Six afterthoughts on that Mary McAleese progamme

 Following Joe McVeigh’s blog yesterday, I’m reluctant to add this one, since Joe has covered most of the main points. But we all experience things from our own unique point of view, so here are six things that struck me during Mary McAleese’s documentary on RTÉ.

1. Calling on integrated education to save us all from ourselves is a waste of breath and time. Of course you get to know other kids better if you’re sitting in the same class as them, but check out a considerable number of both Catholic and Protestant/state schools: virtually all have an admixture of other faiths. Has this transformed our society? Have integrated education graduates – and there must be a lot of them knocking about since the latter part of the last century – have they meant a changed society? And if you went to a Catholic or Protestant/State school,  did you then become a bigot? Enough with the integrated schools, Mary.
2. We know that terrible things happened during the Troubles, so why tell us yet again? And if you must use footage of the carnage of the Shankill and Omagh bombs, would it not be worth at least trying to add some significant detail? Such as the bomb-deliverers in both cases had almost certainly no intention of producing the blood-bath they did. That there are inspection-worthy claims that a British agent was involved in both the Omagh and Shankill bomb. Finally, stop throwing around the term ‘murder’. That’d mean that Sean Kelly murdered his comrade Thomas Begley.
3. What is the point in having Mary McAleese being taken around in a black taxi from a Protestant/loyalist area? Is that to add a frisson of danger ( maybe the taximan will attack Mary!) or so another voice can add variety, pointing out killing points?
4. Anyone who doesn’t know the part Fr Alec Reid played in bringing John Hume and Gerry Adams together for talks should maybe switch off the telly and go back to playing marbles.
5. Of course the conflict wasn’t a religious war. Of course if everyone acted as Jesus urged – Love your neighbour, do good to those that hate you – we’d not have had bloodshed. But like it or choke on it, violence is what happens when people feel they are under the yolk of injustice and want to free themselves.
6. Thanks to programmes like this one, people here in the North have now reached the point which English people reached decades ago: mention the word ‘Troubles’ and a lot of thumbs will immediately squeeze the remote and change the channel. It’s known as the FFS factor.