While most civilised political debates centre on the living, in this part of the world our arguments also include the dead. Here sectarianism never dies.
Last week’s war of words on who should be entitled to commemorate whom showed that we cannot let the dead rest in peace.
Welcome to the world of posthumous politics, where the living fight their battles through the armies of the dead.
A Sinn Féin commemoration in south Armagh was condemned by unionists because, they said, the IRA were terrorists.
The Kingsmills massacre, in which 10 Protestant workmen died, was certainly heartless terrorism. However, the Narrow Water attack, in which 18 British soldiers were killed, might reasonably be classified as war. (Whether it was a legitimate war is a debate for another day and it was certainly not inevitable.)
So how do you segregate terrorism from war, presumably since some IRA members might have been involved in both?
The same issue arises with the British army. In resisting Nazi Germany, the British lost 380,000 soldiers who deserve commemoration.
However, Britain’s long history of colonial terrorism (carried out by the British army) killed an estimated 150 million. So ceremonies at Britain’s cenotaphs commemorate some war and lots of terrorism.
If unionists are to be consistent, they must also criticise SF for attendance at those ceremonies, which include the commemoration of state terrorism in the Ballymurphy massacre and Derry’s Bloody Sunday.
Of course, soldiers are just cannon fodder for the political ambitions of others. Nationalists and unionists who died in World War I were victims of a British political scam. As Eric Bogle asks in The Green Fields of France, “Do those that lie here know why did they die?”
After World War I British soldiers expected to return to “homes fit for heroes”. Instead the survivors returned to poverty, while the dead were rewarded with poppies. So in World War II the British squaddie was fighting as much for a welfare state as defeating Germany.
None of them presumably died for Thatcherism, which came 30 years later, and did any of them lay down their lives for Boris Johnson?
Similarly with the IRA. Those who died gave their lives for Brits out, opposition to British royalty, retention of arms, the northern state’s destruction and opposition to the EU.
SF has now reversed all those principles, so when unionists ask if SF has the right to commemorate the dead, there is another way of interpreting that question.
Does SF have the right to commemorate those, some of whom today might well oppose SF policy?
The dead are eternally silent, but Ireland is full of those claiming to speak for them. The departed’s talking is done by others, usually seeking to interpret the intentions of the dead for the political ambitions of the living.
Perhaps we might regard posthumous politics along the lines of Mártín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille, an Irish novel about gossip, argument and discussion between the dead in a Conamara graveyard.
Do the dead now wonder at what happened after they died and do they ask, both in Britain and in Ireland, “Would you look at who’s commemorating us these days (and who’s not)?”
Or are our violent deaths too tragic for literary interpretation? Who, for example, will commemorate Freddie Scappaticci (if he really is dead): the British or the IRA? (Maybe a joint commemoration?) And who will commemorate his victims?
We are told that the patriot dead gave their lives for Ireland. But who or what is Ireland: the wealthy, the social elite, the political profiteers? Are they worth dying (or killing) for?
The best way to commemorate the dead is to care for those still alive, but as last week showed, there are more votes in arguing about the dead than in addressing the needs of the living.
As for the dead themselves, may they all rest in peace and may politicians acquire the human decency to let them do so.
