Yes , it’s a curious one. Everyone “knows” that Gerry Adams was the leader of the IRA but nobody has seen his membership card.I dare say that “truth” holds sway right across the Nationalist and the Unionist communities in Norneverland. It’s like the Oscar Pistorious trial .Most people believe that the Bladerunner murdered his girl-friend because he lost his temper , but nobody was in the room to see it , so they will never know for sure.Then again , maybe the IRA never had anything so ordinary as a “leader”. Maybe Gerry was their top advisor or some such and refused point -blank to be a “leader”. He might have said ..”I will not be having it!” Everyone may have stood about shuffling their feet, looking sheepish …and then said “Oh, alright then ,Gerry, if you don’t want to be the leader, you’re not the leader!” “Now can we get on with the bloody meeting ?”
We discussed these semantic distinctions in law before, didn’t we? Most of the people who “really” know that Gerry Adams was the leader of the IRA are unfortunately dead and may have been delusional or telling fibs. The law is very funny about stuff like this.Anyway , we lived through some very “Alice in Wonderland “times where logic was stood on its head for a generation so we shouldn’t now expect anything like perfection in our local government.
I hope we are not all collectively, forever, to repeat and refer back to the list of horrors and calumnies that certain people across the divided communities did to each other . It’s a fact that it all ended with the Good Friday Agreement anyway ,when we were agreeing to begin anew. A brand new start .A brand new day.If there was a “war” or a “social unrest” for us of the previous generation, it was at that moment when we all agreed it was over and most of us were damned glad that it was. Most of us were bored witless with it all anyway;living through it ;reading about it;getting nowhere fast as we just got older.
That said ,It seems that there are still many who want and require a conflict of sorts to continue forever.A divided society suits them very nicely.Some people, no matter their Christian prattling, simply want a nice little bit of human revenge.They miss that old conflict.Some who never even lived through it are already nostalgic about it .Wee silly boys who thought it must have been some great romantic time , like a hack’s version of the Wild West in an old pulp magazine.
We have arrived at a flawed system that has caused the guns on both sides, for the most part, to fall silent .That really should be an end to it but it obviously isn’t .There’s the carping about people who used to be members of violent groups .Well ,everyone who carried arms whether legal or illegal were in violent groupings. There were many deaths on each side of the divide and many prominent politicians on every side encouraged that mayhem, if only by speaking rashly or foolishly. There were plenty of us who didn’t though.There were plenty of us who could see the blatant hypocrisy virtually every day .The violence, the manipulation and then the revenge killing. That’s what most of it was of course . ..just old -fashioned revenge for imagined or possibly real wrongs. Revenge , all the same. Everyone lost someone from their community or their wider family circle. Norneverland is such a tiny place that it was bound to be like this.
That was then. We have a system now where we vote in anyone we want. There was a consensus that this new system would represent the majority views of the two communities and their aspirations. Unionism wants to maintain a union with the UK .Nationalism wants to unite with the rest of the country. That’s fair enough…. .If some of them were members of groupings, illegal or not , there should be no argument . If you throw a stone here , you’ll hit someone you know or someone who knows someone you know who was either a security force member or in an illegal group..
All democracies have some horror in their origin story too. All kings, rulers or top dogs don’t get to that position of power by being nice guys. They become leaders by walking over the bones of their rivals.That happened here too .When the smoke of gunfire cleared, the winners, for good or bad , walked out of it.
So we ended up with a group of politicians , some of whom we don’t like or who have a dodgy back-story, in our collective government.Well …what did we expect? Throughout the Troubles , these were the movers and shakers who were getting their names in the newspapers every day.
Was Gerry Adams leader of the IRA? Why should it even matter now . There is no IRA anymore and there will hopefully never be need for anything like it again. There are no B specials in the police force either, because it was a force, for and mostly from ,only one side of the community .There is no RUC or UDR and the army are gone back to the UK and to conflicts elsewhere.Did some nationalist politicians step outside the law in the past? Of course they did .The law was their enemy.. Did some unionist politicians step outside the law ? Of course some of them did .This state was founded on them threatening armed insurrection after all .what did we expect.Let’s not beat about the bush here though…these are mostly all old men at retirement age now . That old world is all gone now. it is past tense.
The other thing is , you don’t need to be in a political party to be a rapist or a child abuser. Every business and every grouping will have its share of these misogynistic bad apples.The fact that there was a rapist in the IRA should be no surprise, given that if you are prepared to kill a person, you’d have little bother with a little immorality. There were plenty of violent sex abusers in the RUC, too , I’m sure . There was certainly a macho-sexist cut to that force’s jib .In fact sexism a couple of decades ago was taken for granted across the board. Look it up if you didn’t live through it. All these perverted Dee Jays were mostly taken for granted back then.Actually , if you cared to upturn a few stones , you’d soon discover that the extent of incest within families throughout Ireland and your own community would make your hair curl.Mental institutions are brimming with all sorts of damaged sexual goods.Damaged by their siblings or their father …sometimes their mother …or both. It’s not all clerics fiddling about either.
None of this is new in any case .Should Gerry Adams be held accountable for one of the minions in his {leaderless}”Hole in the Wall Gang” that existed as outlaws in their own little redoubts? …especially when he was not their “leader”, in law, and where the “law” was seen as the enemy in any case?.
Well that’s one for Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee or one of the many characters in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”.
As i said somewhere before , Norneverland is a very close state to Alice’s Wonderland.There may not even be a border separating them.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where –”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” …Lewis Carroll.
Brilliant article, it sums up the whole ludicrous situation we find ourselves in here bitter , people, a vast majority of them gun toting Unionists, whether in or out of `official` British uniforms, forever harping on and on about IRA actions from forty years ago. Funny how it is always IRA actions, never any acknowledgment of the carnage inflicted on the Nationalists by the British army/ RUC/UDA/UDR/UVF etc. The twelfth of July should be held on Groundhog Day, when we are forced to relive the past, time after time after time. How can a whippersnapper like Jamie Bryson be outraged at things the IRA did decades ago? Does Peter Robinson ever cast his mind back over the illegal antics he got up to years ago? Speaking as a Republican, the one thing I fear most is if Unionists ever move into the modern world and do away with their anti Catholic bile, it could draw in some Catholics towards supporting the union, but let`s face it, that is not very likely.
You can watch a thieve but you cannot watch a liar.
If you can’t tell the truth, how can I trust you.
And of course the Unionists, whether in or out of uniform, never tell lies? I don`t care whether or not he was in the IRA.
As a freeloader from the Free Southern Stateen one sentence in particular, Esteeemed Blogmeister, lurched out, staggered down the corridor and headbutted one full-on in the face, Roy K style: ‘Some who never even lived through it are already nostalgic about it’.
As the contemporary cliche has it: tell me about it.
Down here on the morally superior side of afrontier (oops, meant to writer ‘a frontier’) there was a popular virtual game called ‘The High Moral Ground’. It was enormously popular with children, not least those from the ages of nine to ninety. (Only a bus can be 90A, as Spike Milligan almost remarked).
The basic tenet (a darling word which is a real morally superior version of ‘dodge’) was to see which of the affronted contestants could condemn in the loudest possible terms the latest atrocity north of the border up Vexico way, that pretenatually angry province.
Not just any atrocity, mind. But an atrocity committed by one particular side of the confounded conflict, and one only. (Alas, Perkie’s sieve-like memory which no longer continues to give, cannot now quite recall which particular side that was, almost a score of point-scoring years later).
Whichever contestant reached the highest level in his condemnation, decibel-wise, on the Fintanian Scale, was crowned the winner. Which summit in this most virtual of all virtual games was signified by the bright flashing of blue lights around the C-word on the console: ‘CaraounToole’ !
Peter (Ustinov, not Robinson) had something similar in mind when he ventriloquised the following line for the 2nd Soldier in his play ‘Romanoff and Juliet’: ‘At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we’re all Generals.Only some of us never grow out of it’.
Despite denunciations of the most strenuous ilk (a post graduate study of these strenuous d’s would perhaps make a suitable topic for any academically ambitious student bent on achieving a ‘Spin Doctorate’) the childish game is still as fashionable as ever. As was evidenced by a goodly gathering of the great and g. of polite society in the Royal Irish Academy (R.I.A.) on Dawson Street, Dublin last week.
All of them suitably togged out in paper hats and wooden swords for the launch of the hagiography of W.T. Cosgrave, founder of the Free Southern Stateen. Despite the political party atmosphere and the morally superior chatter of the canape and Chardonais class at the bash where bashfulness was not in evidence, one topic was taboo. A self imposed gagging order, one might say, of the Section 31 stripe, was in effect. Not at all inappropriate for the genre of book being launched: the gagiography.
One forlorn question in rags was peremptorily refused permission to enter the imperial mansion, of grey matter (granite) built. And compelled to squat on the steps outside, rattling his tin cup. He cut a truly pathetic figure, this question called Mark did.
And what this question begged was: Was W.T. Cosgrave in fact a member of the R.I.A.?
The Free Southern Stateen continue to deny this suggestion, vehemently, till they are blue of face and shirt alike. They snidely put down the question beggars by chanting the following one size fits all reply like a mantra: ‘Not only did W.T. never handle a book in his life, he would not even recognise one if it head butted him in that clipped moustachioed face of his. W.T. was a man for bookies and not the books. He was one for riding to the Hounds and not reading about them, including ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.
Yet, and yet, and yet.
Evidence does exist, deny it though they may, and they do, to the contrary. Perhaps a clue lies in the number ‘four’ as features in that quote by Peter the Great (Ustinov) as distinct from Peter the Grating (Robinson). It may not at all have been a randomly chosen digit.
For, in the post-mortem personal effects of W.T.Cosgrave was found undeniable proof that he was, in effect, an avid, albeit clandestine, reader of books, well, ok, book. That book was ‘The Four Horsemen of the Provincialypse’.
Do not be misled by the equine vibe of the title. Note rather the numeral in the title. Perkie’s inner bibliophile has it on not just good, but great authority, that this is an in-publishing house tilt of the hat in the direction at the most cherished manuscript in the no-fault vaults of the R.I.A.: ‘The Annals of the Four Masters’.
Which book of W.T’s, of course, has gone into no less than 77 editons, and indeed, 78 if one is minded to include the American edition, which was published under the title of ‘The Stonebreaker’s Yard: a Trigger-happy Memoir of a Firing Squadie’.
Indeed, there was even a song published on e-tunes to coincide with the launch Stateside. It was called ‘Take it down from the Asgard, canape-aters’ whose first line went something along the lines of : ‘ You’re m-worded brave Liam and Rory
You’ve b-worded bold Richard and Joe’
And still they deny that W. T. was a member of the Royal Irish Society.
W.T. is right.
The Free Southern Stateen Wet Dream (penultimate) White Trash who made it to the Ward Union Hunt.
Tally ho !
Oh Perkie. What a morning tonic- as the actress said to the bishop…
De nada, Esteemed Blogmeister.
It’s called a Perk-up. Designed to be taken as an aid to a Wake up. (Under strict supervision of your local friendly family Spin Doctor).
Just one tiny top-up from Perkie’s inner neutral pedant: this Ascendency-transcending tendency of the Southern White Trash to aspire to the Tally-ho Hall of Fame was/is not confined to one side of the (alleged) political spectrum, cf, CJH.
As an old hot pursuer of the inedible border foxes, the unspeakable PW knows this.
PS Special Offer ! Special Offer ! Slightly soiled old jodhpurs for Sale ! Will not put much of a dent in your Coffers !
A fantastic article Harry. Well done.
Keep saying stuff like that and I’ll try to keep tapping ’em out Patrick!
Nice meander through the maze (that one aside), reminding of the twin St Patrick RC and Church of Ireland in their annual soccer game.
This year the Church of Ireland side won.
The most cheered toast in the pub that night was: “There’ll be weeping in the Vatican this night.”