The Price of Peace

Ireland Calling with John Spain

The Price of Peace

November 7, 2007

By John Spain

ONE of the aspects to the settlement in the North that is still difficult to come to terms with is the corruption of language that has been part of it, perhaps even a necessary part of it.

There are certain key phrases that are used now to sweep much of what happened over the last 30 years under the carpet. These phrases are not used to excuse the inexcusable, but to indicate that the time for discussion of these awful happenings is over and that it is time now for us all to move on.

That’s one of them, by the way — time to move on. Another one you will be familiar with is this — the price of peace.

You hear all kinds of idiots using phrases like these nowadays. It’s a kind of mantra they have learned.

You find beginner journalists who are too young to know the horror of what went on using them. You hear aspiring politicians with dreams of being in government some day using them. They all see themselves as worldly, wise commentators, sagely helping us all to accept the inevitable.

Even the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern uses these phrases, like he did at the time he was trying to release the IRA thugs who had murdered Ann McCabe’s Garda (police officer) husband Jerry. Or at least Ahern was, until a public outcry here stopped him.

You hear the phrases used every day now. You hear them whenever there is mention of all those RUC widows who now have to watch their husbands’ killers sauntering around the streets where they live, out on early release as part of “the settlement.” That’s another one that covers a multitude — the settlement.

There are shattered families and grieving spouses on both sides of the divide, of course, for whom the pain goes on and on, no matter what the settlement is now. Which brings us to another of these phrases — equality of suffering.

Which is a real handy one if you’re trying to obscure the fact that the lion’s share of the suffering was caused by the IRA, to their own side as well as to the other.

But the one that you hear thrown around all the time in a manner so glib that it’s really nauseating is the mother of them all — the price of peace.

That’s the one that everybody knows. It’s the one-size-fits-all phrase to smooth over any difficult moments when someone (like an RUC widow) asks a few searching questions about why some people seem to have got away, literally, with murder and are now treated like anyone else.

“It’s the price of peace. We’ve got to move on.”

Yes, terrible things were done, but we have to forget them. It’s the price of peace.

Yes, many peoples lives have been shattered forever, but we can’t dwell on that too much at this stage. It’s the price of peace.

And yes, we have to watch some of the people who did these awful things behaving as though they have nothing to be ashamed of, and we must stay silent. That’s hard — but it’s the price of peace.

Last week we had a truly surreal example of this corruption of language by the man who has coined more of the slippery phrases than anyone else around, the master himself, Gerry Adams.

The occasion was something that was almost too grotesque to watch, the meeting between Colin and Wendy Parry, the parents of Tim Parry, the young boy who was blown apart by an IRA bomb left in a litter bin near a shopping center in Warrington in the north of England in 1993.

As if to emphasize the surreal nature of the meeting last week and the event which followed, it took place in Canary Wharf in London, the financial district blown apart by the IRA in 1996. That’s just 11 years ago.

Colin and Wendy Parry looked stunned when they met Adams last week, even though the meeting and the public discussion which followed had both taken place at their request.

They have for years been trying to make sense of what happened, as a way of coping with their grief. Their courage in doing so immediately after the bomb instead of going mad with anger won them huge respect across Ireland.

With the support of Wilf and Marie Ball, the parents of the other little boy, Johnathan Ball, who was also killed by the Warrington bombs, they set up a Foundation for Peace to encourage reconciliation in the North.

And last week’s event in Canary Wharf was part of that ongoing attempt by them to find understanding and peace. It can’t have been easy for them.

Colin Parry said that before he met Adams and shook hands he did not know what he would do or say. He wasn’t even sure he could go through with it, but he felt he had to.

It can’t have been easy for Adams either, of course. But then he’s a professional politician and one with a particularly solid brass neck.

He’s had lots of practice meeting people in difficult circumstances, and he has all those key phrases at the tip of his tongue. On TV he looked only slightly uncomfortable as they met, but completely in control.

At the public debate which followed Adams apologized once more for what had been done. “Irish Republicans — the IRA — were responsible for what happened that day,” he said. “It brought huge grief to these two families, as well as to others hurt in that incident.

“The IRA expressed its regret at what had happened. I have also expressed my personal and sincere regret, and apologized for the hurt inflicted by Republicans. I do so again this evening. This is the right and proper thing to do.”

If Adams had left it at that, it might have been okay. Or maybe if he had gone on to give us the details of who was responsible for leaving bombs in a busy shopping area and explained how anyone — even his buddies on the IRA Army Council — could ever have thought that such an action could be justified, it might have been okay.

But that was only a bit of his very lengthy speech (and yes, I have read it all), a speech that was replete with all those self-satisfied phrases that spring from the mother of them all — the price of peace.

Adams was as patronizing as ever, probably without even realizing it. “The Tim Parry/Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace is an optimistic example of how people, who have been grievously hurt, are able to meet that challenge head on and to produce something good and constructive, and positive and compassionate, from it,’’ he said.

So there you have it. From the outcome of this unspeakable act by the IRA, Gerry manages to extrapolate optimism.

The result of that unspeakable act becomes a challenge for the Parrys. There’s even a pat on the head for their compassion. It’s like Warrington happened on a different planet. It had nothing to do with him.

It got even worse. Adams went on, “I therefore want to acknowledge Colin and Wendy Parry’s personal journey and how they have created this positive space from the place of deep trauma and grief they personally experienced.”

Now we’re down to pop psychology, “a personal journey” leading to a “positive space.” Listen to Guru Gerry. That’s what happens to you when the IRA blasts your child to bits. You’re on a “personal journey” to a “positive space.”

It’s going to become another one of those phrases. All those RUC widows and all those children (now adults) who were robbed of parents, they’re all on “a personal journey.”

If you didn’t see through this corruption of meaning and language, you might easily forget that Adams was one of the chief tour operators at the time.

The Parrys, to their credit, got through the evening. But whether they will feel, looking back, that they got very much out of it is another matter.

Adams’ long speech was essentially a justification for the IRA war, smoothly tailoring his account of the last 30 years in a way that his largely British audience would not have been able to question.

In a nutshell, what he was saying was that the boys had no alternative. He wouldn’t get away with that argument here.

But towards the end of the speech he did say something intriguing in a section about truth, victims and reconciliation. Whether he is really serious about the IRA fully cooperating with a public Truth Commission and owning up to what they did over the last 30 years... well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

There’s “merit” in the idea, he said. It’s not exactly a commitment. Maybe he was just saying what he thought the Parrys and the audience wanted to hear.

It’s all very hard to take at this stage. But as the phrase goes, it’s the price of peace.

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