Recently released papers and learning from the past

They say that we here in the north of Ireland dwell too much on the past. There may be some truth in the charge. The Orange Order marches to the rhythm of  a distant past (“The sash my father wore”); and while republicans could be accused of many things, they don’t forget their dead.

On the other hand, if we have no knowledge and awareness of our past, we are rudderless and helpless. Think of it at a personal level: if you can’t remember what you did two days ago or last week, or even what groceries you planned to get this evening, you are probably suffering from dementia. Likewise with a society: the community that ignores its history may not be doomed to repeat it but will act on a narrow base of information. Memoro ergo sum –  I remember therefore I am.

So it’s not just interesting but insightful to look at papers from the past. The latest batch of files to be released tell us quite a few things about the thinking of various parties back then. Let’s list a small number.

• Ken Bloomfield, the head of the NI Civil Service in the 1980s, appears not to have held West Belfast and its citizens in any notable esteem. The knight saw the area as having a “ghetto mentality” (no, I don’t know either, Virginia, but it’s not good); he also believed that the area hadn’t just departed from “normal civilized behaviour” but found such normal behaviour “alien”.
• He was fearful that regeneration might be applied to the area, since unionists would then see this as reward for killing British soldiers.
• Gerry Kelly – yes, the Sinn Féin one – was seen as an extremely dangerous and dedicated terrorist.
• The British government thought John Hume wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about cross-party talks. They looked to Bishop Eddie Daly as someone who might influence Hume.

Let’s take each of those in turn and try to wring a droplet of wisdom from each.

• When the head of a state’s civil service considers a major Catholic part of Belfast  inward-looking, at best semi-civilized, and is reluctant to help the people of the area for fear that unionism mightn’t like it, you begin to see why some people from that community resorted to violence.
• The description of Gerry Kelly as an extremely dangerous and dedicated terrorist is as good an example as you’ll get of how people and events here are viewed differently by different communities. For the unionist and British authorities, Kelly being dangerous and dedicated and a terrorist was a warning that this ruthless and daring man should never be trusted. To the uncivilized people of West Belfast, the fact that the British authorities feared his ruthless abilities would have been seen as a badge of honour.
• The British government thought John Hume wasn’t sufficiently close to their line of thinking and action. From any normal and civilized way of thinking, John Hume was an outstandingly reasonable man who fought for civil rights in a peaceful way, a man who, though deeply concerned for the welfare of the north’s nationalist people, was the personification of mildness in his nationalist thinking. Yet this man was deemed insufficiently committed to dancing to the British tune.
• So the British appear to have used Bishop Eddie Daly as a a go-between and someone who might influence Hume more towards their line of thinking. You got that, Virginia? Hume, a consistently non-confrontational and inclusive figure was seen as not being sufficiently close to British thinking on things. So what did they do? They used Bishop Eddie Daly, in the hope that he would influence Hume. In other wards, they considered Daly to be nearer to their thinking than Hume. And Daly’s reward? Not a single unionist politician put in an appearance at his funeral.

These recently-released files are educative. They let the West Belfast people see how they were regarded by at least one major unionist figure, and how treatment of nationalists was determined by what unionists might think. They show us that, for all the talk of the IRA being forced to end their war, there were individuals in the IRA who frightened the pants off the British forces. It’s also instructive to ask yourself: did Ian Paisley have a Damascene conversion and assent to power-sharing because he realized we are all, Protestants and Catholics, unionists and nationalists/republicans, really brothers and sisters under the political/religious skin? Or was he forced to accept into power-sharing government men like Gerry Kelly because the alternative of joint rule was even more unpalatable?

In ways the papers are saddening, when we reflect that a highly-educated man like Bloomfield would have the contemptuous views he had on a whole community; that the British would have seen John Hume as dragging his heels over talks and used a revered Catholic bishop as a way of bringing him closer to their thinking. Alas, sometimes the truth is sad.

Were Eddie Daly alive, he might have had something to say about the British view of him. Ken Bloomfield is alive and is, I hope, ashamed of his arrogance in labeling a whole community uncivilized. And Gerry Kelly is alive and this morning will no doubt feel a grim satisfaction that he managed back then,  so firmly and thoroughly, to put the wind up the authorities.