That is curious.
Some are even asking
if October 5th 1968 was "The Beginning of The Troubles"
That is very curious indeed.
October 5th. 1968 was a day when police beat a massive Human Rights march into the ground. But when my parents talked to us about The Troubles they were talking about events in Belfast during the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties when one section of our population was regularly attacked by supporters of the government urged on by street preachers and secret societies.
When people were violently forced out of homes and jobs.
When people like my relatives sheltered under the stairs because the death squads were out, some emerging from police barracks.
A continuation of our history in which, as the late Andrew
Boyd pointed out, there had been an average of one such major
government-assisted pogrom once every
twelve years for a hundred years.
A time when the preachers' condemnation of alcohol in East
Belfast escalated into pogroms against those who sold it, followed by their
premises changing ownership at a low price and returning to business under new, government approving,
management.
That and much else of this same kind is what parents and
others were talking about when they talked to us about "The Troubles" .
So .....to refer to
what happened after October 5th 1968 as " the beginning of The Troubles " is asking us to
wipe out of our memory a long history of
troubles inflicted on my parents ' generation and many before and after them. That means fitting one set of Troubles into a
historical cage in order to forget the others.
A march for civil rights was not the beginning of The Troubles.
The beating of the march into the ground was not the
beginning of The Troubles The political system within which we lived and our parents lived had Troubles deliberately and permanently built into it.
..................................................................................................................................................
Those of us who grew up in the time of the European dictators can put into context what was happening in Belfast more easily than those who didn't. We can understand how and why some people used words about it to soften the effect of their memories on us. My parents' generation used the words "The Troubles" to soften their story of atrocities so that we and they might demand remedy for them , not retribution. Their memories and the reason they described events as they did, as "troubles" rather than atrocities, deserve to be recognised and not used to pretend such things did not happen.
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TWO RELEVANT
THOUGHTS
1. We were invited, two of us, a Church of
Ireland friend and I, to talk to a peace
group in Athlone.
On arrival we realised the Peace Group was run by the local
military. When talking to them about what was happening on the other side of
the border we used the word "war" describing it.
We were rebuked for that by members of the audience who said
calling it a war was to give it a dignity it did not deserve. They said it was
just criminal activity.
Our reply was simple : it had all the elements of war and therefore
was a war. And the military and we had different ideas about dignity.
Years later I listened to
a British military officer claiming that his job was to bring peace in N.Ireland. I said, "You cannot bring
peace if you don't tell your government the truth and you are not doing that".
He admitted that what he and his troops were fighting was an
efficient , highly organised and effective political guerrilla force.....not,
as described by his government, a crowd of thugs....
Another person in the conversation said : "You have to remember
that what an army tells its government is one thing, what the government tells
its people is often something quite different".
The military officer agreed.
2. The words
"The Troubles "
may remind us Oldies of stories in magazines and books of our times about the
Empire - like :
" I say , old
chap," said the brigadier as we passed the port around in our tent that dusty
desert evening, "Old
Fotheringay tells me the natives are
somewhat restless around the hills these days ..... bit of trouble there d'you
think .... ? "Oh I shouldn't think
so, always Troubles up that
neck of the woods you know........Natives get restless , nothing the sight of a few chaps with bayonets won't
cure.......... ".
This is not a real quote. But it's near enough.
That Imperial mind still endures, even as the empire departs
.................
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