New Year: Same old story...

So, it’s a new year and it's also an election year in both jurisdictions of this little island.  Politicians on both sides of the border have their sights set on these upcoming elections: and that does not just mean Sinn Fein, who will be contesting both.

New elections bring new promises and commitments however the electorate is still waiting on the old promises to be fulfilled.  ‘Dealing with the Past’ is one such commitment that has yet to be addressed.  The latest failed attempt, from our political representatives, to tackle this toxic legacy, was the ‘Fresh Start Agreement’.  Some have labelled this as the ‘False Start’ but a more apt characterisation could be that we were served up a ‘Fresh Turd’.  Now that we have had time to digest this agreement our first impressions have not been improved upon: we are still left with a bad taste in the mouth.

Previous efforts to address the past met a similar fate.  Last minute spanners were strategically thrown into the new machinery that was designed to process the toxic sludge of conflict, and its effluence.  This time that spanner is called ‘National Security’.  We are told that to reveal the intricacies of the ‘Dirty War’ would threaten the security of the State and certain individuals.  Whereas the real truth is that it is the integrity and legitimacy of the State which would be tarnished.  It is to the benevolent State that we look for protection.  To reveal otherwise, that the State was in virtual control of many of the violent protagonists, would strip away the longstanding tenet that Her Majesty’s Government was a neutral referee between two warring tribes.  As many of us already know, and sing in unison, “The referee’s a W**ker”.

On a more sympathetic note, it is unfair to put all of the blame at the door of our own local elected politicians, and those MPs across the water, for that matter.  It is evident that a democratic mandate is not strong enough to bring about any real change.  Political commentator Brian Feeney has often claimed that even the Secretary of State is politically impotent; that the big decisions ‘are above her pay grade’.  I would put it that the big decisions are above the ‘pay grade’ of all elected politicians, even Prime Ministers.  The real power to deal with the past lies with those who don’t need to concern themselves with trivial matters such as 'pay grades'.  The Establishment will never need to worry about the ‘Dirty War’ coming up through their sewers.  Their plumbers in MI5 and MI6 are on top of everything: a convenient spanner here and a bung over there will clog up the machinery for many years to come.

So what are we left with over here in the Big House on the Hill?  The Fresh Start Redux is coming down the line, we are told.  More negotiations.  What’s the old saying…you can’t polish a turd?  Next week will see the unveiling of our new marriage of convenience between the DUP and Sinn Fein.  First we had the jovial ‘Chuckle Brothers’, then came the incompatible ‘Step-brothers’, and now it’s Martin and Arlene.  One possible portmanteau for this relationship springs to mind: Marlene (why do I hear Boycie from Only Fools and Horses in my head?).  Will they hit it off or will their honeymoon be stopped short by the oft poisonous election fever? 

Time will tell but I suspect that ‘whataboutery’, mutual resentment, and a good dose of ‘othering’ will resurface well before the ink has dried on the Wedding Register.  Maybe if they followed the wisdom of Marlene Dietrich herself who held that “Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast” would we see the oFMdFM work in partnership, as it is supposed to; for the betterment for all of us in this part of the world.

Injured On That Day

The following is a piece I wrote, a few years ago, for a book ('Injured On That Day') published by the WAVE Trauma Centre which describes my experience of events in my home on 6th January 1994.  Events which changed my life in an instant.  Events which put me on a new path and have brought me to where I am today, on the 6th January 2016.

The second piece below is something I wrote, in 2014, on the 20th anniversary of that day, entitled 'Epiphany'.  

The web link further on will take you to an audio clip which I made with 'The Theatre of Witness'.  This also touches upon my journey through trauma and acceptance.  It is called 'Everyone Is My People'.

I dedicate all of these pieces to my family, my friends, and my fiancee Sammie.

'Injured On That Day'

When you hear many of the stories about shootings and killings in this country, they usually contain the line that the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  On 6^th January 1994 I was in the right place at the right time.  I was a 21 year old man in my home in Lenadoon about to sit down to my dinner.

A rap at the door.  My 15 year old sister, Joanne, goes to answer it and is pushed aside by an intrusion of wooly faces brandishing their hardware.  “We are the IRA and we are taking over this house.”  When the IRA come into a house in Lenadoon you sit down and shut up.  So that’s what my mother Mary Jane, my 18 year old brother Damien, my sister and I did.

The Crystal Maze was on TV but nobody was watching.  Joanne was frightened.  The fat, wooly face had his machine gun pointed at her.  She was crying.  I asked the black head to stop pointing the gun in her direction.  After giving me a cold look out of his sweaty mask he pointed the muzzle to the floor. 

After a long 20 minutes the front door knocked again.  Another of the gunmen came down into the living room from upstairs.  He instructed me to go to the door, open it and bring whoever it was into the living room where we were being held.  “If you do anything stupid, I will shoot your family.”  

There was no argument.  I went out to the hall and opened the door to my father, Paul.  He had a few drinks on him but noticed that there was something wrong.  We walked into the living room and the door was closed behind him.

I sat down while he stood there in the middle of the room.  “What the fuck is going on here? What are you all doing in my house? ”.  The little, wiry monkey one pulled out a big black hand cannon and pointed it up to my da’s forehead.  “If you value your life, you will sit down now.”  Joanne was hysterical now.  “Da, just sit down.   It’s the Ra.  They’ll be out of here soon.” I said.  He sat down beside Joanne.  We were all a lot more nervous now. 

Ten minutes later the door knocked again.  “Just bring them in here!”  I got up and went out to the door.  It was a few of Joanne’s friends.  Wee girls.  “Joanne’s already out with her other friends” says I.  I was not bringing these wee girls into this situation.  I closed the door and went back in.  The white eyes in the black heads weren’t too happy, but unlucky!  “You don’t need to bring those wee girls into this”.  I sat down again.

They all left the room and closed the door behind them.  We all looked at each other and just sat there.  The door was kicked open.  “Operation’s over,” was the shout.  Then a loud crackle of bangs rang out and they were gone.  “Is everybody alright?” asked my mum. 

“I’m not alright” says I, to myself.  “I’ve been shot here”.  But nobody could hear me.  Five bullets had pierced my body.  My arm, my femoral artery, my lung, my spleen, my spine.  I was in shutdown and melting into the sofa.  A strong smell of cordite filled the air.  “There’s something wrong with Paul here”, says Damien.  Keep him awake. Phone an ambulance.  Get a towel.  Stop the bleeding.  Keep him awake.  Slap his face.  Stay awake screams Dee.  Stay with us.  Where’s that ambulance.   Pandemonium.

I was quite happy and content.  An enormous sense of warmth was flowing through my body.  But I was falling away and I knew it.  Damien was pulling me back out, he had a tight grip on my arm, both in my mind and literally.  Stay with us.  I started to come round a bit but I was only running on adrenalin.  “I’m ok, I’m here” I thought, but I could not open my eyes. 

The ambulance came and the boys got on with their job.  They got me in the back and it was away we go.  “I’m alright, don’t be worrying yourselves, lads” says I.  That must have been some strong gear they gave me because I was in the clouds.  We arrived at the RVH and it was like a movie scene.  The stretcher banging through the doors, the strip lights above.  “Paul, would you please stop that chanting?” requested one of the doctors.  “Ay ya hi ya, ay ya hi ya” was all I could shout for the previous five minutes.  My inner shaman was keeping me awake.  Then the anaesthesia kicked in and that was that.  

I woke up many, many hours later and was told that I was in intensive care.  I had a very long breathing tube down my throat and could not speak.  I motioned to get a pen and paper and scrawled ‘Don’t worry, be happy.  Jah Lives’.  My inner Bob Marley was in control.  Back to the morphine.

The week in that bed was a nightmare.  The heat was oppressive and the pain was here to stay, for good.  After a few days I was told by the surgeon that I would never walk again.  I was paralysed from the waist down.  It was hard to take and it was even harder to express this on an Alphabet card.  That bloody tube.

The next few months in Musgrave Park Hospital Spinal Injuries Unit were long but I was able to meet many more people who, in my eyes, were worse off than me.  I still had my arms and that breathing tube was gone.  A wheelchair couldn’t be that bad.  I still had my family and all of my friends with me.

By the way it wasn’t the IRA after all.  Turns out, the UFF did it.  Their intended target, a neighbour, didn’t arrive so ‘any Fenian will do!!’.  Who knows?  Who cares? 

'Epiphany'

In Western Christianity January 6th is the feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany in its most basic sense is an experience of sudden and striking realisation.  I view what happened to me on that day twenty years ago as a sudden and striking realisation of how my life was going to be.  The beginning of a new chapter.

That was the day that the men with hard steel in their hearts and cold steel in their hands paid a visit to my home.  They had come to attack my neighbours. Instead, they attacked me.  Twenty one, eldest son, facing the wrong end of a gun.  I was inches away from becoming the first story of the 1994 chapter of ‘Lost Lives’.  Bullets riddled me.  Blood drained from my body. Organs were removed. Spinal cords severed.

In spite of all of this violence and trauma inflicted upon me by the brave defenders of Ulster, I woke up. I survived. I lived.  It was a new life though.  No longer, was I the same young man; tall and fit and ready for life.  My identity would change.  My ambitions would change. My physicality and bodily integrity would change. I would feel severe burning pain from my injuries for the rest of my life. I was now crippled, within and without.  There would be many barriers put in front of me.  This was my epiphany and I had to deal with it.

I look back on the past twenty years as a time of personal compromise, pragmatism and struggle.  I had to fight every day to retain my sanity through some tough times.  The 1994 ceasefires were perhaps the hardest time for me.  To see people parading around the streets in celebration really hit me hard.  Why could it not have come that little bit sooner for me? A selfish thought, I know. Many more people were yet to lose their lives in the years since to this futile violence.  It continues to this day.  There may always be political and sectarian violence in this part of the world and it may be impossible to stop.

What I came to realise was that I could do my bit to use my new identity as a victim/survivor to help others who had been hurt and were still suffering.  I joined victims and survivors groups.  I met people who had been hurt the same as me.  People who had been paralysed forty years ago, thirty years ago, twenty years ago and ten years ago.  The milestone anniversaries keep coming and going.  As the years go by the pain has become worse but the determination to bring relief and to ensure the non-repetition of the Troubles has grown amongst my fellow injured friends and I.

I pay tribute to my friends within the WAVE Injured Group for the campaigning they have done in the past few years on some of the issues that affect people like me.  Their collective strength has given me new determination to carry on with their Campaign for Recognition.  This campaign has seen the collection of a ten thousand strong petition; the lobbying of our politicians and an input into how we can ‘deal with our past, present and future’.

It just so happens that today marks twenty years since I was shot, but for people like me every day is a reminder of January 6th 1994.  That is not to say that I look back on that day with a morbid fixation.  I certainly do not.  I have moved on.  I have grown from that traumatic event.  I have had inspiration and support from my own inner self and resilience, from my family, from my friends and from my community.  Others have not had such support structures.  They need more help to move on and I will now focus my determination for the next twenty years to help alleviate this suffering in whatever way I can.

I hope that on this day, the feast of the Epiphany, that many of our self-professing Christian politicians, communities and those without faith will experience a sudden and striking realisation that there can be another way.  A way of compromise, pragmatism, utilitarianism, hope, love, mutual understanding and true peace in this place I call home.  Where are the Wise Men when we need them?

Everyone Is My People - Audio 

Will we finally set Barabbas free?

Last week marked the 21^st Anniversary of the Ceasefire declared by the Combined Loyalist Military Command.  It was heralded as an end to decades of Loyalist violence.  Earlier that year I met a handful of their colleagues who entered my home one evening and proceeded to empty the contents of a sub-machine gun into my body: all because I was a defenceless ‘innocent’ Taig.  I emphasise the word innocent because that was the point: the more innocent and defenceless the better; Loyalism wanted to instil fear and terror into my community.  This left me paralysed from the waist down: a cripple; burning with pain; plagued with illness.

I got my apology from Gusty Spence that crisp October day: abject and true remorse.  I can’t remember if I accepted it at the time but, in a way, in later years, I did.  I say in a way because it was not an apology from the individuals who were in my home but from the Loyalism as a collective.  I accepted it because I had to make peace with myself in order to make peace with those who harmed me. 

I wanted peace.  That is why I and the majority voted ‘Yes’ in the Referendum.  On Good Friday 1998 we agreed to set Barabbas free; all of the prisoners would be released from the H-Blocks.  This still sticks in the craw of some people but I believe it was a necessary concession to help cement the peace process.  Paramilitary organisations would do well to reflect on the magnanimity of this gesture by the public at large.

There was a relative peace between the traditional enemies after Good Friday but the men of war continued to wreak havoc on their own communities.  They found it difficult to give up their Brigadier status and lifestyle.  Demobilisation and disbandment was not on the radar.  The weapons of choice were intimidation, extortion, drug peddling, knee-capping and murder.  The working class communities against whom they waged their war never stood a chance against such muscle-men.

The Ceasefire Generation is now twenty-one: will they get the key to the door?  A key to open the door of the cage: a cage which houses the hawk, which can only whistle to the tune of ‘The Billy Boys’, or to release the doves of peace.  That is the test for the new Loyalist Community Council.  Have they called a new ceasefire, ended their war and will they display abject and true remorse to their community?  Will they finally demobilise and disband?  Will they be able to reintegrate this time?

They are going to need help to reintegrate.  They are going to need the communities that they intimidated to show some magnanimity.  They need to give something back to these communities.  They shouldn’t expect to retain their status by virtue of their hard-man past but instead need to earn the respect of their people.  Any funding opportunities coming into these communities should not be sewn up as ‘Jobs for the Boys’ but should instead be used to create jobs for the boys: the boys of the Shankill, Ballybeen and beyond.  Disband the Young Citizen Volunteers and replace them with young citizen volunteers who will work for the betterment of their community.

If the jackboot is finally lifted from the throats of Loyalist working class communities the people themselves need to begin to reclaim a stake in this society; they need to find their voice.  They are only disenfranchised by virtue of their own apathy.  They need to use the only legitimate weapon they have: the vote.  They need to come out and vote for people who have their loyalist working class interests at heart.  They need to waken up and realise that Big House Unionism couldn’t care less about the Two-up/Two-down loyalists in the Village.  They need to find new Dawns; to elect more Julie-Annes over the Jolenes; and to forget about the Humphrey-Dumptys of this world.  To maybe look at those who would put People Before Profit.  Don’t just use your vote to keep ‘themmuns’ out but instead get ‘yousens’ in.

I hope that the loyalist working class begin to realise their core identity: their innate humanity.  Strip it all away and that’s all we have.  Stop worrying about whether the big dome is adorned with a perpetual flag or the Northern Ireland football shirt can hang from the big wheel at Funderland.  Stop listening to the dog whistle politics that has led so many onto the streets, filling the jails and cemeteries.

I call on all paramilitaries to be more sensitive when honouring their fallen.  To take a moment to reflect on their victims as they observe a minutes silence every Easter or Remembrance Sunday.  When they reminisce about the heroic operations carried out by their brave volunteers don’t forget to include the stories about their attacks on defenceless people like me and the operations I went through to fix my body (the latest one was only last week!).

It is time for the Loyalist Community Council to prove the doubters and the cynics wrong.  I stand beside those who welcomed this new initiative on the airwaves last week.  People like Jude Whyte, John Allen and Mark Rodgers: people who were so badly affected by loyalist violence.  It’s time to reintegrate and we as a society need to let them.  We need to put aside the labelling.  We need to let the ‘perpetrators’, the ‘victim-makers’ and the ‘terrorists’ re-join society.  We need to let them apply for all jobs on an equal basis whether that be as a landscape gardener or a SPAD in Stormont.  We agreed to set Barabbas free in 1998 but yet they are still fettered in 2015.  We need to and we should give you another chance.  Please don’t blow it again.

Stormont: a theatre of bitter disappointments

In one instant in January 1994 my life was changed forever.  Up until that moment I had lived relatively unscathed by the violence that had consumed our society for centuries.   Many before me were not so lucky: now my time had come to join them.  UFF gunmen entered my family home in the expectation of assassinating my next door neighbours: tired of waiting they decided that I would do just fine.  ‘Yabba dabba doo, any taig will do’.  I woke up two days later.  The volley of shots had ripped my body apart.  I was going to have to get used to the disappointment that my new wheelchair could not take me to places where I could previously go without a moment’s thought. 

Disappointment changed to hope.  My crippled body was not going to paralyse my mind or my spirit.  It was the same outside.  There was a new hope of peace; a hope for change.  A new hope that the politics of dialogue and cooperation would fill the crippling political void.  A hope that our politicians would be able to represent us, to hear us, to work for us.  Where is that hope now?

The current situation at Stormont is just another example of the long history of disappointments that the inhabitants of this part of the world have had to endure.  Has it ever delivered anything for the ordinary Joe since it was first built in the 1930s?  The building itself is now just a glorified vaudeville theatre which plays host to a perpetual hokey-cokey pantomime.  One party rule, nationalist abstentions, discrimination, internment, Sunningdale, ‘Workers’ strikes, shutdown, Good Friday, Stormontgate, decommissioning, letters from America and vengeful bloodlust are all part of the in/out saga.

The shaky foundations upon which Stormont was first built are now held up with ugly scaffolding.  The edifice is crumbling.  The leaking roof needed fixing.  In-house saboteurs are throwing spanners in the works; some are downing tools; whilst apprentices jump up and down and throw their toys out of the pram.  The interim stand in First Minister cum purse holder guards against rogue renegades whilst the boss calls a wildcat strike.

We are told that there will be no more business as usual: that is, unless that business involves the ‘business’ of the DUP.  The full contingent of the DUP clocked in on time last month to discuss ‘business’ matters at the Committee for Finance and Personnel.  They couldn’t possibly throw a sickie that morning; the boss would be watching closely on CCTV.  Business as usual that day.

The petty stuff can wait we are told.  Petty stuff like legislating.  Legislation that will mean something to the ordinary Joe.  One example would be the long awaited Private Members Bill that would enable people who were seriously and permanently injured during the troubles to receive reparations in recognition of their suffering and ongoing hardship.  We are told that the DUP Bill is all ready to go but alas we must wait until the shop steward of the Unionist Union of Democratic Party Workers gives the nod and lifts the farcical and absurd work to rule strategy that has brought about this Autumn of Discontent.  This Workers Union will fight long and hard to secure their pay rises and pensions but the rest of us can wait.  “We need to look after the Union first and foremost” is the campaign slogan.

Time runs out for people like me.  I would qualify for the proposed Special Pension as would hundreds of other ordinary Joes who got caught up in the violence which filled previous political vacuums.  As a member of the WAVE Injured Group which lobbied the MLAs at Stormont for the past four years to bring this proposal to the fore there is a sense that the pension will disappear into the current political vacuum.  The Bill needs to hit the floor of the assembly now or it will not pass in time.  Time that many of the injured don’t have.  ‘Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting’.  This ageing population of blinded, paralysed, limbless cripples can no longer wait on this macabre pantomime to come back from this lengthy intermission.  We need to see all of the actors back on stage, reading from the same script and singing the same song: a song that we ordinary Joes can understand, ‘We can work it out’. 

Changing the Definition of our Victims: who for and why?

Yesterday (1^st September) marked the first full day in the job for the new Victims Commissioner, Judith Thompson.  There is no doubt that she will have an overflowing inbox on her desk as it has been well over a year since her predecessor, Kathryn Stone, moved on.  I suspect one of the first requests she will have to deal with is the annual call to change the actual definition of a victim as set out in Westminster statute.

Ever since The Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 (which defined victimhood as a result of ‘The Troubles’) was established there have been calls to scrap it.  This is due to the fact that some see the current definition as ‘politically expedient and morally defunct’.  DUP MPs have attempted to amend the legislation every year since it was set and now there are calls from the umbrella group Innocent Victims United (IVU) for a Public Referendum on the issue claiming that this is the only way for the supposed widespread 'swathes' of public support to be demonstrated: ‘to let the people’s voices be heard’.  

The current definition is as follows: 

(a) someone who is or has been physically or psychologically injured as a result of or in consequence of a conflict related incident; 

(b) someone who provides a substantial amount of care on a regular basis for an individual mentioned in paragraph (a);

or (c) someone who has been bereaved as a result of in consequence of a conflict related incident.

There is no mention in the definition of the background or perceived morality of said individuals: only that they have been harmed in some way as a result of or in consequence of a conflict related incident.  Those who propose a change demand that the background and the perceived morality of said individuals becomes a determinant factor in such individuals and their carers receiving official recognition as victims. 

IVU is asking for this referendum in the hope of generating a debate where we can have a ‘genuine examination of the fundamental issue which cripples this society from moving forward’.  This may be so but what is the short punchy referendum question going to look like and who will decide the wording?  We will need a plain straightforward question to which the answer must be: yes or no?  Realistically I cannot see this happening.  The questions around victimhood are more complex than yes or no and black or white.

Proposals have been put forward by IVU as to who would be excluded from victim recognition in the event that a referendum demands change.  One such proposal is if someone was or ever has been a member of a proscribed organisation.  Would this happen to include members of the UDA?  According to IVU the answer is yes; UDA membership would warrant exclusion. However, the UDA only became a proscribed organisation in 1992 even though it had been involved in violence and paramilitarism for decades.  It was perfectly legal to have been a member of the UDA up to 1992.  So if a UDA member had been killed before the 10th of August 1992 the IVU could maybe count you in as an 'innocent' victim.

IVU and similar victims groups along with various politicians have been calling for a change for years now but my question is who benefits and who loses; and why?  What is the real reason for this call?  Is the demand for a change simply borne out of an abhorrence of moral equivalence?  Or is it something more cynical?

We are told that the definition was first devised out of expediency.  This is true.  The whole peace process has been politically expedient.  It had to be.  We needed practical solutions to complex problems.  We were coming out of decades of conflict with many people killed and injured by many different actors.  It was a stalemate that could only be resolved through political dialogue and compromise.  There was no decisive victory so there was no chance for one side to decide the terms of the peace.  What we were left with was a society marred by the violence.  We needed to look at the harms inflicted upon each other: not who did it.

The main thrust of the argument from IVU is that it was all the fault of the ‘terrorists’ and the handful of individuals who brought shame on the military and police by ‘dishonouring the code’.  These are the people who cannot be considered victims in the same way that the 'innocent' victims are.  I can understand this notion but I disagree with it.  

Those convicted of being ‘terrorists’ are easy to pinpoint; they have criminal convictions.  However, there have been and will continue to be an avalanche of cases where such convictions have been quashed due to violations by those in the security forces who presumably ‘dishonoured the code’.  There are also those who were said to have been 'involved' but were never convicted of any offence.

Recent revelations surrounding allegations of collusion between the security forces and various paramilitary groups have cast doubts on whether such a ‘code’ even existed here in the first place.  Recent comments from the former head of Special Branch, Raymond White, indicated that when he requested clarifications, at a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, for legal guidelines on agents involved paramilitary activity he was told to ‘carry on with what you are doing, just don’t get caught’.  If we follow this logic there was no code.  The few rotten apples theory does not hold water anymore; it was the barrel itself that was rotten.

The problem with black and white definitions and punitive exclusions are that the situation here was too complex and messy.  I think that this is understood by some in IVU.  Recent press releases from IVU acknowledge ‘that perpetrators and their families live among us (as has always been the case) and if such individuals require support via psychological or welfare-based services enabling them to deal with the aftermath effects of actions they inflicted upon their fellow neighbour then this State has an obligation to provide such support to them as citizens of this Nation’.  This recognises the need to look after those who have been harmed or affected by violent conflict and follows the thinking of Gandhi who said: "The measure of a country's greatness should be based on how well it cares for its most vulnerable populations".  Ironically this sentiment fits with the current definition which they seek to change.

I sense that the demand to change the definition is more around the historical narrative and political dimensions of victimhood.  To recognise paramilitaries as victims would be seen as legitimising their campaigns and that would not do.  As I said above certain sections of the community want to pin the blame for all of our ills on the paramilitary groups and onto them alone. 

It may also be a way of shutting down calls from those who demand that certain killings be investigated.  Removing victimhood status from certain people would demonise and delegitimise them: labelling them as ‘undeserving perpetrators’ who brought their demise upon themselves.  Why should we look into those killings?

By pinning all of the blame for the Troubles onto the paramilitary groups, any other actors in the conflict would be viewed as clean, innocent and blameless: apart from the few bad apples who ‘dishonoured the code’.  They would sit at the top of this victim hierarchy.  They are to be reified above all other victims and should be left untouched.

Changing the definition for such political ends would be unjust and morally defunct.  It does no service to people suffering on the ground today.  The battle over the definition of victimhood is just another in the ‘battle a day’ mentality of our political discourse.  The war on the streets may be relatively quiet but the conflict remains alive and well in the minds and egos of some sections of our community.  There is a debate to be had on the issues that have crippled our society for years but we cannot let it descend into one with a yes or no answer: it’s not all black and white.

Some may attempt to label me with being an apologist for terrorists for holding such views but I tend to look beyond such sweeping judgements.  I know full well the impact of violence on our people and I would not justify it.  However I do try to understand it; to look into the motivations for violence and to make sure I do all that I can to make sure it is never repeated.  Violence is wrong and should not be used in place of dialogue.  That goes for the State too.  The State should not have a divine right to utilise violence to further its political ends.

Ceasefire: 21 years on - The key to the door?

31^st August was marked again yesterday in the Belfast Telegraph with a welcome piece about a group of young people who have turned 21 this year and how they now view our country 21 years on from the first IRA ceasefire which marked the beginning of the Peace Process.

I am now going to publish a piece that I wrote last year which marked the 20^th anniversary of that day in August 1994:

31st August 1994 should have been a day that we all should have been happy about.  The IRA called a ceasefire that would eventually lead to our ‘peace’.  The killing and bloodshed would be coming to an end.  There would be no more people, like me, put into wheelchairs. 

I was not happy that day.  I felt so sad, my stomach churned.  Why could the war not have ended a year sooner?  I would still be walking about.  I would not be sitting watching the news on TV showing the ‘celebrations’ outside Connolly House.  Listening to the cavalcades of black taxis and cars beeping their horns, playing rebel music from the Sinn Fein election megaphones, waving their Tricolours.

It was a real bittersweet moment for me.  People were outside revelling in the street on the way home from the pub.  The mood was jovial.  You could hear the singing and shouting.  Somebody knocked the front door.  A woman asked to use our toilet on her way home.  She was in good form, a few drinks on her.  She asked us what we thought of the ceasefire.  We quietly responded that it was good news but inside we had mixed feelings.

There was an eerie quiet about the ceasefire in our house that day.  None of us really spoke about it.  We were all feeling sorry for ourselves.  We had a right to be.  My family had been held hostage and witnessed UFF gunmen pump a volley of bullets into me just a matter of months ago.  I nearly died in front of them.  Now it seemed that peace had arrived – just a bit too late though.   I went to bed that night and cried myself to sleep.

I am sure that this was a feeling that was felt all over our country.  I am sure that there were people looking at empty seats and at their loved ones in wheelchairs and thinking why could this day not have come sooner.  C’est la vie.

I look back now and see the two 1994 ceasefires as significant. As things to celebrate. As seeds of hope in a time of despair.  The ceasefires led to the peace process.  People are walking our streets today may have been dead if the ceasefires had not been called.  That is something to be thankful for.

Milestones are there to be marked but I hope that this one and the many historical events that happened here can be commemorated with dignity and respect.  I understand where the joy and celebration came from that August day but people need to think about the legacy of the conflict for those who were bereaved and injured.  There is no celebration in this.

A warm welcome to our new Victims Commissioner: You can't always get what you want... but you might get what you need.

I would like to thank the oFM/dFM for finally agreeing on a new Commissioner for Victims and Survivors.  It has been over a year since Kathryn Stone stood down from this position: a position which is an integral cog in the structures set up to deal with the needs of those of us most affected by the years of political conflict. 

The Victims Commission was hamstrung by the absence of a figurehead, as was the Victims Forum.  Both bodies could formulate policies, bring forward ideas and take soundings from individual victims and victims groups but they could not present them to those with the power to put any of it into effect.  This was only in the gift of the Commissioner.

I wish our incoming Commissioner well.  Judith Thompson is taking on a challenging job.  She will be met with many demands from all quarters of the community.  Victims and survivors have many different needs and wants.  I would suggest that she focuses her attention on the needs rather than the wants. 

There are too many wants that, in reality, may never be satisfied.  The new Commissioner needs to be honest about the capabilities of this fractured post conflict society to deal with the wants of individual victims and survivors.  Their wants are varied, complex and mostly filled with an highly emotional sense of injustice.  Such high emotion is understandable: the harms inflicted upon this group of people have been atrocious. 

We see this harm manifest itself everywhere in our society.  Countless documentaries, newspaper articles, talk radio shows highlight the legacy of pain and loss.  Most of the discourse is negative and is focused on the extremes.  Victims are put up against other victims while many of our politicians indulge in the circular arguments of whataboutery, pointing to the pie charts of who killed the most: while an increasingly apathetic general public looks on in dismay.  Who could blame them?  Some of the arguments have even descended into the semantics of what we actually call the ‘Troubles’.

The incoming Commissioner needs to recognise this emotion but she also needs to look at the reality of what can be realised.  She needs to stay clear of the philosophical cul-de-sacs of defining who is a terrorist and who is a victim. 

Not all victims will get what they want but they should get what they need.  This is where the Commission comes in.  The previous Commissioner rightly shone a light on the problems faced by the Victims and Survivors Service and the Department of the oFM/dFM in delivering for a sizeable number of victims and survivors.  Our new champion will need the same tenacity if she is to keep check on a slow moving bureaucracy which tries to address individual and societal need.

The so-called victims and survivors sector could also do with an introspective examination.  It is often said that the thoughts and feelings of the victims are paramount and should come first when trying to deal with the past but I feel that this puts too much pressure on those who have to implement the proposed mechanisms.  We victims and survivors need to realise that we should not be put on pedestals and revered; we are not precious and without faults.  We are just normal members of society like everyone else.  We are natural stakeholders with valid opinions but we should not have a veto over any of the structures put forward in the Stormont House Agreement (SHA).  Our emotional responses, no matter how loud, should not be allowed to hold the rest of society back from dealing with the past.  There is too much disagreement and politicking.  The new Commissioner needs to find a way of implementing what can be agreed upon and she needs to do this quickly before it is too late.

I ask our new Commissioner to oversee the implementation of the relevant legacy sections of the SHA and to make sure that the current impasse over Welfare and the Budget is disentangled from outstanding legacy issues.  Legacy issues should be and should always have been standalone issues regardless of who holds power in Stormont or Westminster.  This is where our new Commissioner should shine a light and advocate: focus on what can be done now.  All of the research and policy formulation is done: what we need now is action.  Good luck Judith, you will need it.