Decency survived despite the barbarity
Something deeper prevailed in March 1988 to prevent tribal bloodletting in the North
Mourners take cover as a grenade explodes during Michael Stone’s attack in Milltown cemetery, Belfast, on March 16th, 1988. Photograph: Paddy Whelan
Above all I remember the sense that anything might happen. We had suddenly, shockingly come to a place where norms – for even sectarian warfare in the North had its ‘norms’ – had been abandoned. If a funeral could be attacked what next? To borrow Seamus Heaney’s phrase, the war had by then established its “customary rhythms”. After nearly 20 years of violence we could still be outraged but all within a template of what had become, perversely, routine atrocities: the part-time UDR man shot at his front door; the father of four killed for being a Catholic; the army patrol blown up in south Armagh; the unarmed teenager shot by the army on the Border. There was killing, condemnation and killing.
In retrospect the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen should have warned us against complacency about the “acceptable level of violence”. Vengeance for that extraordinary act of mass murder would help inspire the terror of those terrible days of March 1988 which began with the shootings in Gibraltar and ended with the deaths of corporals Wood and Howes.