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Prime Minister Tony Blair had to face hard choices (a popular
phrase of the present administration) on Northern Ireland
in relation to Bloody Sunday. He could have courageously tried
to show leadership and put the past behind us for a better
future or buckle to republican pressure.
The eventual decision was not in doubt however, it did not
have to be the divisive disaster that Labour seem to want
to make it. What happened on Bloody Sunday was a tragedy -
a security operation that went wrong and would not have taken
place if it had not been for the activities of republicans.
But it is not how the media have been suggesting that unionist
hostility is like that of a child, give one child a sweet
and the other feels left out.
The zero sum factor or if they get something we lose something
often applies to politics in Ulster of both Green and Orange
varieties. This has not been the case in relation to Bloody
Sunday. Unionist opposition has not come from a complicity
to Roman Catholic lives or an unquivering support for the
British army but rather for the way the Bloody Sunday tragedy
was perverted to suit the republican agenda.
The comparison with a Bloody Sunday rally on the first of
February is clear when republicans hung huge pictures of paratroopers
on Derry's walls aimed with rifles at the general population.
Sinn Fein/I.R.A. has perverted Bloody Sunday as an excuse
to justify their campaign of genocide against the Ulster-Scots
community and will use any pro-Roman Catholic result to undermine
the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland.
These are the reasons for unionist hostility towards Bloody
Sunday and not a disregard for Roman Catholic lives.
What makes such an inquiry hard to stomach is the lack of
parity of esteem. The Prime Minister claimed that what made
Bloody Sunday different was that it involved British soldiers.
It is right that this incident be laid to rest once and for
all for within a matter of weeks of Bloody Sunday several
Protestants were shot dead, perhaps to show that the British
government was not one-sided in Ted Heath's propaganda war.
Who knows?
The Government did not feel that the death of innocent Protestants
warranted an inquiry either then or now. Does the involvement
of British soldiers not entitle Ulster-Scots Protestants to
the same justice as their nationalist neighbours? Others have
correctly highlighted the involvement of the Irish government
in the murder of civilians through their part in establishing
the Provisional I.R.A.
If the Eire government or people in parties that make up
the Irish government are involved in training the I.R.A.,
putting guns in the hands and encouraging them to destabilise
Northern Ireland. And let us remember that in the early days
the I.R.A. had not the politically astute political leadership
that released they needed to justify murdering Protestants
such as the fact that they were wearing a police uniform at
the time instead walking into churches, butchering people
and equal acts of savagery to ethnic cleanse the border areas.
Are they not as guilty as the men who pulled the trigger?
Should history not recognise the role the Eire government
played in the massacre of many Protestants and not just the
role in one Roman Catholic massacre by the British government?
However, these incidents have not had the same effect on
the Protestant people as has Bloody Sunday on the nationalist
side. The ethnic cleansing of Protestants south of the border
has had the same effect on the Ulster Protestant physic.
On the whole it is right that the Prime Minister addresses
Bloody Sunday as nationalists have no chance of accepting
the Northern Ireland state unless it is dealt with but equally
unionist cannot except any positive relationship with Dublin
unless the ethnic cleansing of the Scots-Irish minority south
of the border is properly dealt with. There should be an inquiry
now into what has happened south of the border for if it is
left much longer the people best able to record what happened
will have died of old age.
In fact, I would suggest to the Ulster Society that a book
on the same format as "The Twelfth, What It Means To
Me", would not be a bad book to add to their collection.
In conclusion, there are many criticisms one could make as
to the government’s decision, its failure to launch an
inquiry or broaden the present one to take into account the
victims on the Shankill Road, the fact that the people who
were shot were in the middle of a riot, a fact that the head
of the Paras at the time still considers significant or even
the failure to look into the setting up of the I.R.A. but
the real equivalent on the loyalist side is the ethnic cleansing
south of the border. It is interesting to see that Bertie
Ahern is good at pointing the finger but whenever the issues
above are put to him he seems unable or unwilling to tackle
them. Bloody Sunday has been a thorn in our sides for years
and hopefully having pulled it perhaps nationalist will be
more able to deal with the Northern Ireland state.
The Prime Minister had two choices to put the past behind
us or deal with the concerns of both sides. In this respect
there is no right or wrong answer but what is unquestionably
wrong is dealing with the concerns of one side while telling
the other to stop moaning. Whatever breaches of human rights
took place on Bloody Sunday it is most certainly dwarfed compared
to what happened south of the border and unlike in Eire probably
accidental.
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