed from the 36th Ulster Division, from the Burma Star, Star of India. In fact, one of the founder members of my lodge actually was a founder member of the Star of the East which was a lodge set in Hong Kong, and as the regiment moved around the world, the lodge moved with it. Also, you find that there are lodges which could be described as having been set up for a particular purpose. I’ve mentioned that both David and myself are members of the Lodge of Research – that’s a lodge that undertakes research, undertakes to give lectures, present papers and to add to the knowledge which is held within Orangeism.
“Again, you would have lodges that would be actually formed to promote the Gospel. Orangeism is set for the defence and promotion of the Reformed Faith – you would have members who would be required to have a Christian testimony – in fact I know lodges where, in order to gain entry to those lodges, you have to actually give your Christian testimony in public. So you can see that there is a very broad representation of Orangeism – it’s not the narrow view that the press present – it’s much wider than that.
Meetings: “I think that’s really all that I want to say, but I’ll say something about the meetings, before I finish. I would imagine, and if I’m wrong you can say I’m wrong, that most people who don’t know very much about Orangeism would say that they meet in secret and they conspire and plot, and they’re anti-Catholic, but really if you want to examine the business of most Orange meetings – some of them can be quite boring – they discuss quite mundane routine matters such as finance, such as how much are we going to raise the dues by, such as if the roof leaks etc. – they have to maintain the hall, so there is a lot of routine business. In addition to that, and I can certainly speak of my own lodge, we invite guests along to speak to us. We have had Dominic, who has actually come to my lodge and addressed the members. We also have debates, we discuss all sorts of religious and political issues and we sometimes refer matters to senior lodges at District level. But really there’s no plotting, there’s no scheming, we are actually not anti-Catholic.
Qualifications of an Orangeman: “I brought with me, and I can leave these for anyone who wants them, the “qualifications of candidates”, and if anybody wants to find out what the qualifications of an Orangeman actually are, I have brought about 20 copies. I think at this point I have said enough. I want to pass over to Gordon who will speak about the development and history, and some notable personages who have been involved in Orangeism.”
2. Gordon Lucy: Historical aspects
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I would like to just echo what Roger has said in terms of our pleasure in being here tonight and accepting your very kind invitation. It’s very very difficult to talk about the history of the Orange Order, especially if you’re dealing with an organisation which has celebrated, or is celebrating, its bicentenary this year. It’s very difficult to summarise the history of 200 years in the amount of time that I have available to me. By its very nature I am being selective – I can’t be other than selective in picking out things to talk about, or themes – but I do hope I’m avoiding being tendentious.
“There are a number of points which Dr. William Smyth, the President of Maynooth, has made during this year about the history of the Orange Order during the last 200 years, and since I suspect that not everyone present was at the Oldbridge Summer School, perhaps it might be worthwhile to focus on those 3 points that he wished to emphasise.
Longevity: “First of all, the sheer longevity of the Orange Order. Very few organisations ever last or exist long enough to celebrate a bicentenary – he suggested the churches, Trinity College Dublin, and some of the public schools, e.g. my own – those are the sort of organisations that tend to exist long enough to celebrate a bicentenary. The Orange Order is one of that small select band of organisations that exist long enough to celebrate a bicentenary.
International character: “Another interesting facet of the Orange Order is its worldwide spread. Roger alluded very briefly to a lodge in Hong Kong – it’s largely spread throughout the English-speaking world to some extent. I’ve suggested elsewhere that many of these lodges are military and their warrants, the authority by which an Orange lodge is set up, seems to have travelled in the knapsacks of individual soldiers. Certainly the origins of the Orange Order in Canada and Australia can be attributed to military lodges. It also exists in the French-speaking territory of Togo where Orange Lodge meetings are conducted in French rather than English.
Social inclusiveness: “The other interesting feature that Dr. Smyth thought of the Orange Order was its social inclusiveness – just the sheer range of people from different social groups that can be members of the Orange Order. I think that’s worth bearing in mind.
“I noticed in some of the papers during the summer that they tended to suggest that the Orange Order was a narrow working-class phenomenon – to some extent that’s true in Belfast but there’s great diversity in the Orange Order. Certainly, outside Belfast and a number of other urban centres, the Orange Order embraces people of all social classes. I think the social inclusiveness of the Orange Order is something that it would be silly to overlook.
Change and evolution: “An organisation which has existed for some 200 years does not remain fixed or static. There has been change and evolution – I don’t know how to address this exactly, but certainly the organisation which sprang into existence in 1795, in response to the attack on Dan Winter’s cottage in September of that year, is not exactly the same sort of organisation that exists in 1995. That, I suppose, is only to state the obvious. The Orange Order over that period of time has evolved – in different periods and different times there are different emphases, e.g. if one was just thinking in terms of the Orange Order at a number of years at the beginning of this century. I remember reading the Northern Whig accounts of the 12th July in the years 1910-1915. In 1910, the 12th July was a social occasion; in 1911-14 it was less of a social occasion – it was becoming more of a political occasion because of the impact of the Third Home Rule Crisis. Again, if you go to 1915, the Orange Order is essentially a religious organisation imploring God’s blessing on the Allied cause during the First World War. So you’ve got that change in that short time span – you’ve got change going on all the time.
Diversity: “The other thing I want to stress is this question of diversity – the image that you see of the Orange Order in Belfast, overwhelmingly a proletarian organisation. Outside Belfast, it is usually much more socially mixed and diverse. Very often when I was reading some of your papers during the summer, one noticed this focus or attention on “skinheads” and people carrying cider bottles and all the rest of it – these weren’t members of the Orange Order at all; they were, if you like, the “hangers-on”, they were there witnessing the thing, they weren’t actually Orangemen. Sometimes there’s confusion as well over some of our bandsmen – the bandsmen aren’t necessarily Orangemen either.
Origins of the Order: “Now this question of what exactly I’m supposed to concentrate on in the time allocated to me. I’m going, just very briefly, to tell you about the origins of the Orange Order.
“As you may know, especially if you’ve read History Ireland, the Orange Order was formed in the late 18th century against a background of sectarian conflict which was particularly intense in Co. Armagh. Now why the political and sectarian rivalry was particularly intense in Co. Armagh is something for historians to haggle over – it’s one of the interesting questions that there are many theories around. I don’t think anybody has come up with the exact explanation. One of the reasons undoubtedly was the fact that N. Armagh was one of the most densely populated areas in Western Europe, so there was, perhaps, this hunger over land.
” There’s also the explanation that a lot of the people at that time in North Armagh were comparably wealthy – they were almost the equivalent of “yuppies”. They had far more money and time on their hands then they knew what was good for them, but you know I don’t know really what the absolute explanation is – that’s for historians to argue over. In terms of the general detail – on 21st September 1795, approximately 400 “Defenders” (a Roman Catholic agrarian society) attacked Dan Winter’s cottage at The Diamond, near Loughgall, and they were confronted by much stiffer resistance than they had anticipated, with the result that the aggressors were repulsed by a dozen determined Protestants, at the cost of one Protestant casualty. Perhaps as many as 50 Defenders may have been killed in the assault, but, as the enemy carried away their dead and wounded, the total must remain uncertain. That evening, the victorious Protestants formed an Orange Society for the defence of Protestant interests and from those very, very humble beginnings sprang the Orange Society.
“Now at different times in its history the Orange Order has had greater importance than at others. In the first two decades of the 19th century I think it had considerable importance and enjoyed the support and interest of social elites. For much of the 19th century it lacked that support altogether. It even voluntarily dissolved – the Grand Lodge of Ireland voluntarily dissolved itself in 1836 – but despite the fact that the Grand Lodge didn’t exist, individual Orange lodges continued to exist, maintaining a very lively underground existence until the Grand Lodge reconstituted itself in 1846 under the leadership of the Earl of Enniskillen. Dolly’s Brae is the episode you are probably familiar with – I’ll not actually bother telling you the story of Dolly’s Brae but I’ll sort of deal to some extent on the “fall-out” from Dolly’s Brae.
Dolly’s Brae: “What happened at Dolly’s Brae was that the Orangemen were essentially ambushed by an agrarian secret society called the “Ribbonmen”, and, although the Orangemen, I think it would be fair to say, won the battle, their opponents contrived to win the propaganda war with the result that in 1850, there was the passage of the Party Processions Act which had the effect of banning Orange parades.
“Now much of the leadership of the Orange Order, at this time, was fairly aristocratic, and, while the aristocratic leadership didn’t exactly welcome the legislation, they were sufficiently cautious, and anxious to remain within the law, not to challenge it. The Order’s fortunes in the 1850s and the 1860s languished to the intense displeasure of the rank and file. Eventually, a minor Co. Down landowner, William Johnston of Ballykilbeg, who shared the frustration of the rank and file Orangemen, came forward to offer alternative leadership. In July 1866 he held an Orange Jamboree, within the law, on his own estate, to celebrate the 12th. In 1867 Johnston decided to challenge the legislation directly by appealing to the working-classes and organising a massive yet peaceful demonstration from Newtownards to Bangor. On its arrival Johnston delivered a speech in which he stated that Orangemen would no longer tolerate the situation whereby it was illegal for them to walk on the 12th, when nationalists could parade in Dublin with complete impunity.
“Contrary to the very shrewd advice of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who I think at that stage was the Earl of Mayo, the Government insisted on prosecuting Johnston and he was sentenced to 2 months in prison in Downpatrick Gaol. Imprisonment had the effect of conferring martyrdom and heroic status upon him, and in the General Election of 1888 Johnston contested the Belfast constituency, which at that time returned 2 Members of Parliament. It was the first election after Disraeli’s “leap in the dark” – huge sections of the working-class had been enfranchised for the first time and Johnston headed the poll and was returned to Parliament. During his stay in Parliament he had the very signal distinction of achieving the object for which he had been elected within the lifetime of a single Parliament. Most people enter, certainly our Parliament, and I’m sure your Parliament also, making all sorts of promises and they actually are able to honour very few of them. For securing the “right to march”, Johnston was to the people of Sandy Row, the Shankill and Ballymacarett, an Orange and Protestant folk hero second only to that other William of “glorious, pious and immortal memory”.
“A legend in his own lifetime, Johnston’s portrait continues to feature prominently on Orange banners, not only in recognition of his successful campaign to secure the repeal of the Party Processions Act, but also his sterling contribution to reviving the Orange Order’s fortunes and boosting its morale.
“That sort of revival that Johnston initiated was really the precursor of another revival which was to occur in the 1880’s. The Orange Order was incidentally initially quite sympathetic to the Home Rule movement – there was a by-election in Monaghan in 1871 and a lot of rather disgruntled Orangemen gave their support to a Home Rule candidate, Isaac Butt. In fact, Butt wasn’t the original preferred candidate – the original preferred candidate was a man called John Madden, but the Roman Catholic hierarchy, in the guise of the Bishop of Clogher, took very considerable exception to these Orangemen, and, I just throw it out as a suggestion, there may have been a possibility of Roman Catholics and Orangemen campaigning in Monaghan in 1871 for the same candidate, but that’s life. Anyway, the point was, the Home Rule movement ceased to be a vehicle for Protestant discontent and annoyance with the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, and instead started embracing a programme which Orangemen found repugnant and, as a consequence, Orange support for Home Rule disappeared, not to say evaporated, although there were one or two Protestants who obviously did continue to have an interest. So Home Rule was obviously a tremendous boost and filip to the Orange movement.
12th July: “Now maybe, without wanting to delve into too much history, I was just going to go forward and make a few remarks and observations about the “Twelfth”. If you feel unhappy about how I’m doing things, please feel free to ask plenty of searching and penetrating questions which I may, or may not, be able to answer afterwards. The 12th of July is the most important date and event in the Orange calendar, and this has been so since the first parades in 1796.
“Over the years fashions have changed – sashes have been replaced by collarettes, flags have been displaced by banners and the fife and drum have been displaced by a wider variety of musical instruments. But even allowing for all this evolution of the Orange Order in some respects, there would be aspects of these parades which I think would be familiar to the first Orangemen. Now how do we interpret the “Twelfth”?
“The historian A.T.Q. Stewart was cited in the Guardian of 5th October 1988 as observing “the BBC is quite wrong when it says with ill-conceived astonishment every 12th July that so many thousand Orangemen celebrated the victory of Protestant over Catholic in 1690. It is not about that at all. It is about the continued survival of Protestants against the unitary Catholic state.” Now I think there’s a lot of merit in that, but I think that the fact that people can debate and argue over that highlights the fact that the Twelfth is an event capable of many diverse interpretations. Some view the 12th July as an expression of triumphalism – a triumphalist and provocative occasion, others view the 12th as an expression of Protestant solidarity – a badge of identity in the face of a perceived threat, and even to participants themselves the 12th July has very many different meanings because the Orange Order embraces so many of the diverse strands of Ulster Protestant society. I suspect perhaps that Roman Catholics… because perhaps Roman Catholicism, though it may not be quite monolithic, it may not be quite homogenous, but if you are Roman Catholic I don’t think it’s necessarily all that easy to understand the complexity, the diversity and the vociferous character of Ulster Protestantism. As I said, I want to go back to this idea that the Twelfth is a multi-faceted event – it combines historical commemoration, political demonstration, religious service and carnival, and for many people involved in the 12th July it’s essentially a family day out for every stratum of Protestant society, it’s an opportunity to meet friends and renew old acquaintances, and an occasion to exchange news and to chat. In rural areas, especially when you have good weather, which fortuitously on the 12th July very often is the case, even in a bad year the 12 July frequently manages to be a good day, it’s really something in the nature of a picnic, a large-scale picnic. So those are just some general observations about the 12th July and I’d like you to take some of them at least seriously.
Marching season: “This question about the “marching season” – there are numerous church parades organised by the Order across the country, the most important of which, I suppose, is Reformation Sunday in October which commemorates the occasion on which Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Cathedral. There are also a series of “mini-Twelfth” celebrations on the 1st July and the purpose of these is to commemorate the fact that so many Orangemen fell on the first and second days of the Battle of the Somme. The biggest of these demonstrations is in East Belfast. There are also Junior Orange celebrations – they tend to take place on Easter Tuesday, and Bangor very often is the principal venue.
“The marching season is just not confined to the Orange rder. Roger mentioned the fact that there was the Orange, the Arch Purple and the Black. The Black itself has its own calendar.
“The Black organisation does not have the same concentration on one particular date – in different parts of N.I. they celebrate their day on different dates, e.g. Fermanagh and S.W. Ulster, including Cavan, Monaghan and S. Donegal, they tend to commemorate their festivities on the Saturday nearest to the 12th August, and in doing that they’re commemorating the Battle of Newtownbutler. In much of N. Armagh and Co. Down they celebrate Black Day on 13th July in Scarva, and in the rest of N.I. they tend to celebrate their day on the last Saturday in August, hence the phrase “the last Saturday”. Then you have another organisation called the Apprentice Boys which is not, strictly speaking, linked in any way to the Orange or the Black at all and they have 2 principal demonstrations in December when they celebrate the closing of the gates of Londonderry in 1689, and they also celebrate the relief of the city in August. So that’s part of the marching season, that’s part of the rationale for it and I was just going to conclude my remarks by looking at Orangeism in N.I. today, just some general remarks which you can pick up on later.
Role of Orangeism: “Orangeism continues to play a significant role in the life of N.I. Much significance is attached to the fact that all 6 Prime Ministers of N.I., most Cabinet Ministers, most Unionist MPs, have been Orangemen. N.I. has been represented as the “Orange State”, the Cabinet has been viewed as a sub-committee of the Grand Lodge, and Stormont has been described, was described in the past, as a “glorified Orange lodge”. It is true that Sir James Craig once boasted that he “was an Orangeman first and a politician second”, but in practice James Craig and other politicians were politicians first and Orangemen afterwards. The fact that the Government at Stormont on more than one occasion was prepared to ban parades is a very clear illustration of this fact. For many, perhaps most, Orangemen the Order is primarily a religious organisation – something David will address in greater detail. As I’ve already hinted, Protestantism is institutionally divided and fragmented compared to the more unified structure which exists within Roman Catholicism.
“The Orange Order therefore affords Protestants of different denominations the opportunity to meet together to share their common Protestantism and to co-operate.
“In terms of its religious outlook the Orange Order is predominantly evangelical and it tends to be unsympathetic to ecumenism, as conventionally understood. The reason for this is quite simply that Orangemen are anxious to preserve a distinctive and undiluted Protestant and Reformed witness.
Social role: “The Orange Order has a social significance as well, despite the creation of community centres by the Government, which I imagine is a way of trying to minimise the Orange Order’s influence, but historically the Orange Hall has long occupied a central place in the social life of the community. Orange Halls serve as venues for a much wider range of gatherings than simply those that are strictly Orange. They are the venue for dances, concerts, cookery demonstrations, flower shows, meetings of young farmers and youth clubs – a wide range of events and activities take place in Orange Halls.
“I was just going to conclude by suggesting that the Orange Order may be a minority organisation in the sense that not all members of the Protestant community are members of it, but nevertheless it remains the most cohesive force in Protestant society and is an essential expression of the cultural heritage of the Ulster Protestant people. Thank you.”
3. David Richardson: Religious aspects
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d just like to thank you very much indeed for the invitation here tonight. My own experiences are largely in the Province of Connaught, that’s where my mother comes from, and in actual fact I am a member of the Orange Order in the Province of Connaught, so this is a new province for me. I haven’t any Orange connections with Munster yet but maybe that will come.
Fundamental basis of Orange Order: “I’m not sure what experience many of you will actually have of the Orange Order and I’ve taken the liberty of bringing along a short video with me to give you some visual demonstration, if you like, of a 12th July parade [video shown]
“I’m sure you noticed several things about that video. For a start it wasn’t raining, which sometimes happens on 12th July despite all our protestations, and of course there was a very low police presence, but one thing does stand out perhaps more than most – all the marchers were black men and a very large number of women as well, and you may have noticed some children there at the beginning. Now you might well wonder what that was – that was actually the Grand Orange Lodge of Ghana in W. Africa. What on earth do the Orange men and women of Ghana have to do with the N.I. problem and the situation there? But that is to misunderstand the Orange Order completely.
“The Orange Order is not completely for Ulster, Irish or even European people – the Orange Order is for Protestants. That is the fundamental basis of the Orange Order, and if you don’t understand Protestantism you don’t understand the Orange Order.
“Now to many people Protestantism has a very negative image of protesting against, e.g. one aspect of Protestantism which is often portrayed …in N.I. is the aspect of how the Lord’s Day, Sunday, is observed. Many stories are told against that, many Borough Councils, for example, have strict laws as to how the Lord’s Day, Sabbath, Sunday is observed, and the story is told of what happened in one such borough in the north of Co. Antrim – a pilot was flying over the countryside, his aeroplane developed difficulties and the engine went on fire. He had no other option but to bale out, he got his parachute on, pressed the ejector seat button, flew out of the canopy and down towards earth, and no matter how hard he pulled on the parachute cord nothing happened. He finally landed crash into a haystack and the farmer came running up to see what was the problem. The pilot said “I’ve just had a dreadful experience. I was pulling my parachute cord and nothing happened.” The farmer said, “I’m not surprised, nothing round here opens on a Sunday!”
“Now that’s a story that’s told against us, but very often that’s the perception many people have of Protestantism – it is a negative “you can’t do this”, “you can’t do that”, “we won’t talk to them”, “they’re not for us” – that, as I say, is to misunderstand Protestantism.
What Orange Order stands for: “Protestantism comes from the Latin word “protestatio”, meaning “witness” – a stand for something. I just want to spend a few minutes’ time this evening concentrating on what the Orange Order stands for.
“At its very root Protestantism is based on the Bible and the doctrine of the Reformers from the 16th century onwards, and in fact before that, from the time of Wycliffe, was “sole scripture” – scripture alone. This is the book on which we base our beliefs. We don’t actually worship the Bible itself as some people would hold that we do but we do believe that it is the word of God. Paul, in his 2nd Letter to Timothy, says that “all scripture is God breathed”. It’s the very word of God. These are the standards we hold and this Bible should be the yardstick by which we live our lives and conduct our worship. In fact we’ve got a very good example for that: our Lord Jesus Christ, whenever he was confronted by the Pharisees on a matter of doctrine, very often said, “it is written”. Very often that is the stand Protestants take – “it is written”.
“So I just want to spend some time looking at the fundamental message of the Bible that Protestants uphold. Now I realise that that’s a bit of a gargantuan task, and people have spent hundreds of years defining the essential message of the Bible but that is a certain core that I would like to concentrate on tonight and the aspect that Protestants wish to defend.
Sin: “First of all, from the Bible, we learn that man has a problem. In the early chapters of Genesis we read of God creating man in His own image in the Garden of Eden and then sin entered the world and man turned against God, and the problem that entered into the world was sin. Now we sometimes have a mistaken concept of sin – we think that sins are individual things such as stealing or murder – they are individual specific compartmentalised things in our lives.
“However it is much more widespread than that. Sin is an attitude of mind and can be summed up as love of self – notice the little letter in the middle of sin – “I” – sin is putting “I” in the middle, putting yourself first, and above all putting yourself before God. In Paul’s Letter to the Church at Rome we read these words – “people have become filled with every kind of wickedness, with greed and depravity; they are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice; they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” These words were written nearly 2 millennia ago yet they do not sum up the state of the world today.
“The human condition is the same now as it was in Paul’s day – all people have fallen short of God’s standard. It’s easy to be judgmental and say “I haven’t killed or murdered, I don’t steal, I’m not included in that, I’m not a sinner”. But the Bible tells us we are.
“The Bible cuts through our self-defence, our excuses, and again slightly later on in Paul’s Letter he says these words (Rom. 3, vv. 22-23): “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” God’s standards can be likened to an examination where the pass mark is 100%; you might get 10%, or you might get 80%, but you still fail. God’s standards are so high that we cannot possibly hope to reach up to them. We are naturally sinful and have turned our backs on God, everything we do, no matter how good it might seem to us, is tainted by that sin, if we do not love God.” Again, Paul says in his Letter: “those controlled by their sinful nature cannot please God” and one hymn often sung at Orange services expresses it this way:
“Not the labour of my hands can fulfill thy laws’ demands, Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears for ever flow, All for sin could not atone. Thou must save and Thou alone.”
Fundamentals – justification by faith: “So that’s the first thing Protestants learn from the Bible – that we have fallen short of God’s standards. But the Bible provides us with the answer, and I’m really working through Paul’s Letter to the Romans to try and draw out the fundamentals of the message that we as Orangemen believe in. In Rom. 5:6-8 we read these words: “At just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly; very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
“We could not reach out to God because all of our actions, everything we do, is tainted by sin, but God reached out to us at a terrible cost to Himself. God is a loving God, but He’s also a holy God and He cannot overlook sin. That sin must be paid for before our relationship with God can be restored and God gave His only son to do just that. God is a holy God and cannot tolerate sin, God is angry with sin. Now our human anger is provoked by the most irrational things, it blazes up and is gone. God’s anger is a just anger…[tape ends]….a crime has been committed and someone has to pay the penalty.
“But the judge’s son, who hasn’t committed any crime, steps forward and takes our place, takes my place. We have earned punishment but Jesus takes our place and takes the punishment for us, and that is the central doctrine that the Orange Order defends – justification – that we can be made just in God’s sight because Jesus Christ died in our place.
Royal Black Institution: “Now Gordon has referred to the Royal Black Institution – I am actually a member of the Royal Black Institution in Co. Cavan, and this is a Royal Black collarette – this is what we wear on demonstrations and parades at various times in the year. Now you’ll see that…there’s a badge there which says “Killeshandra Dist. No. 1 Co. Cavan” and on the other side you’ll see something very simple – a red cross – that is the highest symbol that the R.B.I. has because it reminds us that Jesus died on the cross to save us.
“Protestantism is the theology of the cross and the doctrine that we as Orangemen defend is that everything was done on the Cross for us, we can’t contribute towards that. It is by grace we’ve been saved, and not by works – nothing we’ve done, but by grace… We have been made right with God because Jesus died on that Cross. And we as Orangemen believe that if you repent of your sins and place your faith in Christ, you will be saved. Your sins – they’ve been put behind you – God has wiped the slate clean. We can do nothing. Christ has done all for us.
“It’s been said that the difference between Christianity and other religions is 2 letters. Many other religions say “do this, do that, and you’ll be saved”. Christianity says “Jesus Christ has done it” and that is what we as Orangemen, I reiterate, defend. It’s such a precious truth that we want to stand for it. As the scripture says, “let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence”. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice in our place, we can approach God in prayer directly, we can speak to God directly as our heavenly Father. We believe as Protestants we have that privilege again, not because of anything we’ve done, but because Christ has done it for us. We can approach God in prayer and will spend eternity with Him; we don’t need any other mediator or intercessor because Christ has gone before us. As Paul wrote to Timothy – “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”. Now that is a very short summary of the essential doctrine of the Protestant Faith – justification by faith – that by faith in Jesus’ death on the cross we can be made right with God, and if Orangeism stands for any one particular doctrine, it is that.
Degrees of Royal Black Institution: “Now very quickly I just want to take a brief look at some of the structures of the degrees, for example, that we undertake. The Royal Black Institution has more degrees than any other – it has 11 degrees, culminating in the Red Cross, as I have said. The Red Cross Degree informs us of Christ’s death on the cross and the fact that paradise is open to those who have a firm belief in Jesus’ blood shed for them. And the various degrees are essentially scripture lessons and they teach such things as charity and other Christian virtues. The degrees focus on the lives of various biblical figures such as Moses, Adam and Eve, Daniel and King David. The best analogy I can find for the degrees – I don’t know if you’ve ever been to York or any of the great English medieval cities where the mystery plays are acted out and where various stories from the Bible are dramatised and the fundamental message of these is brought home – and that’s what degrees essentially are, they’re like mystery plays where biblical stories are brought to life and the doctrines which we as Orangemen believe are brought home to us.
Orange banners: “These lessons are often visually emphasised on Orange banners, especially Black banners. As Roger and Gordon have both [mentioned], Orange banners very often reflect the origins of particular lodges e.g. “The Great Northern True Blues” Lodge in Belfast has a picture of a steam railway engine of the old Great Northern Railway because most of the Lodge members originally came from the railway officers and the railway staff. Other lodges might for example have political figures like Lord Carson or the Earl of Erne. They also have religious figures, and many of the banners depict Protestant martyrs such as Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, and great Protestant spiritual leaders such as Wesley and Martin Luther. And in the Royal Black Institution what you tend to find is the banners are exclusively religious – they concentrate on biblical figures such as Noah releasing the doves from the Ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, which bring home the spiritual lessons we’ve learned through the degrees.
“I would just like to close what has been a very inadequate survey of some Protestant beliefs by telling you something about my own lodge’s banner. I’m with the Rising Sons of Killegar, Co. Leitrim, as you’ve got on your sheets there, and we’ve got a new banner this year – on one side you’ve the parish church, Killegar parish church, and on the other side we have a picture which to me encapsulates the essence of Protestantism and therefore Orangeism – it’s a picture of a cross, a bleak stone cross, nothing glamorous or romantic, on a rock lashed by waves and to that cross a prone figure is clinging saying “My faith looks up to thee”, clinging to the cross. And I think that’s an ideal summary of what we in the Order stand for. The “true Protestant”, not in name only, is someone who has accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. This is the Protestantism which the Orange Order espouses. There is far more to the Orange Order than wearing a sash and parading on the 12th July. Thank you very much.”
Chair: John Clancy thanked the speakers from the Orange Order and introduced the fourth speaker, Dominic Bryan, a researcher from Q.U.B. and co-author of a recent publication Political Rituals: Loyalist Parades in Portadown published by the University of Ulster.
4. Dominic Bryan: “Parading”
“Thanks very much. I’m going to show a little video from a programme…called “Blood and Belonging” because I think what this will do is perhaps show you images of the 12th Parades with which you are familiar – it will ring true with you. But before I talk, have a look at the images – it’ll take about 5 or 6 minutes….you’ll notice some rather ominous music played all the way through this to give it a particular image…you go to these bonfires, they’re actually very happy-go-lucky cheerful events…
“This is a little talk I gave at a meeting just before the 12th this year which was looking particularly at the Ormeau Road situation. I had individuals from both communities in the audience so you might notice that the little talk treads very carefully. I’d been looking for 4 or 5 years at parades particularly, not specifically about the Orange Order, but predominantly.. [tonight’s talk] is going to be about the Orange Order.
Change: “Parading has a complex history in Ireland. The institutions and political organisations that attempt to control these events have gone through a number of reforms and played a variety of roles at different points in history, and Gordon mentioned some of the changes the Orange Order has been through – the Orange Order is a case in point, it is not, and never has been, an unchanging monolith. Its development into one of the focuses of Protestant identity did not happen immediately and has been due to particular historical circumstances. Over the years it has been used by the British State and in turn has been suppressed by the British State – again Gordon mentioned some of these occasions. It has been an institution of economic and political patronage and also one that has at time served radical class and agrarian causes. It has been used by the aristocracy, by employers, by politicians, and has in turn been abandoned by them. During the Stormont years it was central to the State and patronised by a large majority of the Protestant classes. In recent years it has been going through changes and will, in my view, probably become more politically marginal and not the focus of unionism.
The problem: “[The Orange Order] has provided a sense of community and security but in doing so has at times provided good reasons for Roman Catholics to fear and even despise it. Thus we have a problem – that which has come to be seen by a significant amount of Protestants in the community as central to their identity is seen by many Catholics in the community as symbolic of historical oppression. How can these rival claims be negotiated? Have we any reason for optimism at all? The Orange Order is a disparate organisation and contains a variety of broadly unionist opinions. Its various local lodges, district lodges, county lodges, have their own localised identities and internal politics and you’ve been given a flavour of these identities tonight. Its members vary from being highly religious, almost non-politicial, to those involved fundamentally for political reasons. The supposedly united political line displayed on the streets often hides the internal politics of the Institution and the actions of members. Decisions which appear to outsiders to be directed at them are often more to do with the internal politics of Orangeism and Unionism, and we could discuss it later, but what happened at Drumcree was very much also to do with what was taking place inside unionism, and not only the opposition between the Green and the Orange.
Changes in parades: “The parades have undergone great changes; it is difficult to see them now as a celebration of the State of N.I. as many working-class Protestants feel themselves as alienated from that State as do the Roman Catholics. In recent years the parades have come to contain what are called “blood and thunder” or “kick the Pope” bands, and you saw some images of those on the video, which have no formal connection with the Orange Institution.
“Authority and control over the parades has become more diverse than the Institution would always care to admit – in other words it can find it difficult to control the events even though it wouldn’t always admit that it finds it difficult to do so.
Optimistic message: “To call events traditional as you heard on the video is therefore to hide the many changes which events have been through. He [the video presenter] is making that image there of it having always been like that – I just don’t think that is true. Indeed the past contains an optimistic message – the meaning and role of parades is not set in historical stone – when economic and political structures change so do the political groups that work within them. Now if you want an interesting example of that I set for you perhaps Guy Fawkes Day. My background is one of a Catholic from England, although I wouldn’t practise or be a believer now. I used to stuff this Guy, put him on top of a bonfire and burn him. Now essentially part of what is being done is burning a Catholic, and 100 years ago that would have been the reason, part of the understanding of Guy Fawkes in England, but to a great extent that, if you like, sectarian understanding of that event has completely gone from the English celebration of Guy Fawkes Night, so much so that people like myself never gave a second thought to the fact that we were supposedly burning our own. I offer that as an optimistic sign.
Cultural tradition: “Now we’ve seen one particular image of the “12th” – there is another image which will be found in the Belfast Telegraph, The Newsletter and on BBC and ITV highlights in the evening – that’s of a cultural tradition, of the coming together of a community to take part in one of Europe’s biggest folk festivals. I put it to you that the way rituals work is that they can be both of these things. Both these images can exist at the one time within one ritual. Clearly neither is totally right nor totally wrong.
Mistaken notion of territorialism: “There is one aspect that I want to make quite clear- that is the idea of “territorialism”. You’ll be aware of events such as have taken place in Portadown, on the Ormeau Road in Belfast, and in Derry, and you often have this image of a sort of territorialism, and you hear about “animals marking their territory”. Many journalists present Orangemen as marking their territory like animals, scaring their opponents…. I have recently seen Orangemen described as acting like cats, robins and dinosaurs as well. However the territorialism we are talking about here is not that sort of territorialism. To see it as some sort of primal instinct is to totally misunderstand what takes place.
Parades as an expression of identity: “The parades are a means through which people express their identity and by which people symbolise a political opinion, therefore to block an Orange parade is understood by those in the parade as an attack upon their identity. To ask someone to stop taking part in something that is viewed as central to their tradition, albeit often a recently-invented tradition, is to ask that person to reconsider their way of viewing the world. These parades therefore signify the wider complex political disputes over identities within a territory, not simple animal instincts whereby one male animal seeks to control access to resources and sexual partners. I think it will move the debate on a little bit if we start understanding what we’re talking about when we talk about territorialism.
Conclusion: “Just to conclude, I’ll put forward a few questions. It’s not to say that these things should not be approached critically since, for those outside, the parades act as a reminder of injustices and a barrier to the full expression of their own identity. But there are no easy solutions.
1) “Do we want, yet again, to enhance the ghettoes of Belfast by reinforcing boundaries? Because when we stop people parading in certain areas that is what we’re going to do. At the end of the day, nationalists have suffered more in that sort of situation than have unionists.
2) “Are those claiming the right to march prepared to publicly support the rights of all to express their opinions in a public space, no matter how unpalatable those views? These truly are a test for civil and religious liberties.
3) “Are those marching prepared to show respect for others’ rights by limiting inconveniences to the fewest possible occasions and by showing the utmost respect for neighbouring communities? Whatever the outcome of the Peace Process, it seems absolutely necessary that people’s identities should be respected and where are the deeds on all sides to show that these identities will be respected?
Governments need to face the issue: “Finally, and most importantly, both Governments must seriously address this issue. Both the British and Irish States need to examine some of the sectarianism within their own political structures and constitutions. Further, it is not acceptable for the British Government to leave it to the police to deal with – that’s been the general routine this summer – “it’s a police issue”, and the police have left it till about 10 minutes before the parade is going to take place before they’ve given a decision. To my mind that’s produced the sort of disastrous effects that we’ve had. Unless we face the problem we will yet again have working-class community facing working-class community, policed by predominantly working-class, albeit well-paid, police officers. Confrontation over the parades has in the past led to other forms of communal violence, and unless we face the issues now it may well lead to major communal violence again. Thank you.”
Chair: Thanking the speakers on behalf of the Meath Peace Group, John Clancy pointed to the fact that Orangeism started at a time when Jacobinism was very rampant in Europe – “many would contend that the early years of Orangeism was to do with the maintenance of the concept of monarchy in Europe and they were part of that movement, and it was particularly obviously focussed on the monarchy in England. I think it is interesting that it happened at the same time as the great changes that were coming over Europe. It is also important to realise that 200 years later the kind of issues that were faced then we are facing again, but maybe in a calmer atmosphere, and maybe at a time when both the Protestant and Catholic perspectives can.. prepare more focussed views of one another, in terms of developing respect for the intrinsic values of each ethos… ”
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS (Summary only)
Q.1. Julitta Clancy [Meath Peace Group]: Re Drumcree situation: What happened at Drumcree – what went wrong, was there any dialogue?
Roger Bradley: It was his belief that issues like Drumcree and the Lower Ormeau Road have been politicised. “If you go back to the ’60s you had the Grand Master of the Orange Lodge, Sir George Clarke, actually meeting with the President of the A.O.H. and you had the “Green/Orange Talks” – you had a situation where Orange lodges would have lent banner poles to the A.O.H. for their parade on 15th August – you would have had bandsmen who would have played in each procession. If you compare that situation with the situation which existed in the summer, clearly things have changed. And what has changed is that Orangeism, or the actual parading tradition, has become politicised, whereas before it wasn’t politicised.” He said that he would prefer to talk about the Lower Ormeau Road situation because he knew it better than Drumcree. “If you look at that road you will find that there are virtually no residential houses located on that road – it is a commercial route in that the residential houses are confined to the side streets. You have a situation where people have come in from outside and politicised it.” He referred to allegations of intimidation, where people from the community had allegedly had their cars damaged and homes attacked because they refused to sign a petition. The whole situation had been politicised he said and he could only explain it in that way.
Julitta: “…Can you see at all the problems that people like those in Garvaghy Road might have with Orange parades?”
Gordon: “The Garvaghy Road situation is very similar to the Ormeau Rd. situation, in the sense that the houses, by and large, do not look on to the road, so in order to be annoyed or offended you actually physically have to get out on to the road to be there.” He believed that some of those who spearheaded the protest were members of “Provisional Sinn Fein/IRA” amd many people also believed that leading Provos from E. Tyrone and S. Armagh were actively involved in stirring up the trouble in the Garvaghy Road. “It is significant I think, as well that the local parish priest in Portadown is not involved …in any shape or form in the protest.” He referred to the presence of the Jesuit Order in Portadown. “My understanding and knowledge of the Jesuit Order is that Jesuits are often highly politicised – they sometimes lead the politics of extreme left, sometimes the extreme right. … I regret to make this point, but it seems that in terms of chronology there seems to be a clear correlation between the participation and activities of the Jesuit Order in Portadown and these disturbances over parades…. I notice next month that you are actually having people from Garvaghy Road so I would be very interested if you would like to focus on those points….If the houses do not actually face on to the road, as they do not, and it’s a very short piece of road, it takes approximately 7 minutes to walk down that road, if people have to actively get out there to be upset or annoyed, I just really can’t understand…it’s not even exclusively a nationalist road, it’s the main road from the church into Portadown. You know, people do not actually own the road – and yet these are the same people who are demanding “parity of esteem”.
“Parity of esteem is something they claim obviously exclusively for themselves. They’re people who fly an Irish tricolor – the symbolism of the tricolor is Green, White and Orange – amity between the two traditions Orange and Green. They demand “inclusive talks” and yet they deny Orangemen what they consider to be their rights…” He referred to some of the graffitti on the walls – “I think there should be some focus and some attention on the political attitudes of those people who are orchestrating those protests. Incidentally, I don’t want to tar all the residents of Garvaghy Road with having those views. I’m not accusing them of being necessarily Sinn Fein. I am given to understand some of them are actually intimidated out of their houses to be there, so I think you know it would be interesting to put the people of Garvaghy Road on the spot and find out what they’re about – what their objections are? Certainly we, or some of us at least, would see it to be very politically motivated, and Sinn Fein simply orchestrating or organising confrontations.”
Q. 2. Bill Willis (Wilkinstown, Navan; originally from Co. Down): Referred to the amity between the Hibernians and the Orange Order in the ’60s, and this was borne out by his experiences as a child in Co. Down. “The perception now is that perchance the politicians and various other people seem to have an undue influence on the Orange Order…. are you doing anything to restore the image?” As for Home Rule, his own grandfather was actually Master of an Orange lodge and he was a Home Ruler. He said he had been living in Meath for 46 years and when he goes back he is shattered to see the changes… “I think you must return to that period you referred to, when there was an understanding and mixing.” He mentioned his belief that the Orange Order actually supported the ’98 Rebellion, “and that was one period when we were all together”.
Gordon Lucy: “The politics of late 18th century Ireland are so confused that you actually have cases of entire groups of United Irishmen going over to the Orange Order, but on the whole the Orange Order was not sympathetic to the ’98 Rebellion. Ironically enough the Order wasn’t actually sympathetic to the Act of Union in 1800 either”.
On being asked by David Richardson to expand on what he meant by his reference to the public perception of Orangeism, the questioner replied: “I refer to the triumphalism seen in the summer – Trimble and Paisley running down holding hands … that only harms the Orange Order”.
David: “…Ian Paisley is not a member of the Orange Order and we have no control over him.” As for how Orangemen get on with the other community, he mentioned that in Co. Fermanagh he has never seen any suggestion of trouble. “The community comes out and takes part…but unfortunately that’s not good news … the media cameras go where there is likely to be some friction, and very often the cameras would exacerbate that friction….In the vast majority of parades there is amity and real parity of esteem – it’s just unfortunate that the media don’t choose to present it.”
Roger Bradley said that he had recently attended a function in Royal Avenue, Belfast. There was a “peace parade” organised by members of the fringe unionist parties – and he felt a bit intimidated, although he is a unionist…”there they were with the battalion colours, flags, banners, in semi-paramilitary dress, some of them in all black T-shirts, actually looking quite intimidating.” Those political parties do not have a mandate, he said, and “those are the parties the Government is trying to bring into talks.
“Now that is alien to me… they don’t speak for the majority of unionist and loyalist opinion. They speak for their own paramilitary organisations and most people want nothing to do with them. …The people who are not really being consulted are the people who actually have a mandate.” He felt this experience illustrated the point made “that some parades can be intimidating and …give Orangeism a bad name”, but he stressed that this particular parade was nothing to do with the Orange Order.
Q. 3. [Slane resident]: She said that she would be classed as a “Dissenter” – “a very small minority on this island”. She always feels very frightened when she hears about religion “because it strikes me always again and again that once you make religion of it….it leads to bloodshed for somebody…People who claim to be religious on either side have to look very carefully at what they’re doing because I don’t believe that anybody has the right to say “I love peace and I love Christ and I’ve got the right to march by tradition” and I say this to both sides.” She referred to examples of “unthinkingness” both North and South – “and I would have to say that you are going to have to give a bit, and I’m a bit frightened because I haven’t seen much of it.” Then she asked -“where are the women?”
David: There is a large organisation for women in the Orange Order. “In the Orange Order we give them equal standing… we also have children involved as well… in the rural areas where I come from we have whole families involved in the Orange tradition and it brings people together.”
As for the religious question he said that he was a committed Christian… “I never had any religious hatred or division with people I worked with and I would like to see that applied across Northern Ireland”.
Q. 4. Cllr. Phil Cantwell (Trim UDC): “First of all, you’re very welcome, it’s good to see you coming down…please understand, I come from the Catholic tradition but I’m trying to understand the other side. …I’m very concerned about the Qualifications of an Orangeman.” Phil read the qualifications and referred to one of them which stated that an Orangeman “shall strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act of ceremony of Popish worship”. “I find that offensive…but maybe I’m missing something here because I’ve got so much religion here from the gentleman with the Bible”.
David: He said that this was a very sensitive issue. Protestants believed that Jesus Christ was the only mediator between God and man. “Unfortunately, over time, the Roman Catholic Church has drifted away from that”. He pointed out that the Qualifications of an Orangeman also stated that an Orangeman should abstain “from “all uncharitable words, actions or sentiments, towards his Roman Catholic brethren”. “We have no axe to grind with individual Catholics”, he said, ” and it grieves us when sectarian attacks are made, that is no part of our faith… Our quarrel is with the doctrines of the Church …but we seek to disagree in love. ..We believe in speaking the truth, rather than dodging the issues – I think that’s more helpful in the long run.”
Roger stated that there are fundamental differences between Protestantism and Romanism …”they’re there, we’re not going to remove those… but what is written here is consistent with the Westminster Confesssion of Faith of the Presbyterian Church, and the Thirty Nine Articles of the Anglican Church, and that is something that is not going to be removed.”
Q.5. Henry Mount Charles (Slane Castle): Referred to Roger’s remarks about the fringe loyalist parties and Mr Hutchinson’s remarks today that he could see circumstances where people who come from a “new emerging tradition of Protestantism” would be prepared to talk to Sinn Fein, would Mr Bryan comment on what he sees as an evolving situation – “while reference may be made to the size of their democratic base, in changing circumstances might that democratic base expand?”
Dominic: He had two reservations about this. Firstly, these sort of political parties had been around before, in the ’70s, and had withered away. Secondly, “like all politicians, people like Billy Hutchinson, Gary McMichael and David Ervine have become quite polished at talking one language to one group of people and one language to another group of people… it’s very difficult to tie in a lot of the quite remarkable material that the UDA has produced in its time…and at the same time that organisation was taking part in a fairly blatant sectarian murder campaign…. they have had to take a political track … they had to speak a language which was significantly different from the Ulster Unionist Party and the Orange Order… I must say I find some of their speeches very heartening…but there’s nothing historically which suggests to me that they will increase their mandate…. On a side issue, if they can add to the pressure… to separate the Unionist Party from the Orange Order, I think that would be a beneficial movement for almost everybody involved… I think Unionism would begin to be able to look for a broader political base than it’s had so far.”
Henry Mountcharles: Referring to earlier discussion re Qualifications of an Orangeman – “I am a Protestant, a member of the Church of Ireland, and … I am absolutely amazed that in this day and age that this is the type of language that belongs to the general body of Christianity…. I’ve always held that we must extend hands to each other, not this kind of language.. I’m sorry but that is how I feel.”
Gordon: “I think, as members of the Church of Ireland, that we could just agree to differ.”
Q.6. [Presbyterian minister]: As a minister, a Protestant and a Presbyterian, he wished to touch on the Reformation. One of the fundamental things is that “the Church is always under reformation”. He explained that he is “an unashamed ecumenist and I see nothing inconsistent in that..”. On the Scripture issue, he said that you cannot make the distinction that the Protestant churches are churches of the Bible and the Catholic Church is not a church of the Bible. “You cannot say that the Protestant Church is not a church which has a tradition – the Westminster Confession and the Thirty Nine Articles are traditions in the Protestant church but they are not set in concrete, which means they can be changed.” He pointed out that the General Synod of the Presbyterian Church in 1988 clarified its understanding of the Westminster Confession that identifies the Pope as the Anti-Christ, saying that the historical interpretation is not manifestly evident from the Scriptures. “Even a tradition can be reinterpreted… and we, as Protestants, are not free from tradition.. that doesn’t mean that there aren’t differences, that doesn’t mean those differences aren’t worth discussing.” He was not an Irishman, “but it seems to me that many of my brothers and sisters in the North are caught in a time warp back in the 1600s and 1700s, and don’t realise that tradition does change, it is interpretive, it needs to move on.”
David Richardson: He was very glad to be a member of the Church of Ireland. “We say that the Church has erred over time … and it is possible for churches over time to err.” The church is always reforming itself, he said… and in addressing the Reformed Faith we’re not just directing against the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, we’re directing against these strands of Protestantism and evangelical Protestantism which have drifted away from the standards which we see in Scripture. ” Looking at traditions, he said that they must be placed against the Scriptures – “if they don’t measure up, we must discard them… the Orange Order believes in Scripture… I am a true ecumenist as well, I want to see everyone coming in unity round the Gospel, but unity without the Gospel is not true unity…”
Q.7. Walter Kirwan (Dept of An Taoiseach and Forum for Peace and Reconciliation): Re the diversity of the Order: “David emphasised the religious dimension, but obviously going back to Dan Winter’s cottage and so on, there was obviously a political element, the element of protecting… the Ulster British cultural heritage… Which of these strands would our visitors see as the strongest within the Order?” Also, there were references in the Northern papers last week to a lot of dissatisfaction within the Order with respect to the Grand Lodge …”one would guess that the reason these people aren’t happy is prehaps that Martin Smyth not going to Drumcree wasn’t political enough… on the other hand, there are other people… who are proposing that the link will be cut between the Ulster Unionist Party and the Orange Order. What would be the predominant view within the Order as between these two poles…?”
Roger: “I would say that the emphasis within the Orange Order…has to go back on to the evangelical standpoint. That should be the focus of Orangeism, and yes, politics does cloud that issue at times.” Re the link between the Order and the Ulster Unionist Party, “it is probably fair to say that if that link were severed it might be better for Orangeism as well as better for Unionism, so that is an ongoing debate…. One point I would say…there are many Roman Catholics in N.I. who would aspire to be Unionists but cannot actually vote for the Unionist party because it is allied to the Orange Order… I think that is a very powerful argument to weigh in the balance when we come to take a decision as to whether the two bodies should be linked.”
Q. 8. Noel Weatherhead (Tullamore resident): “Does the Orange Order feel they have a responsibility to steward the parades and to control the lunatic fringe that associates with all parades, or do they rely on the RUC to do that for them?”
Roger: “The Orange Order has been concerned about bands and the behaviour of bands… and the Order does take steps to try and control bands… if they step out of line then they are banned from taking part in future parades.” There are also marshals, he said, who work along with the police. “We are also subject to the law in that we have to give notice, we have to have approval… yes, I would agree with you that we do have a responsibility and we do try to carry that out.”
Q. 9. John Keaveney (Kilbride teacher): He would like to be able to bring a group of children from all traditions to march in an Orange parade. What would the obstacles be? There would be girls – could girls march in an Orange parade; there would be Catholics – could Catholics march? Re women, “my impression of Orange parades is that there is a very severe lack of gender balance”.
Roger: “There is the Women’s Orange Institution and there are women’s lodges… In the past they have not paraded along with the men – that is now changing and you do now have women’s lodges coming out with the men to church parades and so forth… that happens more in the country than it does in the city.” Re a group coming up to take part – he said that only Orangemen and women could march, but such a group “would be welcome to watch and partake in the day”.
Questioner: “You consider it as a carnival… yet by that kind of regulation you are excluding a good percentage of the population of your area from participating… I’m trying to get away from the polarisation… for the sake of peace, for the sake of bringing people together… there must be some kind of way of catering for that…”
Roger: “In a sense you’re right in that it is a Protestant society and therefore it is exclusive to that degree… in the same way you have Roman Catholic societies that are exclusive to their own beliefs.”
Questioner: “Could I ask if there is not some way of bringing the two together – it would break an awful lot of the symbol of separateness.”
Roger: Referred to the situation in the ’60s when the Orange Order had talks with the AOH. “I would see that type of trend as being useful and positive .. we need to get back to that situation where we can live with everybody and each respect each other’s viewpoints…”
Gordon: There is no antipathy at all between the Orange Order and the AOH, “but the sort of people who are problems with Orangemen these days are not Hibernians, they tend to be militant republicans, members of Sinn Fein/IRA and their followers.”
Dominic: Re the participation of women in the parades. “I have a sneaking suspicion that people have started to feel that if we had more women in the parades that in fact it would change the nature of the parades.” He pointed out that in the “blood and thunder bands” – generally seen as the most sectarian element, the standards are often carried by women…. women are involved in the parades, they may not always march, but they’re the spectators, they’re the ones doing the dancing, they’re the ones doing a lot of drinking, they’re the ones dancing up and down in Union Jacks, so to that extent they are very much involved.”
Q. 10. [Columban missionary]: “This is not a question, it’s a statement. I just want to say that I’ve been very encouraged listening to the members of the Orange Order tonight, speaking for myself. Because I grew up in Co. Cavan, and as a child the Orange Halls were always pointed out to us and they always aroused a certain amount of fear in me because I was given to understand that something secretive occurred in there, which was a kind of a plot against Catholics, and now I hear the Orangemen tonight coming out and wanting to redeem themselves and say what they’re all about and I find that a very great change and it will certainly take a lot of fear out of me.”
CLOSING WORDS
Calling the proceedings to a close, John Clancy thanked the audience for being so attentive. On behalf of the group he thanked the Columban Fathers for the use of the hall and for their consistent generosity and encouragement. Thanking the speakers, he said that, like many others, he had a profound ignorance of the Orange Order – ” all my knowledge was the confrontations during the marching season… But what I have learned this evening .. is that the Orange Order, in a sense, is… an umbrella that holds the diversity of the Protestant ethos and those people who want to celebrate their diversity under that… And I just want to turn it another way…there are the two diversities of the Orange and the Green in the North, and if they can within their ranks have many different kinds of emphases in terms of the Protestant ethos under their umbrella, I think that somewhere within their 200 years they have mechanisms to understand the Catholics and what their concerns are, and in the same way the Catholics have to learn this very important fact, as I see it, this celebration of diversity…”
“What is clear to me, having heard about what happened in the ’50s and what happened in the ’30s, is that the last 25 years of violence… has done untold violence to the trust that grew up at various times during the last 200 years between the Catholic and Protestant or Protestant/Orange ethos. And this is the time now for us to redouble our efforts to put behind us the violence of the last 25 years which has done so much damage, and to build a respect, because in respect of the other’s point of view comes enhancement of your own position in terms of your society and what you stand for.”
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©Meath Peace Group. Report compiled and edited by Julitta Clancy. Taped by Anne Nolan
Meath Peace Group contact names 1995: Julitta Clancy, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co. Meath; Anne Nolan, Gernonstown, Slane; Pauline Ryan, Navan; Philomena Boylan-Stewart, Longwood; Michael Kane, Ardbraccan, Navan; Felicity Cuthbert, Kilcloon
13th June, 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan
Speakers:
Nuala Kelly (Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas)
Martie Rafferty (Quaker Prison Service)
Ronnie McCartney (former republican prisoner)
Marty Snoddon (former loyalist prisoner)
Chaired by Hon. Judge Catherine McGuinness (Chairperson, Forum for Peace and Reconciliation)
Contents
Introduction: Judge Catherine McGuinness – “The work of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation”
Meath Peace Group Symposium on Prisoners and their Families:
Summary of main points from speakers
Speakers’ addresses:
1. Nuala Kelly
2. Martie Rafferty
3. Ronnie McCartney
4. Marty Snoddon
Questions and comments ……..
Closing words
Biographical notes
INTRODUCTION: Judge Catherine McGuinness – “The Work of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation”
Judge Catherine McGuinness said she was delighted to accept the invitation of the Meath Peace Group to come and speak on the work of the Forum and to chair the ensuing discussion on prisoners. She said that one of the casualties of the last 25 years was that people in the Republic know so little about Northern Ireland and there has been so little contact. “Increased North-South contact at all levels could play a big part in reinforcing the peace process”, she said, and it was very important that groups should provide a forum where people could learn more about the situation. Judge McGuinness commended the work of the Meath Peace Group for its efforts in building links with the Interaction Group from Craigavon, Co. Armagh and other groups in Northern Ireland. “The Group’s work in promoting public awareness of Northern Ireland through its meetings addressed by Northern speakers and its programme of school visits, provides a model for greater community involvement in the building of understanding and trust between different traditions in Ireland”, she said.
The Forum’s agenda: “Many of the issues explored by the Meath Peace Group – human rights, justice, the role of community relations, constitutional issues, and the perspective of victims of violence – have been part of the Forum’s agenda since it was established in October last”, continued Judge McGuinness. “While the Forum cannot negotiate a political settlement, it has undertaken a systematic examination of many of the central issues arising out of the peace process, including constitutional questions, North-South structures, the economic consequences of peace, policing, prisoners, and equality of treatment.”
North-South contacts: “Involvement in the Forum has brought it home to me what a lot of co-operation already exists, for example in the economic, cultural and sporting fields. Peace provides a tremendous opportunity for developing the kind of relations that ought to prevail on an island the size of Ireland, whether it be in connection with business, farming, tourism or everyday contact between individuals or community groups. North-South contacts are already burgeoning in a climate of peace and their further development deserves to be encouraged, both for the direct advantages this will bring and in terms of an incentive and support for broader political dialogue,” Judge McGuinness said.
“For too long the two main traditions have been characterised by a comparative lack of contact with each other. This has tended to amplify their differences and hinder prospects for accommodation between them. As a result, many people here have lived their lives with all too little direct experience of Northern Ireland. For this reason, the character of the Northern Unionist tradition is inadequately appreciated here while, for their part, many unionists appear to harbour genuine apprehensions and misconceptions about the South. These inadequacies of understanding constitute a very real obstacle to reconciliation which we must acknowledge and seek to remedy.”
Obstacles to reconciliation: As part of its bid for greater understanding between North and South, the Forum has an Expert Group examining obstacles in the South to reconciliation, Judge McGuinness explained. In addition, the Forum had commissioned research into the history of the Protestant population in the South. “Conscious of the need for a better understanding of their tradition, we are making every effort to foster dialogue with unionists. While unionist politicians have not yet taken up the invitation to attend the Forum, individuals, community groups, business, farming and tourism interests have come to express their interest in improved North-South co-operation. Moreover, the very impressive presentations by the three main Protestant churches have given the Forum a real insight into thinking within their communities,” the Forum chairperson said.
Ongoing work of the Forum: Judge McGuinness outlined the work of the Forum to date, the debates and discussions and the submissions received and heard. Also, valuable research had been commissioned into various aspects of the problem – the economic results of peace, the treatment of minorities in other countries and research into a Bill of Rights that could apply both North and South. Publications of the contributions, submissions and research were planned.
Judge McGuinness mentioned the criticisms raised when the Forum was set up – that it would be just another “talking shop” and that it was simply designed to “bring Sinn Fein in from the cold”. Judge McGuinness agreed that it was a talking shop – but “that is what democracy means”, she said. As for bringing Sinn Fein in from the cold, that was important, she said, and Sinn Fein have played a major role in the work of the Forum. In addition, the social interaction at the Forum has been good and overall she believed that the Forum is performing a major purpose and its work will assist in the solution of the problem.
MEATH PEACE GROUP SYMPOSIUM ON “PRISONERS AND THEIR FAMILIES”:
Summaries of main points made by speakers:
Nuala Kelly (ICPO) outlined the problems encountered by Irish prisoners in foreign jails, most of whom are “non-political”, and explained the work of the ICPO in the context of emigration and issues that concern prisoners abroad and their families in Ireland. Turning to specific issues relevant to the peace process, such as transfer, release and amnesties, she stated that there is a general acceptance of the centrality of prisoners to the peace process and a recognition of the role they played prior to the calling of the ceasefires. She emphasised the need to provide strong incentives to occupy people previously engaged in military conflict, and the need to think positively, be inclusive and open about embracing new ideas, such as release and pilot schemes which require risk taking.
Martie Rafferty (Quaker Prison Service) explained the services provided by her group at the Maze and Maghaberry prisons, particularly the visitor centres. Re release of prisoners she said this was a very emotive issue and a very complex one. Many people didn’t like the use of the word “political” but the fact is that the majority of prisoners are there for political reasons, she said. There was the problem of consistency, and whether it was right that prisoners who were only sentenced a year ago should be released at the same time as those who had served 16-20 years. She said we had to consider the victims and play our part in contributing to the healing process. But the prisoners and their families were victims also, she said, and we had all some responsibility for what had happened. If we really want peace, she said, we must be willing to work for it and to work with understanding and patience. People in prison have often changed more than many and have a real appreciation of the costs, she said. “We should see released political prisoners as a resource, they can offer an awful lot. Let’s enable them to do so and let’s not be frightened of it”.
The ex-prisoners, Ronnie McCartney (republican) and Marty Snodden (loyalist), talked about their prison experiences and the community work they were involved in since coming out of prison, and the problems encountered generally by ex-prisoners on release, particularly unemployment. They called for the release of all politically-motivated prisoners as being crucial to the peace process and stressed the important role played by the prisoners in bringing about the ceasefires. “We have to engage in a healing process, and prisoners are part of that process, whether people like it or not.”
Addresses of speakers:
1. Nuala Kelly (Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas)
Ms Kelly said she would be covering 3 main areas in her contribution:
1. The work of ICPO in the context of emigration and issues that concern prisoners abroad and their families in Ireland.
2. General points about the prison situation in Ireland.
3. Specific issues of relevance to the current peace process including transfer, release and amnesties.
She began by complimenting “the courage and foresight” of the Meath Peace Group and of those who attend and participate in the sessions on justice and peace. “When I asked one of the organisers yesterday why you were holding these meetings, she said ‘well we are interested in the North; we always had a position that we were against violence and that was it. We didn’t know much more. But now we are learning a lot from the contributors’ ideas and they are learning from us also.’ It struck me forcibly as a Northerner, how influential the media and censorship laws had been over the past 25 years in reducing such a serious situation to a simple slogan that people – especially politicians – felt safe behind, “I am against violence”. It meant nothing and it meant everything. It was code!
“Perhaps one of the more refreshing things that has happened in the past year has been that “code” no longer suffices. People want to know for themselves, want to demystify situations and to debunk the many myths that exist about life and people North and South.
“There is still a long way to go but groups like this are crucial to the outcome of what we want to achieve on this island – whatever the political structures we devise – in the long term. Openness, accountability and truth are vital to understanding; small steps are the key.”
Ms Kelly said that recent debates in the Republic about prisoners, prison building, bail, and so on have done “anything but debunk myths and reveal truth.” In the interest of financial rectitude and international regulatory mechanisms, she said, “policies” are formulated in the party political arena where whatever is opportune becomes policy. “Thus, one minute a new women’s prison is necessary and the next, due to cutbacks, the same politicians question whether prison is the way to deal with female crime at all – having ignored the international research and advice to this effect in the first instance.” It was time, she said, for well-thought out policies with long term impact rather than “Quick fit” solutions.
“We have a real problem with crime; research shows a high correlation between unemployment and crime, between physical and sexual abuse and youth crime. Fear is growing yet we do not deal with the obvious causes”, she said.
1. The work of the ICPO: Ms Kelly said that the work of the ICPO throughout the world has been an attempt to deal with causes as well as introduce some practical policy measures to help Irish prisoners abroad. ICPO is a sub-section of the Bishops’ Commission for Emigrants and was set up 10 years ago to care for the needs of all Irish prisoners throughout the world and their families in Ireland, regardless of faith or offence. Their work must be seen in the context of 2 factors :
• increasing use of imprisonment throughout the world, particularly in Europe
• emigration
Emigration: “Ireland has one of the highest rates of emigration in the EU. Many survive the experience and prosper while others don’t. The vulnerable frequently end up in prison. Just yesterday, to give some examples of the kind of cases we deal with, we got an Irish missionary to visit a 45-year old man with a serious heart condition in prison in Morocco; we advocated a transfer from Jersey to England for a prisoner so that his mother could visit; we met the mother of a young man imprisoned in England who is dying of AIDS but who cannot get a transfer or humanitarian release; we prepared a briefing on 8 republican prisoners in England – some of them the longest serving in connection with the Anglo-Irish conflict; we helped a mother to ensure her son’s fare home is paid prior to his release from a Catalonian prison and we attended the inquest of a prisoner found dead in his cell in a London prison just before Christmas. We continue to work with his family to seek an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death.
The other aspects of our work involve the preparation and dissemination of information, research and lobbying on issues relevant to prisoners overseas and their families and the pursuit of human rights for prisoners, refugees and migrants.
Why a service for prisoners overseas? “This can only be understood in the context of emigration. We have proportionately more Irish-born prisoners abroad than in Ireland itself – North or South. In England and Wales alone – over 1, 000 Irish-born. Of these there are now approximately only 35 Republican prisoners. ICPO works for these prisoners too and their families. The vast bulk of our work is for what are called “ordinary” prisoners. But they have suffered too as a consequence of the conflict between Ireland and Britain. General issues of concern to us are racism in prisons and criminal justice systems, poor prison conditions, lengthy pre-trial detention (elsewhere in Europe also), lack of bail, transfer, deportations, miscarriages of justice, the Prevention of Terrorism Act and deaths in prison.
2. General points about the criminal justice/prison system:
“We need to see prisoners and their families as part of us and our communities. although today we tend to focus particularly on Loyalist and Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland, we cannot ignore the issues of “ordinary” prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families either, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. While they will have very different needs they also share some common experiences. Many of them are victims of society’s failures to solve social and economic problems.
“The current peace process offers an opportunity to look at new ways of working and to develop new initiatives in relation to crime prevention and criminal justice matters in general and particularly in relation to prison matters. At the heart of any agenda should be the need to facilitate the integration of ex-prisoners, and those at risk of offending, into our community.
“Issues of social justice, poverty and social exclusion should form the context for a general review of crime and crime prevention. The provision of appropriate services for prisoners, their families, the victims of crime, humane and effective sentence and prison management, as well as the development of a range of alternatives to custody, are some of the matters which must be addressed. Most importantly, the involvement of the recipients of services as well as a range of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and statutory agencies is crucial to the direction of long term stability, justice and peace.
“Services must be co-ordinated and targeted at the complexity and multiple nature of the problems (ranging from housing, training and employment, to social and personal needs) facing prisoners and their families – especially those in the most marginalised and alienated sections of our communities.
“Community organisations should be encouraged as part of a bottom-up process of change. Clear policy objectives are needed on the treatment, detention and release of offenders, especially in relation to community-based programmes. While not wanting to be disingenuous about the need for resources for Republican and Loyalist prisoners and their families, new programmes should be developed with other ex-prisoners and their families in mind also. All of these, however, should respect individual choice and privacy. Not every prisoner will want re-integration; of those who do, some will want locally based and controlled services or centres; others may prefer more centralised options and yet others may wish to go abroad.
“It is time to place the issues of ex-prisoners and their families on the agenda of government – especially in the Republic – and in an integrated fashion so that planned and sustainable initiatives can carry us through the current difficult years of the peace process and during the unsettling but hopeful period thereafter.
3. Specific issues of relevance to the current peace process including transfer, release and amnesties:
“Most of the questions we raised in our Submission to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation on 20th January 1995 remain central to considerations of furthering peace and justice in Ireland. We also offered suggestions for further specific and practical work.
“By now there is general acceptance of the centrality of prisoners to the peace process and a recognition of the role they played within their respective organisations prior to the calling of ceasefires.
“The Forum [for Peace and Reconciliation] session on the full participation of ex-prisoners in social and economic reconstruction highlighted in particular the level of acceptance of the fact that discussion about release and regime matters are crucial also to progress now. In recognition of this, our organisations suggested that the Forum should send a small delegation into the prisons to meet prisoners from all persuasions. It would give the Forum an opportunity to hear their views directly. In spite of recent difficulties in the prisons this might still be a useful learning exercise about the concerns of both Loyalist and Republican prisoners.
“The focus tonight is not going to be totally on release or prison regime matters although, indirectly, both of these are relevant to, and will impinge on, the discussion. Release and regime matters are crucial to the peace process and should not be used as a political football to endanger the interests of justice. Discussion of release or amnesty, however it is labelled, is a very complex area; it must be coupled with discussions on the right to truth, young people in prison, concern for victims and the requirements of justice.
“NIACRO [N.I. Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders] has completed and published its research on the international experience of the release and reintegration of politically-motivated prisoners. Their report examines the possible release mechanisms which exist in current law and practice. They conclude that the early release of politically-motivated prisoners is crucial to any peace process which follows a violent political conflict. They do not minise the legal, philosophical or political difficulties involved in a consideration of early release. They examine possible conflicts of interest, with the rule of law, with the possibility of re-offending, the views of victims and problems of reintegration. But overall, they conclude that “any legal, technical or administrative factors which are held up as obstacles in the way of early release of politically-motivated offenders are fundamentally obfuscatory. If the political will exists, the means to accomplish it exist within the legal and administrative paradigms of our criminal justice system”. In fact, prisoner releases can be used as a positive way of encouraging peace and reconciliation.”
Educational Trust: “NIACRO continues its work on the establishment of an Educational Trust for ex-prisoners. A report on the feasibility and the format of the Trust will be available in June. It is hoped that the Trust will be established by the Autumn.
Funding: “NIACRO are also investigating sources of funding to enable them to support projects which will have a substantial degree of self-management by ex-prisoners themselves. There is a need to continue to advise funding channels, bodies and groups, about the special circumstances and needs of those groups. Hopefully the implementation of the European Task Force and the release of monies will make a significant contribution to resourcing the needs of released prisoners and their families. The principles and mechanisms for the delivery of these funds should be fair and open.
“Funding should be made available for preliminary research and technical assistance to enable groups and communities to devise sound research-based (local and international) proposals for effective and durable projects, which will promote social inclusion. This may delay the delivery of monies for projects but could prove an important long term measure in social and economic reconstruction on the ground.
Assisted family visits: “At present in Northern Ireland there is a fairly adequate scheme for assisting families to visit prisoners. In the Republic there is nothing. While individual CWOs have been very helpful to families, under the discretionary allowance which they administer for the Health Boards, the lack of policy in this regard is totally unsatisfactory. In practice it can mean policy by default or that families in severe poverty never get an assisted visit. This needs tobe addressed especially in light of the importance of family contact to resettlement on release.
Family support services: “In N.I. these are highly developed via NIACRO, Quaker Prison Service and Probation, as well as prison welfare groups, political parties and individuals.
“These services include prison visitors’ centres at four of Northern Ireland’s five prisons. The centres provide a range of services for prisoners’ families including creche facilities, refreshments, and information and advice. Other services available in Northern Ireland to prisoners’ families include transport to prisons, childcare services, benefits advice and the establishment and support of prisoner family support groups.
“In the Republic, family support services, with the exception of prison chaplaincy or probation, do not exist. This is an area which will need urgent attention in conjunction with the development of sensitive counselling services accessible by choice by prisoners and families. Such counselling services are already available, for example, through organisations like Relate, but these counselling agencies will have to be made more aware of the specific needs of prisoners’ families and ex-prisoners.
Children: “NIACRO has been carrying out detailed research into the impact of imprisonment on children of prisoners in Northern Ireland. The results will be published in the near future. It is expected that the research will demonstrate the need for the development of counselling services for families to enable them to cope better, both with separation and the eventual re-integration of prisoners with their relatives in the community.
Employment, education and training: “Policy and services need to be developed to ensure that employment and training development programmes recognise the specific needs for resettlement of prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. In the United Kingdom at the present time more than one third of adult males have a criminal record by the time they are 35. Therefore whilst there may be a special problem with respect to re-integration of ex-prisoners in Ireland in the forthcoming period, there is and will continue to be a general need to develop effective and inclusive employment and training programmes for ex-prisoners. Therefore we must ensure that these issues are addressed honestly and inclusively and we must encourage such programmes to accept all our citizens. This will require a special effort of co-ordination and partnership between the State, the private sector and the voluntary sector. This partnership will have to be in the context of building mechanisms for the effective re-integration and re-employment of ex-prisoners into their own communities.
“To quote the UN – “In the west where the facts of liberty and humanism have flourished … there is little excuse for the continued failure to integrate correctional policies including education and employment into the mainstream of national life … we must think of policies to increase the employability and employment of ex-offenders as a continuum … for those who are incarcerated, it [education and training] must counter a negative effect of prisonisation” (Eduardo Vetere, Chief Crime Prevention Officer, The United Nations)
“Also Mary Clarkson of the Institute 1992 of Directors adds – “Employers have a major role to play in preventing offending among young people and also have a support role with older ex-offenders … There is a need for a shift of emphasis within the European Community towards those on the margins of the labout market. Priority must be given to training and possible moves towards harmonisation of legislation on the rehabilitation of offenders.”
“New approaches are needed to promote equal rights and stability, especially for those who have spent long periods in detention in an abnormal environment, to help them re-establish themselves as citizens of the community.
Prisoners in England: “ICPO has been engaged in extensive work in lobbying for improved conditions for Irish prisoners in England and elsewhere. Notable among these prisoners were republican prisoners in HMP Full Sutton, Belmarsh, Whitemoor and Frankland. Their families have suffered considerable upset and physical and mental stress as well as financial loss over a complexity of petty matters brought about by penal policies which have ignored the recommendations of the British Government’s own Woolf, Tumin and Ferrers Reports of the 1990-92 period in relation to transfer, family visits, prison conditions and other related matters. Considerable concern was expressed by ICPO, NIACRO, CAJ, amongst many others, about the problems posed for the peace process if these conditions should continue. We are particularly concerned about the impact of such conditions on their families. Our work on this is ongoing and we prepared a briefing for the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body meeting in Dublin Castle in March and for the Minister for Foreign Affairs in May.
Transfer: “We discussed the question of allowing prisoners serve their sentences nearer the family home in some detail in our submission [to the Forum] on 20th January.
“The situation to date is as follows:
(a) From England to N. Ireland: “The British Government should continue to implement the recommendations of the Ferrers Report which they accepted in 1992. This should include an examination of the obstacles to permanent transfer for all prisoners whose families are in Ireland with a view to relevant legislative amendments, where necessary, to remove differentials. Two more prisoners were transferred to Maghaberry Prison in early March. They were granted permission for a transfer the previous Autumn. Another prisoner has been given permission but not yet transferred. 10 other requests are outstanding at the time of writing. Another prisoner whose mother was very seriously ill, was transferred recently.
“Other issues in relation to transfer to Northern Ireland concern the lack of permanency and the ensuing uncertainty for families, the need to improve transfer for accumulated visits for prisoners whose families request them, and the need for continued support for families.
(b) The Republic – “It is reassuring that the Irish Government has published a Draft Transfer Bill. We hope that amendments can be completed and placed before the Houses of the Oireachtas before any further delay.
“One note of caution – our agencies presented our own Draft Bill to the Minister for Justice in January. The model we urged for implementation recommended that sentences be converted to what would be appropriate in this country for a similar offence. Instead, the Government is proposing that the sentence given in the sentencing country is enforced here. This could lead to complications and to a two-tier prison system where a prisoner sentenced abroad serves longer for a particular offence than a prisoner sentenced in Ireland. As agencies concerned with criminal justice and penal policy in particular, we have already stressed to the British Government in relation to transfers to Northern Ireland the problems created by a 2-tier model. We also suggest that the process of decision-making be open and accountable. Unfettered ministerial discretion is harmful to the interests of justice.
(c) Prisoners from the Republic in England : “Prior to final ratification of the Convention by the Irish Government, prisoners whose families are interested in travelling to the North to visit should be transferred to a prison in N. Ireland. Even upon ratification this should still be considered an option since the Northern prisons are nearer for some families from Northern and Western counties in the Republic.
“This issue is of major importance to families. An ICPO survey showed that of 600 families and prisoners (from the whole island) in the 1988-93 period, 34% of families and 22% of prisoners raised this issue. It is families who suffer most as a result of long journeys to visit prisons or from the breaking of family ties over many years.
Legislation:
(a) “The Prevention of Terrorism Act: Emergency legislation must be removed. The PTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) was made permanent in 1992. This Act must be abolished as part of the current peace process. It has been ineffective as a deterrent, it has acted as a trawling device on the Irish community in Britain and prevented them engaging in legitimate political work for the needs of a migrant community; the first people arrested under it were the Guildford Four. This case highlights the dangers of such legislation. It has no place in a civil democracy which respects human rights. Exclusion Orders are a blunt and unnecessary instrument. The European Commission supports this view on 2 points of law.
“One family whose arrest under the PTA caused major family loss through death, loss of job and destruction of the family home, had all charges against them dropped at the start of their trial late last year. This was over one and a half years after their arrest and detention! Such experiences of emergency law serve as a hindrance to developing the peace process and also intimidate the Irish immigrant community in Britain.
“A total review of this legislation is urgently requested by many civil liberties organisations including a report by the Civil Liberties Research Unit of King’s College, London – calling for a total review of the legislation. As CAJ [Committee on the Administration of Justice, Belfast] says, ordinary criminal law provides the police with more than adequate powers. The PTA is in breach of international obligations. If people are to respect the rule of law, then we need a thorough and open review of all emergency laws, and of police and policing in Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales.
(b) Deportation: “There is evidence that deportations of prisoners have been increasing on completion of sentence in England. Prisoners have been dispatched penniless to Dublin without advance warning to any agencies. Some have family living in England or have English partners. In the new climate of desired closer co-operation between the two countries, this acts as an irritant and is resented by the Irish community in Britain. It would be desirable that a bilateral approach to this problem is developed. This is also a broader issue which the European Union must address, as similar cases have happened in Spain, France and the USA.
Emigration and deportation: “It is possible that in the short term the current peace process may generate greater unemployment and increased emigration. Therefore individuals, especially ex-prisoners, should be facilitated to leave if they desire, but for those forced to emigrate, proper support, visas and consular services must be delivered. For those living abroad, who fled the conflict and remain illegal immigrants, resident visas must be considered.
Concluding her address, Nuala Kelly said that we need to “think positively, be inclusive and open about embracing new ideas – particularly about release and amnesties, and pilot schemes which require risk-taking; we need to provide strong incentives to occupy people previously engaged in military conflict, be they ex-prisoners or police, who are locked into a particular mind-set in relation to stigmatised groups in society; we need to improve our focus on youth, on family support , and finally be creative in exploring new forms of criminal justice which involve victims, communities and alternatives to custody.”
“Finally I want to thank the Meath Justice and Peace Group for inviting me here today. I hope to learn from the discussion. I also want to thank the families and prisoners and groups with whom ICPO has worked over the years on the ground. Individuals like yourselves in communities, in organisations, and at policy level, have contributed and will continue to contribute to a search for justice, equality and respect.
To conclude I want to quote Teresa McComb. When she was asked to talk about family needs in relation to re-integration and participation of prisoners at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation her words were – “I don’t know, I never let myself think about it. It seems like a dream to speculate.” This is the hardest time; one of uncertainty – for everyone. We all need to change our perspectives but let’s hope that the dreams can be realised. It’s up to us all.”
2. Martie Rafferty (Quaker Prison Service)
Martie Rafferty began by explaining the historical background to Quaker involvement in prison work which had its origins in the support services started to help Quaker prisoners and which had developed over the past 300 years.
Quaker involvement in prison work: “We were formed in England about 1650 and quite early on in our own history an awful lot of Quakers were imprisoned, mainly because we were considered heretics, and because we didn’t observe a lot of the social conventions of the time, or refused to put up soldiers… As a result Quakers formed a network of support for those Quakers and their families [who were imprisoned] …and out of that grew an interest in all other prisoners and prison conditions.”
Violence: “Quakers are pacifists, Ms Rafferty said, and do not justify violence “whether it is violence committed by the State, by someone in legal uniform, or someone of a paramilitary nature. We just don’t accept it on any level. However that is not to say that we can simply condemn violence; like Nuala said, and as you have demonstrated – and I really commend your efforts – it’s not enough to simply sit back and say “that’s wrong!”. You’ve really got to say, “well, what is the root of it? what’s causing it? why are the people doing it?”…In our case it is part of our sense of Christian witness that we would then try to work in some way to remove the causes of violence and to help present people with alternative ways of redressing perceived wrongs.”
Long Kesh Visitors’ Centre: “When internment was introduced, the Quakers set about establishing something at Long Kesh. “At the time nobody was too clear what was happening there; people were interned; there were no facilities at all – the prison wasn’t even equipped to deal with visiting. They had no procedures laid down. People were gathering in just an open car park in all kinds of weather, by the hundreds sometimes, trying to see their relatives, and the prison had no system even for processing visiting. It was an area of great distress but also of quite confrontational flashpoints, and a couple of prison staff were assaulted at the time.” So the Quakers went to the Home Office and obtained permission to set up a centre in a portakabin. “That was in 1972 and it was staffed only by volunteers, because we thought it was very short term … we were thinking weeks really… but, 23 years later we’re still there working away.” Since then they have continued to develop the services needed as identified by the families.
Services at visitors’ centre: “We have become, I think, a permanent feature of prison life in N.I…. We started off just by being a presence, trying to show that somebody cared about the people … but we now have a full centre service where people travelling any distance can have some food. We have a child care service, we give information and advice, we have a whole range of practical services… for example, if people come up to bring clothing to a prisoner and the prison paperwork and documentation isn’t sorted out…. well, instead of going away again… we will take the thing and sort it out through the prison and try and get the paperwork done… So in little practical ways we try to facilitate the visit itself and the family concerned for the prisoner.
“We’ve also developed a counselling service, and a pre-release support programme – where a relative is returning home, perhaps after a very long time, we have group work where the families can reflect on what that means, what it’s like to have a husband coming home after he’s been away for 12 years, what it’s like for a mother or father to have a son coming home – how prison might have changed them, all the fears they might have, how they can help?… In these groups loyalists and republicans would come together … we’ve always had a mixture … the differences fall apart, and they are families trying to do their best to welcome and prepare for people coming home. They share a common experience in all that and are very supportive of each other, and it’s been a tremendous learning experience for me, and a tremendously moving experience sometimes as people share at quite a deep level what the whole thing has meant for them. We also offer, on an individual basis, post-release support.. We have no programme for that, but through the years … sometimes people feel it easier to just refer back to people they know if there’s a problem.
Maghaberry: “In 1988 we extended that service to Maghaberry, we were invited to set up a visitors’ centre when that prison opened.. I was given a full pass, so apart from from working with the families, I work directly with the prisoners as well.”
Quaker Prison Service experience: “Over these 25 years we have built up a fair understanding of what the issues are for the prisoners and their families, and what effects imprisonment does have, and the NIO recognise that and meet with us regularly, and sometimes consult on policy issues… We may be somewhat unique in the North, and I hope I’m right in saying that we have the trust and credibility of republicans, loyalists and the NIO, and that puts us in a position that bears quite a responsibility, because it means we can be a channel for people who would otherwise not meet or listen to each other… ”
“The N.I. Prison Service now directs that visitor centres be provided at every prison; the idea is spreading throughout Great Britain and recently the Canadian prison service expressed an interest in following this example. “I’m quite pleased that the idea has taken root and that people are understanding that when you deal with prisoners the family is an important part of that”.
Release of prisoners: There were 3 words that were really quite emotive in this area, Ms Rafferty said:
1. “Political” – “The Government says we don’t have any political prisoners, so this debate is irrelevant if you accept that there aren’t any political prisoners in the first instance. And that does give them a bit of a difficulty because it’s hard to grant amnesties and its hard to make political decisions when all the time you are declaring that you don’t have any political prisoners.” There is a terrible inconsistency, some would say hypocrisy in this kind of thinking, she said. “Most of the prisoners are there under emergency legislation, virtually all are there in a system that has suspended all jury trials. The review procedure for lifers … is a very political document”, she said. When a prisoner is being considered for release, even if he says he has changed and even if his behaviour indicates he has changed and he is not at risk of re-offending, if the organisation to which he belonged is still active, there has to be concern as to whether he can get caught up in it.
“Now there’s no way that can be translated as anything other than political; that is not at all judging the individual prisoner, and so it is generally understood, it is accepted that these prisoners are political, and it is a bit of a nonsense to say we don’t have political prisoners. People are going to have to come to terms with that; however you may disagree with the motivation, the majority of people are there because our political structures haven’t worked and they are there for political reasons”.
2. Consistency“: When people say ” accepting that the legislation is there, the review procedure could be adapted and people could be released”. But the question arises – “is it right that some prisoners who have served 20 years, 16 years, 15 years and are due to come out should get out at the same time as people sentenced to life only last year for having done something dreadful? she questioned. Prison officials would say there has to be consistency for the whole justice system to make any sense. “I have to admit I personally have some difficulty with that as well, that is an issue we have to look at, it is a very human response. I don’t think the organisations representing political prisoners or the prisoners themselves have a difficulty … they say everybody should be out.”
Lee Clegg case – “This is a man who was sentenced to a life sentence – the normal procedure in N.I. is for someone to be reviewed after 10 years; now I know one young man who was being reviewed at 10 years whom everyone involved – clergymen, right up to the Bishop, and all of us concerned with him – were reasonably sure he was innocent anyhow…. and the answer I got from the NIO was that “it is not the job of the Review Board to retry anyone, we’re only talking about releases… once they’re tried and sentenced all we can do is accept it. So far as we’re concerned this man was convicted and he got a life sentence, and that’s it.” Now it is arguable whether or not somebody like Lee Clegg or another soldier should have been tried, but the fact is he was tried, he was sentenced, he got his conviction, and he’s been reviewed after only 3 years. …
“This kind of inconsistency sows the seed of frustration and anger and mistrust and of a feeling of unfairness”, she said, and she was not saying that Clegg shouldn’t be out. “Consistency is the issue”.
3. “Victims“: “One of the first questions people ask is “what about the victims – you have to consider them” and we do have to consider them… and there is nothing anybody can say about that… people have suffered losses that can never be regained. They will never get back loved ones that have been murdered, they will never restore limbs that have been blown off and there isn’t really anything we can do except to accept that pain and be with them in it and in some way contribute to the healing and help them move forward…
“Who are the victims? “But I would caution you to be wary about classifying simply and neatly into little categories. … Who are the victims? What is a victim? It does of course include those people who have lost relatives, but it also includes prisoners’ families who have lost quite a lot; it also includes prisoners, not only for the treatment they’ve got in prison, but what led them to do that in the first place. Most of the prisoners I’ve spoken to didn’t actually join an organisation for any great worked-out political thinking. That came later. They were mostly responding to a local issue – they’ve either had someone killed themselves or a bomb has gone off in their neighbourhood, or soldiers have come in and wrecked the house, or there’s been general harassment – they’re responding to local, family, community or street affairs and they were responding because they felt nobody else was dealing with it.
“ In a sense we have all been victims, and everyone, all of us, have our story to tell, everyone in the North, whether a perpetrator, or a victim, or whatever, everyone has their story to tell… and in a sense we have all contributed to the violence as well because I think each of us has a responsibility for what goes on in our society, and each of us has a responsibility for the systems and the structures that are in place in our name.”
Responsibility for the peace: “In saying that therefore each of us has a responsibility for the peace and the making of the peace. It’s not just a question of “if the terrorists stop their killing then everything will be ok.” It was never that simple and it’s not that simple. There are real and perceived injustices, real fears, real misunderstandings, real hurts that must be addressed by all of us, and difficult as it may be for some people to take, the prisoners’ issue has to be part of that process.
Compromise: “We will all have to accept some things that we would maybe prefer not to; we will all have to settle for less than we would ideally like but I think that’s the nature of compromise, that’s the nature of trying to see the other side of things. Peace is that important to us and that’s what we have to work at. So I would just raise the question “How important is the peace to you?” “How much are you willing to work for it?” Because it does need total commitment and it does need a lot of hard work, understanding and patience … We have given 25 years of the violence before we decided it wasn’t the way forward and I hope we will give the peace process an equal 25 years before we get frustrated and say this isn’t the way forward.”
Released prisoners as a resource: Ms Rafferty pointed out that people in prison have maybe done more thinking than the population at large in the North, have maybe changed their viewpoint more than many, “have right up front realised what the cost is and what the sacrifice has been…. I actually have seen and heard more forward thinking and more willingness to break the barriers, to go that extra distance, amongst the prisoner population, than I have in some of the more middle class areas where people aren’t confronted with the violence in quite the same way, and I would encourage people to see the prisoners, released political prisoners as a resource. They can offer an awful lot; let’s enable them to do so and let’s not be frightened of it.”
Chair: Judge Catherine McGuinness: “Thank you very much indeed. I’m sure that like myself you all found that not just impressive, but extremely perceptive and thoughtful, and raised a lot of issues for us to think about. I can only say that as a child I recall reading a child-orientated life of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker penal reformer in her day, and clearly the Quakers have kept on at it very well ever since. I’m very much struck by the questions Martie has put for us, and you will be dealing with them in your questions, but just with regard to legal systems, it is my view that if there is the political will to deal with the prisoner situation, and to deal with early releases, legal mechanisms can be found, and I would agree with both Nuala and Martie that I don’t really think it is the legal position that is so much the problem , as the will to look at it. Strangely enough, for those of us who are old enough to remember, in previous times when there were periods of violence in N.I., say in the ’50s, there were prisoners at that time and when the violence stopped, those prisoners were released by the then Unionist Government. With all the faults and all the difficulties that the Unionist Government had, they were actually quite reasonable about it once there was peace. There wasn’t any great fuss about it, but the back door was opened and they got out. So it is possible and it really is a very central issue, and I would absolutely agree about that.”
3. Ronnie McCartney (former republican prisoner)
Ronnie McCartney explained that he was sentenced in 1975 in England at the age of 21. He was 16 and living on the Falls Road when the Troubles started, and his was an emotional response. Their homes were attacked. “We started off by defending our areas, we built barricades, we ended up joining what you called the “auxiliaries”. The defensive went to offensive after the curfew in 1970 and before you knew it you were involved in an organisation involved in a military conflict.” He explained that he went to England in 1974 and was arrested in 1975. His experiences in prison were brutal for him and his family. While in prison he came in contact with innocent prisoners like “Giuseppi Conlon, the Maguire family, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six” etc who could not get people to listen to their plight and as a result most of them spent years in prison. “One of the tragedies was that the British Government knew that they were totally innocent of the crimes which they were convicted of – in actual fact they knew the people who actually committed the crimes.. the Balcombe Street Four, they actually made statements admitting the bombings…”
Prisoners: “One of the problems is when you’re talking about the release of prisoners – you know, when people talk about prisoners, they talk about republicans, they talk about loyalists, they have his perception that we’re somehow subhuman or something, but in actual fact we’re very human people – we became involved in something, not because we’re immersed in violence, but because we cared about our communities in one form or another.”
Identity: “Some people would say it’s a religious problem, I would say it’s a political problem – a problem of identity. One of the biggest obstacles that we have to overcome is that problem of identity. The fact of the matter is, when we talk about democracy and we talk about rights and freedom, what we should realise is that every man, every woman, and every child should have the right to believe and practise what they believe – nobody should be barred from what they believe…”
“One of the things that has impressed me since I came out of prison – I’m only out of prison about 6-7 weeks – is the fact that there are groups like this here, the fact that there is the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the fact that there are the Quakers and the ICPO actually focussing people’s minds on the real problems in Northern Ireland. But one of the things I see, as a republican in the North, and one of the biggest fears from the loyalist community in the North, is the problem of here in the South and what has actually happened to the Protestant population here in the South. So I’m pleased to hear that there is going to be some sort of study carried out by the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation to look into that problem, because when we look at the problem in the North, we have to look at all sides.
Healing process: “We have to look at the British side, we have to look at the nationalist side, and we have to look at the loyalist side, and what we actually have to engage in is a healing process, and prisoners are part of that process, whether people like it or not. Most of the prisoners, all of the prisoners that are in prison today, either loyalist or republican, or Lee Clegg, are there not because they were involved in crime, or what they would call crime, they were involved in something they believed in – they were defending their communities, defending their rights, or defending something. So I don’t see any problem in the release of any prisoner – I believe the conflict is over, that the release of prisoners has to come, and it has to come speedy.”
Prisoners in England: “There are some cases in England giving cause for concern – cases such as Paul Norney, Sean Kinsella, Brendan Dowd, Noel Gibson and Stephen [A?]. Paul Norney was 17 years of age when he went into prison; he was convicted of attempted murder. He has now done 20 years in prison. Last year he went for judicial review, and the Lord Chief Justice in England turned round and said that he sees no reason why this young man or these 5 people should be released when their 20 years is served. We’re asking for the release of prisoners now, and one of the problems that is arising within the nationalist areas of Belfast is that they are looking at this case in particular, and the case of the other prisoners who have done 20 years in prison, and what they’re actually saying to themselves is that if we can’t get prisoners released who have served their sentence, and they have served their full 20 years, then how can we get prisoners released who haven’t served their sentence? That situation is a political decision, because all the decisions that affected the prisoners in England… were all political decisions. Before anything could be done within the prison situation in England it always had to be referred to the Home Office Minister. Now I know for a fact that from about 1985, prison governors, Boards of Visitors, bishops etc. were actively campaigning for myself and other people to be transferred home to the North of Ireland, and every time that was cleared, or every time I fulfilled the criteria in order for the transfer, a Home Office Minister stepped in and said “No” ..
“… They would turn round and say that your offence was so serious that you were undeserving of public sympathy. If we were to accept that attitude now – we would decide “no, these prisoners have committed heinous crimes… and they shouldn’t be released”, then I feel you are going to alienate the level of feeling that is in the North at the minute. I came out last year on parole – I was 19 years in prison before I actually got parole – and when I came out, it was like a big open prison to be quite honest with you. I looked at West Belfast, and I seen this big ring of steel – during the day you had all the probation officers coming in doing their work, and at 5 o’clock at night they’d go home; they’d go up the Malone Road, they’d go up the Antrim Road, and the next thing there’d be a ring of steel round West Belfast – it was a prison without the walls, but you still had your ring of steel.”
Ex-prisoners: “One of the remarkable things I have seen is ex-prisoners who have actually been released in the last 3 or 4 years – the work that they’ve actually been doing within the communities themselves. Some have become involved in community groups or youth groups, and what they’re doing is giving a lead; because like me, I would not like to see any young man or young woman go through the same thing which my family went through or I went through myself. Now I evolved in prison. I would say I was a “hothead” at 21 years of age, but within the prison setting I evolved, I matured. The unfortunate reality is that opportunity wasn’t there before I went into prison, because there was no mechanism there where I could express my views, or my community could express their views, and unfortunately, the direction that was taken was violence. I am saying one of the most unfortunate things about the last 25 years is that there were not groups like this here, that there were not people more interested in actually what was happening in the North. It’s no use turning round and saying “we have it all nice down here, but the people in the North, no, put them away, forget about them.”
Reaching out: “It’s a matter of reaching out – it’s a matter for the people of the South to reach out to the North, and people from the North to reach out to the South, and what you actually have to do is to create some form of common denominator, where people can come together, where they can develop their thoughts, and where they can reach a process which may not be agreeable to all people, but it’s a process where rights are protected, and that’s one of the most important things I feel should be enshrined here in the North, is a Bill of Rights for everyone.”
Lee Clegg: “I feel – and I think most people who are on the ground and who have experienced prison also feel – that if there’s not a speedy release of prisoners, if Lee Clegg is released with the next couple of weeks, it is going to cause immense problems within all the areas especially in the likes of Paul Norney’s case, because it will become an issue. Once it becomes an issue, the influence that prisoners have had, the influence that ex-prisoners have had, will be neutralised…”
Loyalist prisoners: “When I went to Maghaberry in 1991 I met loyalist prisoners for the first time. Maghaberry is an integrated prison and one of the things that struck me most was the very common themes that everybody had in common – you know you had this feeling “that’s a republican, that’s a loyalist – he believes in this, and I believe in that”, but when you start getting down to the nitty gritty, when you start talking about work, you start talking about social issues, you start talking about drug abuse in your areas, you start talking about employment, about prisoners going out, and families and things like that – I actually done a study with a loyalist prisoner into the effects of imprisonment on families.
Victims: “And when we talk about victims, I feel that the families of prisoners are as much victims as the victims themselves – they are innocent individuals, and when those families are actually travelling to England, and when they’re travelling up to prisons in the North, one of the things that has struck me is the hardship that the families go through. Now when the ceasefires were called last August and last October expectations were raised within nationalist and loyalist communities. Now whether people like it or not, they are the people who have borne the brunt of the violence, and they see no problem in the release of all prisoners, because people are of the view that if the conflict is over, then prisoners should be released, and we should set about setting up a system, regardless of what that system is, which recognises the right of everybody.”
4. Marty Snoddon (former loyalist prisoner):
“Thank you very much folks for listening to me this evening – I actually grew up on the same road as Ronnie did – on the Falls Road, but I actually came from Upper Falls, a little estate called Suffolk. During the early days of the Troubles, Suffolk was chaos, there was a lot of Protestant families put out of their houses. I was 15 years old; I was throwing bottles; I was throwing stones. I was trying to protect my family, my friends. I went from the defensive to the offensive – joined the UVF – went down the road to Long Kesh – served 15 years in Long Kesh and was released in 1990.
“I’m here basically for two reasons tonight – 1), should the prisoners get released? and 2), what happens to the prisoners after release? Both, I think, are equally important.
“If I can refer to what Marti had said earlier about the [3 points]… “political”, “consistency” and “victims”:
Victims: “Everybody regrets there’s victims, there’s victims in every theatre of conflict and nothing anybody can do can change that – that’s just life unfortunately. I see myself as a “prisoner of war” – the “in” term at the moment is “politically motivated prisoners”. I wasn’t a politically motivated prisoner – there was nothing political in my actions – my actions were actions of war, so I was a prisoner of war. Certainly now I recognise that it was the whole political environment – the chaos that was in Northern Ireland – that led me down that road. ”
Consistency: “If the paramilitaries had said, “well, let’s stop shooting soldiers this year; next year we’ll stop blowing up buildings in Belfast”, and the loyalist paramilitaries said “we’ll not go down to any bars in Dublin and attack IRA men, or who they perceive to be IRA men, or we’ll not attack anybody this year, and next year we’ll stop paramilitary beatings” – then it would have gone on for a long time. The British Government have got to recognise now that for to get peace then we’ve got to let the prisoners out.
Release of prisoners: “And what happens after the prisoners get out? I was released from prison – I thought I was coming out to freedom – it wasn’t freedom I came out to – there was a lot of pressures and a lot of stresses that came into my life when I was released from Long Kesh – family pressures. Whenever I went in I was 19 years old. My mother thought she was getting a 19 year old back out again – she wanted to mother me again – I was 35 years old. I wanted a flat of my own, I wanted to build my own life – that was a pressure within our family that we had to deal with, thankfully we did.
“Friends of mine from before I went into prison expected to see me coming out and putting a gun in my pocket again and going to war once more. They had to come to terms that my attitude, my views, had changed. It would have been very easy to have just sat down and said, “let’s have a pint boys; F– the Pope. Up the UVF, and let’s get on with it”.
“That’s the easy way, but when you’ve changed, it’s harder to put your hand up and say, “hold on a minute, why are we doing this, where are we going, what’s it going to achieve?”
Influence of former prisoners: “Fortunately enough, a lot of the men that I came through prison with still remained in contact in the world outside and are a support group for each other, and are able to stand up within our communities and say “that’s wrong”. And they are listened to, which is more important, because they do carry a lot of respect within their own communities – a lot of young people who had heard about them when they were growing up thought they were some kind of heroes because they’d taken up the gun. They can influence them people even more outside down the road to peace. There are other everyday relationships that prisoners have to deal with on release that they didn’t have to deal with when they were inside – they may have had a penpal or a girlfriend coming up to see them for 30 minutes or an hour once a week, or once a fortnight – that’s entirely different from living with somebody. So there’s a lot of pressures that the prisoner has to deal with in that respect.
Employment – “95-100% of loyalist prisoners being released end up on an ACE programme for their first year – they need a job before they can actually get out on the street. The ACE programmes – Action for Community Employment – last for 12 months, and then you’re out of a job. I would say 70% of the people who were released within 2-3 years of myself are now unemployed and probably have been since the end of their first year on ACE and they’ve no prospects of employment, by and large, because they’re still being discriminated against, because they were prisoners. I was personally discriminated against just at the turn of the year in my job – I was fortunate, I studied in Long Kesh, and am now a trainer in information technology, but even after 4 years with the company I found out that the personnel officer within that company disclosed confidential information to other employees, for no reason at all, just idle talk. That idle talk could have got me killed. So there’s a lot of discrimination, there’s a lot of problems that the prisoners need to deal with. If the prisoners need to deal with them there’s a lot more groups in our society that needs to help them.
PROP: “A year after my release, in 1991, Martie Rafferty brought together a number of ex-prisoners from both traditions – at the start there must have been about 5 or 6 PIRA ex-prisoners, 3-4 UVF ex-life sentence prisoners. What we didn’t realise at the time was how important that group was going to be in the future. We formed what we now call PROP – the Progressive Release of Political Prisoners.
“It’s make-up is Quakers, an independent research consultant in conflict mediation, and both traditions are represented on PROP – loyalist and republican. We’ve put together a proposal for 2 centres – one on the Falls Road, and one on the Shankill Road. We have for four years been researching and putting together that proposal, and for the past 2 years we’ve been trying to get funding for the centres. We’re halfway there with the funding – we’ve got a conditional guarantee of £60,000 – we can’t get the centres fully operational until we have all the funding. The type of thing we would like to be doing in the centres is for addressing all the needs of the prisoners, and the needs of the families of those who [are out].. and those still incarcerated. Nuala mentioned NIACRO and their proposal, or their booklet on “The Reintegration of Political Prisoners”. In 25 years of the Troubles I don’t think NIACRO once sent any representative into the prison. In that case, I don’t think NIACRO is an authority on prisoners, politically motivated prisoners’ issues. NIACRO are aware of us, as too is the N.I. Probation Service – a lot of what both those statutory bodies are saying is the content of our proposal to them for funding.
Chair: Judge Catherine McGuinness: “Thank you very much indeed. Now perhaps I should say that, because of the way things are mixed up in Ireland, where you don’t necessarily belong to one stream or the other – in my widespread family of clergy one of my uncles was Rector of Upper Falls where Marty came from, and yet at the same time my mother-in-law was a republican prisoner in Kilmainham during the Civil War. .. And I can remember my children when they were still small being quite proud of the fact that they had a granny who was in prison… You don’t get the one stream. All of us have connections, and in a way that’s helpful in giving us an understanding of both sides.”
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS – SUMMARY
Q. 1. What sort of relationships were there between loyalist and republican prisoners? On the Lee Clegg issue, the questioner felt some sympathy for him and felt that he should not have been sentenced for murder, but he believed the whole affair had been stage-managed.
Ronnie McCartney: Clegg was found guilty in a court of law. As to relationships between prisoners, many loyalist and republican prisoners have good relationships, he said.
Judge McGuinness: The difficulty with the Lee Clegg case is the consistency issue. She felt there was a very strong feeling that his release would be a very bad signal. “This was nothing to do with the individual guilt or innocence of Clegg himself.”
Q. 2: If someone were found guilty now of murder, how would this come into the question of early release?
Martie Rafferty: That is one of the issues that comes up frequently. “I can understand that this is a problem – I have a personal problem with that too. Most ex-prisoners believe that all prisoners must be released. It would be very hard to establish the criteria … There could be a minefield of difficulties, but I can understand the difficulty in human terms”.
Marty Snoddon: “It’s a very hypothetical. He believed that the longer the British Government takes on the issue, the more likelihood that it’s going to happen. On the Clegg affair, he said that the paratroopers were trying to keep the peace. If you recognise that, then you recognise there’s a war. If Clegg gets released as a result of the situation, then every prisoner should get released.
Q. 3 John Clancy: There have been over 3, 500 killed in the Troubles. Many of the killings were hideous and barbaric. Should the perpetrators of atrocities like Darkley and Greysteel etc. be released?
Ronnie McCartney: You could look at any of the murders that took place – there’s hurt on all sides. “I say they should be released. You have to put yourself back to look at the causes. The problem is to create the situation where people can feel they can put forward their views”. He said that he has also lost family members. If there is to be an end, then the prisoners must be released. “It’s a challenge for everyone on this island.”
Marty Snodden: This year [1995] we saw celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War. How many atrocities were done during World War 2 ? – at the end of this war prisoners were released.”
Martie Rafferty: Most of us have talked about the need for healing. “I feel some sort of structure has to be set up where people can tell their story – no matter who it is – there has to be a way of saying to those people – we know you have suffered a loss, and to acknowledge and recognise that, and let them say it.
“If there were some mechanism whereby people could come and simply tell their story and have their experience validated in some way, I think that would go some way towards the healing process.”
Chair: Judge McGuinness: “The Forum has had victims of violence telling their stories …and we may address this again. The victims came from both sides of the divide, but not from the security forces, I recently went to Belfast to meet some of the Disabled Police Officers Association. They were very anxious to talk too and …they felt they had been treated meanly by the authorities. …We need to let the victims tell their stories and we need some mechanism for healing – it is very important”.
Q. 4. It must be a very different experience to come out of prison during a ceasefire and to come out before the ceasefire. How were you received in your own communities? Do they feel you have fulfilled your fight? What is your relationship now with those you were fighting with? You seem to have a different approach.
Marty Snoddon: When he was released, there was no ceasefire. The UVF had a policy that UVF life-sentenced prisoners would not be welcome back as a military operative. There hadn’t been any pressure on him to go back. As to the reaction of his community, he had been besieged with people welcoming him back.
Ronnie McCartney: He got out during the ceasefire. He said he had no problem getting back into his community. He has had great support and is now working with young people – “What I’m trying to do is give back a value to them, so that they can accept the position of responsiblity and accountability. It’s a two-way process – we also have to be responsible and accountable to them”. He got out only a short time ago and has had no pressure from anyone.
Q. 5 (Isobel Hylands, Craigavon): On the healing process she would like to let people know about a project she was involved in in Belfast – the “Crann” project which was trying to set up a place where people affected by the violence could come and tell their stories. Many of these will be recorded and the stories will be held in trust – the good things as well as the bad will be recorded, she said.
Q. 6 (Cllr. Jim Holloway, FG, Navan UDC): He would like to ask the prisoners – “at what point in your lives did you come to the conclusion that you didn’t have to be engaged in violence? If people feel secure they don’t feel they have to resort to violence.”
Ronnie McCartney: He went in to prison at 21 years having had only a basic education. In 1980 he started a course with the Open University and had got a first class honours degree. He believed that education had given him the ability to articulate and to analyse and realise there wasn’t only one side of the story – there’s maybe two, three, four sides to the story. “Instead of the tunnel vision my mind had started to open up … But because I am saying you have to go the democratic way, it doesn’t mean that my views or beliefs have been diluted in any shape or form – I still believe that there has to be a solution based on an all-Ireland context, but I’m prepared to argue, I’m prepared to be a persuader for that, I don’t think I should be excluded …but I also recognise that loyalists have a legitimate view – their view of their state is just as legitimate as mine. It is my hope that we will be able to persuade people to come into an all-Ireland state.”
Marty Snoddon: “It’s the first time I’ve been asked this question. There was no sudden change. It happened over a period of time”. He had no academic qualifications when he went to prison, having left school at 14. He was fortunate to be with Gusty Spence in prison and he was a great influence. The majority went into prison aged between 19-21. Gusty encouraged them to study Irish history and arranged for outside tutors to come in for a variety of subjects. He found himself in a study group with some members of the Official IRA and they used to chat and discuss their fears. “Through discussion and further development of the mind, I came to change my views and attitudes – it’s a complex thing, other things have contributed too, but there was no particular point at which this happened.”
Judge McGuinness: Educational structures were very important at Portlaoise too. The National College of Art and Design has had exhibitions of art work from Portlaoise. I believe it did a lot. The vast majority of prisoners that appear before her in the courts are drug-related. This is not the case at Portlaoise – and much progress has been made through education there.
Q. 7 (Navan resident, formerly from N. Ireland): To the ex-prisoners: “At the end of a war you release people. I agree with that. But there are people in prison who have been hiding behind the cloak of the IRA and UVF. Surely we must be selective? There are people in prison whom you must be ashamed of?” He instanced the case of Loughinisland just one year ago, when innocent people were gunned down while watching a football match. Surely you wouldn’t have done that? They were really war criminals.
Ronnie: “Yes, I would release them – no one has used me”. If we start differentiating, saying I can release this one but not that one, then we’ll get into again the whole cycle of violence. How does anyone know what they would have done. “I can’t determine what I would have done or wouldn’t have done…. I can’t justify it, I don’t think anyone can .. You have to look at the whole situation.. If I was a member of an organisation I would have done what I was asked to do, whether I liked it or not. You could bring up many instances. But where do you stop?”
Marty Snoddon: “I would reiterate what Gusty Spence had said when he announced the loyalist ceasefire. He deeply regretted all the shootings and all acts of war. He had particularly mentioned the Loughinisland episode.”
Q. 8: (Drogheda resident): During the last 25 years, he had raised his family. The only strife he had been involved in was industrial strife. He believed that common sense would solve the problem. “You’ve got to solve the problem yourselves” he said, fringe groups can only do so much. He was born in a mixed Catholic and Protestant street in Drogheda. All through the Troubles common sense had kept relations good between them.
Q. 9 (comment): He wanted to thank Judge McGuinness for chairing the meeting and particularly for explaining the work of the Forum. The perception had been that it was just a talking shop. He felt that Nuala Kelly had dealt comprehensively with the socio-economic issues of prison life and he was surprised at the high number of Irish prisoners in English jails and the relatively low number of those who were republican prisoners. Martie Rafferty, he said, was the essence of practical help … and the two prisoners were wonderful and had given us a very good insight into something we wouldn’t normally see. He also congratulated the Meath Peace Group for organising the event.
Q. 10: (Sinn Fein member, Navan): He would like to see the early release of prisoners, but he believes that progress has been deliberately held back by the British Government – to use the prisoners in some future negotiations. What can be done now to move the British forward?
Nuala Kelly: “The main issue up to now that we could have asked people to make local representations was the question of transfers … that looks like its going ahead now. Each prisoner will probably be taken case by case. I think there is a need to keep up awareness on the transfer issue across the board.. I also think that people with relatives in England .. should ask them to raise issues and put pressure on their local representatives”.
Ronnie: Permanent transfers should be sought – not temporary. Republican prisoners are being discriminated against again in the North. All applications for parole have to go to the Home Office.
Martie Rafferty: “Pressure must be brought – to convince people who would exert more influence than us. … Northern Ireland is small, that is an advantage, you can meet people personally — contact people within arenas of influence and get them to put things forward…”
Chair: Judge McGuinness: Politicians are influenced by what they think their constituents want. “If we can influence people on the ground .. particularly within the Northern Irish or indeed the English situation, and … express how central this issue is to the whole peace process and how dangerous it is to leave the issue fester.”
Q. 11. Surely the handing in of arms is part of this issue?
Judge McGuinness: “It’s hard to say … The issue of making de-commissioning of arms a prerequisite for any talks at all was not something that was raised until after the ceasefires – in many ways that is creating a lot of difficulties as well”.
CLOSING WORDS
Julitta Clancy thanked Judge McGuinness and all the speakers. She said a particular thanks was due to the two former prisoners who had come at such short notice, due to other arrangements having fallen through. There were a couple of points she would like to make. “Violence has always been glorified in this country – we have seen the results of violence over the last 25 years… How can we change things in the future? We had some victims of violence talking to us 3 weeks ago – we could feel their terrible hurts and the need for them to talk and be listened to. It is important that they be given an opportunity to tell their stories.” The prisoners and their families were victims too, she said, and we must address their problems too. But will the prisoners’ groups listen to the victims too? Too often the violence is glorified. Terrible things had been done, terrible and unjustifiable things. How can we avoid this happening again in the future? We must be prepared to learn from this. The Meath Peace Group had brought the exhibition “Violence – Count the Costs” into many schools in Meath and the students were very interested in both the causes of the violence and the effects. This period of history must be a constant lesson to us all, she said.
Biographical notes
Judge Catherine McGuinness, Circuit Court judge, was appointed chairperson of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in October, 1994. She was born in Belfast, daughter of a Church of Ireland rector, educated in Dublin (Alexandra College and TCD), and was called to the Bar in 1977. Her interest in family law culminated in her report on the Kilkenny incest case in 1993. During the 1960s, she worked as a parliamentary officer for the Labour Party, and has served on many bodies, including the National Economic and Social Council, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown and the Employment Equality Agency.
Nuala Kelly is a sociologist and community worker, originally from Co. Fermanagh. She was appointed to develop the services of the ICPO 10 years ago. She recently coordinated the submissions to the Forum on the part of prisoners’ groups. The Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas is a sub-section of the Bishops’ Commission for Emigrants. It was established in 1985, in response to concerns expressed by prisoners and their families, to act in the particular interests of Irish prisoners serving sentences abroad. The Commission cares for all Irish prisoners throughout the world, regardless of offence or faith, and their families in Ireland.
Martie Rafferty works closely with individual prisoners in both the Maze and Maghaberry. The Quaker Prison Service operates visitor centres at the Maze and Maghaberry prisons in Northern Ireland. Each centre offers a range of services to visitors, families and friends, including canteen facilities, information/assistance/counselling, transport, childcare and pre-release and post-release support for prisoners and their families.
Ronnie McCartney (former republican prisoner) was brought up in the Falls Road in Belfast. He was 16 when the “Troubles” started. He moved with his family to England in 1974 and in 1975, at the age of 21, he was arrested and sentenced. He served 20 years in prison and was released in the Spring of 1995.
Marty Snoddon (former loyalist prisoner) came from the Suffolk estate on the Upper Falls in Belfast. He joined the UVF in the early 1970s and was sentenced in 1975. He served 15 years in Long Kesh before being released in 1990.
Meath Peace Group report. July 1995. Compiled and edited by Julitta Clancy; audio-recorded by Anne Nolan
(c)Meath Peace Group
23 May 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan, Co. Meath
Speakers:
Marie Smyth (Sociologist and psychotherapist, Magee College and Temple Group Project, L/Derry)
Ann Mc Mullen (Ardoyne Survivors of Trauma Group, Belfast)
Brendan Bradley (Ardoyne Survivors of Trauma Group, Belfast)
Chaired by John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
INTRODUCTION
John Clancy welcomed everyone to the talk and introduced the speakers: “Our first speaker tonight is Marie Smyth – she undertook one of the first seminal works on the impact of violence, in this case State violence relating to Bloody Sunday. She’s gone on from there to widen her palette, if I may use that word for her expertise – she’s working with the Disabled Police Officer’s Association, and is presently on a two year sabbatical from the University of Ulster, where she is doing study and research into sectarianism, a very important study and a very important area which must be addressed. She will be followed by Ann Mc Mullen and Brendan Bradley, both from North Belfast, where, within a circle of one mile radius from the centre of the Ardoyne, over one third of all the fatalities, murder and terrorism of all kinds took place. I think it’s very important to remember that. Ann Mc Mullen lost two of her family – she lost her brother in 1981 (shot by the IRA), and she lost her father in 1989 (shot by the UVF). Brendan lost three of his family – in 1975 he lost his brother, in 1992 his sister was shot, and in 1994 his nephew was shot. In Brendan’s case as well he lost his family through terrorism from both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland. So tonight, each will talk about how the violence, the loss has affected them.
“Unfortunately, the WAVE group who had also been invited to speak, were unable to travel tonight.
1. Marie Smyth (Sociologist and psychotherapist, Magee College and Temple Group Project, L/Derry)
“Thank you. I’d like to start by reflecting on something that was mentioned and kind of glossed over in the introduction and that is that there are different sources to the violence that has happened in the North over the last 25 years, and each of these sources has its own set of meanings and set of experiences.
One of the things I have been interested in doing is exploring violence that hasn’t been explored up until now. So my first piece of research was conducted on a kind of violence that had not been research before. No academic, no person had gone and talked to these people before, and those were people who had experience of “State violence“, people who had been killed by the security forces. So the first piece of research I would like to talk about is that, and I’m assuming that the other speakers won’t necessarily be talking about that. The second group that I would like to talk about, very briefly, as my work is at an early stage, is in fact the State forces themselves, because the next piece of work that I have done is actually talking to them and beginning to uncover their experience of the Troubles as well.
So that puts me in a kind of peculiar position, because I talk to all sorts of groups. WAVE who were going to be here this evening – I talk to them, I talk to the Disabled Police Officers, I’ve talked to people who’ve lost family members in Bloody Sunday, who subsequently joined the IRA and served prison sentences, so I’m moving between a whole range of groups in the North, and there’s major problems on language and I want to talk a wee bit about that for a moment.
Terminology:
‘Victim’: “The term ‘victim’, is a problem; its a problem for all sorts of reasons. I recently gave a talk in Stormont, and I used the term ‘victim ‘, in relation to the families of Bloody Sunday, and I talked about the “Victims of Bloody Sunday” – I got a very angry response from some of the disabled police officers who were there; they said “these people were not victims, they are terrorists”. So the word ‘Victim’ is a problem.
‘Survivor’: “I have a problem about using the term ‘Survivor’, because when I interviewed people in the first study that I’ve done, and in the second study that I did, I discovered people who may be alive, but I would argue that they have not survived the violence at all, they are severely affected and continue to be over a long period of time, and the word ‘Survivor’, therefore does not attach itself easily to these people. As a result of which I talk – and I use the term quite deliberately – of ‘People Affected’ – not victims, not survivors but ‘People Affected By’, and that’s the term that I’ve learned to use and it’s the only term that I can actually use with all the different groups that I’m working with, and I’m happy with that…..
‘Violence’: “So what do you call the violence?. The first term I used was Political Violence, and you can imagine this is the talk I was giving in Stormont, and we had different disabled police officers this time saying, “excuse me, this isn’t political violence, these people are terrorists – these are criminals, there’s no such thing as political violence in the North of Ireland, they’re all criminals etc.” So you can’t use that term – that’s out.
‘Murder’ is a term that is used by all groups but other people commit murder, they do not commit murder, so that’s a problem as well. You can’t use that. The “war” is a term that tends to be used more or less within Republican circles, it’s not used by Loyalists. So I’ve ended up using euphemism, which I’m not terribly happy about, but it’s the only term that I can find that everybody shares, that is “The Troubles“. So I talk about “People who are affected by the Troubles“.
For all kinds of reasons which I don’t need to go into now I don’t use the word ‘Psychological’, because that carries a whole other weight of meaning to it as well. If you say to people “You’re psychologically affected”, there’s a kind of implication that these people are a bit ‘loopy’. And I argue very strongly that the people I’m talking to, even though they have symptoms that you would associate with mental illness, are in fact perfectly normal people having perfectly normal reactions to very abnormal circumstances. So that’s really why I am refusing the term ‘psychological’, and I prefer to use the term ’emotional’- “The Emotional Effects of the Troubles“.
The issue that I referred to earlier, about the term ‘victim‘, is really an issue about the legitimacy of people’s suffering. In order to be a victim, in order to qualify as a victim, this is terrible to say this, but I think it’s very important that you understand this, in order to qualify as a victim, you must be innocent; and there are huge problems about defining people’s innocence within a very conflicted society, where people are at loggerheads with each other and they have competing political interests.
Principles: “…. You’ve probably gathered from the kind of weird boundary crossing that I’m doing, that basically I work on two principles:
1) The first principle is humanitarianism – I don’t care where the person is from or what political views they have, or whatever, my job professionally as a psychotherapist, is to treat human suffering where I find it, and I have a kind of ethical commitment to doing that. So it doesn’t actually matter whether I’m dealing with a police officer – I’m from the Catholic community, that was a huge challenge for me to do that, because in my past I personally sued the RUC for wrongful arrest, so you can imagine the piece of work I had to do in the morning before I went to do that. I’ve worked with Loyalists – again I’ve had my life threatened by the UVF, that was a difficult thing for me to do, but nevertheless I think that it’s really important that we’re dealing with humanitarian issues here.
2) The second is the principle of inclusion – that anyone that’s been affected, and I don’t care whether they’ve been a member of a paramilitary organisation or not, whether they’ve been a member of the security forces or not, whether they’ve used violence or not … everybody must be included in the framework. There’s no grounds for putting anyone out or saying they don’t qualify, they’re not legitimate; human suffering is legitimate and that’s basically what my work is based on. … That’s the preaching over! Now down to business.
“The first theme I’d like to talk about is “The Emotional Effects of the Violence in the Troubles“, and I’d like to just spend a wee bit of time on the findings of the first study that I did, which were the bereaved families of Bloody Sunday – the people who were actually in that little group – the living group of the people who were killed. Then I’d like to just introduce you to some of the findings from the other piece of research and then I was going to make some conclusions. Somebody has asked me if I would talk a little bit about the proposal that I put to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, so I’ll finish by doing that.
I. Emotional Effects of the Violence – Bloody Sunday families:
Framework: “The first thing I’ll say, just to be a wee bit technical, is the kind of framework that normally this kind of research comes into. PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s a term that’s used in psychiatry, to diagnose people who have a deep-seated and ongoing reaction to trauma. So its post-traumatic and its a disorder of some kind, where the symptoms survive longer than you normally expect them to do after a trauma e.g. if I’m in a road accident you would expect me to be a bit shook up for a period of time afterwards, but after a period of time you’d expect the symptoms to go away. And what we’re dealing with here is something more over and above that where the symptoms last for a long period of time or indeed one of the things which I find is where the people had no symptoms at all immediately afterwards, for maybe a period of up to ten years, and this is the thing that really is quite bothering; that after ten years for example somebody loses their job, and suddenly they have all the symptoms associated with their trauma. So that’s the framework; that’s the definition there.
Three groups of symptoms that we’ll talk about:
1. Intrusion – e.g. flashbacks. Something triggers the person into being back in that experience, it’s not like remembering it, it’s actually re-experiencing it, you see, you maybe even smell the smells that you smelled at the time of the trauma, and you actually go back into the experiences, it’s not like memory at all, it’s actually re-experiencing of some kind.
Intrusive thoughts. Most of us will normally have some kind of experience of intrusive thoughts e.g. if you have been bereaved, even if it’s not a traumatic bereavement, quite often for a period of time after, the person will come into your mind or you will remember something about the person, even though you are trying to concentrate on something else. Now for people who are traumatised by violence of the Troubles, these thoughts come into their minds all the time, uninvited, and they can’t get them out – some of the people anyway.
Dreams and nightmares: people will have dreams associated with the trauma; they will have nightmares to the point where they couldn’t sleep in bed with their partner anymore, because the nightmare would wake them up and they’re thrashing about in the bed, and so on. They would typically have the same nightmare over and over again. That’s the kind of symptoms we talk about when we talk about intrusions.
2. Hyperarousal: “you’re basically talking about your expectation of danger, so a typical thing if you’re in the North of Ireland and you do that – [loud bang on table] – the whole room goes OOH! That’s a very simple example of it, but literally you can see it in the general population. That is an exaggerated startled response and your autonomic nervous system, which is your nervous system that keeps you moving without you even thinking about it, is tuned up – it’s like a car engine that’s running too rich, if anybody here knows about these things. Your autonomic nervous system is very excited all the time, and that leads to a whole range of symptoms, but your expectation of danger, particularly, is very tuned up So for example, disabled police officers that I talk to will not sit where you’re sitting, they have to be near the door, they have to be near an exit. People who were on Bloody Sunday marches will not go into crowded streets, they need to be near where they can get away from the crowd, because of this kind of symptom.
3. Constriction; “ these are emotional symptoms and they’ve got to do with our emotional responses. What actually happens there is that people shut down their emotions, they don’t feel so they lose interest in things they were interested in beforehand, they will lose interest in their family, they’ll withdraw themselves emotionally from relationships, and so on and so forth; there’s a whole range of these symptoms we can talk about. They can become apathetic – they’ll say they don’t care and in this particular group of symptoms, in this particular response people will also induce this state in themselves by the use of drugs and alcohol, so if they can’t actually induce it through their own emotional responses they will achieve it through the use of drugs and alcohol as a kind of anaesthetic to the pain that they’re experiencing.
Method of research:
“I believe one of the things that’s dreadful about doing research is that we research a people; we go out and we ask them questions about themselves and we take them away and we make sense of them in a room, usually in an ivory tower of some kind, and then we publish it somewhere and the person that you’ve interviewed has no sense of what you’ve said about them; and secondly you cannot take part of the picture sometimes and you may not get it right. Academics are notorious for not getting it right, in my opinion anyway. The main reason that I was determined not to do that was because in many ways, that’s what has been happening to people in the North of Ireland, particularly people who have been bereaved. Bloody Sunday families and other people have had paths beaten to their door by the media – they have been, I would argue, quite exploited by that experience, where their emotions have been portrayed on television and all the rest of it, and really they have no control over that whatsoever. I would argue, as a psychotherapist that that actually re-traumatises people, it doesn’t help at all.
So when I was going to do the research I was determined I was going to try not to do that, so I worked with a group of families and they collaborated with me in the research – the people who did the tape transcriptions were family members; the people who arranged the interviews were family members. I transcribed each interview and gave it back to the person I had interviewed so that they could read what they said, correct it and give it back to me and when I finished the research and put my findings together, the first group of people that I presented it to were a group of the families and they criticised it and offered me suggestions and so on. So basically that’s also an important point, because I think very often in the past it hasn’t been done that way – someone has come out with a questionnaire and they’ve asked you questions and they’ve ticked it off and then put it in a computer somewhere and then people have no access to that. I think people really have had enough of that in the North, and indeed elsewhere.
I interviewed 15 people, the interviews ranged between an hour and a half to, in one case, three and a half hours. With the exception of one person, all of the fifteen people interviewed told me that I was the first person to ever ask them how the felt about Bloody Sunday; they meant that I was the first person to ask them about their emotional reaction as opposed to how they were related to the person that was killed, what did they think about the Widgery Tribunal, what did they think about the British Government and nobody had actually sat with them and explored their emotional reality and their emotional responses, which I find a totally horrifying revelation and it really made me distressed personally. The second remark I’m going to make is that it was the most distressing piece of research I’ve ever done. Bloody Sunday happened 23 years ago now, and I went into houses and really I was opening up things that really were as fractious now as the day they happened. That was an extremely taxing experience for me as researcher; normally I am an old hand – I can do 4 or 5 interviews in a day. But then I could only do two interviews in a day- one in the morning, a break at lunch time for a cry, and another again in the afternoon. So it’s very demanding and very difficult research to do.
Themes that came out of the interviews:
1) Justice: “The first theme that came up again and again and again was the need for justice. I now know from other research that I’ve done that that’s something that happens to other groups as well. For example, the disabled police officers that I talk to will say “we haven’t been fairly treated”, and they will either equate that with the Police Federation or the Government or with the compensation they got- they feel unjustly treated. And obviously the Bloody Sunday families feel unjustly treated and almost every single person I talked to, and certainly in the questionnaires that we distributed, it came up again and again – the need for acknowledgement that these people were killed unjustly. People couldn’t put it away, they couldn’t let go of it, and say “right, it’s over and done with”. Because in their mind it’s not over and done with and in fact some of the families are pursuing a case at the European Court even as we speak. So that was something that was keeping it going, keeping it fresh.
2) Grief: “Allied to that was the whole issue of grief, and that being reactivated or re-stimulated by for example seeing coverage – there’s constantly documentaries in Northern Ireland, which use footage from Bloody Sunday. So if you are a family member, you can turn on the TV, thinking that you are going to watch something and suddenly, there it is, back in front of you again. Bloody Sunday is public property, so you never know when you are going to come back into it again, and again it’s your family member that’s been lost, you’re restimulated and the grief just comes back every time this happens.
It also happens for people who’ve witnessed other kinds of violence in the Troubles. For example, a woman told me, if you remember there was a helicopter going from Northern Ireland to Scotland, that crashed and there were a number of people killed. If you remember the TV coverage – there was a row of coffins at one point, and for one moment that row of coffins took her straight back into Bloody Sunday, because again, on Bloody Sunday there was a row of coffins. So there’s all sorts of visual things that trigger people and take them back into this experience.
3) Lost trust: “The third theme that came up in the interviews was the theme of lost trust. That idea – that up until the trauma happened, you might have known that the world was a kind of unsafe place in patches, that there were things that were risky and other things that were less risky – but for the people that I talked to, what actually happened at the point when they were traumatised on Bloody Sunday, was that they lost trust completely; the world was not a safe place any more; the world was universally dangerous, and it was risky to do all sorts of things that, before the trauma, appeared to be quite safe. And there were all sorts of issues about trusting people that previously they had trusted.
4. Feelings of vulnerability: “again that is something that came up in all of the interviews, the feeling that it could happen again. And particularly allied to this here, the first one, the need for justice, the idea that this kind of thing could happen, that it hadn’t been addressed, and therefore this could happen to any of us at any time. Indeed when I looked at what these families told their children, one of the things that children were told all the time was “you better be in by seven o’ clock or eight o’ clock”, or whatever. “Remember what happened to your Uncle Mickie” or “remember what happened to your father” or “remember …” and it was constantly there as a kind of threat out there, and a feeling of vulnerability as a result. It happened once so it can happen again.
5) Intrusions: “I have already mentioned the whole issue of intrusions; the whole idea that it comes back into the arena of the family; that it’s discussed without it being invited, that its not been decided that we’re going to talk about it, but it’s there, uninvited all the time.
So these are the kind of themes that we found.
Conclusions from Bloody Sunday research:
1) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder doesn’t make any sense in Northern Ireland at all. We weren’t dealing with post anything, we were dealing with something that was ongoing. …People were being re-traumatised by new episodes of violence. Now I don’t know about post-ceasefire, because I haven’t actually done the research since the ceasefire. But basically the kind of traditional psychiatric framework for looking at this, I’m throwing it out the window, I’m not happy with it.”
2) Abuse of trust: “The second thing is a really shocking thing to say, and it was something I was really nervous about saying to the families of the Bloody Sunday victims, because it was in their research that I found it. There’s a lot of concern about the emotional aftermath of childhood sexual abuse, but I was seeing, in the interviews that I was doing with people who were traumatised by Bloody Sunday, virtually identical symptoms to what one would expect to find in somebody who was traumatised by childhood sexual abuse- the same profile of symptoms and all the rest of it. The parallels it seems to me are that the person who is in the position of great trust, and who has great power over you, abuses that trust in a very fundamental way. In the case of childhood sexual abuse that’s a parent, in the case of Bloody Sunday, it was the State, That there was no recourse, there was no higher authority that you could go to. As a child there’s no higher authority than your parent, and as a citizen there’s no higher authority than the State. So what I was seeing was very much like the kind of psychological and emotional effects of childhood sexual abuse.
3. Gender differences: “I found big differences between men and women. I found men much more likely to self-medicate on alcohol, I found women much more likely to use what’s termed “street valium”. I found women much more likely to become depressed – I found two women who had been hospitalised for mental illness, and in my opinion, though I’m not allowed to diagnose in this country (unlike the United States), these two women were misdiagnosed. They were actually suffering from the effects of Bloody Sunday, but they were diagnosed in some other kind of way. One man has been diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic” and he is not. Why he is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic is that he gets extremely drunk, and when he gets extremely drunk he thinks everybody is a paratrooper. So it seems to me quite clear, without knowing that that man had lost a son on Bloody Sunday, you might think that he was paranoid, but in fact, when you realise that he had lost his son on Bloody Sunday, you realise that something else is going on here. And so men and women tend to deal with it very differently.
Also, men in the families that I interviewed were much more likely to be treated differently – the families policed the boys very carefully, they watched them when they went out at night, they watched till they came in again, the fear was that they would get involved. That didn’t happen to the girls – the girls were considered to be safer on the streets and all the rest of it. There’s a whole difference between how men and women are affected and how boys and girls were affected. Girls very often are expected to take over parental roles – the parents of those who were killed were much worse off emotionally than siblings. So if your brother or sister was killed you had a much better chance of surviving emotionally than if it was your son or daughter. If you think about it, the role of the parent is to protect the child, so if the child is killed, that’s a huge huge trauma, whereas if it’s your brother or sister somehow you’ve still got a parent up there, so there’s all sorts of things that we could talk about all night, but we won’t.
4. Support and services: “The last thing I want to talk about is the lack of support and services to these families. Again we’re talking 23 years ago, and the only people that were available to provide support to these families were the GP’s, and what GP’s were doing, by and large, was doling out tranquillisers, and that was all. Also if you remember that this happened in Derry, where very often the GP was a member of the local community, and indeed may have been on the march himself or herself, that therefore there’s a whole community trauma that we’re not even talking about.
General conclusions from the research:
1) Numbers of people affected: “If you take it that there were 14 families involved who had lost somebody on Bloody Sunday, and if you multiply that by the average family size which is fairly large in the community concerned, you’re probably talking about roughly 200 people. And of the people we interviewed, we found that 50% of them had symptoms which were disabling or prevented them from going about what could be termed normal lives. So if you multiply Bloody Sunday by the number of incidents that there are in Northern Ireland, and you think about the hundreds of people who are affected by each incident, what I’m saying is that the emotional effects in the general population in Northern Ireland, I would estimate to be huge. I think there are huge numbers of people out there who are emotionally affected by all sorts of incidents throughout the troubles.
2). Untreated symptoms don’t necessarily go away. There’s this happy notion, which I think has been invented by civil servants and maybe academics as well, that you know you get over things – that something happens a year ago or two or three years ago, and three years down the line you’ve kind of put it away and you’re getting on with the rest of your life. That is not to be found at all.
“This research was done a year ago, it’s 23 years since Bloody Sunday. Almost 50% of the people we saw, after 23 years (22 years we looked at them, but I’m still in touch with them, so I know that they haven’t made miraculous recoveries as the result of my interviews or anything), almost 50% of them had trauma related symptoms 22 years later. And the untreated symptoms didn’t necessarily go away – people were still having panic attacks, they were still having difficulty going out of doors, they still panicked when they saw RUC patrols or foot patrols or people on the streets or whatever, and the other thing I mentioned earlier on was that just because people seemed to cope very well at the time, didn’t mean that they wouldn’t ever suffer from symptoms.
One person that I spoke to – he was actually one of the people that was shot on Bloody Sunday and survived, and I subsequently talked to him, and he was fine for I think it was 10 or 12 years, and he was made redundant after 10 or 12 years. Up until that point he had denied who he was, he didn’t disclose to people that he had been shot on Bloody Sunday at all. When he was made redundant he somehow lost something that was very important to him and which held him together, and he went into full, classical post traumatic stress disorder – he couldn’t go out of the house, he was having nightmares, night sweats, etc.etc, and he is the only person out of all those I talked to who was actually diagnosed psychiatrically as having post traumatic stress disorder. But it happened 10 or 12 years after the trauma – not at the time at all. So again I think that has implications for the long-term care of people who have been exposed to some of the traumas that have gone on. I said access to services is non-existent.
4. Need for non-medical support: “The other thing was that there was a fear on behalf of the people involved to look for help; because what they were scared of was that if they went to their doctor, the doctor would send them to a psychiatrist, and that the psychiatrist would tell them that they were crazy. So one of the conclusions I’ve reached is that it is actually very important to have non-medical self-help kind of support available to people; that actually there is no reason why a doctor or psychiatrist has to provide the type of help that people may require, but it’s very important to locate that outside of a kind of labelling system for people and that it’s normalised in some way.
The kind of things we saw were panic disorders – i.e. people would have panic attacks all the time without warning, so they were scared to go out shopping in case they would have a panic attack in the shop. One woman in particular, who actually did the transcription for the research, was very severely disabled by panic attacks – if I wanted to take her to a meeting, I’d have to call for her and take her in the car even if it was only in the next street; she’s very very scared about being out of doors. And sleep disturbance was virtually universal. It was very funny when I was presenting the research, because the other thing was that people didn’t talk to each other about this. So we’ve got this campaigning group of people working on the European Court case, and they don’t talk to each other about how they sleep at night; so I’m standing in front of them saying “well actually 50% of you have got sleep disturbance, and so they start looking at one another and saying “have you got sleep disturbance?”. There’s a kind of isolation – people were stuck with these issues and not necessarily talking to each other about how they were feeling about what was happening to them.
Hyper-alertness, I won’t bang the table again – you know what that is – and Somatic Disorders. In one family that I talked to, there were I think 10 children, one of whom had been killed on Bloody Sunday, and of the remaining nine, seven of them had duodenal ulcers. What I’m suggesting is that there may well be, now it’s not my field, but there may well be evidence that in the case of stress related things like ulcers, heart disease and so on, we may need to look at them in terms of the effects of trauma.
II. Disabled Police Officers.
“The second piece of research actually happened as a result of the Forum, believe it or not. There is some cynicism in the North about the effectiveness of the Forum, but this is an example of how it works. I went to the Forum and I talked about the research that I’d done, and one of the officers at the Forum said that he was very keen to involve people from the Protestant Community and also people from the Security Forces in the North, so I went back and he had given me the ‘phone number of the Disabled Police Officers Association, so I rang them up and went to talk to them. As a result of that I’ve done several interviews with them and I’ll be working with them trying to establish their experience which is very different to other groups and it’s certainly a huge insight to me, because I knew very little about it before.
The first thing that struck me was the isolation. If you can imagine being a member of the RUC in the North for the last twenty odd years and having to check under your car every day; not being able to trust people that you meet in the course of your life. That you go in to buy a newspaper, but you don’t know who’s there, who’s tracking you etc.. And there’s a kind of fantasy in the Catholic community that police officers are integrated into the Protestant community. From work elsewhere I know that that is not the case – there’s very much a little inner circle of people who are in the RUC who speak to each other, who trust each other, but almost anybody else outside of that experience is excluded. So it’s a very isolated and segregated community of it’s own.
That raises issues of identity, I call it Identity Management. I’ll tell you a story to illustrate it – one man that I interviewed has two bullets lodged at the base of his spine, and he’s on morphine continually. I was interviewing him and I said to him “well, how do you explain this when you go out for a drink or whatever?”, and he said ” well it’s very interesting, I used to go into the pub and people would say “What happened your leg?” (it looks as if it’s a bad leg, but actually it’s his spine), and I used to say I had polio”, and then I got caught out”. People would say to him “my sister has polio and there’s this new drug, Have you heard of it, you should go to your GP and get it”, and he would be drawn into conversations where he would be caught out basically, where it would be discovered that he didn’t have polio at all. So now he says to people, “Look mate, many years ago I got a skin full of drink, got into my car, I crashed the car, I did this injury to myself, I’m totally ashamed of it, I don’t want to talk about it, Okay”. So the man is unable to explain what actually happened to him in terms of disclosing who he is to people in the broader community. You can imagine the difficulty that sets up for the person emotionally, in terms of forming relationships and maintaining relationships, outside of that – all related to security issues and fear and all the rest of it. Huge anger at the authorities and the government, anger at the government particularly, about services. The perspective within the DPOA (Disabled Police Officers Association) would be: “we acquired these injuries through the serving of our country, look at the way we’re treated now, we’re shunted to one side and all the rest of it.”
There’s also associated a sense of injustice about compensation, about support, about access to disability benefits and all the rest of it. There’s huge anger at the attackers, and in some instances, that is generalised out into the Catholic community, as a whole, and I think that’s a feature of many of the groups that I talked to. There’s also a lack of services, and part of that is actually an awareness, as well, because one of the things that I discovered with this group is that they were actually asked, way back, if they wanted counselling, and the response that they made was, “what’s that?” So they actually didn’t know what to ask for, and therefore weren’t provided with it. They were very suspicious of me when I first went there, and they said ” are you a psychologist?”, and I said, “well sort of -yeah”, and they said “oh the last psychologist we met we didn’t like – they interviewed us for 15 minutes and told us we were all fine and sent us away”. They feel very strongly that they deserve a special continuing support, and they feel a loss of status, role and career….
“Generally within the RUC, it is the case that, if you declare yourself to be under stress, which you might well do if you imagine the kind of stress that people have lived in, you automatically lose any prospect of promotion. So there’s a huge disincentive for people to actually say “I’m under stress “. They must keep it to themselves and cope with it as best they can.
“Isolation from former colleagues is the other thing. If you can imagine the disabled police officer with the two bullets in his spine – to his colleagues he represents something, which is basically “this could happen to me next”. So quite often you’d find that able-bodied police officers have stepped back from disabled police officers, and they’re not actually integrated, they won’t visit them, they’re embarrassed, it’s too difficult, they’re fearful and so on and so forth. So there’s quite a lot of isolation from former colleagues within the ranks of the RUC. There’s also isolation from civilian organisations that are dealing with disability issues, for all sorts of reasons, security and all the rest of it. And there’s a lack of attention completely to the emotional needs of disabled police officers, including their own attention.
I mean they’ll talk to you quite happily about ramps and wheelchairs and pain-management and all the rest of it, but they are really tentative around issues of their own emotions and how they feel, beyond anger – they can be very angry quite easily – but beyond that there really isn’t any access to other kinds of feelings.
I locate that very clearly to the general attitude to stress within the RUC, very stoical – you must keep a stiff upper lip and get on with it, and it’s not a culture in which it’s okay to be stressed out, or to suffer from stress, and therefore when people are disabled there’s no repertoire of behaviour to deal with that at all
III. Proposal:
“I’ll just tell you the story of the proposal – basically what happened was I got a bee in my bonnet abut it after doing the first piece of research, and the bee in my bonnet was that although there were some existing services, really the group of people I’d talked to, the Bloody Sunday families that I had talked to, had been largely left without any kind of services at all, and I sit on the committee in Stormont, which is extremely boring, and they don’t do very much; so I thought this is an opportunity to kill two birds with the one stone – I can make the meetings more interesting and I might actually do something useful as well. So I took the research findings to this committee in Stormont, and said to the senior civil servants there, we need to do something in terms of delivery of services to people affected by the troubles. I was expecting to be thrown out but they listened very carefully and then they said “what do you think we should do?”, which I thought was quite a remarkable kind of question, but anyway, they didn’t seem to have any ideas of their own, so I went away off and told them what I thought they should do, and this is what I think they should do:
Independent Body: “The first thing which needs to be done is to establish an independent body responsible for the provision of support services to those affected. I said this earlier – it’s not political violence anymore, it’s the troubles.
I feel very strongly that there needs to be some kind of independent body. Independent from the State, because people who have been affected by State violence have a difficulty in using it. Independent from professional people like psychiatrists, because that puts a label on people that’s not useful, and it needs to be in the hands of people themselves, that they need to have a lot of control and access to it.
I don’t have any vested interest in this, I’m really putting the suggestion forward as a way of stimulating debate about what needs to happen, and I did that at the Forum, and I also lobbied at Europe, and in the Peace Dividend that was announced about a month ago there is an inclusion of monies to go to services to those affected by the troubles, and also in terms of pay management for those physically disabled by the troubles. There has been a kind of space created now for the creation of some kind of initiatives and that those initiatives are bottom-up, i.e.. they are created and controlled by the people themselves as opposed to people like me. So that’s basically it.”
2. Ann Mc Mullen (Ardoyne Survivors of Trauma Group):
“I haven’t been to university. I’m a mother, I’m a housewife, I’m a grandmother, I’ve four children, three grandchildren. My first recollection going back to the beginning of the troubles, is 1971. That was the worst part of it , when Paddy [ -] was shot dead in front of me, in our front garden. He was an IRA Volunteer, and he was out doing his bit for the people of Ardoyne, that’s what I thought then, and still do to a certain extent. We were evacuated as a family, I was the head of that family. Mammy and daddy and the older ones stayed and I was evacuated to Navan, down to this area. Going from that then through to 1981, was when my brother Anthony was shot dead by the IRA. He was 22 years old and married with three children. They classed him as an informer, which they still have no proof. About 6 to 8 weeks later, after Anthony was killed, what I believe was the real informer, was brought to the fore. During that time I suffered what I’ve called a nervous breakdown. I attended a psychiatrist twice a week. I got shock treatment twice a week. I was on all sorts of tranquillisers, and so was my mother at that stage. I am going through this in a very quick way, to get it out of the road or space without boring you to death. The next was 1989, when my father was shot dead. He was shot dead sitting saying the rosary with my Mummy, it was a Sunday night. It was the 19th of March and he had just made her a cup of tea. And after they had finished the tea they went out into the kitchen and were saying the rosary, when the UVF burst in and they shot him dead. He was shot nine times. Again the family sort of fell to pieces during the wake . There was a lot of good people came to that wake in the line of support and support for the family. I don’t think it was really necessary at that stage – it was really afterwards, when the funeral was over, for weeks after that, maybe four to six weeks after that, we could have been doing with some sort of help.
“My own feelings for the people that shot Anthony, which were the IRA, and the UVF that shot my daddy, are – I just feel so sorry for them. I’ve no hatred for them. I actually tried to meet the person that shot my daddy ….. He was sentenced to four years for his part in my daddy’s death. There was nobody else convicted. There was nobody ever got for my brother’s death, although we know who these people are, we’re in a sort of daily contact as you could say with Anthony’s killers.
“That’s it basically. That’s just it. That’s my story of how the troubles, as this lady calls them has affected me as a mother . And I hope this peace that we have, it’s very fragile peace, but I hope whatever it is that’s up there in the north, will continue. And people down here and England and America and everywhere else that’s involved within this peace process, to really work at it for the likes of me and my children that are coming up and the grandchildren, and not let it go back to what we have been living in for the past twenty-five years, which is mainly behind steel bars.
“I took my steel bars down when the cease-fire came about, and they’ve gone back up again from reading the “Sunday World ” front page, when the UDA or is it the Red Hand Commandos, some Protestant organisation are stockpiling. We wonder what they’re stockpiling for. So this is something else that we’re hoping doesn’t come about. If they want to stockpile for World War 3, let them go ahead, but leave Ardoyne alone, the rest of Northern Ireland- the ordinary people don’t want to be involved in it. That’s it.”
3. Brendan Bradley (Ardoyne Survivors of Trauma Group)
“ I’m from Ardoyne as well , from a large family, there was 15 of us, including my mother and father – 13 children. I can’t ever remember most of the family ever being employed, anytime they wanted to get employment they had to go, they had to move out of Ardoyne ….. there was never employment for them in Belfast. But a bit like Anne, I’ll talk about myself a wee bit first. I was the second youngest of my family – nine boys, the rest were girls – four girls. We were brought up by a mother and father, of course. Both of them were blind, registered blind people. The mother was very badly severely handicapped with blindness, the father had one eye – they met each other in the workshop for the blind on Ladbrooke or Ladybrooke, whatever it’s called. My mother was a Protestant, my father was a Catholic. I suppose they didn’t see eye to eye, it could be said! Both of them got married – they lived on the New Lodge Road, it’s an all-Catholic, ghetto-like area, in North Belfast. They moved up to the Ardoyne just before the Blitz. During the Blitz -1940-’45 World War 2 thing, they moved out of the house that they were in, into our house, bringing us right up 1969, when all the family had been born. The youngest brother of mine, Francis, and myself and a couple of other kids, were actually moved out……but we were moved out in ’69, but it wasn’t in fact until we’d seen what had actually happened – a place called Butler St., Hooker St., Herbert St., had been attacked by the B Specials, who led in Loyalist mobs who burned down the houses – that was my first experience. And then the shooting in the house of the B Specials, from a gun turret on top of an armoured personnel carrier and killing Lynch. That was my first experience of death but I was to learn more about death as the years went on. Ardoyne is a community of 6600 people.
“Out of them 6600 people over the last 25 years, there has been 180 people, friends, relatives and neighbours, killed. It affected me. I think the only way I can describe it is, I heard a lady talk about a mental block you put up . It affected me – I mean every street corner tells a story – you have to walk by it, and you remember the person that died there. It affected me as if I was an ambulance man or a fire brigade man – death is a thing that comes natural, this is a thing that you see all the time. I mean people with no heads and stuff like that, it just came normal.
“1975 came along – what happened then? Well there was a lot of police activity in our area, a lot of people were being pulled in for one reason or another. I was involved in what is termed “cross-community” work from 1973 to 1975. This cross-community work was sort of on the peace line; it was a wee hut where everybody , sort of “weighed in” – Protestants and Catholics. The police took great notice, great attention to what I was doing, not because of cross-community work, but because I knew everybody who lived in the wee village, within the Ardoyne. I knew everyone and everyone knew me – a big family, a big extended family. So what they were interested in me was – would I work for them? Would I come out and work as a spy on my neighbours, to find out who was up to no good? And when I refused this, they kept on harassing – every week you were being arrested, every week, for one thing or another. They used to do you for ‘ impeding a policeman in his duty’, “riotous behaviour”, “throwing petrol bombs at the police”.
“I remember being arrested at the same time that Anthony was killed, and they were trying to get me to work for them at the same time, and when I refused they brought up this charge – whatever – I think it was robbery they called it.
“Whilst being in prison, my brother actually died – he was killed in an explosion which was planted by the Protestant Action Force in a garage outside of Ardoyne, in the middle of town actually, in Belfast city centre. And what happened was – I wasn’t there, I’m only relaying what I heard happened – the brother went to see a picture in the picture-house, it was in town. By the way in Ardoyne there’s no facilities at all – there’s no picture-houses, no playgrounds, no nothing. The Belfast City Council will sit and tell you the most deserving place in North Belfast would be Ardoyne, but we don’t want to spend any money on it. Last year in [?] an area that joins our area, which again is a nationalist area, they spent £5 to fix a lock, that was the whole expenditure award – £5 from the City Council. But lucky enough we have other things set up there, I’ll explain them to you later.
“When the brother died, I was in gaol – I was in Long Kesh in the ‘huts’. I was on remand. And what happened was about 8 or 9 o clock in the evening, the doors opened and in come the prison wardens and the guy who was in charge, the warden or whatever you call him. And he comes up and he said, ” Have you a brother outside?”. I said, “I’ve got a load of brothers outside “. And he said “Have you one called Francis?”. I said ” I have “. He said ” Well he’s dead”. And he just walked away. This was this man’s compassion to me, telling me that my brother was dead.
“Francis was the youngest one of the whole family, and if he heard a sound like the lady made [bang], he would run, he would run. I mean he didn’t build up any immunity to the sound, he wouldn’t duck, he would just run, that’s about he way he was. And when he told me I couldn’t believe that he’d get caught up in such a thing, until afterwards I realised what had happened. He went to get a spare tyre that he had left in the garage, to be fixed, and he went back to the garage and his petrol gauge wasn’t working in the car. He was 17. And he asked the gent that was working behind the counter, ” Have you any spare petrol cans? ” Your man said ” there’s a load of them over there in that corner – go way over and get one”. So he went over and lifted a petrol can that was booby- trapped. A petrol can in all these petrol cans, that blew him, that blew his stomach and his hand and leg away. I mean it could have been anybody, but it happened to little Francie – fate I suppose. But the Protestant Action Force says that they were trying to kill somebody in the garage ……
“The next death happened in 1992 in the middle of a festival, the Ardoyne Fleadh Cheoil, in August, just after the festival actually …..
“It was the 21st August – a sister of mine had come over from England to give my other sister a respite from looking after the mother who was senile at the time. She was on her way home – it was her last day. She was actually leaving at 7 o’clock that night. She was walking from my home to another sister’s home, and somebody decided that they wanted to fire at the soldiers or the police who were coming down the road. And they fired three shots. And they killed my sister and they wounded another civilian – not very successful in their shooting at the people who they were trying to kill. But the end result was there was somebody who died, and it happened to be my sister. I couldn’t really say that I really grieved for my sister.
“When I went over to see, my brother was hanging over her; and she was face down on the ground, like a couple of yards from where I live. I said to him “Who is it?” And he says to me ” It’s Isobel “. And Isobel was so like trying to get up, to sort of look round her, but Isobel was beat out, I mean Isobel was going to die – I knew that. I just shook my head and says “I feel so helpless, I mean I can’t do nothing for Isobel, I mean Isobel’s gone or she’s going”.
“When I looked round at all the stunned people who were aghast that this here had happened – you know it happened in a busy street where there were loads of people going about their business to a shopping complex. I looked at them all in amazement – they were all standing there, you know the expression, or maybe you don’t know the expression of people standing aghast at what happened. And then as being part of a small community group I looked at Isobel and I looked at the people and I says ” I can do nothing for Isobel but I will try to do something for the rest of these people, through community work. What I’ll try to do is make them aware of how they are living and what way they are living in the area. So I got involved more – I buried my head deeper in the community work.
“On a workshop trip out – we do work in every street, we don’t have a club or a hall, or anything like that, we do work out on the street, because in a recent report it says that 75% of all children in North and West Belfast do not use youth facilities. There’s three thousand youths live in Ardoyne, so 75% of them is running about the street and nobody looking after them – nobody trying to help them. So what we did was we had this programme – we go out into the streets – we load the bus up with parents and children and we take them wherever they want to go. I mean if we have to bus them to a park ‘cos there’s no playing facilities, or an indoor play area or the zoo or wherever they want to go. And on one of these trips to a place called ‘Jungle Jim’s’, an indoor play area, I was sitting with the children, just last May (1994), and the guy who was driving the bus came over and he says , “I’ve a bit of bad news for you” . I says ” What is it ?” He says ” Big Martin was shot “. I says “was he shot in the bookies, was he shot in the bookmakers?”, ‘cos that here I expected him to be. But he says “No, he was shot in Patricia’s house”. I had to go away and find out what had happened. Well Patricia’s house was the house that my other sister was going to when she was shot, and she was going with Patricia’s daughter who was 11, called Joeline, and Joeline was standing beside Martin when he got shot. She was beside my sister when she got shot, at 11, and now she was standing beside my nephew when he got shot. She’s 12, 13 now.
“And having all these deaths in our area, 180, we see people again, I mean nobody has a monopoly on grief. Grief attacks all of us one way or another”.
“But Martin’s death really got to me, ‘cos Martin was a big simple fella, who had no animosity against anybody. It was actually the first thing he would have done when he came into my house or into anybody’s house, if there was a small child, he would have lifted it and put it on his shoulders and walked about. He was a big fella, but he wasn’t very brainy, he wasn’t very bright.
“So when these people came in to kill Martin, he was standing with a child on his shoulders, and my sister cooking chips, and the niece standing beside the sister. And this guy came in and he says “hi boy” and shot him four times in the head. We had to go in and identify Martin on the kitchen floor to the police. They says they wanted to get it over and done with – they didn’t want us to go to all the bother of getting a way out to the mortuary, so they let us do it there, which when we went in it was a bit of a mess.
Who really cares about us? “So as I’m saying, all these things – when Martin was being buried, that’s when it hit home to me “who really cares about us, really?” I mean the only people that care about us is us. And the only people that’s going to help us is us. Everybody else can talk about us, but they don’t talk to us.
Peace Dividend: “I went to the same things that the lady went to for the European money, for peace. In Balmoral when we had John Hume, Jim Nicholson and Ian Paisley, the three MEP’s for Northern Ireland – and there was people there from banks, that were looking for this money – saying “could we have this money, because we could make it much easier for the people to borrow from us”. There were people there with big farms saying anybody with money shouldn’t be excluded from the Peace Dividend. There were people there from Queen’s University who were looking for the money. Everybody was looking for this money, but it’s supposed to be for the damaged communities – the communities who have borne the brunt of the troubles, the so-called ‘troubles’.
Unemployment: “I had that gentleman, he was one of the European Commissioners – he came up to my house for tea, all he got was tea jam and butter, it was the only thing that was there, you know what I mean. I’ve been unemployed for seventeen years – I haven’t had a job. Any job I’ve been offered was £80 a week … £80 a week isn’t going to feed me – I have four children and I’m going to be a grandfather, hopefully. I mean the work that’s there – it’s non-existent. And the only work that can be created is the ‘feel-good factor’; if people feel good about themselves, if they can get someone in to create work like that there, for to make people feel good about themselves, that’s the only work we ever see coming to the Ardoyne.
Because there isn’t going to be any big Sony factories or big Ford factories, where they’d create hundreds of thousands of jobs – it’s never going to happen. So what do you do with all the unemployed? Me as an unemployed person, I mean as I’m saying, all these people were talking about me – they were all talking about the damaged community – I just looked at my family and said “we’ve got a microcosm of everything that’s happened in Northern Ireland – the family is a microcosm of everything that’s happened in Northern Ireland.
So what we thought was – I mean a couple of us got together and created a situation in Ardoyne – we’re building up an infrastructure, where people are trying to make their own way without, because government people come and they say to you “have you got your qualifications?” We don’t have no qualifications. The only qualification we have is ‘life’. We live there. We know exactly what’s wrong with it. You see all these people generalise about us – us, who live in a wee small community like Ardoyne, ” you know they’re all this and they’re all that..”, but we aren’t. “We’re 6600 different personalities in there who all want to shout – who all want to talk about their experiences, but nobody gives them a platform. The only ones they’ll talk to are the people who, if you don’t mind me saying it, are real educated. I mean we do a wee bit of research ourselves – to be successful in anything, 25% of anything to do with success is your aptitude, your brainpower and your talent, and the other 75% is commitment. And the people of Ardoyne, through thick and thin, through all these murders and everything that’s gone on, have the commitment – the commitment to live there, the commitment for a stable community, and the commitment to carry on to do whatever they want to do.
And, as Ann says, hopefully this peace will last, and that nobody else has to die – God, I hope that nobody else has to die. But unless they sort out the problem, they’re dealing with the symptoms, and the problem is a big problem, that they’re going to have to tackle – and that is the Irishness and the Britishness of the people who live in North of Ireland. Unless they sort that out, I mean 10 years on, who’s going to start burying our own children? Thank you.”
Chair: On behalf of the Meath Peace Group John Clancy thanked the speakers for coming. Before taking questions he mentioned an interesting statistic – “it was described earlier that over 200 people were affected by the 14 deaths of Bloody Sunday – if you equate that with the three and a half thousand that have lost their lives over the last 25 years, then somewhere between a quarter of a million and half a million have been scarred by that violence – I think that’s a salutary lesson to us all. I think it’s just interesting when all the rhetoric is done, and the posturing of the various groups, this is the hurt and wound that is left in the society that constitutes Northern Ireland”.
Editor’s note: there were many questions from the audience but these were not recorded
Meath Peace Group Report. 1995
Compiled by Marian Kerrigan from audio tapes recorded by Anne Nolan; edited by Julitta Clancy
Meath Peace Group contact names 1995: Anne Nolan, Slane, Co. Meath; John and Julitta Clancy, Batterstown, Co. Meath; Pauline Ryan, Navan; Philomena Boylan-Stewart, Longwood; Michael Kane, An Tobar, Ardbraccan
16th May, 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan.
Speakers:
Rev. Leslie Carroll (Presbyterian Minister, Tiger’s Bay, North Belfast)
Fr. Brian Lennon, SJ (Jesuit community, Portadown, author of After the Ceasefires – Catholics and the Future of Northern Ireland, Columba Press, 1995).
Rev. Timothy Kinahan (Church of Ireland Rector, Gilnahirk, East Belfast, author of: Where do we go from here? – Protestants and the Future of Northern Ireland, Columba Press, 1995)
Chaired by Maeve Lennan
Contents:
Rev. Leslie Carroll
Fr. Brian Lennon
Rev. Timothy Kinahan
Questions and comments – summary .
Biographical notes
Extracts from recent publications of Rev. Kinahan and Fr. Lennon
1. Rev. Leslie Carroll (Presbyterian Minister, Tiger’s Bay, North Belfast):
Time of crisis: “We live in a time of crisis – crisis of change and of identity, and also a time of joy and expectation as we wait to see what the outcome of the peace process will be; but I believe that we in the North and beyond must not only wait and see what will happen, but must also find ways with which to engage in the process at all levels, personal, emotional, political, community etc.”,
Stressing the need for the churches and ordinary people to be involved in the peace process, Rev. Carroll said “We must find ways with which to engage in the process at all levels. We have all played our part in the violence of the last 25 years, either by our disinterest or our sectarian interest, and some by active participation in sectarian violence. We have a responsibility to engage with other denominations in order that this time of hope cannot be lost”
Rev. Carroll explained that she worked in an inner city congregation in North Belfast, an area which had often been referred to as the “killing fields” of Belfast. Her church building is on one of the “peace lines” dividing the Protestant Tiger’s Bay and the Catholic New Lodge areas.
Perceptions of people in the Republic:
“As a Presbyterian I entertain the notion that generally speaking the people of the Republic are not particularly interested in what is happening in the North nor do they have any great understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the people who live there, and that is a particularly true perception of the unionist population.”
She quoted from a letter in the Irish Times (15th May) – “the Long Bore” – a letter expressing boredom with the “interminable peace process in Northern Ireland”. Such letters go a long way to “feed our insecurity”, she said.
“We in the North, or unionists at least, have yet to be convinced that people in the Republic are truly interested in us, as we have yet to be convinced by republicanism that there is room for us and for our Britishness.”
“Presbyterians and unionists in Northern Ireland are people who long to be understood, long to be listened to and to be taken seriously. It is our perception that the world has grasped republican and nationalist ideologies but has little sympathy or understanding of the unionist position.”
Unionist thinking: Unionist thinking was greatly influenced by the democratic structure of Presbyterianism, she explained, which is the largest denomination in Northern Ireland. At the annual Presbyterian assembly ministers and elders have equal number of votes. The business of the denomination throughout the year is carried out by boards and committees and within congregations there is shared responsibility. At every level, she said, decisions are made by groups which are accountable to the whole. Decisions are never made by individuals. Unionists, she said, find it difficult to accept things like the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Hume-Adams talks, the Downing Street Declaration and the Framework Documents.
“Documents and discussions given birth in secrecy give rise to deep suspicion…they represent hidden agendas and attempts to exclude us from the whole process.” As Garrett Fitzgerald said recently, “it is not always possible to know what is happening in the peace process”. It is certainly the unionist perception, she said, that others.. have been unwilling to show their full hand. There is a perception of secret deals being done. On the other hand, Unionists have always stated the case as they see it. “Part of our culture is not to negotiate but rather to state our case clearly and precisely as we see it. So we have come to be known as a suspicious and immovable people, hard-hearted and intransigent who care for the clarity of words more than we do for the process of negotiation.”
Some of this may be true, she said. But it is also true to say that the sense of alienation which Presbyterians feel from the process as a whole is “due to the fact that we are dependent on an entirely different system of government than the majority of people on this island.”
Presbyterian response in fragile time of hope:
Rev. Carroll went on to discuss how she saw Presbyterians responding to the issues which confront us in what is still a fragile time of hope: “As a denomination we have a responsibility to one another, both to challenge and support attitudes and thoughts, while at the same time engaging with other denominations, and indeed those of no denomination, in order that this time of hope, this Kairos moment might not be lost”.
“Presbyterians are people of the Word, that is the Word of God which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We have come to define ourselves in standards, most notably the Westminster Confession of Faith, which very clearly states what we are not. As Presbyterians in Ireland we are in search of a new identity or at least a revitalised identity which begins back at the Reformation…It is to this root that we must return, in order that we might become a people of positive and clear identity”, where the old insecurities might be swallowed up and people would feel free to enter negotiations.
Fear and insecurity:
“To exist by fear is to exist out of a profound sense of insecurity. That profound sense of insecurity comes our sense of being a minority on this island, a minority that wants to stay in the Union”. The unionist community have yet to move beyond their insecurity, she said, “so as no longer to be governed by the fear in which we exclude ourselves from the peace process”, and “the church in its various denominations has the duty to support, encourage and challenge.”
Quoting Cardinal Carlo Martini, she said there is fear of many things – fear of oneself, fear of exposing ourselves, fear of reciprocity which is at the root of all forms of paternalism and explicit and implicit possession of others, it produces an inability to enter into genuine dialogue. The unionist position, she said, is perhaps best understood in the words of Marcel Proust, “The true paradises are the paradises we have lost.” …”The lost paradise of the day when we knew ourselves to be a majority, still lives on in the minds of unionism“.
As Presbyterians and people of the Word, “we must also live with the words of Jesus”, she said, – “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” – and with the Psalmist – “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it”, which might be better written in our time “the earth is the Lord’s and everyone in it.”
“To live separate from one another is to live contrary to the Word and so we all, but particularly Presbyterians, must move away from concepts of winners and losers, defenders and aggressors, and move towards a concept of new community with shared expression and a shared experience of difference and hurt.” To return to the basic principle of the Reformation, she said, we must return to a commitment to being a people of the Word, made tangible in this day.
“To declare who we are and to speak into our differences, so that those differences no longer divide us but become the place of our meeting, and in this sense, our difference unites us.”
Individual conscience: Presbyterians uphold the right of individual conscience, she said. “This individualism has not however given us freedom in the political realm”, she said – the perception being typified by the question she was asked recently by a republican – “does one have to be a a unionist to be a Presbyterian?” It is the right of every individual to make their choice, and the “possibility for us to live in harmony despite our different choices.”
Time for courage and risk: “This is a time for courage, and also a time for risk. It is the time for the Church to declare its hand as an institution not of the present age, but of the age to come”. “For we are like no other institution in this society – our identity is not bound up with this age – our identity is ultimately bound up with the age that is yet to come and it is in this age that we find our fulfilment. So in this difficult and fragile time, we have the freedom to live beyond the identities which have trapped us and stifled us for the last 25 years and longer. We also have the responsibility to listen to others, and to listen in trust and expectation.”
Presbyterians have for too long been a suspicious people, Rev. Carroll said – “a people driven by fear.” “We have to learn to take the risk to trust, and to carefully challenge, in both love and trust, the words of people like Jim Gibney (SF) who wrote in the Irish News (May 15th) – ” We will consider any political models designed to accommodate the special characteristics of the Irish people which history has handed down to us. We must reassess our historical attitude to those almost 1m people who are of British origin and have lived on this island for several hundred years. They have carried their sense of Britishness with them during this time; while at one level it was a source of conflict, at another level, it has contributed to what constitutes the Irish nation today.”
“Until we change the dynamic of relationships from suspicion and fear to forgiveness and trust, we remain people of the past…We remain people paralysed, immobilised and disempowered”. Jesus was not in the business of paralysing individuals or communities, she said. “Jesus was in the business of setting free and empowering.” This clearly is the business of churches, and of us all.
Victims of violence: “It is time to move beyond the overwhelming sense of sacrifice while at the same time ministering to the needs of those who carry the deep wounds inflicted on them by the other community. They must not be forgotten in the struggle for a lasting peace in Ireland. Their loved ones will never come back, their injured bodies will not be made whole, their years in prison cannot be restored to them nor to their families…but to dwell on sacrifice with no sense of empowerment for the future is indeed to be paralysed, a sense of the sacrifices made can urge us on to something better”. “Too long a sacrifice will make a stone of the heart”, wrote W. B. Yeats.
The duty of every Christian and for the churches is as ever ” to allow theology to live”, difficult as that might be.
Rev. Carroll concluded: “We are left to wonder in the words of Robert Frost, whether it is true that “good fences make good neighbours” or if it is worth acknowledging and working with the notion that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”
2. Fr. Brian Lennon, SJ (Jesuit community, Portadown):
The ceasefires: “The ceasefires are a wonderful experience. They have transformed the situation, at a day-to-day level that I think is very difficult to imagine.” When the IRA ceasefire was announced, many people in Northern Ireland were not so euphoric as people in the South – at first they didn’t believe it. Even still “they are very very cautious.” Part of this was caution about what way they peace process might go and partly because the process of adjusting from a situation of violence, where actually there are certainties, to a situation of peace and where there is some uncertainty.
Confusion: But the ceasefires have produced enormous confusion in some people, he said. There is great bitterness and anger among many people, even among committed Christians – this is only human. “In reconciliation we confront confused feelings in ourselves and anger that may shock us in its intensity.”
Ambiguity and ambivalence: “The processes going on in the peace dialogue are ambiguous. There’s been an upsurge in street violence – and there may be more in coming months – for one reason that people will be less afraid of getting shot at.” The political gap between the parties involved is enormous, he said – between Sinn Fein and unionists on the arms issue, and the gap between Sinn Fein and both governments and all the other parties on this island, on the issue of consent. However he noted Sinn Fein’s participation in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the outcome of which will be to accept the principle of consent.
Fr. Lennon referred to an article by Fintan O’Toole after the IRA ceasefire, which commented on the ambiguity in language. As Rev. Carroll had said, Protestants like clear definite language – and “the one thing that John Hume and Gerry Adams did not give for 2, if not 20, years before the ceasefires, was clear and definite language“. But, “there was a clear answer on the 1st September last year”.
With all the difficulties, the peace process is still a huge step forward, he said. The IRA ceasefire statement “is like a beacon of light in the whole history of Irish nationalism”, that is, the commitment to violence side of it.
Task of the church: What is the task of the church in this context? – “To witness to the presence of God’s community among us, and that is a community of divergence, a community of difference. It’s starting point is the Trinity, probably the most forgotten teaching of all Christian truths, and the Trinity is a teaching about community – 3 persons unique and diverse but who are also one.”
Reconciliation and justice: The most central task for all our churches, Fr. Lennon said, is to give total, if not exclusive priority to reconciliation. “There is no more important task facing the churches.” This is not accepted by the churches in practice. “If we are not committed to reconciliation as a priority we are not in touch with God”. This should be of some concern. There are models in the scriptures – the Pharisees – who kept to the law and put their faith in the law and believed themselves to be in touch with God. The law was put above all else as the means of getting in touch with God, and Jesus said “no – you are wrong, the only way you get in touch with God is through compassion”.
Jesus’s life was dedicated to breaking down the divisions between the self-righteous and the sinners, and the foreigners who were outside the covenant community, Fr. Lennon said. God’s call was not simply to a narrow Jewish community. The parallel for today, is that “We will not be in touch with God by being members of churches, we will not be in touch with God by religious observances, but we will only be in touch with God by committing ourselves to reconciliation.”
Justice must go along with reconciliation, he stressed – one form of reconciliation is really an attempt at politeness used as a means to block dialogue and to avoid tough questions of division between people. There are different concepts of “justice” – it is a very strong word in the Catholic community of Northern Ireland. For that reason, “Right relationships” might perhaps be a more appropriate term than justice, but he would prefer to use “justice”.
Different concepts of justice: Fr. Lennon explained the different understandings of justice – 1) you will treat me justly when you give me what you owe me (very much a 17th century understanding of individual rights); 2) the biblical concept shalom – community involved in right relationships with each other and involved in relationships with one another that are “mutual relationships”. The second, biblical form is particularly relevant in the whole context of reconciliation, he said.
Policing: Turning to the issue of policing, Fr. Lennon said that in some respects this is the most important of the issues that have to be faced – “it is the one that is really going to impact on the lives of people in more deprived areas.” Catholics/nationalists will have to face issues in relation to policing, he said. “There will be no settlement of the policing issue based on a concept of justice which demands rights for nationalists only. There will be no answer for the policing issue, until nationalists take responsibility for policing in the North.”
“If the Catholic nationalist community feel aggrieved, and if Sinn Fein particularly feel humiliated in many respects by the peace process, the unionist community feel threatened, feel they are facing the brink, feel they are facing an inevitable united Ireland”, something which always surprises him.
That issue of policing is a demand on nationalists -“they have to play a role in creating new structures in Northern Ireland and in joining and taking responsibility in those new structures.” This is enormously difficult for nationalists, who have been in opposition to the State since its foundation. “In the end those structures will have to be built using words that are explicit and are clear”. Unionists have to face the fact that a different police service in Northern Ireland will be one “where there is change in its identity and change in its accountability…where nationalist will have to take up a fair share of the number of jobs in policing”
Concept of Irishness: The term “Irishness” can be understood in a variety of different ways, he said. Protestants say it is an exclusive concept and they are basically right. “I don’t think we really allow for the Britishness of people in our concept of Irishness”. Within the UK framework there is a concept of Irishness that is different -there Irishness is parallel to Scottish or Welsh or English. He is not absolutely convinced how strong within the United Kingdom there is respect for that diversity and …clearly there is a drive within the UK to separate themselves from Ireland. “this can be difficult for an Irish person, within the UK concept, living in Northern Ireland, faced with an Irishness understood by the rest of the people that tends to exclude.”
Reconciliation: “If we are to take reconciliation seriously we must make space to listen to each other and spend time with each other as you are doing here tonight”, he said. Lay people will perform a whole series of activities as in Portadown. We will have to face issues about our individual denominational worship. We have a long way to go “if we are actually going to put reconciliation, rather than maintenance of our own communities, as a priority.”
Editor’s note: extracts from Brian Lennon’s book After the Ceasefires – Catholics and the Future of Northern Ireland (Columba Press, 1995) are reproduced at the end of this report.
3. Rev. Timothy Kinahan (Church of Ireland Rector, Gilnahirk, East Belfast)
“Things have changed a great deal up in the North. Life’s so much easier now…There are still a lot of problems but life has changed remarkably for everybody”.
Reaching out: “The air is full of words….There’s plenty of advice, plenty of thinking, plenty of ideas, plenty of challenges, but…for far too much of the case, these thoughts and challenges and words are falling on deaf ears. We speak to our own respective communities and reinforce the sense of identity of our own people. There is very little sign of trying to reach out – to speak to the other in a way that can really be heard and to listen to what others have to say. The guns have fallen silent but there is not yet a ceasefire in our attitudes and in our words.”
Understanding: He spoke of a recent meeting of the Interchurch group on Faith and Politics addressed by a Unionist MP, who was asked by a member of the nationalist community to put himself in the shoes of nationalists, to understand them – “I can only do that when I’ve come to an accommodation”, said the MP. But, said Rev. Kinahan, “we can’t come to a realistic accommodation until we understand the way the other feels”. The MP in question would be similar to most unionists in this.
The Presbyterian tradition is very dominant, Rev. Kinahan said. Many Unionists are quite content to see what the other wants – to face a list of demands, but they don’t ever want to get to the situation where they can see why the other person wants those things, why the other person disagrees. There’s very little will to move out. Many unionists disbelieve the accusations of unionist misrule in the past, he said. “There’s a block there. It’s an understandable block in the light of our polarised communities, in the light of our situation and the pain and suffering of the last 25 years. But “it’s very easy to pillory people because they don’t understand or don’t want to understand. The more you pillory people for that the more you reinforce them in their unwillingness to move“.
Need to move forward: Christian people need to move beyond this, Rev. Kinahan said – “We need to take risks – to move beyond the ghettoes of our own traditions, the ghettoes of our own minds, the ghettoes of place, the ghettoes of community, the ghettoes of our own religious denominations”.
Parishes are inward looking by their very nature, he said. We spend a lot of time with our own people doing our own things. For most people involved in parish life it’s a big effort to take an extra step, to take on an extra commitment which involves extra time. “The church really does need to lead in the process of trying to get people to seek to understand. That’s all too rare from all sides. He said that the “para” church groups – Corrymeela, Columbanus Community etc. are working at the edges of the churches – not disowned but not fully owned by the mainline churches who are “caught in their own traps”. The central bodies of the churches sometimes come out with very good statements – positive statements for reconciliation and understanding, he said, and he cited the work of the Presbyterian Church and Government Committee. But these statements don’t filter down, he said. Most people are comfortable in their pews. “We are comfortable in our prejudices, we know where we are and we are afraid to move onto strange and uncharted waters, despite the promise of Christ that He will be with us.”
Negative voices: Despite the positive statements, most voices are negative, he said. Pious vacuity – statements produced that don’t say much, and are not worth the paper they are written on. “We play safe” – again, very understandable.
He related how the Church of Ireland bishops in the North recently went to see the Prime Minister, John Major. The impression was given that they were representing the unionist position. This reinforced all the stereotyping of the church being the spiritual arm of unionism. Again at the Forum – they articulated unionist fears – echoing prejudice but not challenging the people to move forward. That takes risks. There are many clergy who want to move forward, to be ecumenical, but play it safe – they don’t want to rock the boat, he said. They were more concerned with the buildings of the church, and keeping the congregation numbers up. Secularisation is gathering pace fast – this will accelerate hugely. Churches are therefore very reluctant to offend anybody in the ranks, and move nowhere.
His recent book was very critical of current unionism. Some felt that he was doing great damage to the church. Perhaps he was doing damage to the institution of the church, but perhaps it needs to be damaged and may need to be radically altered and rebuilt from the ground.
Maybe people who want to move forward need to be a conscience, he said – “seeking to apply the word of God to ourselves instead of criticising others”. “We’re too busy pointing the finger at others – we have to see what we can do and not leave it to others to make the first move.”
Protestant community: The problems are deeper within the Protestant community, he felt. Greater signs of flexibility among Catholics. There were cultural reasons for this. Protestants prefer things to be clear and decisive. Any sense of frameworks without bricks is threatening. “We need to recognise we are prisoners within our own history.” He saw very little sign of Protestants moving forward to make a gesture of generosity.
Protestant churches were largely unable to see the other point of view. “We feel misunderstood but do not seem to want to understand others.”
The churches need to recognise they are not the mainstream of Irish life – we need to return to being a voice in the wilderness, he concluded. But “how can we do these things without going so far ahead of our community that we lose them completely?”
Editor’s Note: Extracts from Rev. Kinahan’s book Where Do We Go From Here? – Protestants and the Future of Northern Ireland (Columba Press, 1995) are reproduced at the end of this report.
Chair: Maeve Lennan thanked the speakers and summed up the key points emerging from the discussion and the contributions of the speakers:
- Risk
- Time to take risk in trusting
- Fear in taking risks
- Trinity and community
- Communication. Too much secrecy
- Need to be involved in interchurch work
QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION – points raised
Integrated education; common religion taught to all children.
Catholics – time of crisis and time of conversion.
Reconciliation should be the first task of Christians.
Role of women – we must listen to the voice of women
Use of word “church” – should be “kingdom”
Divorce – how would change in the Republic affect North-South relations?
People are not listening to the churchmen. Bread and butter issues dominate.
Should we keep politics out of our interfaith dialogue?
Biographical notes on speakers:
Rev. Leslie Carroll has been minister in the Tiger’s Bay Presbyterian congregation, North Belfast, for the past 3 years. Before that she was assistant minister with the Rosemary congregation, also in North Belfast.
Rev. Timothy Kinahan is Church of Ireland Rector of Gilnahirk, East Belfast. From 1984-1990, Rev. Kinahan was Rector of St. Columba’s Whiterock, on the “Front Line” between the Falls and the Shankill. He is the author of a recent book Where do we go from here? – Protestants and the Future of Northern Ireland (Columba Press) which challenges many of the certainties that have dominated Northern Irish Protestantism for so long.
Fr. Brian Lennon S.J. has been living in a small Jesuit community in a working-class area of Portadown for the last fourteen years. He is the author of a recent book After the Ceasefires – Catholics and the Future of Northern Ireland (Columba Press) which examines the serious questions that have to be resolved from a nationalist point of view and analyses them in the light of major events in the history of nationalism.
Maeve Lennan is a counsellor psycho-therapist working in Navan and Dublin. She has considerable experience in ecumenical and interchurch work, having lived in Belgium for 20 years. She obtained a degree in theology in Louvain and worked in religious education for many years. Her ecumenical experiences range from religious education, ecumenical groups, pulpit exchange programmes, multidenominational prayer groups etc.
Editor’s note: Extracts from the recent books of Rev. Kinahan and Fr. Lennon follow:
APPENDIX – BOOKS:
1. Where do we go from here? – Protestants and the Future of Northern Ireland(Rev. T.C. Kinahan, Columba Press, 1995)
Starting from the assumption that the Ulster Protestant heritage is something to be proud of and is worthy of encouragement, Rev. Timothy Kinahan questions whether the best interests of the Protestant community are being well served by unionism as currently practised. He argues that the Ulster Protestant community has for too long been dominated by attitudes that are not consonant with their biblical faith and ideals. He feels that the best way for Protestants to preserve what is best and most positive in their culture is to talk, with an open agenda, to seek new paths, to take risks in the cause of greater peace, justice and prosperity for all.
Extracts and main points:
“It is a sad truth that the politics of the Northern Irish Protestant community as a whole are motivated by…narrow, tribally-based self interest, rather than by a broader feeling for the interests of the whole community….Yet gut reaction cannot just be dismissed. There are very good reasons (as well as very bad ones) why we Ulster Protestants have taken the political stances we have. We are an immigrant community, and immigrants are insecure, despite the centuries. We feel threatened…by the dominant Gaelic culture that surrounds us and are therefore reluctant to place too much trust in that community…We want to preserve our culture and identity which is a noble aim. Yet, we have hitched all our colours to one mast – the mast of unionism. This is very dangerous. Surely it would be safer, and wiser, to explore every honourable avenue to settlement, a settlement in which we all can feel secure.”(p. 53)
Writing in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the Framework Documents, Rev. Kinahan states that the negatives seem once again in the ascendant, and asks “where is the generosity of spirit that should be the hallmark of the Christian and the Protestant mind? Where is the real willingness to talk with an open agenda? Where is the willingness to admit that there is an Irish dimension… that needs more than toothless committees to give it life? Where is the willingness to take risks, to be bold for the sake of all?” (p. 56)
Reiterating the biblical challenge, Rev. Kinahan asks the following questions:
“Is it a Christian merit to cling to supposed privilege? Is it a Christian merit to refuse to talk with those enemies that Christ told us to love? Was it a Christian merit to dismiss, for seventy five years, the nationalist cries of alienation and pleas for justice?…Is it a Christian merit to seek for a return to Stormont-type “majority rule” while angrily denouncing any suggestion of a united Ireland?…Is it a Christian merit to seek a monopoly of political power when Christ regarded such power as a satanic delusion?” (p. 56) “A mutual recognition of the reality of fears, without necessarily accepting the validity of those fears, is vital for our future in Northern Ireland.”
Rev. Kinahan writes of the crisis in unionism and in Ulster Protestantism generally and hopes that the crisis “may yet force us to examine other options, and to begin to talk seriously and constructively with all comers. I hope that this will encourage us to seek new paths, to take risks for the cause of greater peace, justice and prosperity for all; to take risks to ensure that the society that arises out of our current chaos is one that respects and enhances both the identities and the cultures of all“ (p. 64)
Forgiveness: “Community forgiveness, by all sides, is desperately needed. If we refuse to forgive, or admit our own need of forgiveness, we condemn ourselves to live in a prison of bitterness from which there is no other escape.” (p. 66)
“A realistic, Christian input into the political and peacemaking process depends on the Christian churches and denominations getting their own houses in order.” (p. 74)
Christians in Northern Ireland today must ask many questions, the writer says. “They mustgrapple with them, difficult as they are, as individuals and as churches, at all levels. Theology of this importance cannot be left to the professionals or the synods: it must be done in the churches, in bible study groups, in the homes and bars and street corners of this land.” (p. 73)
“If we speak the truth to each other in love..instead of shouting our “truths” and refusing to listen or hear tell of any other “truth”, there is a chance that we might learn something from each other. If we have the courage to abandon the silly pretence that “our side” has a monopoly of truth, there is a chance that we might begin to have the riches of our own tradition enriched from the “other side”. If we can muster the courage to accept that we might be wrong…then there is a chance that a harmony might break out between our various church traditions.” (p. 81)
“Anyone who genuinely desires peace and justice in this land must seek them in both the political and religious spheres, at one and the same time. Even after the ceasefires there is no real shalom in our land. So long as we Ulster Protestants refuse to respect or even hear the political and religious opinions of our Roman Catholic neighbours, there will be division and hatred in our land.”(p.92)
2. After the Ceasefires – Catholics and the Future of Northern Ireland (Fr. Brian Lennon, SJ, Columba Press, 1995).
This book asks what tasks Catholics face in responding to the political and social realities of Northern Ireland and its relationship with both Britain and the south, in the aftermath of the 1994 ceasefires and the author approaches the issue from two different perspectives – the theological as well as the political. He looks critically, but constructively, at the Catholic/Nationalist community and offers not only criticisms but also shows possible alternatives.
Arguing that reconciliation and justice must go together, he goes on to outline the major concerns of Irish nationalism at the 1994 ceasefire, and examines topics such as the nation state, the issue of consent, political structures, security, the issue of minorities, pluralism and the treatment of economically deprived people.
Fr. Lennon poses the questions that remain to be resolved and analyses them in the light of major events in the recent history of nationalism: the Forum for a New Ireland (1984), the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) and the Downing Street Declaration (1993):
– Do nationalists fully accept the principle that N.I. should remain part of the UK as long as the greater number of its people desire?
– How is the Irish identity of nationalists in N.I. to be recognised?
– What sort of structures should there be in policing in order to take proper account of nationalists as well as unionists?
Consent: Outlining the differences between the SDLP and Sinn Fein in their understanding of nationalism, Fr. Lennon states that the issue of consent has not yet been resolved. “There has been movement from 1980 so that now all the nationalist parties, with the exception of Sinn Fein, are committed to accepting the principle of consent as outlined in the DowningStreet Declaration.”
Faith: Behind the political and constitutional questions, he argues some faith questions: “What sort of faith do we bring to our political dilemmas? In what way do we view our political opponents?”
“Divisions among the churches reinforce the political and secular divisions that exist. We have inherited a tragic history in which our ancestors were divided across a range of issues, including religion. But because we have inherited these divisions we are faced with the task of responding to them. Our response can…continue and reinforce these divisions…or we can tackle the divisions and pass on interchurch relations radically different from those we have received.” (p. 92-3) “In Northern Ireland, people are divided in their housing, jobs, schools, interpretation of history, attitude to their state and political loyalties. This produces a separateness that is lethal.” (p. 93)
Community: “The degree to which the church responds to its calling to be a sign of God’s community in the world is the degree to which it will be in touch with God. It needs to make the building of community an absolute priority.”
Northern Ireland political identity: “There is a need for Catholics, out of their faith commitment, to contribute to a crucial task: helping to develop a Northern Ireland political identity…Whatever political settlement is arrived at in the future, the people of Northern Ireland will have to live with each other. In almost any political scenario, Northern Ireland is going to continue as a political entity, albeit as part of some wider structure. There is therefore a crucial need to encourage anything that helps the development of a positive Northern Ireland identity for both nationalists and unionists. If all the churches in Northern Ireland gave themselves seriously to the task of encouraging such a process, it could make a dramatic impact for good.” (pp. 114-115)
In the final two sections of his book, Fr. Lennon integrates the scriptural and political vision and suggests changes in the area of church and worship (looking particularly at issues such as intercommunion, ecumenism, interchurch marriages, role of clergy and the marginalisation of women), and secondly in the relationship between church and society (political issues, integrated education, divorce, cultural identity). He looks at the continuing theme in Irish nationalism that the British have been responsible for grave injustice against the Irish:
“The wrongs that the British have done to Irish people need to be acknowledged. This is crucial in the healing of memories… Because of wrongs committed in the past, and wrongs in the area of justice that are still being maintained by the British government, British people have a particular duty to be concerned about the well-being of Irish people. However…Irish people have also done great wrong to British people. The most obvious examples are the atrocities committed by the IRA..The IRA are part of the Irish people just as the Nazis were part of the German people. So it isat least appropriate that Irish people play a special role in seeking the welfare of British people as a result.” (p. 117)
“Forgiveness is part of reconciliation … it is the task of the victim to offer it. But there is no reconciliation until those who cause the suffering come to terms with what they have done and seek the forgiveness of those they have harmed.” (p. 160)
The book concludes with the author’s constitutional and political suggestions covering issues such as a Bill of Rights, Articles 2 and 3, Northern political structures, North-South structures and policing changes.
“Good states do not get built by accident. They come into existence because of hard political thinking and action. They depend on a vision. That vision has to take account of the needs both of individuals and groups within the body politic. It also has to deal with external relationships. The vision has to be inclusive. It has to balance power between different groups and classes. It has to protect minorities.. it has to be a dream to which all can relate. It has to be a means by which one can have pride in the state and identify with its people.” (p. 162)
Ends
Meath Peace Group report – May 1995. Compiled by Julitta Clancy
Contact names 1995: Anne Nolan, Gernonstown, Slane, Co. Meath; Julitta Clancy, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co. Meath
25th April, 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan
Speakers:
Marian Donnelly (President, Workers’ Party)
Cllr. Bill Ramsay (Alliance Party, Craigavon Borough Council)
Chaired by John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
Editor’s note: There was a very good attendance at the talk, which included local councillors and people coming not only from Meath but also from adjoining counties. The talk was recorded – however the report is not a full transcript but contains main points and extracts from speeches
Contents:
Main points and extracts from speeches
Questions (brief summary)
Biographical notes
1. Marian Donnelly (President of the Workers’ Party
“It will take a long time to break down the barriers – there have been so many victims, and so many scars”, said Marian Donnelly (Derry), President of the Workers Party at a Meath Peace Group talk in Dalgan Park, Navan, on Tuesday 25th April. The meeting was also addressed by Dr. Bill Ramsay, an Alliance Party councillor on Craigavon Borough Council. Both speakers outlined their respective party policies and hopes for the future. (The D.U.P. speaker failed to appear).
Ceasefires: Marian Donnelly described the great changes that had come about since the ceasefires: “After the ceasefires there was euphoria, there was rejoicing and relaxation. That may have subsided somewhat but the sense of relief is still evident in the pattern of life of the people as they tentatively re-discover, reconcile, seek normality, savouring this new found peace”.
Peace, she said, meant many things: “a stanching of the blood, an end to investment in destruction and in counter violence by the state; it means freedom from fear – to be able to speak your mind without fearing the midnight knock on your door; it means the opportunity to meet the man or woman down the street and exchange views, the chance to work, to play, to shop, to travel in security; it means to hope that there will never be a return to the murderous sectarian campaign which brought so much tragedy to so many and diminished the quality of all our lives.”
Workers’ Party objective: Ms Donnelly set out the long-term objective of the Workers Party – “A democratic, secular, socialist, unitary state in the island of Ireland – a Republic. This can only be achieved by the majority in each state demanding and voting such a transformation.” “Our support for the democratic process and for the rule of law is absolute and unequivocal“, she said. “The central pillar of our platform for Northern Ireland is the creation of a united integrated democratic community”, she continued. “We are firmly rooted in the tradition of Tone and the United Irishmen in that we believe in the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter – or to put it in modern terms – the unity of the Shankill and the Falls. This is not romantic nostalgia nor political naivety – but a principle that has informed the best political action for 200 years. Unless such a principle permeates all Irish political thought then we run the risk of sinking deeper into the morass of sectarian division and hatred“, she said. “We insist on the primacy of this unity as the basis for political, social and economic progress, in particular for the most deprived and exploited. Anything which intensifies the divisions must be seen as anti-democratic, anti-freedom and must be resisted; for that reason we have consistently declared ourselves hostile to all forms of sectarianism – in politics, in education, in employment, in housing, in sport – wherever it has reared its ugly head.”
Resumption of violence: Ms Donnelly deplored a recent interview by Albert Reynolds when, in criticising British tardiness in arranging talks with Sinn Fein, he practically justified a resumption of violence. “No one can blame them”, he said. “This is wrong – everyone will blame them”, she said.
On the talks issue, she said “Failure to talk may hold up the political process, but it should not interfere with the peace process – it should not be used as an excuse.”
“There is no justification for violence now – just as there was no need for it 25 years ago,” she said. Every other option was open as the successes of NICRA demonstrated. Subsequent negation of those gains was due to the outbreak of violence as well as the heavy-handed reaction of the state. “We cannot accept that abiding fully by the democratic principle in any way militates against the pursuit of either Unionist or Nationalist objectives.”
Guarantee for peace: The best guarantee of the extension and deepening of peace is the will and total determination of the people to resist any and every effort to persuade them that carnage has a place in our political life, she said, and “this will is being forged and this determination is being secured in every section of the community”.
“Peace is no longer a demand it is a reality, no matter how fragile”, she said, “and the people will deal harshly with anyone who seeks to turn back the clock. “
Framework Document: Ms Donnelly outlined 3 continuing obstacles to lasting peace:
(i) The sectarian nature of N.I. society
(ii) The democratic deficit
(iii) Social and economic deprivation.
While welcoming the Framework Document, she said it had only addressed the second obstacle and had other limitations. “We have the opportunity of making real progress with peace the necessary context in which to create new political and economic structures. A crucial weapon against a return to violence is democratic politics. The most enduring guarantee of peace would be agreement among political parties that the basis for progress is total and unconditional acceptance of the democratic principle.” People have been deprived of power for nearly a quarter of a century, she said. “We must take on responsibility and accountability for our lives, problems, decisions, actions. We must establish institutions which will enable us to do that – to deal with difficulties of economic, social and environmental nature which have escalated rapidly while violence and prejudice diverted our energies and resources down blind alleys.” The WP welcomed the Framework Document, she said, while recognising its limitations. “Our position over the past 20 years has been support for a democratic devolved government underpinned by a Bill of Rights.”
Bill of Rights: A Bill of Rights could be implemented immediately and would be important in gaining acceptance for a political settlement, she said. “The Workers Party argued for years for a Bill of Rights, a cornerstone of democracy, asserting fundamental rights and liberties of all citizens and groups, guaranteeing inalienable rights of freedom and equality before the law. … A Bill of Rights would lay down democratic parameters within which political progress can be made and at the same time perform an important social, psychological function in relation to the exercise of state power and vital for maintenance of confidence within the community. It would offer people a constructive, constitutional way of redressing wrongs, challenging prejudices and achieving change.”
Sectarian divisions: The Workers Party reject the conventional description that NI is composed of two disparate politico-religious communities, she said: “this is politically and historically inaccurate; the Workers Party belongs to an anti-sectarian, radical tradition which has played a major role in combatting armed conflict and in promoting issues to unite rather than divide.”
It is within the two main power blocks that sectarian attitudes and practices are entrenched and nurtured, she said. “The sectarian divisions in our community are deeper now than at virtually any other modern period and are reflected right across the socio-economic, cultural, educational and geographical dimensions of the state, perpetuating a violence mentality and strangling any chance of success. A whole generation has grown up knowing only a divided society dominated by gunmen and inept politicians who are motivated by sectarian bitterness and inbred prejudices, who maintain support by exploitation of real or imaginary fears and grievances. In the moral and mental as well as geographical ghettoism bigotry thrives and violence is accepted as the logical way to settle disputes. Tribal instincts are strong and people feel obliged to explain and excuse atrocities which are perpetrated by their “side”.”
Ms Donnelly said that those in positions of responsibility must actively seek the breaking down of sectarian barriers to get rid of outdated antagonisms and prejudices. “There is no point in preaching peace while banging the same old sectarian drum at every turn around and scaring people into separate camps. There are still enough twisted individuals, enough warped minds to keep the campaign of squalid murder for another quarter century …The vast majority of people want peace and democracy – the right to a job, to a house; they do not want to bequeath a legacy of bitterness or violence born of these last two decades to their children.
They do not want to tell them that we can’t solve our problems or that they must live in a society increasingly ghettoised, deprived of political culture, torn asunder by medieval hatreds. People want mutuality of help rather than strife, acceptance rather than destruction, compassion and peace rather than confrontation and blood letting.”
“We can have no victors, for that would mean vanquished”, she said, and “terrorism and suffering thrive in the vacuum caused by political intransigence”. The problem must be tackled without any trace of triumphalism or point scoring. “There must be compromise.”
New agenda: “We are entering a new political era, a new political arena, we need a new agenda which will reflect the needs and interests of the people. The sectarian system must be dismantled – in all its structures, attitudes, values; the apartheid mentality must be challenged where ever it surfaces – politics, education, employment, culture, recreation, housing patterns.”
Education: One area to begin is in the field of education, she said. “There is no moral, economic, social or ethical reason to maintain a segregated system of education where children at best are building life long friendships and forming attitudes based on one part of the community only; at most they are developing a sense of fear, mistrust and even hatred of the other side. … If peace is to be lasting you must set about changing society now. It means confronting substantial barriers but steps to resolve this destructive chasm must be a major priority if life in NI is to be raised beyond its present level. We must cultivate a climate of tolerance, of respect for diversity, as a source of enrichment rather than confrontation.”
Poverty and unemployment: Ms Donnelly then spoke of the “horizontal” division reinforced by the critical unemployment situation – widespread structural and cyclical unemployment plus extensive low paid, part time, low esteem jobs. “Despite millions of pounds and projects there are still unacceptable levels of poverty and deprivation. Obviously no coherent plan, no real strategy – each small agency looking after its own patch and competing with each other.” She pointed to the 100,000 unemployed, 375,000 living below poverty line, education system which treats 80% of children as rejects, and a deteriorating health service.
The Worker Party proposed a “Central Commission for Social Reconstruction, an All Party Jobs Forum, and a coherent imaginative, forward looking plan to combat unemployment and poverty. “Our slogan Peace, Work, Democracy is not a mere catch call to be trotted out at elections – it has concrete meaning woven into the fabric of the struggle for political and economic power. Freedom means freedom from poverty, from inadequate housing and from an economic system which allows such poverty to exist alongside extravagant wealth.”
Ms Donnelly concluded: “We are about changing society, about creating the climate and conditions where the vast majority can live in dignity… This is not a task for small-minded people with only an eye for today. It is a task for people with a vision of tomorrow.”
2. Dr. Bill Ramsay (Alliance Party; filling in for Mary Clarke-Glass)
Dr. Ramsay outlined the historical development of the Alliance Party which he said had equal Protestant and Catholic membership. On Craigavon Council the Alliance members had a good working relationship with the Workers Party, he said. Being a small party, devoted to non-violence, it was very difficult to get media attention he said, and he commented on the saturation coverage given to Sinn Fein which had 51 local councillors, while his party had 45. In such circumstances it was difficult to promote peace, he said. The media seemed interested only in bad news.
Dr Ramsay said that the Alliance also called for a Bill of Rights, but they did not believe in forcing people into integrated education. His party welcomed the Framework Document as a basis for negotiation, and believed in equality of treatment for all. He looked forward to a society where people would be at ease among themselves and would be able to feel free to discuss religion and politics openly.
Questions: After the talk, questions were asked on a wide range of issues including Integrated education, Housing, Community relations, De-commissioning of arms, Funding for jobs, Devolved government.
Asked about ways of improving North-South relations, Marian Donnelly called for more people from the Republic to make friendships with people from Northern Ireland, to travel North and to invite people down and she praised the work of the Meath Peace Group. Isobel Hylands (Lurgan) was commended for the talks which her group Interaction had organised in Craigavon Co. Armagh, bringing speakers from political parties in the Republic and Northern Ireland to talk on issues in her area.
Biographical notes on speakers:
Dr. Bill Ramsay, Portadown. Member of Alliance Party since foundation 25 years ago. Member of Craigavon Borough Council, 1973-1981 and 1985 to date, and parliamentary candidate in several elections; retired G.P.
Marian Donnelly: School teacher; interested in political and social activity since childhood. Joined Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in late ’60s and founder member of County Derry branch. Active member of the Workers Party (formerly Republican Clubs) since 1969; President of the party since 1992. Also belongs to GAA and local drama group and various community and women’s groups.
Meath Peace Group report – May 1995 – compiled by Julitta Clancy
Tuesday, 28th February 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan
Speakers:
James Tansley (First Secretary, British Embassy)
Eamonn O Cuiv, TD (Fianna Fail)
Andrew Boylan, TD (Fine Gael)
Brian Fitzgerald, TD (Labour Party)
Joyce MacCartan (Women’s Information Network, Belfast)
David Tower (Community worker, N. Belfast)
Chaired by: John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
Contents:
Summary of main points and extracts from speeches:
Questions and comments
1. James Tansley, First Secretary, British Embassy, Dublin:
Mr. Tansley explained the principal features of the Framework Documents:
1. The Strand One document incorporates the British Government’s ideas for restoring local democracy in Northern Ireland.
“What is needed is a structure of government that combines democratic legitimacy with a system of checks and balances“. He described the suggestions for a new assembly in Northern Ireland having legislative powers, but no tax-raising powers.
2. The principles behind the Strand 2 document were consent, constitutional change to reflect consent, and self-determination. The North-South body envisaged would not give the Irish Government joint sovereignty over Ireland. There would be checks and balances and there must be agreement both North and South. Contrary to some opinion, there is no pre-determined list of functions to be allocated to this body, although suggestions are included in the document. There is no intention to impose ideas, he said.
3. The Strand 3 document outlines suggestions for addressing the relationship between both governments, replacing the Anglo-Irish Agreement. This is not intended to be a hard-and-fast blueprint, he said, but was very much a consultative document.
Only by addressing the 3 relationships will we find agreement on the island, he said.
To sum up, the Framework Documents allows for:
• The restoration of democratic accountability
• The enshrinement of the principle of consent
• The preservation of the existing birthrights
• The protection of civil, political, social and cultural rights.
He stated that the reaction to the document has been very variable, but he would like to make it clear that there is no intention on the part of the British Government to impose these ideas. They were interested in other ideas that might be presented, and he hoped that the parties would eventually come up with an agreed framework. Once agreement was reached the proposals would be put to the people in a referendum and then would go for approval to the Parliament at Westminster. He believed that the document should be read in its entirety. The many positions were hard to reconcile and there would have to be compromise, he concluded.
2. Eamon O Cuiv, TD (Fianna Fail):
Deputy O Cuiv stressed that we need to go back to the the background to the situation. We need to understand where we’re coming from. He would like to make two points on this:
1. People might want to get away from the notion of territory, but we all live under a government and under laws or a constitution. In Northern Ireland, there are different views:
(i) nationalist view – up to people of whole island
(ii) DUP history of N.I. – stresses there is a N.I. identity separate to rest of Ireland
(iii) British constitutional position – what happens in the island of Ireland is solely a matter for the British Parliament
2. Is there a territorial claim in our Constitution? In his belief, No. According to Article 1, the Irish nation can choose its own form of government; Article 2 is the traditional national claim; in Article 3 the laws will only apply to the 26 counties.
On the 3rd strand he said that government was not an issue in the UK or Republic, but it is an issue in N.I.
Nationalists feel very much part of the Irish nation, he said – all feel part of the one family. There was also a unionist family – they would like local democracy copperfastened by Westminster because they fear the rest of the people on the island, north or south.
On the Framework document he said that he would go along with most of its tenets. He believed it moves the situation forward, but it is not the final solution. It allows people to move into frameworks they can live with.
For nationalists – rather than dry words in a Constitution, this would allow them to start building things on a common ground.
For unionists, two elements are attractive: 1) local democracy; and 2) nationalist Ireland would reaffirm to unionists that we cannot arrive at solutions that didn’t find acquiescence with them.
But the status quo cannot be maintained, he said.
The effort in the Framework document is to get the balance right.
He understood the unionist position to some extent – a large part of N.I. is totally nationalist-dominated. N.I. isn’t simply divided – there are nationalist and unionist-dominated areas. Their fear is once an all-Ireland thing gets going the border would start to disappear – these weren’t natural borders.
“We have to constantly get across to unionists that we have no desire to visit on them what was visited on the nationalist community“, he said.
“They must also be persuaded by the British Govt that they can’t say “no” forever to the people of Britain and the people of the south – they can’t work out an agreement with the nationalists in N.I. without coming to an agreement with the south. “
Deputy O Cuiv stated that he believes there is very little difference between nationalists north and south. Unionists must realise they have to come to some accommodation.
“The Framework will work and it will only work if it’s brought to us in its entirety. In that framework we are once again giving our assurances to the North, and we’re writing it into our Constitution if they want it; that we can reach no solution without their consent was never in doubt.”
Addressing the British Embassy official Deputy O Cuiv outlined his own understanding of the broad nationalist view on the island: To most nationalist people, the symbols of the Crown can be hurtful, he said. He had said in the past that he would have no objection to a united Ireland in the Commonwealth, but he had been criticised for that. We must realise that symbols are powerful to many people and there should be rapid moves in nationalist areas to address the problems.
Policing: Deputy O Cuiv said that it was time to change the police – “they must have no identification with one community or the other”.
There is a need for demilitarization of both the paramilitaries and the police. If we want peace to last, we must be sensitive to these issues.
Prisoners: this was an emotive issue, he said, and he outlined some of the problems faced by families of prisoners. He would beg that we move forward on the issue of prisoners – release the prisoners – this would be a token of good will. “The communities the prisoners come from are also the communities where most of the victims come from”.
“If prisoners are released, it would allow the compromises that nationalists will have to make much easier to bear, and those severed by history could go forward together and bring peace and prosperity in a united way to this island.”
3. Andrew Boylan, TD (Cavan/Monaghan), Member of Fine Gael delegation to Forum for Peace and Reconciliation
Deputy Boylan began by congratulating the members of the Meath Peace Group for the work they were doing. He was aware of what was being done in Meath and had heard very good reports of the talks from people in Cavan who had come to some of them. He said it was very important to continue with this work.
“Peace will last because people want it”, he said. He lived just 4 miles from the border and was very much aware of the savage killings that had been going on. The ordinary people want peace, he said, and the men of violence have been silenced. But fear was a big factor.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement and the International Fund for Ireland had brought about great developments. In all this we mustn’t forget the 6 border counties who had also suffered immensely. Many of the towns and villages in these areas had been totally devastated over the period. These areas must also benefit from the financial spin offs.
Turning to the Declaration he said that the underlying principle was consent and consent will only come about when people understand each other and trust each other. In his area people don’t talk about unionist or nationalist, but about Protestant and Catholic – people from both communities can work together, so why can’t they work together in N.I.? Fear was the biggest factor he said, and we all have a role to play in dispelling fear.
On the Framework Document, Deputy Boylan said : “lasting peace and stability on this island requires that three sets of relationships be addressed: the relationship between the two communities in Northern Ireland, the relationship between both parts of this island, and the relationship between the sovereign governments in Dublin and London.
“In the documents published last week the two Governments have set out their shared view of the points that need to be met if the three relationships are to be satisfactorily accommodated.
“May I briefly say what the Framework document is not. It is not a prescription for an unpalatable dose of medicine. It is not a blue print rigidly to be imposed on the people of Northern Ireland. It is not a cage within which their political leaders will have their dialogue confined. It is not an Irish nationalist agenda. It is not a British agenda. What is it? It is a view, shared by two governments, as to what might most usefully be done to deal with the three, fraught and difficult, sets of relationships.
“It represents an assessment by the two governments of what we think might be an agreed outcome from future talks involving the governments and the Northern Ireland political parties. We believe we have got it right. We are open to persuasion by anyone who believes otherwise.”
“It is now a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, and also for the people in this part of Ireland, and in Britain, to study the document, and I recommend that they do so in a constructive and calm way.”
“No party will regard this document as meeting all their requirements and aspirations. The document represents balance and compromise. If its main elements become the basis for new institutions and political arrangements, I believe that they will ultimately command the widespread support necessary to ensure a fair and effective arrangement for the three sets of relationships to which I referred.”
He said that the Framework Document was founded on four guiding principles:
(i) The principle of self-determination as set out in the December, 1993 Downing Street Joint Declaration;
(ii) The principle that the consent of the governed is an essential ingredient for stability in any political arrangement;
(iii) The principle that agreement must be pursued and established by exclusively democratic peaceful means without resort to violence or coercion;
(iv) and, finally, the principle that any new political arrangements must be based on full respect for, and protection of the expression of, the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland and must, in an even handed way, afford both communities in Northern Ireland parity of esteem, including equality of opportunity.
In conclusion, Deputy Boylan proposed the setting up of a Peace Bursary for the arts, “to encourage our talented young people, North and South, and which in its first year would be devoted towards composing an anthem incorporating the best of both traditions in this country.”
4. Brian Fitzgerald, TD (Labour, Meath; Member of Labour Party Delegation to Forum for Peace and Reconciliation):
Deputy Fitzgerald welcomed his Oireachtas colleagues and the First Secretary of the British Embassy to the Meath constituency.
He said that we have to consider where we are and where we are likely to be.
” We have an opportunity not to make the same mistakes as were made over the last 70 years. We have an opportunity we should grasp.”
He asked us to consider what might happpen if we don’t. He explained how before the loyalist ceasefire he had met with some former paramilitaries – they were anxious for the ceasefire but were afraid the IRA ceasefire wouldn’t last – “If the ceasefire breaks down, Greysteel or Loughinisland would have nothing on what is likely to happen,” he was told. He said that he came away from the meeting feeling a deep responsibility to ensure that we have a lasting peace.
When the State was set up, both governments sat back and ignored N.I. – perhaps there were good reasons, economic or otherwise, through the thirties, forties and fifties, for this.
Then in the 1960s, we saw the education changes manifested themselves in the civil rights movement. We were all shocked when the violence started. Both governments were not prepared. Bitterness and hatred had built up over all those years.
What happened in the last 25 years changed the thinking of most people in the south – previously many people held a simplistic view of the problem. If Britain left, there would be no further difficulties. Most of us were not aware of the unionist sense of British identity.
“Over the last 25 years, people took up violence in our name. We have learned a lot, albeit at a terrible cost.”
“We can all feel guilty – we glamourised what was happening through song and verse. We may have incited young people with nothing to do, to join the republican movement”, he said.
“We must not make the same mistakes. We must see what we can do as individuals in the Republic to reconcile the two traditions“
We need to look at our Constitution and at our education system, he said. We should not be afraid – we need to use whatever programmes are available to outreach to the unionist community. The unionists are nervous – they feel Britain doesn’t want them and they don’t want us.
Churches: The churches have a major role to play, he said – and that includes all churches. Deputy Fitzgerald said that the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation has been accepted by most political parties on the island. Many people have made submissions – over 350 to date. He was very disappointed that the Catholic Church had not made a submission and he asked the audience to try and get the Church to make a submission, which other churches have already done. Trade unions too have a particular role to play and many have suffered abuse over the years. Women’s groups are playing a major role in the community also, he said.
Prisoners: Deputy Fitzgerald said that the Prisoners’ issue must be addressed – in a sensitive way. “We must also remember the victims. People who have suffered are often softer on the issue, than people who have not suffered. Resettlement programmes must be put in place. But there are differences of opinion here – one group wants all prisoners released and wants to look after them themselves; the other group wants resettlement programmes.”
These issues must be addressed and we have the opportunity now.
Forum for Peace and Reconciliation: he believed the Forum had a major role to play. Many issues are being addressed there, and a wide variety of views was being expressed. People in the south have changed considerably.
“The peace dividend will create an economic dividend that will benefit all”, he said. How much could have been done to address economic deprivation here with the money spent by both governments on security? he asked.
Mr. Fitzgerald ended with a quote from James Connolly, contained in the Labour Party’s document on the nature of the problem.“Ireland without her people is nothing to me”….
He said that the work of the Meath Peace Group clearly reflected the image of Connolly and hoped they would continue and that other counties would follow their example. For his part, he was glad to offer whatever help he could give.
5. Joyce McCartan (Women’s Information Network, Ormeau Rd., Belfast)
[Late arrival]
Joyce McCartan apologized for coming so late. She said we must remember there was a lot of hurt on both sides and a lot of healing to be done, especially for the women who have suffered so much for 25 years.
She would like to see an all-Ireland but it must be the wish of all. She herself had lost many good friends and family, and has worked for many years with women’s groups. She is hoping to set up a women’s lobby, to say to the men “get down and sit around the table”.
6. David Tower (community worker and P.U.P. member, North Belfast)
Mr Tower explained that he lived in a hard-line loyalist area, and was involved with the Progressive Unionist Party. The people in his area are frightened of nationalists, he said.
On the Framework Document, he said he believed that most people don’t understand it fully. It was far too complex. Politicians jump on the bandwagon – they’ve gone on too long, he said. People in the unionist community want to talk. The document does threaten a united Ireland but at least it has made the main unionist parties produce their own ideas. The British Govt. has put it up to them, he said. He knows the document is unpalatable to unionists.
“Most working-class Protestants want a fair Stormont”, he said. Mr Tower said that he is not opposed to talking to Sinn Fein. Nationalists have been frozen out for too long, he said. Though he is opposed to a united Ireland he believes in talking with each other. It was important to start at the bottom and tackle the economic issues first. Then, after perhaps 2 years, it would be possible to talk about constitutional matters.
Most hard-line unionists are not aware that the people in the Republic don’t want to take over, he said. Politicians have misrepresented them for too long. There won’t be agreement on the nationality issue, but maybe in time it will become irrelevant, with Europe etc.
The Irish Government should stay away from the talks table for the moment, he said. The British Government should put an ultimatum to the unionists – that they will start talking with whoever wants to talk. He believed the unionists would eventually come on board.
Closing words: On behalf of the Meath Peace Group, Anne Nolan (Slane) thanked the speakers for coming. She was encouraged by what several of the speakers had said about the importance of local groups. She explained that one of the suggestions in the Meath Peace Group’s submission to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation was that this type of local forum be developed throughout the length and breadth of the island.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS: Summary of main questions only
Q.1. Cllr. Christy Gorman (Democratic Left, Meath County Council):
He congratulated the governments on the talks initiative. He would like to ask Deputy O Cuiv about his call for new policing – How did he see this being implemented?
Deputy O Cuiv referred to a recent discussion on Cursai on the policing issue, in which SF took part, and which featured a previously recorded interview with David Ervine of the Progressive Unionists. He pointed to the British police model which is based on different areas of the country. SF were agreeable to the idea of policing under different areas, but with the same police force covering the Falls and Shankill areas of Belfast, he said. The new police should not be called the “RUC” but should be based on the British system, he said. They would be cross-community in each area – with equal representation and with neutral symbols. The membership could, of course, comprise former members of the RUC.
Joyce McCartan (Belfast) pointed out that the reason why Catholics didn’t join the RUC was because of IRA intimidation. She wanted to point out that there were good policemen too.
Deputy Boylan: He wanted to bring up the question of punishment beatings. There was need for a reorganisation of the police force – the full answer to this would come when people started to trust each other. But “we cannot condone the brutal beatings that are taking place”. He urged members of the Meath Peace Group to travel to N.I. and meet as many people as possible.
Q. 2. (Slane resident): Questioner wanted to bring up the wording in the Document – he believed the idea of consent of the greater number of people in N.I. was in fact meaningless – if a majority wanted to vote for unification, there would still be a large number wanting to be in the UK. There were areas, particularly around Belfast, where there would be a large majority in favour of staying. However the present wording would imply that this large minority in the N.E. would be forced into a united Ireland. Also, if this side decides to abolish Arts. 2 and 3, have they the right to say to people in, say, Newry, that we don’t want you?
The real answer must be to give an opportunity to those who want to be transferred to be transferred, he said. A referendum should be held and a boundary commission set up – people should be allowed to transfer if a majority in an area wished for it. His ideal would be a united republic of Great Britain and Ireland.
Q. 3. (Slane resident): Question to Deputy Fitzgerald referring to latter’s statement that we must reach out to unionists. As the site of the Battle of the Boyne is in this area, had the deputy any ideas about how unionists might be helped to celebrate the Battle in its location.
Fitzgerald: He did not agree as he did not believe that re-playing battles is the way to reconcile the divisions. “We must remember and respect our dead but we mustn’t use a battle to do this”, he said.
Q. 4 (Primary school teacher, Ratoath): He was disappointed with O Cuiv’s talking about nationalism. How could he reconcile his pacifism with his talk about nationalism? He was glad to hear the loyalist interpretation of the document. What would be David Tower’s interpretation of the UDP defeat in the recent by-election at the time of the leak of the Framework Document? He hoped that the Progressive Unionists would gain ground but he was worried that fear can take away their support.
David Tower: Traditionally Orange people had put faith in what was put forward by their political leaders. During elections in N.I. it comes down to voting for who is wearing the Union Jack or the Tricolour. It was going to take years to break this down, he said. That is why the UDP were defeated recently. “At times of elections, the people resort back to old alliances and hard-line politicians”.
Joyce McCartan: “The loyalist people were too wise to elect the UDP candidate, she believed. The fringe parties stand for people who have murdered innocent people”, she said.
David Tower: “Many people connected with the fringe parties are ex-terrorists, but no member of those parties is currently a member of a paramilitary group. They are genuinely working now for their communities and must be given a chance. David Ervine and McMichael are grass-roots unionists”, he said, and it was not fair to hold their past against them.
Joyce McCartan: She meets many women through the Women’s Information Network, and they don’t want ex-terrorists representing them. They want people who will work on the real issues – poverty, unemployment etc.
David Tower: Ervine and McMichael etc. are only interested in bettering conditions for their own communities.
Deputy Fitzgerald: We have to be fair. There would not have been a ceasefire without Gusty Spence, Ervine, McMichael, Hutchinson, Mitchell and others. They are the guiding people behind the ceasefire and it is they who have the influence, he said.
Deputy Boylan agreed.
Deputy O Cuiv: Getting back to the question about the greater number theory. If by some chance it came to a day when 1 more nationalist in the North wanted a united Ireland, the questioner had asked, would unionists be irrelevant? This would be abhorrent to him – he feels there should be a guarantee that no change will come unless the consent of all sections is given. As for the previous question, re his pacifism. Yes he is a pacifist, and is opposed to all wars. He had always put the argument to SF that their legitimate aspirations would be put much better by laying down their arms. Many people are wishing away their nationalist feeling. But we all feel nationality. That is reality. We shouldn’t ignore it because it causes problems. “We must face up to diversity and not fudge it, then we can sit down and ask how can we start reconciling.”
He said he represented an area – Connemara – where there are Irish and English-speaking sections. He got elected by both parts by being up-front and showing that he was no threat to the other part.
“We must face the nationality problem … We must recognise it in a pacific way and come up with a formula that everybody feels at home with.”
Q. 5 – Nuala McGuinness (Nobber resident, originally from N. Ireland): She explained that she was brought up in Northern Ireland and had worked there for many years. Lately she had noticed two important and hopeful changes:
(1) a survey last year showed that a certain percentage of the Catholic population in N.I. would opt to stay with the union.
(2) parties like the PUP and UDP were unheard of in her day. The working-class were realising that they had a lot in common with each other.
She would hope that these 2 changes would help to break down the tribalism. It is the hearts and minds of the people in N.I. that matter, and she was hopeful for the future.
Q. 6 – Cllr. Phil Cantwell (Ind., Trim UDC): Deputy O Cuiv had referred to a united Ireland under the Commonwealth – perhaps this idea should be looked at? Maybe the unionists would not feel so alienated then. He was concerned that Deputy O Cuiv seemed only to have visited nationalist areas of N.I. and would agree with Deputy Fitzgerald that people like Ervine and Mitchell etc. should be encouraged. He referred to the background of people in the older generation – the belief that Catholics were superior etc. He believed that everything should be on the table. He was heartened by David Ervine saying that peace would continue despite their problems with the Framework document.
Deputy O Cuiv explained that his trips to N.I. were mostly on invitation. He had recently spent a weekend in Corrymeela with other TDs, meeting unionists, and this was a very fruitful weekend. If invited to an Orange parade, he would go in a flash, he said. He wants to reach out to both communities.
Q. 7: (Secondary school teacher, Nobber): He saw parallels with the 1880s when Parnell held the balance of power. The unionists could well hold the same leverage now, in Westminster and in the proposed north-south body. The power has moved to Brussels, very important decisions are being made there. Economics is a very powerful factor in bringing people together. In the proposed north-south body, there would be equal representation. From being an isolated community at the moment, N.I. could be propelled into a position of great leverage.
Q. 8: (Slane resident): He referred to his earlier question re weakness in the wording of the document and would like an answer.
Deputy Boylan: Decisions would be taken by majority vote. He wouldn’t like to see further fragmentation. At the moment there is fear and misunderstanding, but the cross-border development could have enormous potential. We must improve economic conditions, but we must remember that the world-wide goodwill will not last forever. We have to be prepared to bury our prejudices, he said.
Q. 9: (Duleek resident): Can we have a permanent peace with the British army in N.I.?
Deputy Fitzgerald reminded the audience why the British army were first brought in. We must be very sensitive in the language we use, he said.
Summing up the discussion, John Clancy said that one of the most important statements in the document was the recognition and regret expressed by both governments for the “mistakes of the past”. There was a groundswell of opinion wanting peace, but we shouldn’t rush ahead too fast, he said. This point was made in the Meath Peace Group’s submission to the Forum, and the group had also asked that local fora be initiated throughout the island to discuss ideas and listen to the fears, aspirations and ideas of others. On behalf of the Group he thanked the Columban Fathers for permitting the use of the facilities at Dalgan Park for the talks.
Meath Peace Group report – March 1995. Report compiled and edited by Julitta Clancy
Meath Peace Group – contact names 1995: Julitta Clancy, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co. Meath; Anne Nolan, Gernonstown, Slane, Co. Meath
Tuesday, 7th February, 1995
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan
Speakers:
Cllr. Francie Molloy (Sinn Féin, Dungannon)
Joan O’Connor (Director, Sinn Fein’s Women’s Department)
Liz Groves (Chairperson, Falls Community Council, Belfast)
Chaired by John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
Editor’s note: There was a very good attendance at the talk which was the first talk addressed by Sinn Fein representatives. This was also the first talk to be audio-recorded. The report is not a complete transcript but contains main points and extracts from the speeches and the questions and answers section.
1. Cllr. Francie Molloy (Sinn Fein, Dungannon)
Francie Molloy thanked the Meath Peace Group for the invitation to speak and said he would like to speak on the theme “After the Ceasefires – the situation on the ground”. He would like to be able to say that everything has changed dramatically and that everything was “rosy in the garden” but this is not so. “Peace hasn’t suddenly broken out. Though the ceasefire has now lasted for over 150 days, we still haven’t got the response of the British Government to the new situation”. There is still no big change in the security policy of the British Government, he said. “We haven’t seen any change whatsoever in the actions of the R.U.C. – we haven’t seen the disbandment of the R.I.R. …so a lot of those things have still to change.”
Need for agreement: On the ground, there is a groundswell of opinion across the 2 communities, of the need for an agreement, a need to move forward. He lived in a very loyalist/unionist comunity, located in the area known as the “murder triangle” of the 70s. Even in his area, the opinion is that things have changed, that “we need to move to a new agreement between the Irish people”.
Unionist politicians: Cllr. Molloy said he believed the Unionist politicians were lagging behind the people. Instead of reflecting what their supporters were saying, the politicians, he said, “are actually trying to guide their supporters into reflecting what they’re saying,” and there was a danger in this.
Frustration on the ground: “On the ground in the nationalist community, there is a lot of frustration with the lack of progress since 1st September, he said. He is involved with the Peace Action Monitor – which gets reports from their own political representatives and supporters, but also from a wider section of the nationalist community as to what is happening on the ground. There is resentment from the RUC towards republicans in particular and a lot of activity is going on which seems to be trying to goad people into reacting, into feeling that nothing has changed. The feeling is growing that there have been no benefits. “That I see as one of the danger aspects of the present situation”.
One encouraging aspect of his community work is that roughly 30% of the people whose cases he represents in Dungannon come from the Unionist/Loyalist community. Unionist politicians have basically been saying to their people – “You’re getting what you’re entitled to from the British Government and to look for anything more is sponging from the State” – but at “grass-roots” level, they have the same problems as nationalists. The SF advice centres are open to all sections, he said. In the past they were afraid to come to SF advice centres. “There is a feeling within the community of moving forward”.
British Government: Cllr. Molloy said there must be a better response from the British Government – a response on the security level on the ground, because “otherwise the frustration starts to build up in people”. One of the areas he represents is East Tyrone and also South Armagh, and those two communities, he said, are “saturated with British Army and R.U.C.” People are now being stopped – “petty harassment in relation to motoring offences…all the normal bits and pieces which you can’t actually label as harassment, but in a community that hasn’t actually seen this type of thing happen for so long, then it…has a big effect on them and leads them into that frustration stage again.”
RUC: He believes the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] must be disbanded – “there must be movement before people can actually feel comfortable or feel part of building a new society.”
Dialogue with Sinn Fein: The level of goodwill in both communities is not reflected in the level of activity on the ground, he said. “The next step should be that the British Government should recognise SF’s electoral mandate and speak to the SF leadership in the same way as it represents the SDLP and recognises Unionists’ mandates.”
Unionist veto: While the British Government are refusing to do this, why should the Unionist community feel that they should engage in dialogue, he asked. As long as that continues, the “Unionist veto”, or, the “British veto” to change, is going to continue. He said that the British have been saying to the Unionists for years, “You don’t have to go up the road; you don’t have to engage in dialogue; you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to; and we will support you in that situation.” The Unionists have been saying “no” for too long, he concluded. “We want to move to a new situation but I feel that the one major stumbling block to that is that the British Government are now saying “no” to dialogue”.
2. Joan O’Connor (Director of SF’s Women’s Department and a member of the Ard Chomhairle):
“It is important for all political parties to discuss what sort of Ireland we want, she said. There have been 25 years of pain and suffering. No one wants to go back to it. The onus is now on the British Government to move things forward.
Learning from the past: “Sinn Fein is a democratic socialist party, she explained. “We must look to the future but we must also look to the past. Only by learning from our past we can ensure the pain and suffering will never happen again”.
Partition: “We must look to partition which had a devastating effect on both parts of the island. It set back social progress by decades.” She referred particularly to the position of women in both states and the clerical influences.
Sinn Fein vision: She outlined the SF vision of a new united Ireland – democratic, open, tolerant, based on the exercise of national self-determination.
“The media often look at Sinn Fein as having only a “Brits Out” policy. Yes, the British must go, with all their trappings … but Sinn Fein doesn’t want another 26 counties-type State. Sinn Fein wants accountability and trust …We need a new Ireland…we need to replace the corrupt Church-State”.
Constitution of Ireland: She pointed to the Irish Constitution – the current debate for reform is only aimed at placating unionists, she said. Part of the Constitution was an insult to women. SF upholds women’s issues, and in their vision of Ireland the Constitution would enshrine the equality of women. We have seen the failed policies of both governments – now is the time to put it right. Unionist grievances are very similar to nationalist grievances, and these are very much the same grievances as in Dublin, Limerick etc. Vast sections of the community in the 26 counties are disenfranchised and excluded.”
Unionists: Ms O’Connor said that the Ulster Unionist Party keeps the Tory Government in power, supported them in vetoing the Social Charter, rights for workers etc. She pointed to the Fisheries debate in Westminster as another example – Unionists do not represent working-class interests, they just “prop up” the Tory Government, she said. She knew there were wide gulfs between Sinn Fein and the unionist community. “The British Government must remove the unionist veto. There is an opportunity now to build peace. ”
“In an all-Ireland settlement there will be a place for all .. We can build the new Ireland together. It requires confidence and dialogue. We can’t return to Stormont as an internal solution“.
3. Liz Groves (Chairperson, Falls Community Council, Belfast).
Liz Groves thanked the Meath Peace Group for the invitation to speak. She explained she was not a member of a political party but over 30 years has worked in 2 deprived areas in Belfast. In North Belfast, she made many Protestant friends. When she moved to West Belfast, she got a shock. “Masses of people living on the breadline”. No access to education, to housing, to jobs. No economic base. “These were the children and the women, the young unemployed, coming from families of generations of unemployment, who took up stones and eventually turned, unfortunately, to arms and took up arms as well”, she said.
How the violence started: We have to look to the past and understand the motives of the people who took to violence, she said. Many people ask – Could the ceasefire have come earlier? Couldn’t the 25 years of murder and mayhem have been avoided? But they never ask the question – “How did the violence start? Who was the cause of it and who kept it going?”
“It was started by partitioning this country .. It was started because both governments refused to recognise the list of human rights abuses which were being carried on since the inception of the State.”
She referred to gerrymandering etc. after partition. “People grew up in atmosphere of no jobs, and no housing. Their whole lives were ruined by the “Orange veto” the British and Irish Governments sat back … they allowed a list of human rights abuses to continue.”
Liz Groves said that it was very important that residents of the 26 counties listen to all this as “you are now part of this process …and we want you to be part of it, we need you to be part of it”.
“Over the last few months, many unionists have said that they would have given the nationalists many things. Yet they never gave the nationalists anything that we didn’t forcibly go out and work for and take by whatever means – by educating ourselves, by creating our own businesses, and keeping our communities vibrant and going … They ruled their Protestant Parliament for their Protestant people; and they were true Ulstermen, what they had, they held – they gave none of it away.”
Civil rights: Ms Groves spoke of the civil rights movement – people wanted a vote in the local council elections, basic civil rights, decent houses, decent standard of education, the right to a job. She said that Protestant/loyalist people are now working with Catholics for these same issues. “Prior to 1969 they didn’t have to go out and work for those things. Their housing standards might not have been that much better than ours, but there was one family in every house, the heads of those households all had votes, and if they owned a wee shop at the corner, it meant they had two votes.”
“The system was loaded against nationalists from the beginning. Then came the Civil Rights movement – the RUC and B Specials batonned people off the streets. Over the last few months, the people that enacted all those things against the nationalists are now standing up and saying they’re the ones that want peace and the ones that want to move forward.”
Loyalist working class: “On the ground, the ordinary Loyalist, Protestant person does want to move forward. They are beginning to realise that they were conned more so than us. They no longer have the advantage in education, health and transport facilities. Their political masters all made sure their money wasn’t planted in the 6 counties. … The ordinary Protestant is beginning to feel frightened and his back’s to the wall. His political leaders are trying to cause division within the ordinary working class community. They put the blame on the Catholics for the conditions they are suffering.
Education and Housing: “The unionists say: “we allowed them the vote”, “we allowed them education”, “we allowed them housing”. This is a ridiculous thing to say in a democracy; nationalists had to fight for education, the vote and housing.” She described the funding of education in N.I. – Catholic schools still don’t get full funding. In housing she said there had been only some improvements. “In Poleglass which backs onto what was predominately the loyalist area of Lisburn – 3800 houses were built where 7, 500 were promised. The waiting list in West Belfast is 5, 200. Couples or single parents with more than 2 children .. The houses are not being built as they would upset the electoral balance in the local council and would be seen as a threat to the loyalist estate.”
Judicial system – Private Lee Clegg: Ms Groves said we need to look at all matters, but the big issue, she said, is the judicial system. She referred to the Private Clegg affair. “They don’t mind trying us in non-jury courts, they don’t mind giving us internment, but now they’ve tried one of their own, a member of a Regiment …responsible for untold injuries and maiming…responsible for forty unexplained deaths. Because one of their own got caught up in their judicial system, suddenly it’s wrong”, she said. It was wrong for him, she said, but it was not wrong for all the people who were caught up in the Casement Trials.”
Her area returns the highest number of SF councillors on a first preference vote. None of them sit on the crucial committees of Belfast City Council. They are disenfranchised.
“To move forward they are going to have to look at all those policies and they’re going to have to change them. … They’re going to have to stop demonising my community …they’re going to have to allow my community to be able to stand up and state their case very, very clearly, and they’re going to have to admit that their policies over the last 25 years were wrong. … On the ground, soldiers are off the streets by day in West Belfast, but many police patrols, and army at night. There are still special units that drive around at night in unmarked cars, and they army protect them while they’re harassing and hammering our children into the ground”.
Social issues: Many social issues could be helped by the 26 counties, she said – policing and prisoners – “both communities have these problems and want to solve them together but the doorway is not being put open for them – it’s being shut by Constitutional politicians and by Britain’s inability to deal with the Irish peace process”. She said the British Government were forced into a position of taking part – they were forced into signing the Declaration. “Now the republicans have called their bluff and they’ve got themselves backed into a corner with loyalist politicians.”
But the loyalist community are anxious for social issues and policing issues to be sorted out, “because at times they suffer as much as we do”, she said. They are anxious also that the prisoner issue be sorted out, “because every prisoner is a victim”, she said.
British Government: “The only thing stopping the peace process from moving forward is the British Government’s inability to stand up and be counted, to say “we made a mistake when partition came in; we’ve done nothing to rectify it in 75 years…we now have to sit down with all the people on this island…everybody who’s interested in the future of this country in the ever-widening Europe …to stand up and be counted … It’s time that Ireland went forward into Europe and the ever-widening world as a very united, caring socialist people”, she concluded.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS:
Q1. Nuala McGuinness [Nobber resident, from Co. Down]: The problems of Ireland started a long time before partition. “With the emergence of the 2 new Loyalist parties – can Liz envisage trying to establish rapport? …You are looking at Britain, but the problem is in your back yard”. She remembers Gerry Fitt trying to unite the Catholic and Protestant working class.
Liz Groves: She maintained that partition was the cause of the present Troubles. As for working together, the ordinary working class Protestant has no problem working with her community. The problem is not always with the ordinary working class on the street, she said. “The working class have been constantly divided by politics – politics which didn’t suit them but which suited people’s careers… …Now they’ve come into the Catholic community and we go into their’s, they’ve attended all of our recent police conferences, both in Belfast and in Derry”. She mentioned the recent leak of the Framework document – the Unionist politicians were “screaming hysteria”, got fears going – and the UDP vote collapsed in the by-election. Career politicians are keeping working classes separate, she said.
Joan O’Connor: Wouldn’t agree entirely that problem was in “our own back yard”. SF were told British Govt would respond with imagination – yet one party to the conflict has no ceasefire, i.e. the British army. The issue at the end of the day is not between unionist and nationalist – the issue is the British Government, she said. No initiative has come from the British Government, she said – initiatives always came from nationalist Ireland. “The Unionists are a block, and a bigger block because of the unionist veto.”
“Where is the commitment to peace? There have been some changes, but not enough. For example, the prisoners – the British Govt has hardened its stance. There is no imagination or generosity … If the peace process fails, it will be quite clear that the single factor is the British Government.”
Q. 2 Anne Nolan (Slane) She had lived some time in England – no church school is fully funded in England either, she said.
Re: Punishment beatings: Wonders if SF would like to condemn punishment beatings. “There have been 42 in nationalist areas since September. We hear SF talk about the RUC and army, but it is hard to take that people are doing this to their own. Would SF condemn this publicly? This would help.”
She mentioned the case of Malachy Clarke (16), who committed suicide after punishment beating and subsequent harassment. [The father of Malachy Clarke was interviewed on the local radio that morning]
Liz: She knew the family in question. He was the son of a good friend of hers in the Irish language movement. The media made a lot out of it – and “it has been twisted by the media. The father tried to retract his story, but was unable to do it. ” She said the boy was part of a gang who had terrorised the community for 3 years under the influence of drugs. The beating came as a result of his beating up a woman – it was an inter-family beating, she said, and it suited his father to give the story to the media. “When the father tried to contact the media to retract the story, none of them would carry it.”
Liz said she can’t answer for SF, but she lives in an area where 2% of the population of young people get involved in drugs and joy-riding and hold the community to ransom. She said the community can’t get funding because it’s seen as a high-risk area. “We must understand about policing in N.I. – it was not so simple. When people in my community ring the police to report, say, a stolen car, they don’t react, and … there grew up a lot of hype, so much hype that the young boy’s father was again on the radio this morning talking about the punishment beatings. It still hasn’t sunk through to him that it wasn’t SF or the IRA who beat him; it was people from within his own circle who beat him and the wee boy was high on drugs, according to his friends.”
She said that sometimes communities get frustrated with it – sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights there could be 17 or 18 cars being driven up and down the Glen Road like Le Mans race track and being smashed and the RUC don’t react, she said.
Francie Molloy: Re punishment beatings – he said that anti-social behaviour is not confined to Belfast. Every time these young people have been lifted by the RUC, the RUC are more interested in getting them to inform. We must look at the broader issue, he said. “Republicans are always labelled as carrying out these activities. Many are family feuds. What alternatives had the nationalist community got? ”
Questioner: Offenders are surely entitled to justice. These beatings are barbaric. Are you saying they were all family feuds?
Liz Groves: She admits the beatings are barbaric and wrong. Done by community when frustrated. High-risk area – “many people are angry and try and take the law into their own hands”.
Questioner: She is living in an area where there is quite a lot of “anti-social” activity, yet her community don’t believe they have the right to go and beat up the young people involved.
Q. 3. A major initiative had been made by nationalists – people can sit down in atmosphere where no one is being killed. We are much more likely to sit down without violence. The principal people whose minds must be changed are the people in the North, he said. Most people in the South are nationalists but are a different form of nationalists. “They want peaceful co-existence.” Chief people who must discuss their differences are unionists and nationalists in the North.
Q. 4.: [Policing and accommodation with unionists]: What would SF believe is proper policing in N.I.? About 1 m people want to be British. Over 0.5m want links with 26 counties. How to accommodate both of these? How do SF envision accommodating the unionists?
Joan O’Connor: “I Would like to go back to the question on punishment beatings first – Sinn Fein do not support punishment beatings, but I understand why they are happening. The reason they are continuing is because the majority have no faith in the police force .. If you really want to see an end to them, as we all do, then you must write to the British Govt and say you want the RUC disbanded.”
“SF are looking for the disbandment of the RUC. There must be an unarmed community police force – accountable, “brought from the community to police the community.”
Re 1m unionists – She doesn’t argue that unionists don’t have a major part to play, but the British Govt. claims jurisdiction. What is needed is all-party talks. “This involves the British and Dublin Governments and all the parties sitting down and engaging in dialogue.”
The Unionist veto keeps the position in place …John Major reassured the unionists. “We will keep you in power”.
“SF believe we can come to an all-Ireland settlement – involving all parties to the conflict, where rights of all must be enshrined. One minority in Irish society cannot veto political progress on this island”
Q 5: Is the bottom line the withdrawal of Britain?
Francie Molloy: “Yes, this is the bottom line. We want to see the British Govt. saying to the unionist community – “you have to look at the day when you will sit down with the rest of Ireland”. Sinn Fein will come up with proposals. There could be an assembly in the 6 counties. linked to the 26 counties. There must be an Irish link or dimension. We need to set in plan the all-Ireland institutions.”
Q. 6: British identity: Sinn Fein still do not seem to understand the question of British identity. “For too long, nationalists were not allowed to express their Irish identity and aspirations. If there is to be parity of esteem, how would SF envisage accommodating the British dimension, the British link, aspired to by Unionists, in the SF vision of a new Ireland? By pushing too fast on political matters, by demanding British withdrawal, isn’t there a danger that politicians like SF may themselves be jeopardising the peace process and the chances of achieving lasting peace on this island? ”
Francie Molloy: He would envisage that the Unionist people, who feel British at the moment, might continue on some form of identification with the British Government, for as long as they wish – “You know, the like of people holding a British Passport” etc. He said the questioner ignores the fact that the peace process to date has been pushed by SF. The IRA ceasefire was the key point that brought it all to position – the importance of this cannot be underestimated. “I’m Irish – I live in Co. Tyrone ..one of the counties that voted to be part of the Republic of Ireland. That right was denied us by a British Government…So I think to actually start to turn back that the blame now rests with us…that we should accept what the British imposed on us…I have every right to be Irish and I intend to be so, and if that means me fighting for my rights as an Irish citizen, then, by all means that’s what people have to do.”
“The reasons why violence started was that the British Government, the Stormont administration, couldn’t respond to very simple basic rights…which nobody else was being denied except one section of the community in the North.”
“So, yes, I believe you can have various aspects and aspirations within an all-Ireland, and I do believe that if the people of Ireland as a whole, sat down, then we can recognise the Unionist tradition…we can guarantee their rights, their culture and their values. ….We all have to move into the situation where we can all actually sit down at the same table, because it has to be fear of change that stops people sitting down with other people, because talking doesn’t harm anybody.”
Joan O’Connor: “I find it very difficult, as a Sinn Fein representative, being called a politician at this stage, after so many years of being excluded.” From the very beginning, SF stressed first of all that they don’t “own” the struggle in the 6 counties or the 26 counties “that it isn’t ours and we don’t have all the answers to solve it”.
“..Sinn Fein stress the need for community involvement in all levels of the peace process.. we don’t want the situation, whatever happens down the road, of politicians, and mainly male politicians, sitting down deciding whatever type of future for the new Ireland.”
Re the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, she said that SF had proposed that it would have sittings across the 32 counties where ordinary communities could give their views on the peace process. Also, the money and the aid that is promised “must go to the communities who are affected by 25 years, North and South, of economic discrimination.”
Q. 7: “There must be compromise on both sides. What will nationalists give? If the Tories fall, who would SF prefer to deal with – Conservative or Labour?”
Francie Molloy: – “We have very little to give, because we haven’t got anything. We can guarantee to recognise the feelings and rights of unionists. The 26 county state didn’t guarantee the religious rights of minority – it was not a glowing example.”
Re the Government that SF would like to deal with in Britain – it has often been said that “it will only be a strong Conservative government that will actually make a decision on Ireland…for too long, Labour governments have been looking over their shoulders to see what the Generals are going to say before they actually make a decision. In my dealings…I would have to say that I have found the Conservative MPs…much more constructive in the process”.
At the moment, Labour is “simply courting the Unionist votes and is prepared to jeopardise the Peace Process in order to actually get a majority in Westminster…they’re playing with people’s lives.”
Q. 8: “What kind of Ireland would you like?”
F. Molloy: He would like to see a 32-county Ireland. “But we also recognise there may be other mechanisms that would be brought into being to govern the island of Ireland, and provided it is the Irish people as a whole that are deciding what the future structure of government is, then I would be quite prepared to go along with that – provided it’s not being imposed from outside by anyone, whether it be the British or the Americans of anyone else.”
Q.9: (N.I. resident): Comments re partition – “Nationalist politicians also sat back – they were elected to Stormont but boycotted it. SF also boycotted both parliaments.”
As for the Civil rights campaign – “this was not strictly a nationalist campaign and was supported by many Unionists. The demands of the campaign were all met, in some way, before 1972.”
SF claims that the peace process was initiatied by Hume and Adams – Would they not agree that the initiative started in the community when ordinary people stood up and demanded an end to violence – “that it was this demand from people, North and South, and in Britain, which sparked off the peace process?”
Policing: Re the RUC – “why do SF insist on disbandment and not on reform? At the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which is actually a Nationalist forum, only Sinn Fein, which commands about 5% of the Irish vote, demanded disbandment, while the others called for reform.”
Joan O’Connor: Re the RUC – “How can you reform what is irreformable?” How to reform a police force that is 93% Protestant, based on the ethos of ensuring the second-class status of the nationalist community. She believed it would be possible to have a new police force, representative of both communities.
Re politicians boycotting the Stormont Assembly – “ the Sinn Fein position is that you cannot take part in what is basically a form of internal solution….The kind of talks we want to be involved in involve no pre-conditions …we believe it should be in the context of an all-Ireland agreement – all parties, all communities, being involved in discussion … The type of new Ireland we want is a democratic, socialist, feminist, pluralist, Ireland…….We are confident in our argument, and we’re confident in our politics and our beliefs. … Where is that confidence in the Unionist community? At the end of the day the only way we’ll move forward is by being involved in these all-Party talks and maybe then we can build an agreement. The alternative to that is a return to what we’ve had – a conflict for 25 years. I don’t think any of us want that.”
Liz Groves: Policing will be a major issue. Reform didn’t make the B Specials or the UDR more acceptable to the nationalist community. “Policing in the future, like government in the future, should be from the people and by the people, ” she said. The new force has got to be acceptable to both sides of the community. “It’s got to be seen as a police service and not as an armed force”.
Q.10: If there is procrastination, would you return to violence?
Francie Molloy: “No, I believe in fighting for rights – demonstrating and demanding rights. We must remove the issues that have caused the conflict. … If the situation resorts to violence, then it will be at the making of the British Government. If the British Government refuse, then the nationalist community, or the unionist community, if they feel betrayed, will return to conflict.” SF don’t want to see anyone more being killed.
Re the civil rights campaign, he recognised and appreciated the involvement of many Protestants, and right through to the present day, unfortunately, he said, they were isolated and were in a lot of danger sometimes.
Re republicans boycotting Stormont etc. – it would have been a massive contradiction for republicans to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen, he said.
Closing words:
John Clancy drew the proceedings to a close, and thanked the speakers:
“Tonight has been an introspective look – in looking back at the hurt that is very much alive in Northern Ireland and seeing how we can move forward in terms of a new view, a new vision, a new coming together…It was good tonight that we visited these areas and these hurts, because there are hurts, and there are the dead.”
He agreed with Sinn Fein suggestions about having local fora – this was one of the points made by the Meath Peace Group in their submission to the Forum [for Peace and Reconciliation]- there is a great determination within the “plain people of Ireland” to “sort out this legacy that we’ve inherited”, he said. “We have our gods and our martyrs…but we must look beyond that now – we must look to the future…where communities can live and co-exist and enhance the island of Ireland”, he concluded.
Meath Peace Group Report: March 1995
Compiled and edited by Julitta Clancy
Recorded by Anne Nolan
©Meath Peace Group
Contact names 1995: Julitta Clancy, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co. Meath; Anne Nolan, Gernonstown, Slane, Co. Meath , Pauline Ryan, Woodlands, Navan, Philomena Boylan-Stewart, Longwood, Co. Meath, Felicity Cuthbert, Kilcloon, Co. Meath, Michael Kane, An Tobar, Ardbraccan, Navan, Co. Meath
Tuesday, 27th September, 1994
St. Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan, Co. Meath
Speakers:
Gerard Hogan, B.C.L, LL.M., M.A. (Lecturer in law, Trinity College Dublin)
Cllr. Brid Rogers (SDLP constituency representative for Upper Bann)
Ken Maginnis, MP (UUP security spokesman)
John Bruton, TD (Leader of Fine Gael)
Dermot Ahern, TD (Fianna Fail, Co-Chair, British-Irish Parliamentary Body)
Chaired by John Clancy (Meath Peace Group)
Contents:
Introduction and Editor’s Note: – Text of Articles 2 and 3; context and background to the talk; summary of main points from the speeches
Extracts from the speeches
1. Gerard Hogan – Legal/constitutional issues
2. Brid Rogers
3. Ken Maginnis, MP
4. John Bruton, TD
5. Dermot Ahern, TD
Biographical notes
Introduction and Editor’s Note:
Text of Articles 2 and 3:
Article 2: ” The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas.”
Article 3: “Pending the re-integration of the national territory, and without prejudice to the right of the Parliament and Government established by this Constitution to exercise jurisdiction over the whole of that territory, the laws enacted by that Parliament shall have the like area and extent of application as the laws of Saorstat Eireann and the like extra-territorial effect.”
Context and background to Meath Peace Group symposium: Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland, 1937, have long been a source of controversy and division, with unionist politicians consistently calling for their removal or amendment, and nationalists opposing any unilateral change.
Unionist position: Many unionists see the Articles as evidence of the desire and intention of the Irish Government to “subsume them into a united Ireland without their consent” and the demand for their removal has gathered momentum following the interpretation given the Articles by the Supreme Court judgment in the McGimpsey case (1990). The Articles are also cited by unionists as a barrier to co-operation between North and South: In September, 1994, when informing his constituents of his belief that the IRA ceasefire was “for real” Mr. John Taylor, the Ulster Unionist MP for Strangford, also asserted that as long as Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution remained in place, “there could be “no real co-operation within our island”. At the UUP conference in October, 1994, the Republic’s territorial claim was described as a “serious obstacle to political progress and the normalisation of relations”. Also at that conference the delegates unanimously endorsed a motion calling on the Irish Government to demonstrate its commitment to the right of the people of Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom, “by indicating that it has no selfish, strategic or economic claims upon this part of the kingdom and by removing Articles 2 and 3 from its current Constitution.”
Nationalist position: Nationalists in Northern Ireland have always opposed the removal or unilateral amendment of the Articles, seeing them as their “birthright” and as a means of protecting their right to a sense of Irish identity and allegiance.
Despite the obvious importance of the Articles, there has been surprisingly little open and informed debate on the subject. We believe that many people in the Republic have only a vague notion as to what the Articles are about, and most of those who are aware of them see them as aspirational only. Furthermore, most people, it is suggested, are unaware of the implications of the new interpretation given the Articles by the Supreme Court in the McGimpsey case in 1990. The Meath Peace Group organised the present discussion both to inform the public as to the legal implications of the Articles and the current political thinking in the aftermath of the Downing St. Declaration, and also to give an opportunity to ordinary people to contribute to the wider debate. The talk took place a few weeks after the announcement of the IRA ceasefire, and the interest and concern of local people was shown in the large number who attended (c. 200, most coming from Meath, but with many from adjoining counties, and also a few from Northern Ireland). The talk was not fully recorded but extensive notes were taken. Some of the speakers were interviewed by local radio (LMFM).
SUMMARIES OF MAIN POINTS FROM THE SPEAKERS
While each speaker had differing views on the Articles in question, the meeting was very positive, and there were many points of agreement – these included:
• That there was no doubt that at some time the Articles would have to be changed. They were a product of the era in which they were written and therefore were outmoded in today’s circumstances.
• That there could be no going back to a pre-1969 type situation in Northern Ireland.
• That there was need for respect, tolerance and parity of esteem and that there must be compromise on all sides.
Gerard Hogan – summary of main points:
1: Articles 2 and 3 had always been seen as a political, rather than a legal right. In the McGimpsey case in 1990, the Supreme Court ruled the Articles were a “constitutional imperative” which obliged the Government to seek the re-integration of the “national territory” by peaceful means and that Article 2 constituted a “claim of legal right”, rather than a purely political right;
2. The Articles “will have to be replaced or modified”, but the task of finding a formula of words which will supplant them will not be easy. Any such formula will have to be agreed in the context of “balanced agreement“.
Brid Rogers – summary of main points:
1. For most people the Articles are symbolic and their approach is entirely emotional.
2. The debate around the Articles is but a symptom of the underlying problem, – “the failure to accommodate in a secure and durable way, the conflicting allegiance of nationalists and unionists on this island. The real challenge to all of us is to extend our energies and bend our minds to the task of finding the accommodation.”
Ken Maginnis – summary of main points:
1. Unionist fears derived from the underlying feeling of insecurity arising out of the enshrinement of the claim to the territory of N.I. in the Constitution.
2. With all the talk about moving towards greater understanding, he “didn’t believe there was any great desire to give the people of N.I. a chance to work together.”
John Bruton, TD – summary of main points:
1. The 1937 Constitution was a product of its era. We must now move “towards a new form of constitutional theory, which recognises the concept of multiple allegiances”
2. The resolutions adopted by Sinn Fein at Letterkenny showed that their thinking hadn’t changed – they still thought in terms of territorial unity. “We must break out of the thinking of the 1930s if we are ever to have peace”.
Dermot Ahern, TD – summary of main points:
1. The dilution or removal of Articles 2 and 3, rather than furthering the cause of peace, would have the opposite effect. “Had we listened to the clamour for their unilateral amendment or removal, we would not have reached the stage we are now at in the peace process.”
2. The Articles are a “powerful form of reassurance for the nationalist community in N.I. and a reminder to the citizens of the Republic of our responsibility to the people of Northern Ireland as a whole.”
Extracts from speeches:
1. Gerard Hogan (lecturer in law, TCD): Legal and Constitutional Issues
Historical background: Mr. Hogan explained that the enactment by plebiscite of the Irish Constitution in July 1937 marked the end of the Irish Free State and “a conscious repudiation” by the Irish side of those features – such as the oath of allegiance to the Crown, the right of appeal to the Privy Council and the Governor-General – of the Anglo-Irish settlement of 1921-1922 which they had found unpalatable. “These aspects of the 1921 Treaty and 1922 Constitution had been abolished one by one throughout the 1930s. This was done by ordinary legislation, since that Constitution did not require to be amended by referendum.
“The 1937 Constitution represented the culmination of this process. That Constitution was republican in character and the Crown survived only in hidden form – like a face camouflaged by foliage in a children’s puzzle – with the result that the last severing of formal links between the United Kingdom and Ireland upon the latter leaving the Commonwealth in 1949 was a simple formality.”
Articles 2 and 3: Mr. Hogan quoted the text of the Articles, observing “While these provisions may strike some as having a distinctly revanchist tone, it is only proper to observe that by Article 29 of the Constitution, Ireland accepted the generally recognised principles of international law and pledged itself to the “principle of the pacific settlement of international disputes”. Moreover, as the Irish Supreme Court was strongly to imply in the 1990 McGimpsey decision, Article 29 precluded the State from achieving the “reintegration of the national territory” in a manner which was not consistent with international law.”
Failure of Boundary Commission: “In essence, Articles 2 and 3 constituted a repudiation of the 1925 Treaty Agreement whereby the Irish Free State implicity acknowledged the present border with Northern Ireland following the collapse of the Boundary Commission. …. Articles 2 and 3must be seen as a response to the failure of the Boundary Commission’s report“.
[Editor’s Note: The Boundary Commission had been provided for by Article XII of the 1921 Treaty and its terms of reference were to determine “in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland”.]
Political theory behind the Articles: Mr. Hogan illustrated the thinking underlying Articles 2 and 3 as summed up by the Supreme Court in 1975 when it said that the Articles reflected the political theory that:
“the Irish people living in what is now called the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland together formed the Irish Nation; that a nation has a right to unity of territory in some form… and that the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, though legally binding, was a violation of that natural right to unity which was superior to positive law.”
Despite this, Mr. Hogan pointed out that, even at that time, these provisions were controversial. The Secretary of the Department of Finance in a briefing document in April 1937, described the Articles as a “fiction” and “one which will give offence to neighbouring countries with whom we are constantly protesting our desire to live on terms of friendship. In addition, of course, “the Northern Unionist community found these provisions to be objectionable.”
1967 All-Party Committee on the Constitution: Continuing the historical outline, Mr. Hogan discussed the work of the All-Party Committee on the Constitution in 1967 which recommended a re-formulation of the provisions to make it clear that any territorial change could only come about by consent.
“No action was taken on foot of that recommendation, mainly because the issue became more sensitive with the advent of civil strife in Northern Ireland…These provisions can only be changed by way of referendum – ordinary legislation will not suffice – and genuine fears have been consistently expressed that a unilateral repeal or even modification of these clauses would be either defeated or would give extremist groups a platform.”
McGimpsey v. Ireland – Supreme Court judgment (1990): Up to 1990, the claim expressed in the Articles had always been seen as a political, rather than a legal right. In that year, however, the Supreme Court ruled in the McGimpsey case that the Articles were a “constitutional imperative” which obliged the Government to seek the re-integration of the “national territory” by peaceful means, and that Article 2 constituted a “claim of legal right”, rather than a purely political right.
The Court went on to uphold the constitutionality of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on the ground that the Agreement’s recognition that “any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland” was simply a de facto recognition of political realities and did not amount to a waiver of the Republic’s legal claim of right….“..the McGimpsey case meant that Articles 2 and 3 could not be ignored or dismissed, as the Republic’s political establishment had wished.”
Birthright and citizenship: “It is sometimes suggested that a modification of Articles 2 and 3 would deprive the northern nationalist community of its legal birthright. Whatever the political merits of this argument, it has no legal validity. The jurisdiction to award citizenship is not at all dependent on the persons concerned being resident within the State or the national territory… As far as international law is concerned, there are practically no limits on a State’s ability to extend citizenship to those persons who desire such protection.”
Replacement or modification of the Articles: It is against this legal and constitutional background that the present talks are taking place. “While it is widely acknowledged that Articles 2 and 3 will have to be replaced or modified, since – irrespective of what the Supreme Court may say – they are at odds with the spirit of understanding reflected in both the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Downing St. Declaration, the task of finding a formula of words which will supplant them will not be easy. Any such formula will have to be agreed in the context of “balanced agreement” … and must satisfy the conflicting aims and aspirations of both communities in Northern Ireland, as well as subsequently obtaining the support of a majority of the Republic’s voters following a referendum.”
2. Cllr. Brid Rogers (SDLP spokesperson on women’s issues and Constituency Representative for Upper Bann)
Brid Rodgers thanked the Meath Peace Group for holding such an important debate on what had always been a “political bone of contention” in Northern Ireland. She outlined the background to the demand from unionist polticians for the removal of the Articles, which, she said, often “stridently ignored the basic fact that an amendment to the Irish Constitution is not in the gift of any Irish Government and can only be brought about by the will of the people voting in a referendum. “
“I firmly believe that any attempt to unilaterally remove or change Articles 2 and 3 in theabsence of an overall satisfactory settlement would fail. It would certainly be opposed tooth and nail by the northern nationalists who deeply resent the purported generosity of unionist politicians who proclaim their acceptance of the right of nationalists to their aspiration to Irish unity provided of course it is expressed with due regard for unionist sensitivities and provided that nothing is done to change the status quo in Northern Ireland.”
“The failure of such a referendum would constitute a setback for those unionists who genuinely wish to see the Articles removed or modified. For those unionist politicians whose demands for the removal of Articles 2 and 3 amount to a propaganda weapon, a stick with which to beat the Irish Government and other means of increasing and exploiting the real fears and insecurities of the Protestant population, it would be a godsend, a reprieve, another excuse not to deal with the real issue, the challenge of recognising and accommodating the rights of nationalists.”
Approach of most people: Ms. Rogers stated that for most people the Articles are symbolic and their approach is entirely emotional: “for nationalists they are seen as the means of protecting their right to a sense of Irish identity and allegiance.” For unionists …they are regarded as proof positive of the desire and intention of the Irish government to subsume them into a united Ireland without their consent.”
“Any change to the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, would be vehemently opposed by unionists as it would be supported by nationalists on the same basis.”
Realities: If it were possible to take a dispassionate view of the realities, two things would become very clear:
Firstly, since the foundation of Northern Ireland, nationalists have suffered severe discrimination in all aspects of their lives. But, “the existence of Articles 2 and 3 provided them with no protection against the worst excesses of the Stormont regime.”
Secondly, the Government of Ireland Act, which is the basis on which Northern Ireland was established, “specifically for the benefit and accommodation of unionists”, “has provided them with neither security nor stability. “In other words the protection for both communities has been symbolic rather than real.”
Underlying problem: Ms. Rogers stated that, in her view, the debate around Articles 2 and 3 was but a symptom of the underlying problem, that is the “failure to accommodate in a secure and durable way, the conflicting allegiance of nationalists and unionists on this island. …The real challenge to all of us is to extend our energies and bend our minds to the task of finding the accommodation. ”
Finding the accommodation: The task of building structures which will recognise and accommodate the legitimate aspirations of nationalists and unionists on this island will be fraught with difficulty and will require imagination and courage from all political leaders, she said. It will never be accomplished by harping and dwelling on the various symptoms of our problems nor by demands that these be dealt with in piecemeal fashion. “It will only be achieved when all parties sit down together with everything on the table to work out by agreement how we live in peace together on this small piece of earth.”
Real peace: Ms. Rogers concluded: “The real peace has yet to be won and and winning of it is the challenge facing all of us. It can only be achieved by building structures within which nationalist, unionist, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter can feel comfortable, secure and unthreatened … It is clear that such structures will require, not merely changes to Articles 2 and 3, but the drawing up of an entirely new constitution – a constitution for an Agreed Ireland.”
3. Ken Maginnis (Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone and spokesperson on security)
Mr. Maginnis welcomed the invitation to talk, stating that he was “glad to see the hall filled by people with a genuine interest in the welfare of the people of Northern Ireland”. He went on to outline the problems he and other unionists had with the Articles, especially since the McGimpsey case and the Supreme Court judgment in 1990. He stated that all the fears derived from: “the underlying feeling of insecurity arising out of the enshrinement of the claim to the territory of Northern Ireland in the Constitution.”
Realities: “We cannot re-write history. Northern Ireland is a fact. It has been a separate political entity for over 70 years and will not change unless by consent, or by terrorism and armed aggression.”
Referring to the terrorism of the last 25 years, Mr. Maginnis felt that the Articles could be seen as giving justification to IRA violence. The Articles made it a “constitutional imperative” for the people of the Republic to achieve a united Ireland, he said, and he outlined some of the practical problems arising from the McGimpsey judgment, particularly in the area of extradition.
As to the past, Mr. Maginnis said that he was not going to argue about discrimination – it did occur but checks and balances have been brought in, and he believed there was little point in harking back to past practices now.
Consent: With all the talk about moving towards greater understanding, Mr. Maginnis didn’t believe there was any great desire to give the people of Northern Ireland a chance to work together. While the principle of consent was acknowledged by the Irish Government in the Downing St. Declaration, he felt it meant absolutely nothing more than a “statement of intent by Albert Reynolds and that depends on Reynold being a man of honour”.
“This quibble [about consent] is the rock on which Gerry Adams is building his case – he hasn’t agreed to the consent element in any final solution.”
Mr Maginnis doubted the permanency of the IRA ceasefire when they still held on to their huge stockpile of weapons.
Mr Maginnis questioned the sincerity of talking about consent while the Republic’s government wanted an executive role in the government of Northern Ireland. Unionists were opposed to an executive role for Dublin – they want to govern impartially with people such as the SDLP, and cooperate as much as possible with the South.
4. John Bruton, TD (leader of Fine Gael):
“We must achieve a society in which everybody living in any part of Ireland feels comfortable. Articles 2 and 3 assert that, under a Constitution adopted by the 26 counties only, we have a right to govern Northern Ireland, regardless of the wishes of the majority living in Northern Ireland. That assertion has exactly the same effect psychologically on the majority unionist community in N.I. as, in a sense, everything in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1969 had on the nationalists. It makes them [the unionists] feel that, in our eyes, they don’t count and that their views can be overriden by the assertion in our Constitution, and makes them feel foreigners in their own land. In Northern Ireland (and even prior to its foundation), people with nationalist beliefs felt that in a sense they were foreigners in their own land, that in a sense they did not really belong, they were to be tolerated. This is the reality which bred the resentment which eventually led to violence.”
Constitution a product of its era: In Mr. Bruton’s view, the 1937 Constitution was a product of its era, and the political theories of the time when it was enacted. It was based on the concept of territorial nationalism – “one-nation, one-State” – which was a neat concept but did not work in practice, as history has shown. Mr. Bruton said that we know better now and must move “towards a new form of constitutional theory, which recognises the concept of multiple allegiances“.
Two allegiances: It was possible for 2 allegiances to co-exist in one State, as evidenced in Spain and other European countries, he said. Furthermore, the nation-state “no longer calls the shots”. No State now has complete sovereignty – in this country laws can be struck down if they are contrary to EC law; in effect, the Dail is no longer sovereign, and, with regard to Northern Ireland, Westminster is no longer sovereign. “Ireland, because of Articles 2 and 3, is now the only State in Europe with a constitutional territorial claim.”
Identity: Mr. Bruton pointed out that there are two types of Irish people:
“Irish people who feel they are Irish and European”, and “Irish people who feel British, and feel allegiance to the Crown, but also feel European.”
Need for change: We must find a way of re-ordering our Constitution to allow for respect for multiple allegiances, Mr. Bruton said. We must create a constitutional order in which all people can feel comfortable. Articles 2 and 3 don’t allow that for unionists, just as the Government of Ireland Act doesn’t allow it for nationalists.
There has to be change, but the tragedy of the last 74 years has been that “the strong have always been waiting for the weak to make the first concession“. We must change the Articles, but we can’t do it in a way that would make the nationalists feel abandoned. Public debate is essential.
Downing Street Declaration [1993]: Answering Ken Maginnis, Mr. Bruton said that the Declaration was not a treaty, but it was stronger than Mr. Maginnis supposed. It did not depend on Albert Reynolds – all parties in the Dail had accepted the principles, and any future government would support them.
Cross-border dimension: All parties have accepted that the problem has 3 dimensions – “the problem does have a cross-border dimension, but there must be a cross-border solution also. There has to be a British solution also.”
IRA ceasefire: Mr. Bruton stated that part of the worry about the permanency of the IRA ceasefire stemmed from the resolutions adopted by Sinn Fein at Letterkenny. While Sinn Fein tactics may have changed, their thinking hadn’t changed – they still thought in terms of territorial unity. “If Sinn Fein accepts the rights of unionists, then they must accept their right to be British”, but they hadn’t done that if they are still talking about a “unionist veto“.
Multiple allegiances: “In the modern world we’ve got to have multiple allegiances with multiple expressions of those allegiances, where different sovereignties co-exist within the same territory, not as one sovereignty – one territory.”
“The old-fashioned notion of territorial unity is out of date. “We must break out of the thinking of the 1930s if we are ever to have peace … We must create a constitutional order in which all people can feel comfortable.”
5. Dermot Ahern, TD (Fianna Fail; Co-chair, British-Irish Parliamentary Body)
Mr. Ahern described Articles 2 and 3 as a “stabilising force”. Previous campaigns, North and South, to unilaterally delete or amend Articles 2 and 3, were profoundly misguided, he said: “Their dilution or removal, rather than furthering the cause of peace, would have the opposite effect …Had we listened to the clamour for their unilateral amendment or removal, we would not have reached the stage we are now at in the peace process. …To have unilaterally amended or removed Articles 2 and 3 would have served to alienate the nationalist community, created a vacuum which the paramilitaries would have attempted to fill, had the effect of confirming a Unionist veto, and diluted initiatives to allow the Irish Government to have a legitimate say in the affairs of Northern Ireland.”
“Articles 2 and 3 are a powerful form of reassurance for the nationalist community in Northern Ireland and a reminder to the citizens of the Republic of our responsibility to the people of Northern Ireland as a whole.”
Constitutional change: Mr. Ahern stated the Fianna Fail position which is, that in the event of an overall political settlement between both parts of the island, balanced consitutional change would be required.
Road to an enduring peace: Mr. Ahern outlined the steps on the road to an enduring peace: “beginning the work of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, reaping the benefits of the peace dividend, re-opening of border roads, building cross-border links in every possible sector” …culminating the period of intensive bridge-building with an overall constitutional settlement based on the principle of consent, involving the creation of cross-border bodies.
Internal solution: Mr. Ahern rejected the notion of a purely internal solution, but said “there must be compromise and most people agree with this. It was necessary to keep the peace process moving, he said, and he would welcome the participation of unionists in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
Editor’s note: There were many questions from the floor, but unfortunately these were not recorded.
Meath Peace Group Report: October 1994.Compiled and edited by Julitta Clancy
Biographical notes on speakers:
1. Gerard Hogan: Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and Lecturer in law, TCD. Specialist in constitutional law and administrative law; author of many legal articles and publications, including the major work on Administrative Law in Ireland. His most recent publication was as co-author of the 3rd edition of Kelly’s The Irish Constitution (Butterworths 1994)
2. Brid Rogers: SDLP spokesperson on women’s issues and the Party’s constituency representative for Upper Bann constituency. Native of Gweedore Gaeltacht, living in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, since 1960. Was actively involved in Civil Rights movement. Elected to chair of SDLP in 1978 – First woman chairperson of an Irish political party. Served as member of Seanad Eireann 1983-87 (nominated by Garret Fitzgerald). Leader of SDLP group in Craigavon District Council 1984-92.
3. Ken Maginnis, MP (Fermanagh-South Tyrone), UUP spokesperson on security: Late entry into public life. In 1981 he was elected to Dungannon District Council, and in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly. He was elected to Westminster in June, 1983, and has served as UUP spokesperson on Defence, Security, Employment, and Local Government. Apart from security matters, he has also taken a keen interest in environmental issues since his election to Westminster.
4. John Bruton, TD (Fine Gael, Meath; Leader of Fine Gael) Farmer. First elected to the Dail in 1969, becoming the youngest member of the 19th Dail. Served as spokesperson for Fine Gael in many areas, and has at various times in the 1980s been Minister for – Finance, Industry and Commerce, Industry and Energy, Public Service. Deputy leader of the Party 1987-1990; elected leader in November 1990. President, Irish Council of the European Movement, November 1990 to date. Member, British-Irish Parliamentary Body 1993 to date. Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, December 1989-Jan. 1991.
5. Dermot Ahern, TD (Fianna Fail, Louth): Solicitor. Elected to Dail in 1987. Since his election has been a member of several Oireachtas and Dail committees, and is currently co-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Body, since May 1993. Formerly held posts as Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach and Department of Defence, and former Government Chief Whip. Member of Louth County Council from 1979-1991 and also was a member of Louth VEC and other local authority bodies. Currently a member of Fianna Fail Review Commission and Fianna Fail National Executive.
Meath Peace Group Report: October 1994
©Meath Peace Group
Contact names 1994: Anne Nolan, Gernonstown, Slane, Co. Meath; Susan Devane, Slane, Co. Meath; Julitta Clancy, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co. Meath;
Pauline Ryan, Navan; Philomena Boylan-Stewart, Longwood; Felicity Cuthbert, Kilcloon