Truth & Reconciliation

Context

Before supporting such a process here, we should also recall another occasion some months ago when Archbishop Tutu, talking on BBC Northern Ireland radio emphasised that what seemed right for South Africa’s movement towards reconciliation could not be neatly transplanted into other places endeavouring to resolve the effects of conflict in a different context. Nevertheless, he stressed that the long term effects of long standing violence do need some means of expurgation for both the violator as well as for the violated; otherwise any cycle of recurring historical conflict is unlikely to be broken. A redemptive dimension to the politics of true reconciliation would seem to be a sine qua non.

Further on in that radio programme individuals gave evidence to similar effect and they stressed that there was a need to enable the perpetrator and the traumatised to gain better understanding and greater awareness of both the motivating reasons and the wounding effects of acts of violation and most especially of the deep problems generated by hidden remorse and guilt in the violators, or by resentment, anger and hatred in the violated.
We acknowledge that organisations such as ‘WAVE’ and ‘CRUSE’ are already confirming effectively that we should not be beholden to any single approach to reconciliation.

Thus, it would not seem wise to attempt to transpose the South African experience holus bolus into Ireland. Nevertheless, if we are serious about a permanent conclusion to what has been a recurring conflict perpetrated through so many generations, it would make sense to embrace the principles of open expression of reason and effect as articulated in a shared exchange by the violator and the violated.

Appeal

In making our appeal to those who have intimidated, maimed or killed it is an appeal that they may face up not only to what they have done to others but also to what they may have done to themselves and through the process to liberate themselves from ruminations which may be preventing any conversion to inner peace!
Furthermore, the violators and the violated together may also be performing a necessary function for the rest of us who, living in comfortable circumstances, may share some of the guilt by standing idly by and failing to acknowledge the social and political conditions which were allowed to develop and which led frustrated citizens, with no apparent means of redress, to lash out in anger either to overcome the state or to react by endeavouring to defend it.

Violence

In the New Ireland Group we have defined violence as the physical, sexual or psychological penetration against his or her will of any human being by any other. Force we define as the threat to use violence.

The wearing of a uniform or violent action when not so dressed cannot change the definition even though claims of ‘legitimacy’ on behalf of the state may help those who feel eligible to claim such legitimacy to diffuse the psychological effects, which may follow. Nevertheless, ‘legitimacy’ may become an embarrassing justification in a society in which absence of political consensus is compounded by social and collective community alienation of one form or another especially if there has been a history of state oppression which has not been amenable to change through the exercise of the prevailing political process.

All men are born equal? Hurt one hurt all?

By way of response we, in the New Ireland Group, have argued that all men and women are different, yet each is unique, all are part of the same humanity. Whether we believe that men and women derive from God (the beginning) – “In the beginning God�? or whether we simply acknowledge a humanitarian principle that, however different we are perceived to be, we are, nevertheless, as part of the same humanity, also part of the same spiritual reality, so that an act of violence against one part of that humanity is, by deduction, an act of violence against humanity as a whole. Perhaps it is this which gives rise to those feelings of remorse and guilt which may follow an act of violence unless, as is often the case, we try to sublimate the effect by claiming justification through resort to the use of falsehood. And we resort to such falsehood in many ways in order to exorcise the effect of an act which might otherwise haunt us to distraction.

People who have committed acts of violence have confirmed that they have lived to be haunted by guilt, the constant KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK of conscience to which the Soviet dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn referred in his book, The Gulag Archipelago (1975) Part III, pages 353-375. From that point descent into insanity or worse or ascent by a process of redemption become stark alternatives. “Conscience, the great intruder, is a formidable companion�?.
What is true for the individual may also be true, albeit to a lesser extent, of the collective with which the individual would claim membership.

No remorse?

On the other hand, some people seem able to live out their lives apparently unaffected by their violation of others.
Readers who can recall watching Robert Kee’s ‘Ireland (Television) Series’ in 1980-1981,may remember, should they have remembered nothing else, the way in which an elderly man, with no expression of remorse or regret, told of how, on ‘Bloody Sunday’ 1920, he had put two British soldiers up against the wall in their hotel, and, with a salutary, ‘May the Lord have mercy on your souls’, had “plugged the pair of them�?
From that statement on television, made more than 50 years after the act of killing, the question arises as to whether we must conclude that violation may be perpetrated without any negative psycho-pathological consequence on the violator.
In response to that question it seems reasonable to conclude that the old man may have been able to live with himself without ruminating upon what he had done by convincing himself and those around him of a personal and particular false assessment of the humanity of those whose lives he had terminated. He had not penetrated beyond their uniform!! He had laid claim to falsehood for his justification

Justification by recourse to falsehood is unlikely to be sustained if it cannot be transferred convincingly to those around us, our immediate family and other members of any collectivity with which we associate closely. Hence, any falsehoods which we may use to justify what we have done to others may well become the pollen which will fertilise the violence in a succeeding generation, so obliging it, in turn, to enter the cycle of suffering in conscience for ‘our’ sakes.

In other words if the violator is able to live with what s/he has done, those nearest and dearest to him or her are unlikely to escape consequences. Thus, society may continue to suffer recurrence of the conflict if the effects of historical conflict carried on into the present time are not expiated in a serious attempt to bring about both individual and collective atonement. It is important to acknowledge that there is more than one way of bringing this about. We may benefit from many different mechanisms as well as from the South African model. Nevertheless, it is vital that we consider the creation of an adequate resource to promote healing for everyone hurt, wounded, bereaved or otherwise physically, emotionally or mentally handicapped by the conflict since 1969.

Conclusion: The setting up of a special institution

In our booklet, New Ireland: Sell Out or Opportunity? 30 years on and Revisited we made a proposal to assist the development Truth and Reconciliation, which might be more appropriate to Northern Ireland’s closely knit community where a degree of privacy may be necessary for people to enter the process.

If we wish to exorcise the effects of what we have done to each other as a result of generations of conflict we should at least take serious cognisance of what has been achieved in South Africa. It is too easy to dismiss the healing possibility of an initiative similar to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission without considering very seriously how that unique approach to healing could be modified to meet the different circumstance existing in Ireland. for those who wish to avail of it.

In this respect, the New Ireland Group proposed in its booklet that a ‘special’ institution should be located in attractive and extensive surroundings and that it should be an institution to which everyone eligible to attend it, regardless of their background, could relate. This institution could have a co-ordinating and advisory function for all the different groups involved in healing and reconciliation.
In such, perhaps a college, situated in an attractive estate-like campus, victims seeking understanding and support or violators seeking atonement might more easily identify their individual and collective needs.

Priority of access to this facility should be reserved for young people whose parents or other close relatives were maimed or killed or who, themselves, have been otherwise traumatised. It is vital that all of those unfortunate people who were caught up in our 30 years of violence – whether as violators or as persons violated – should be encouraged to avail of professional counselling in an appropriate Truth, Reconciliation and Restorative process conducted in a peaceful atmosphere and in complete confidence and that the Governments and charities should ensure that the necessary funding is available to ensure that the approach becomes an exemplar in conflict resolution which will restore inner peace to those who have been traumatised…