"Man, a bear in most relations - worm and savage otherwise, - Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion
in unmitigated act."
Thus Kipling in The Female of the Species - a poet our Shinner friends have no time for, but not for his opinions on women. It was men who propounded the peace process negotiations, men who accepted the compromise. It was men who declined to push the logic of a fact to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
And it was men who coldly butchered Robert McCartney to death in Belfast, because they thought they could; and it was women, the McCartney sisters, who have pushed the logic of that fact to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
For women have greater moral courage than men: men hunt in packs and follow the morality of the hierarch. Contrary to mythology, women do not form lynch-mobs. That is a male prerogative and a male instrument imposing male rules in male ways.
Men are physically braver than women, to be sure: women are poor racing drivers and fighter pilots, and if you want to clear an enemy machine-gun nest using female warriors, prepare for a long wait. But society does not function according to such large requirements. Its needs are more modest in scale, and more demanding of morality than mere mortal man can supply. Morality might be enforced by men, but it emanates from women. Even in outwardly male societies, where women go masked, the family ethic is established in the home by the mother.
It is the unwavering female desire to protect kin, even by association, which caused Jill Morrell to campaign for John McCarthy during the long years of his captivity in Beirut, though the British Foreign office told her to go away and to stop being such a silly woman: the poor chap's dead. He wasn't; and nor was his co-owner of a single radiator, Brian Keenan, whose name was kept alive in Ireland by the tireless campaigning of his sisters.
Physical courage is useless when faced with the mountain of getting up each day, and making the same phone calls, the same futile trips to the same government offices to meet the same bored officials, with their excuses and their scarcely concealed irritation, just as you did the day before, and the week before and the month before, just as you will the next day, and the next week, and the next month, for all the years to come.
No. What you need for that is moral courage, moral certainty, moral stamina, and moral focus.
"She is wedded to convictions -
in default of greater ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot wild
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child."
And, in the case of the McCartneys, brother. Nearly 30 years ago, another band of women tried to bring the conflict in the North to an end after the three Maguire children were killed by an IRA get-away car. They were bullied, jeered and harassed off the streets by the young men of Sinn Féin-IRA, assisted by a few females. But the sexes classically divided over the question of peace and war - and the men, with their physical bravery and their obscene reverence for violence, catastrophically won. We know with what results.
For Northern Ireland is a truly macho society - so much so that, Bríd Rodgers and Iris Robinson aside, no woman has had any impact on political life since Bernadette McAliskey left the scene. Thus when peace came, it was through a classically male agreement, bereft of any morality, and steeped in an ethical compromise which enabled the Shinners to proceed just as they wanted. Forget Mo Mowlam: that cursing, vulgar creature was a she-male, imitating men without having the endocrinal wherewithal to do it successfully.
If Margaret Thatcher had been in Downing Street and Mary Harney had been in the Taoiseach's office, the steady drumbeat of murder, arms importations and ceasefire violations of the past decade would have been met with a stern, unbending response. The Shinners would have known that beneath those female breasts beat female hearts implacably opposed to the moral compromise that is the slippery slope to sewer rods, gouged out eyes, cut throats, and an entire pub intimidated into silence.
That silence reached across the month of February, while Ireland busily pretended it had other preoccupations. No doubt the Northern Ireland Office hoped the murder would simply go away, as so many inconvenient IRA murders conveniently have. The Shinners must have thought that yet again they had won; but they reckoned without the dauntless moral courage of Paula, Catherine, Gemma, Claire and Donna, Robert's sisters.
Have you the least idea how much resolve those women had to possess to organise an anti-IRA rally in the Short Strand, under the very noses of the men who beat and slashed their brother to death?
At this point, we cannot say whether their heroism will provide a turning point in the squalid rise of Sinn Féin; but I do know that their remorseless pursuit of justice is a reminder that no deal can work unless it contains a moral heart. For ethics is the glue of all societies. It is learned in the female institution of the home, not in the male institution of the school. And an unethical peace is simply war on hold.