Lest we forget
14 August 2006
Jim Allister's recent Platform piece in the Belfast Newsletter.
If there was one book, arising from what we too glibly call “The Troubles”, that I would wish every Northern Ireland citizen to read, it is “A Legacy of Tears”, recently published by victims support group S.A.V.E.R./N.A.V.E.R. Based on the personal accounts of a snapshot of 13 families from County Armagh devastated during
30 years of Irish Republican terrorism, it is heartrending in its poignancy and timely in its message.
Poignant, because of its unvarnished insight in the callous tyranny of the IRA and the horrific price paid by Protestant and security force families along the border. Timely, because, without any political commentary, it speaks loud rebuke to those who would deliver the representatives of such unrepentant terrorists into our government - a point well made by S.A.V.E.R./N.A.V.E.R chairperson Reatha Hassan OBE when she wrote such a message on the fly leaf of the copy of the book recently delivered to the Prime Minister.
The courage of the contributors in sharing their real life stories and allowing a glimpse into the depths of their private grief, deserves both recognition and praise. Though the stories which they tell must have been very difficult to share, they are stories which badly needed to be told, particularly at a time when the trend is towards sanitising the past.
S.A.V.E.R./N.A.V.E.R - a group I have been happy to help secure EU funding – is to be congratulated for the initiative and foresight which developed this project. Likewise author David Patterson has done a magnificent job. Well done to all concerned.
The chilling sectarian hatred towards Protestants in South Armagh is found not just in the acts of brutal murder themselves, but in the glorification and taunting which invariably followed. When UDR man Joe Wilson was gunned down in the shop where he worked his family went to collect his son from Armagh Technical College. Republican pupils in his class shouted “I hope it is your f…… father that’s been murdered”. When evil hatred shows itself with such venom in such tragic circumstances it has been ingrained from birth.
Strikingly, not a single person has been made amenable before the courts for any of the murders recited in this book – itself an illustration of the grip which the IRA continues to exercise over that community. Of course, to Sinn Fein/IRA these callous heartless murders were not even crimes but the legitimate acts of what they still proclaim to be a legitimate army. Yet, it is with such unrepentant terrorist spokesmen that Hain and Blair would seek to usher us into government down “Rue 24 Novembre”. It’s still right to remember remember!
Of course, Northern Ireland has to move on, as these families, difficult as it has been, have done. But political movement to be worth having has to have a credible foundation. Devolution which allows Sinn Fein ministers to hold onto the morals and pursuits of the slaughtering past of their terrorist organisation, will no more succeed now than it did in the past. Those who justify decades of murder, refuse to recognise and disassociate from the criminality of the past and present, refuse to promote acceptance and support for the police and judicial process, and thereby help bring criminals to justice, have no right, irrespective of proclaimed mandates, to any place in any government anywhere in the world.
