Guy Fawkes. A rather infamous example that should come to mind!

Wow, that is quite moving.

Very honest. I’d like to read more!

“For me, the distance accorded by a third of the average lifetime is enough to put the matter in perspective. Humanism arrives to temper the abstractions.”

One wonders why, 25 years ago, “humanism” appeared not to have arrived in Ireland to “temper the abstractions” of so-called ‘terrorists’… Could it be, perhaps, because centuries of repression and degradation at the hands of the British could not be erased so easily?

“Although I could not have imagined myself saying this in 1984, Tebbit obviously now has the moral high ground.”

Really? Why?

Brave words; it’s never easy to admit that you were wrong.

I was an active member of the LP at the time and hated the Tories. I believed in a united Ireland but never believed in the IRA. This was due to democratic principles but missing a B’ham pub bombing by a few hours and being a colleague of one of those who died in Brighton pretty much kept me to it.

I don’t think Tebbit has the moral high-ground either. It’s easy to see why he would find it difficult to forgive Magee, but he doesn’t have the right to prevent others forgiving him. A quick google search shows the meeting at which Magee is speaking is being hosted by a peace & conflict resolution organisation founded by Jo Berry, whose father was killed in the bombing and who is also speaking at the meeting.

“Moving on” is not just a convenient form of words, it is the only positive course of action open to many people affected by tragedy, and requires sacrifice, and difficult questions like whether to forgive even if someone doesn’t seem to have fully repented.

Absolutely brilliant post Dave.

Tim F @6,

Tebbit of course *does* have the right to urge others not to forgive Magee. Kinda goes along with free speech, that.

I think extreme unionists and anti-Catholics also bear much of the blame. Yes it’s true that by 1985 all of NICRA’s civil rights demands had been granted, but if extremist unionists like Ian Paisley and Brookeborough hadn’t brought down conciliatory unionist leaders like O’Neill, Chicester Clark and Faulkner then none of the 30 years of bombings and misery would ever have happened. The Times in the obituary of Lord Brookeborough, PM of Northern Ireland 1943-1963, partly attributed the sectarian strife in NI to the bigotry and discrimination imposed by Ulster Unionists against Catholics from the foundation of the state. Brooke was a staunch anti-Catholic, sacked all his Catholic labourers on his large (stolen from native Catholics) estates, urged all Protestant employers not to employ Catholics (“99% of whom are disloyal” “Catholics are out to destroy Ulster”), sacked even all the Protestant gardeners in Stormont, wanted the ‘Church of Rome’ to be ‘submerged into the sea’ , and sat back as his party gerrymandered local government to produce Protestant majorities in Protestant minority districts (eg Derry, Omagh). When O’Neill tried to rectify the endemic anti-Catholic discrimination in NI in the 60s, Brookeborough asked how can you put Catholics in positions of power given that they (supposedly) are out to destroy you. He said that a Protestant who employed a Catholic was a traitor. Paisley lead demonstrations against any conciliation to civil rights marchers, and opposed any ‘building bridges’ to Catholics famously saying that a traitor and a bridge were similar in that both lead to the other side The Provos were a monster of Ulster Unionist creation. Anyway I supported the Good Friday Agreement and the Patton reforms, and I pray that no other generation suffers the internecine sectarian strife that has blackened Ulster since the Plantation.

I think extreme unionists and anti-Catholics also bear much of the blame.

They may bear blame for many things, but they did not plant the bombs in Brighton which is what we’re talking about.

#7 – technically you’re correct – he can exercise his free speech to urge others not to forgive. My point is that if he does so when others who were affected worse by the bombing are able to make the herculean effort to forgive, then he doesn’t have the moral high ground: those urging peace and reconciliation do.

No, Tebbit has the right to bare a grudge. I’ll give him that.

Nobody can forgive on your behalf – despite what the Catholic church preaches – any more than they can apologise on your behalf.

By the way, excellent article, one of Dave’s best.

The odd thing about terrorism is that it is obviously incapable, by itself, of achieving its ends. Mass assassination of a government would not change the attitude of Parliament to Ireland, just as mass bombing of civilians in WW2 did not break the resolve of either Britain or Germany.
But it does of course have a logic: to provoke severe retaliation, which will recruit more to the cause. The aim appears to be to cause an ever increasing spiral of bloodshed.
But terrorism, whose justification is that it is the weapon of the underdog, can not win in a war. It can achieve its ultimate aims only when the “oppressor” government is fairly democratic, or has some concern for justice, or can be coerced by outside world opinion. Terrorism is not effective against vicious totalitarian governments.
That being the case, it seems likely that the same ends could be achieved by other sorts of protest, perhaps more difficult and painful for those taking part in it, but less likely to spill a lot of innocent blood. So I cannot see that terrorism can ever be morally justified.
That is not to say that I can’t understand the feelings of those who take part in it or excuse it. I understand the feelings of those who were swayed by Hitler’s rhetoric, and the feelings of the whole British nation who were, apparently, delighted about the complete destruction of German cities. Getting emotionally worked up about how dreadfully you and yours have been treated is totally human. But it is not an adequate substitute for morality.

@tim f

quote: #7 – technically you’re correct – he can exercise his free speech to urge others not to forgive. My point is that if he does so when others who were affected worse by the bombing are able to make the herculean effort to forgive, then he doesn’t have the moral high ground: those urging peace and reconciliation do.

Given that his wife (Norman Tebbitt) was permanently paralysed, and he was seriously injured, your evocation of ‘others who were worse affected…’ is a grotesque insult and typical of the apologists for the butchers who caused more than two thirds of the deaths of the now euphemistically sanitised ‘troubles’ (and yes, I was there through a good part of it). As well to tell the wives (and husbands) of the people who lost their lives in the World Trade Centre towers to quit their whingeing and forgive the murderous terrorists whose emotional heirs still try day by day to kill, maim and subjugate anyone whom they decide is a ‘legitimate target’.

Thanks for that Dave. I moved to England from Ireland to go to college. I remember “unconditional but critical support”. Never could work out what it meant. If anything. It struck me as symptomatic of an indulgent attitude which much (by no means all) of the British left had for militant violent nationalism in Ireland which they would have rightly identified as reactionary in their own country and which the Irish left (again with exceptions) generally did not share. I’ve often wondered what they would think now.

I was born in the year of the Birmingham pub bombings to an Irish Catholic woman in Birmingham.

Interesting that as a result of their barbaric targetting of ordinary citizens me and many of my contemporaries of a similar background despise Sinn Fein and the IRA more than your average English person. I recall one classmate who at the age of 14 or so had has his ambition to infiltrate the IRA and massacre them.

My distaste for Republicanism remains.

#15

Sorry but you’re talking nonsense. Forgiveness is not something that is easy, but it’s the only path to reconciliation. If he is unable to forgive, that is one thing – but it would be best for the cause of peace and reconciliation if he does not stand in the way of others who have been worse-affected (yes, having a close-family member killed is worse than them being permanently paralysed, although both are terrible) who have somehow managed to forgive.

Also, if you’re going to accuse me of apologism, please be specific and give examples from my comments in this thread. If you do that, I’ll either say sorry if I think you’re right, or tell you why you’re wrong. If you can’t, I’ll assume you’re just flinging insults around in an attempt to smear.

Dave

Thanks for your personal account, which was very interesting and honest. I was only about 10 at the time of the bombing so have a hazy memory of it. In Brighton at party conference the other week – and in the Grand bar into the early hours, it really brought it home to me just what a barbarous thing it is to blow up a hotel. Norman Tebbit was certainly a major anti-influence on my political views, but you are right to say he has the moral high ground … The forgiveness and reconciliation efforts are impressive from those who can manage to do that, but that does also demand sensitivity towards the views of others.

Funny enough, rather like PragueTory, partly because my mother is southern Irish Catholic – from Cork – I was always v.sceptical about Sinn Fein/IRA and so also about the “troops out” left. (In fact, my mother managed to combine soft green de Valera nationalism with Daily Mail English Tory attitudes … when I was about 14 I managed to spot the contradiction in this green/blue fusion, to which the answer was ‘Labour put the troops in’, … though to protect the minority in fact). The moderate Irish Home Rule nationalism of the 19th century seems to me very attractive, but the post-1916 developments much less so, and much more now demythologised in Ireland than perhaps on some parts of the British left.
I wrote a bit about that here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/13/mycountriesrightandwrong

Thanks for sharing this.

@19

Sunder, I know what you mean about sympathising with some Irish nationalist movements, but not others. I have always had a strong sense of national or ethnic identity, and balancing being half Irish and half English means I have sympathies for English romantic patriotism, and also Irish nationalism of the Parnell school. I think ultimately if I could change history, I would have given devolution to Ireland, but I would have kept Ireland in the United Kingdom. In the south and west of Ireland, some of the older folks – oddly, given the experience of the Troubles in the North and so on – have a sense of identity that often includes being partially British, and often folks in this area have a strong sense of patriotism (British, not Irish) when they see the Queen, strangely. I believe the Queen is due to visit Ireland next year(?) and it will be very interesting to see the reception she gets.

Could I just burst this Anglo – Irish love in?

When I went for a mid-week break to Dublin, it was made pretty clear to me as a Scot, that we were a shower of wimps and that Irish Nationalism – which has a few issues of it’s own about immigratioin – was far superior to any attempt to break up democratically?

Just saying.

Good article, Dave. But it raises two questions.
1. Were you wrong merely with hindsight, or were you instead wrong at the time to support the IRA? I mean, there were then good Trotskyite arguments against terrorism:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/Trotsky/againstterrorframe.htm
2. If you reject those arguments (FWIW, I don’t), and regard the IRA’s armed struggle as legitimate, shouldn’t you regard the Tory government as at least a legitimate target as the ordinary squaddie who only joined the army to escape the dole?
If so, then isn’t the sympathy for the Brighton bomb victims in part due to their greater fame than that of the many soldiers killed by the IRA?

“Anglo-Irish love in” nothing, @22.

The Brighton bombing was 25 years ago, but my (Northern Irish) partner suffered physical and verbal abuse as a result of her (mostly Belfast) accent just ten years ago, whilst at university in the town.

Incidentally, Dave (and I mean this only partially in jest), what is now the nature of your “unchanged attitude problem”?

Very impressive piece of writing. Writing of this high quality is nowadays very rare.

@21 – thanks, interesting.

I feel it would strike many people – perhaps especially most of those under 30 – as really rather odd that the Queen has never been to the Republic of Ireland in an official capacity. In one way the visit would be enormously historically resonant; in another a somewhat non-extraodinarry event which seems an unlikely thing not to have achieved by 2009. It shows how recent the 1999 agreement is.

I also think ireland’s return to the Commonwealth would be a very good thing. I am never sure what the chances of it happening ever are, but I think the SDLP should advocate it. It would add credence to its aspiration of ‘unity by agreeement’ and, if there were a great nationalist backlash/resistance to it, I think that might demonstrate the limits of that too.

Anyway I feel it is a shame that Attlee and Nehru could deal with the being a Republic in the Commonwealth issue while Ireland left. … It would have a range of different symbolic meanings. For example, the Irish do sometimes link the interest in development issues to being the advanced western democracy which experienced a famine.

This is a really interesting account from Mary Kenny of the Coronation in the Republic
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-republic-of-irelands–secret-love-affair-with—queen-elizabeth-14522516.html