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Ireland

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Mountbatten

August 28, 2019 in Life as we know it | Permalink

As an addendum to my post on the documentary concerning The Troubles in Northern Ireland that was shown recently on the BBC I thought I should make mention of a second BBC programme that was broadcast but a short while later.

This excellent and most moving film – by director Sam Collyns – concerned the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten (second cousin once removed to the Queen) at Mullaghmore in County Sligo, in the Republic of Ireland. The programme also detailed the bomb attack that was carried out on the same day at Warrenpoint on the Irish border, the which resulted in the single greatest loss of life suffered by the UK armed forces during the conflict. I was particularly moved by the testimony of those who lost loved ones on that dark day – not least one of Mountbatten’s granddaughters who was able most eloquently to put into words the terrible and lasting void left by that senseless act.

The reason for these documentaries being shown in such quick succession is that their respective anniversaries – of the start of the troubles in 1969 and of the death of Lord Mountbatten ten years later in 1979 – both took place during the month of August, at a time when many peoples would have been thinking more of holidays, sunshine and relaxation. Mountbatten was himself, of course, on a family holiday at the time of the tragedy.

August 27th 1979 was a bank holiday Monday in the UK (in Canada this would be called a long weekend). The date sticks clearly in my mind because the band in which I then played (my first band) had driven from London to Edinburgh overnight that very day to commence a week of engagements playing at the Fringe Club (then as now this bank holiday fell during the Edinburgh festivals). The first that we knew of these atrocities was watching the news reports on the TV screens in a bar on the south side of the city. Two of our number hailed from Belfast and we were all too aware of the significance of what had happened, which led to a somewhat sombre evening.

It feels strange to be living in a time when the memories of those appalling events appear to have faded sufficiently into the historical past that the pale shadows of politicians that we now suffer can in such a cavalier fashion set a course of action that is quite likely to have all too foreseeable and catastrophic consequences.

That is – however – exactly what they appear to be intent on doing.

One of the most telling elements of the documentary was its confirmation that the IRA’s then Chief of Staff – Martin McGuinness – must have given approval for the assassination, regardless of the fact that it was known that the boat on which Mountbatten was murdered would also have been carrying children and other family members. McGuinness went on to become Northern Ireland’s First Minister once the Good Friday Agreement had brought a close to that sad period in Ireland’s history and the documentary featured again the momentous occasion on which the Queen visited Belfast and shook McGuinness’s hand – an act which must have been hideously difficult for all that it symbolically confirmed the peace accord.

The role that the Queen has been obliged to carry out today in acceding to PM Johnson’s mischievous prorogation of parliament is far, far less noble, but may yet have consequences that last as long.

Sad times indeed!

 

 

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The Troubles

August 17, 2019 in Life in England | Permalink

I watched on the BBC last night a deeply moving and thought-provoking documentary by journalist Peter Jackson – “My Journey Through the Troubles”.

The BBC website described the programme thus:

“In a uniquely personal journey on the 50th anniversary of the deployment of British troops in August 1969, reporter Peter Taylor reflects on almost a half century of covering the Northern Ireland conflict.

The programme is a highly personal account of the Troubles events and legacies, drawing on Peter’s experiences in reporting from Northern Ireland.”

Taylor has spent much of his long career in television. He was working at ITV on the current affairs programme – ‘This Week‘ – when the Troubles started and he continued his coverage of the conflict after moving to the BBC’s ‘Panorama‘ strand in 1980. He has also written eight books on political violence of which more than half concern or include coverage of the struggle in Ireland. He still continues to write and present documentaries – as evidenced by last night’s showing – as he approaches his 80s.

Gentle readers whose background is in any way similar to mine will have done their growing up – as did I – to the background of the Irish conflict. At times the Troubles seemed to us a distant and mysterious affair that featured on the TV news – like something occurring in a foreign country of which we knew little. At other times – such the various periods during the 70s, 80s and 90s in which the IRA extended their bombing campaign to the UK mainland (including the Guildford and Birmingham pub bombings, the Hyde Park bomb, the attempt to kill then Prime Minister Thatcher in Brighton in 1984 and the Baltic Exchange bombing in 1992) – it all seemed uncomfortably close to home.

The Brits were then a race, however, that had not long before survived the blitz during the Second World War. When I were a ‘nipper’ (little more than two decades after those tragic events) a fair bit of the east end of London still showed the scars and was yet to be re-developed. Nothing the IRA might do would long disturb the composure of a people that had truly seen it all.

With the end of the conflict in 1998 sealed by the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) memories of such atrocities began to fade. There have certainly been major terrorist attacks on the UK mainland since that time but – the 2005 tube bombings aside – we have not suffered incidents on the same scale. In the two decades since the agreement was signed it would seem that some in the UK have begun to forget just how terrible it was to live through such strife.

This is not the case in Ireland – of course – and Jackson’s documentary revealed anew just how raw many of the wounds from that conflict yet are. The GFA was not a one-off event, of course. It was merely the beginning of a long process that is still struggling to achieve completion.

It may be that the current UK regime under PM Johnson is simply posturing in an attempt to force an unlikely compromise from the European Union with regard to Brexit – but it looks to me dangerously as though some of the grim lessons of the past are being quietly forgotten or put aside. If that is truly the case then the potential prospect of another three decades of bloody violence could not be ruled out.

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