Truth is at the heart of reconciliation: the need to find out the truth about the horrors of the past, the better to ensure that they never happen again. And that is the central significance of reconciliation. Without it people have no sense of safety, no trust, no confidence in the future. – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
And most people would probably say they agree, so why is reconciliation so difficult, seemingly impossible at times?
The conflict resolution handbook tells us that reconciliation cannot be imposed and involves a very long and painful journey, addressing the pain and suffering of the victims, understanding the motivations of offenders, bringing together estranged communities, trying to find a path to justice, truth and, ultimately, peace.
The goal of reconciliation is a future aspiration, something important to aim towards, perhaps even an ideal state to hope for.
The process of reconciliation is not:
- an excuse for impunity;
- only an individual process;
- in opposition to/an alternative to truth or justice;
- a quick answer;
- a religious concept;
- perfect peace;
- an excuse to forget; nor
- a matter of merely forgiving.
The process of reconciliation is:
- finding a way to live that permits a vision of the future;
- the (re)building of relationships;
- coming to terms with past acts and enemies;
- a society-wide, long-term process of deep change;
- a process of acknowledging, remembering, and learning from the past; and
- voluntary and cannot be imposed.
It can seem as if slowing things down, dwelling on the painful past and the unfinished thoughts and feelings around past violence, would endanger the new political and social structures. The argument runs something like this: “How are we to expect our politicians to begin establishing the patterns of future cooperation in government if we spend time digging up and examining in public the very things that divided them in the past? That will surely just undermine the fragile co-operation that we are attempting, by holding on to the past instead of looking to the future. Would it not be better to concentrate for the time being on our similarities and leave our differences to a later, less tense time?”
This is understandable, but it is counterproductive. Such reflection on the past is as necessary as it is painful because a divided society can only build its shared future out of its divided past. It is not possible to forget the past and start completely fresh as if nothing had happened. Indeed, the motivation for building a future is precisely to ensure that the past does not return – and so a clear understanding of, and a coming to terms with, that past is the very best way to guarantee it will not come back to haunt a society. The past must be addressed in order to reach the future. Reconciliation, if it is designed and implemented in a genuine and meaningful way, is the means to do that.
At the political level, failure to address the past through a reconciliation process – easier option though it might appear – will almost guarantee the failure of the future. Politicians reach agreement through negotiation over the issues in conflict. They find compromises, bargains or pragmatic ways to cooperate within the bounds of their self-interest. That is their job, and it is a vital part of transforming a situation of former conflict into one of future peace. But their best efforts will be totally undermined if they do not also address the broken relationship between the communities they represent, as well as the issues that broke it. The very best democratic system in the world will not endure if sections of its population do not have a modestly cooperative relationship underlying their agreement to work with the new structures.
So what is the problem with knowing and understanding the truth about our past?
History teaches that, choosing to ignore the past completely in the long run, is a serious obstacle on the road from a divided past to a shared future.
- It refuses victims the public acknowledgement of their pain.
- It invites offenders to take the path of denial.
- It deprives future generations of the opportunity to understand and learn from the past and to participate in the building of a lasting reconciliation.
Another problem is, there is no one narrative of the truth, the same events can be seen in completely different contexts and it may not be possible to ever agree one narrative that all sides are comfortable with.
The past can also be manipulated and abused, some leaders of parties in a brutal conflict may deliberately keep alive a memory that fuels the fires of hatred. If they are not corrected through mechanisms such as an independent truth commission, then selective memories are handed down from generation to generation. As Andrew Rigby (Director of the Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation at Coventry University) writes: “Too great a concern with remembering the past can mean that the divisions and conflicts of old never die, the wounds are never healed. In such circumstances the past continues to dominate the present, and hence to some degree determines the future”.
Yet memory can also be a powerful instrument for achieving reconciliation.
It may provide early warning signals, teaching future generations how to identify the first signs of renewed and potentially dangerous distrust. In the context of this argument the words of philosopher George Santayana carry their full weight: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
So how have we dealt with our past?
The first round of “the Troubles” conflict began in 1913 and lasted until 1922, during which time we had rebellion, the Easter Rising, Sinn Féin winning a landslide electoral victory from which they formed Dáil Éireann and declared Irish independence from Great Britain, we had the Black and Tan war, legislated partition creating a 6 county polity directly against the democratic wishes of the people in 3 of the counties and the nation overall, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Civil war and in the end medals including 15,224 which were issued to the Active Service Units of the Irish Republican Army who fought in the War of Independence.
The good IRA as I have heard many say, compared to the bad IRA in the second round of “the troubles” conflict which started in the late 60s.
So how was it the IRA got medals in one conflict and criminal records in another?
After the formation of Dáil Éireann January 1919, the IRA were killing RIC officers, raiding barracks, capturing weapons and freeing republican prisoners
Britain outlawed the Dáil and Sinn Féin and sent over recruits called the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries which escalated the conflict. Up until late 1920, around 300 people had been killed in the conflict. On Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, fourteen British intelligence operatives were assassinated in Dublin in the morning, and the RIC opened fire on a crowd at a football match in the afternoon, killing fourteen civilians and wounding 65. A week later, seventeen Auxiliaries were killed by the IRA in an ambush at Kilmichael in County Cork. The British government declared martial law over much of southern Ireland. The centre of Cork City was burnt out by British forces in December 1920. Violence continued to escalate over the next seven months, when 1,000 people were killed and 4,500 republicans were interned, now officially making the conflict a war. Cork, Dublin and Belfast saw over 75% of the conflict’s fatalities with Belfast most notable for its sectarian character and its high number of Catholic civilian victims.
All sounds very familiar to the more recent troubles but on a much larger scale with more bloodshed, more destruction, more oppression and actually meeting the minimum criteria of war which is 1000 or more deaths in single year.
I can see where some feel there is a degree of hypocrisy and selectiveness in recognising events in Irish History.
So what about other conflicts?
If we are demanding the truth be known on Irish history, in particular around state activities, I was curious as to how other conflicts fared?
World War II
An MI19 prisoner of war facility, known as the “London Cage”, was utilised during and immediately after the war. This facility has been the subject of allegations of torture. The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre, in occupied Germany, managed by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, was the subject of an official inquiry in 1947. It found that there was “mental and physical torture during the interrogations” and that “personal property of the prisoners were stolen.
According to Alfred de Zayas, there are numerous documented cases of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force deliberately firing upon shipwreck survivors.
In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay, under Lieutenant Commander Anthony Miers, was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete, the crew fired upon shipwrecked German sailors and troops. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors following the first incident. Meir’s actions violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances
In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers.
Forced labour was also included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference in January 1945, where it was sanctioned by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1946, the UK had more than 400,000 prisoners, many had been transferred from POW camps in the U.S. and Canada. Many of these were used as forced labour, as a form of “reparations”. An emotional and public debate ensued in the UK, where words such as “slaves”, “slave labour” and “forced labour” were increasingly used in the media and in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
The largest group of forced labourers in the Soviet Union consisted of several million German prisoners of war. Most German POW survivors of the forced labour camps in the Soviet Union were released in 1953. The last major repatriation of Germans from the Soviet Union occurred in 1956.
According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POW’s in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation. Many rapes were committed under the effects of alcohol or post-traumatic stress, but some cases of premeditated attacks, like the attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint by two soldiers in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, which ended in the death of one of the women when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers discharged his gun, hitting her in the neck, as well as the reported assault on three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge. On a single day in mid-April 1945, three women in Neustadt were raped by British soldiers. A senior British Army chaplain following the troops reported that there was a ‘good deal of rape going on’. He then added that “those who suffer [rape] have probably deserved it.’
Most Western scholars agree that the majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet servicemen with the majority of the assaults committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million. According to historian William Hitchcock, in many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history”, and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. According to Natalya Gesse, Russian soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old.
Malaya
On 12 December 1948, during the Malayan Emergency, the Batang Kali massacre took place which involved the killing of 24 villagers. The official British position was that these villagers were insurgents attempting to escape, and that detailed investigation into the situation was not possible due to a lack of evidence.
As part of the Briggs’ Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (roughly ten per cent of Malaya’s population) were eventually removed from the land, had tens of thousands of their homes destroyed, and were interned in 450 guarded fortified camps called “New Villages”. The intent of this measure was to inflict collective punishments on villages where people were deemed to be aiding the insurgents and to isolate the population from contact with insurgents.
Kenya
During an eight-year conflict in Kenya from 1952 to 1960 in which Britain sought to restore order many Kikuyu were relocated. According to David Anderson, the British hanged over 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria during the Algerian War. It was found out that over half of them executed were not rebels at all. Thousands more were killed by British soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged. Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of U.S. President Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated
It would appear that conflict brings out the worst in all involved, yet not all crimes are considered equal in the aftermath.
I would argue that all combatants are equally victims of the conflict, just as the traumatised combatants of other conflicts have acted barbarically. Is it really possible to put a weapon in a human beings hands, ask them to take human lives and expect them not to become corrupted and indeed damaged from it?
Are those that created the monsters, not complicit in the actions that follow?
Do the poppy wearers give a second thought for the millions of women raped in the aftermath of the conflict by the very people they wear the flower to commemorate?
The only feasible future aspiration within the GFA is for reunification when the people are ready. Much opposition to this has been based on historic anti catholic animosity which has no place in the modern world. Even Catholics in Ireland today are not happy with the Catholic church, nowhere on the planet has the Catholic church treated its followers so poorly as in Ireland.
Religion is no longer an acceptable argument against the fulfilment of Irish independence for all of our people on this island. It is all of our responsibility including both states to ensure that happens and state denial of truth is not misused to keep alive a memory that fuels the fires of hatred.
We know evidence has been destroyed or conveniently lost by both states, many combatants are no longer alive taking many secrets to their graves, those that are still alive have after all this time still not come forward, are they likely ever to? It is therefore unrealistic to expect all of the truth is ever going to be available.
So where does that leave justice, we don’t have all of the evidence or the whole truth and we cannot even agree what constitutes a victim with those who refuse to see non state combatants or their families as victims?
Worse still, there are those who see the killings carried out by the state as legitimate and the only crimes as those not state sanctioned. These are the main manipulators and abusers of the past, who refuse to see their hurt in the greater context of conflict where culpability is more complex and indeed are as equally culpable as the combatants themselves.
My own conclusions are that both the Irish and British states care nothing about truth or justice in Ireland but are economic partners who will continue to prioritise and develop their financial arrangements with the southern state taking on the role of the cheap whore, drunk with the blood of its children and mesmerised by England’s wealth.
References
https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/QUEST/FileStore/Filetoupload,25794,en.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger
https://www.globalpolicy.org/international-justice.html
Yawn boring self justification again Jessica
That’s twice, neill
It is healthy to challenge our own perceptions neill.
There is too much control and corruption from state and media sources, we need a space where we can throw out our thoughts and put them to the scrutiny of who is most important, the people.
It will be the people who will take back control of our country.
Now ….neill, that’s hardly a response at all. Maybe it’s only a symptom of the stunted attention -span that is gradually developing in our modern age of instant gratification, where some believe their one- line answer is worthy of a haiku award and indeed feel it explains their thought processes… That a thoroughly researched piece of writing with some fairly valid logical arguments, a plethora of historical and some obscure educational and social detail… and a linear literary thrust that reads as crisp and clear as cold rain ,,can crash against a wall of incomprehension and base indifference to reasoned thought. You ought to be ashamed at such a begrudging answer.I find myself asking why anyone would bother to read if they weren’t prepared to open their mind and contribute a little more than a slogan to the discussion..
Exactly Neil. Article is entitled ‘Truth, Justice and Reconciliation’ but ends up as just another Brit Bashing rant. Notice too the special contempt reserved for “Poppy wearers” who basically should be ashamed to wear one because of the millions of rapes carried out by Russian troops. Nice logic. The bitterness oozing out of this article is palpable.
“Exactly Neil. Article is entitled ‘Truth, Justice and Reconciliation’ but ends up as just another Brit Bashing rant. Notice too the special contempt reserved for “Poppy wearers” who basically should be ashamed to wear one because of the millions of rapes carried out by Russian troops. Nice logic. The bitterness oozing out of this article is palpable.”
I directed no contempt towards poppy wearers KC.
Any contempt would be directed at those who object to the commemoration of the brave IRA soldiers who gave no less or behaved no worse than state combatants in our own conflict or as I have demonstrated through facts, in many others.
There can be no reconciliation until this prejudice is dealt with, and as the article alludes to, failure to do so and put our past behind us through true reconciliation could and as history suggests will most likely result in future conflict returning for our children which I for one do not want to see over intransigence.
Perhaps it is the truth part that you fear the most.
Tip of the Day; when heading an essay make sure it relates to body of writing contained within. Brit Bashing Bitterness (Part 2) by the Usual Suspects would be more apt for this body of work.
“Tip of the Day; when heading an essay make sure it relates to body of writing contained within. Brit Bashing Bitterness (Part 2) by the Usual Suspects would be more apt for this body of work.”
It isn’t nice when media unduly focus on past atrocities to slur good people in the present.
Spare a thought for Gerry Adams who bears the brunt of such afflictions, God bless him and you KC.
“Poppy wearers” should be ashamed to wear one because of the millions of rapes carried out by Russian troops.
Just to clarify KC, while the vast majority of rapes were carried out by Russians, I clearly referenced that british troops raped both during combat and after, and also referenced recorded events were british troops not only raped but killed women when they had finished with them.
Millions of rapes carried out by Russians but highlight the handful carried out by the Big Bad Brits so the two can be lumped together, thereby spinning it that Britain too was responsible for millions of rapes, tie that in with mentioning the poppy and hey presto! – it’s a good bit of demonisation all round. Top marks for smearing.
“Millions of rapes carried out by Russians but highlight the handful carried out by the Big Bad Brits so the two can be lumped together, thereby spinning it that Britain too was responsible for millions of rapes, tie that in with mentioning the poppy and hey presto! – it’s a good bit of demonisation all round. Top marks for smearing.”
The point I am making KC, is that once a conflict starts, it is impossible to control the events that follow, which are often brutal, savage and inhumane.
Yet, the people who have committed such acts almost never start out that way, it is often the conflict which changes them.
There is an on-going media managed campaign to demonise one side of the terrible conflict here, Irish republicans, while the British are allowed to censor evidence to protect their image and portray themselves as outsides in the conflict.
Contrary to the media propaganda, the IRA did not start the conflict here, indeed PIRA did not even exist then the British bombs and killings started. There is ample evidence to rove that conflict evolves and is never controllable.
Those facts are undeniable and the media propaganda which is a continuation of the conflict needs to be challenged. It is only fair that such behaviour is counterbalanced.
The British empire is in decline because it learns nothing from one conflict to another and the same thing is happening once again. The British are still operating in conflict mode, which is why they are going to lose a conflict which was supposed to be over.
Its hard to be told off by somebody who has no problems with criminality however as this is the season of good will I shall let it pass
That is very gracious of you, neill. There’s a basic rule in logic which says you simply cannot argue from the particular to the general. The fact that I can’t get into a moral lather over smuggling doesn’t mean I feel likewise about everything. For example, invading another country and using their resources, human and otherwise, is a form of criminality I detest.
Jessica, once again you have provided much food for thought. Your contribution and the texts warrant careful reading in the search for a shared future.
OMG, Neill, how do you continue to embarrass yourself by exposing your unrelenting ignorance & bigotry, I strongly suspect you didn’t bother to read the post. prefixed opinions on almost anything, why do you bother?
Boring Bridget I just get tired of the ongoing the British are evil and the poor Irish are blameless routine.
The truly amusing thing is this Bridget that you think you are free of ignorance and bigotry that is the amusing part.
“Boring Bridget I just get tired of the ongoing the British are evil and the poor Irish are blameless routine.”
That is not what I am saying at all neill.
The people of both Ireland and Britain are of the nicest you will meet on the planet and I hope our relationship will only get stronger.
How both states have acted here is appalling and their control of the media could teach china a thing or two.
That is the truth which needs to come out.
I think you’ve nailed it, Jessica. Have you looked at this morning’s Indo?
Neil, your reliance on insult to try & score a point is tiresome but not surprising.
But franklynot as tiresome as you.
OK neill – and Ryan. No more unadorned slagging. If you can’t wrap your insult in an argument, don’t even try.
Resorting to insulting the messenger because you do not like the message is always indicative of someone who has not much of an argument to begin with.
Too true, Gearoid. Check twitter some time if you want to see that kind of thing in overdrive…
Thanks Jude! Your analysis is spot on as usual!
Mick you are very kind and I’d LOVE to take the plaudits – but the post is by Jessica…
It’s true, you learn something new every day, I never knew that about Obama’s grandfather, that it occoured, and it was the brit’s who were responsible is no surprise whatsoever.
On the Good Friday Agreement, I was always of opinion the whole thing was aimed at being a learning process for those people in the north east of our nation who needed to come to terms with rapidly changing demographics, I always recall a poll published in the Belfast Telegraph, c. 1998 pointing to a small nationalist/Catholic majority by 2020, albeit never more than one or two per cent, problem is, and with due respect to Jude, the main difficulty lies in the media, the societal information purveyors, who seek to change aspiration to freedom through senseless ‘opinion polls’ they tell us, or at least the BBC and Newsletter do, indicate a majority of the Catholic/nationalist population support the union with britain, where they remain, in 2015, still twice as likely to be unemployed as their Protestant neighbour, than vote to join the Third Republic where they, and their neighbours, would be equally able to secure employment and all other benefits.
I often think of the 1981 interview on Radio Éireann with then leader of unionism Jim Molyneaux, the interviewer asked what if there were a Catholic majority in the north, Molyneaux quickly side stepped the answer with ‘well Catholics make only 30 per cent of the po;ulation’ however the interviewer persisted leading Molyneaux to make the point that if it occurred he thought the new majority would vote to remain in the union as their benefits (of course in Lagan Valley no indigenous people actually worked for their living) would be better in the six rather than in the twenty six counties (of course Molyneaux did not use these references)
I should hope someone, somewhere could drive home the point that these opinion polls must be equally conducted in all Nationalist areas of the six counties, not simply Bangor, Donaghadee and Stranmillis, if we are to get a true reflection of how the populace of the six counties might move in any forthcoming poll on our constitutional futures.
This I think ties to your comment on the role, subservient one, of the twenty six counties vis the old colonial master, my mother once said if Ian Paisley ran for the Presidency the people in the Free State, she grew up there, would elect him, I strongly suspect, in the near future, the next FG government will propose a new Amendment to secure our place in the brit’s commonwealth, with perhaps use of Irish harbors for their potentially homeless nuclear submarine fleet, I further suspect those same gob shites who my mother suggested would happily have elected Paisley, will equally happily join, or rejoin, the commonwealth, at this point I’ll send them back my Passport.
Mark
I agree with you that polls need to be conducted as broadly as possible.
But have you any evidence that recent polls, the big one for the BBC for example, were
confined to areas like Bangor and Donaghadee?
“Mark
I agree with you that polls need to be conducted as broadly as possible.
But have you any evidence that recent polls, the big one for the BBC for example, were
confined to areas like Bangor and Donaghadee?”
It would hardly matter where the poll was taken if the subject isn’t worth asking.
Irish independence deserves proper debate does it not?
We are not going to unite two economies on one island on the back of a farcical headline grabbing poll.
Are we all media blind?
Time we lifted the blinkers and seen the real word for a change.
Your last two sentences are spot on, Jessica. And the more people who question social media, the better. An example my attention was drawn to only today – if this had been an ex-IRA man, can you imagine the orgasmic joy of the social media trolls? http://www.irishnews.com/news/2015/12/22/news/former-solider-admits-benefit-fraud-361658/?param=ds441rif44T
“the more people who question social media, the better.”
To be fair Jude, the vast majority of people on these islands can see through the media diatribe just as their desperate efforts have never had any negative impact on Sinn Feins popularity despite their best efforts.
Just like Ireland in the EU official rankings has the highest percentage of people who believe their own state is corrupt, there is an immunity and acceptance among the population which is unnerving.
But when you witness the self righteous, puerile and at times outrageous attacks on media or state defined targets, not at all perturbed by the absence of actual evidence, like rabid dogs salivating over their prey and demanding the perversion of justice to satisfy their blood lust.
What ever happened to the pride in the green?
We really need to take our country back.
jessica
I am not arguing for or against polls I am simply responding to Mark’s suggestion that they are not carried out properly.
But by all means argue against a point I never made (again).
“I am not arguing for or against polls I am simply responding to Mark’s suggestion that they are not carried out properly.
But by all means argue against a point I never made (again).”
Am I also not entitled to make a point gio?
A more pertinent and relevant one to I may add.
If there isn’t sufficient information and debate, how on earth could anyone claim they being carried out properly?
jessica
I agree. But that is not the point Mark was making, to which I replied.
Out of interest if a poll was showing a majority in favour of an immediate referendum would you dismiss it so readily?
“jessica
I agree. But that is not the point Mark was making, to which I replied.
Out of interest if a poll was showing a majority in favour of an immediate referendum would you dismiss it so readily?”
I have not dismissed anything gio. I am glad that we both agree that the unification of two economies on this island, which is already well underway I should add, deserves proper debate among the people before seeking its constitutional approval as per GFA.
In direct answer to your question, I would absolutely accept an immediate referendum without any hesitation whatsoever.
The problem I can see with that however, is that it is not about you and I, and regardless of the outcome, the losing side whichever way it went could reasonably call for a rerun after proper debate, so would it not be best to just do it properly in the first place.
Out of my own interest, what do you feel would be the reasoning for wanting an immediate referendum without proper debate?
jessica
“We are not going to unite two economies on one island on the back of a farcical headline grabbing poll.”
That seem like a dismissal to me.
“That seem like a dismissal to me.”
Just in case you missed it first time, In direct answer to your question, I would absolutely accept an immediate referendum without any hesitation whatsoever.
Hardly a dismissal to my mind, but I rarely do understand your opinions.
Come on jessica, you dismissed the notion of polls as farcical and headline grabbing. It is right there in your comment.
Then you went on to say you did not dismiss anything.
How is that hard to understand?
“Come on jessica, you dismissed the notion of polls as farcical and headline grabbing. It is right there in your comment.
Then you went on to say you did not dismiss anything.
How is that hard to understand?”
I dismissed the polls you referred to regarding reunification of the people on this island as farcical and headline grabbing as they were designed to favour a predetermined result which even then they did not achieve.
When asked if people would accept unification if it would cost them in their pockets could hardly be referred to as anything else, and we all know it was included to give the impression we would all be worse of financially with reunification, something that fine gael and the media circus in its back pocket go out of their way to promote.
They did not get the result they wanted, and who could have predicted such a high percentage prepared to accept being worse off for reunification?
Fine Gael will fight unification until we are not only back in the commonwealth but have a nice new treaty bringing us back in the united kingdom.
You now well what I was saying, didn’t expect you to sink to deliberately misquoting out of context.
You sure you are not a Fine Gael supporter?
jessica, you say:
“I have not dismissed anything gio”
then
“I dismissed the polls you referred to ”
That is the contradiction I was trying to point out.
Polls you don’t like are dismissed as farcical, polls you would like would be readily accepted.
“That is the contradiction I was trying to point out.
Polls you don’t like are dismissed as farcical, polls you would like would be readily accepted.”
gio, fair enough, I will try and clarify, I am not dismissing polls in general, but trying to explain why I dismissed the ones you referred to.
This is a very well argued, erudite and impressively researched piece of work, Jessica, and you deserve great credit for it. I hope to see some more of your enlightened opinion pieces in the near future.
Just to clarify
This article is not about gloating over evil deeds carried out in conflicts, but about the taking ownership of the truth of what happens before, during and after conflict.
There is no justification of any conflict which is nothing but evil deeds, there is only the actions which cause it in the first place, the actions which fuel its continuance and the actions which support or oppose its end including reconciliation for selfish interests.
The IRA are constantly blamed on starting the troubles but is that the truth?
Being clandestine in nature, the media are unlikely to be sued for libel and I suppose have an easy target and a free rein in the propaganda front.
The best way to challenge this media propaganda aggression is with the truth, and that is what good people need to bring forward.
Terrible things happen in all conflicts, all states approve crimes against its own people in its own interests, and it is the British and Irish states who have more to lose from the truth which is why the propaganda agenda is so intense and will remain so until sufficient time passes when the truth will be less harmful for those involved.
It is quite clear to me that the British state still has hundreds of paid agents and informants within dissident republican and loyalist paramilitaries and approval for criminality leads all the way to Westminster and to Dublin.
Lets hope the new cross border police force will be given access to these details and are not confronted with unfounded national security restrictions when agents are arrested for criminality and will have sufficient regulatory controls to prevent state interference when evidence inevitably points in their direction.
I’m late coming to read this excellent article but wish to say thanks. Thought provoking material.