Ideals of patriotism sullied by bombers

Global, collective or political concepts survive only with difficulty in the domain of personal pain

Global, collective or political concepts survive only with difficulty in the domain of personal pain. If an event such as Omagh had harmed as much as a hair on my child's head, I doubt if I could ever again acquire the will to care about the configuration of Ireland's political options or solutions.

If anything of the horror of last Saturday week were to be visited on those whom I hold dearest, I do not believe that I would care a jot if lumps of Ireland started falling into the sea. But I might, however, be grateful if someone else could summon up the energy to go back to thinking about those matters which still stand between us and a final resolution. It would be a great mistake if, in our desire to dissociate ourselves from the bombers at Omagh, we responded in ways which will, in the long term, serve to ensure that such atrocities happen again.

It would be a mistake, too, to seek again to jettison those values which, in uncontaminated form, are crucial to our capacity to recover from this obscenity. I mean, in particular, the willingness to entertain freedom of democratic expression, and the desire to foster a true spirit of patriotism.

This is a difficult time to talk about patriotism. In the wake of atrocities like Omagh, the word acquires for a time a deep texture of malign and mocking irony. It becomes an unspeakable thing. And in those moments the inevitable voices emerge to tell us that it is something we are better off without. But sooner or later, it must be rescued again, and cleansed in the truth of our necessity for some form of idealism to hold us together.

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It is understandable, at times like this, that people will decide the process is not worth the candle. It is understandable that people will issue demands for simplistic solutions. It is understandable that people will be ashamed enough of the deeds of their fellow man to want to surrender anything of their own beliefs which implies even the slightest degree of affinity between themselves and the perpetrators of such barbarism. Last week, in this column, I asked the question: is it possible to share any of the beliefs of the people who planted the bomb in Omagh and remain part of the human family?

The answer is: it has to be. For the day we allow the bombers to shame us into repudiating our beliefs for fear of sharing them with such monsters is the day we give power to the terrorist to recreate our hearts and our minds. I heard people on the radio during the week demanding that those in the Republic who had voted against the Belfast Agreement show themselves and explain their actions now, in the shadow of Omagh. Such thinking, however understandable in the grief of the moment, is deeply dangerous to democracy. For surely nothing in a democratic society is as far from the mark of a pencil on a ballot paper as a car-bomb in a crowded square. To suggest that the act of the first implies a complicity in the second is to say that, far from being an antidote to terrorism, democracy is merely its synonym. This is dangerous nonsense. The problem is not what people think, but how they react when they are disagreed with.

To give an example removed from the emotion of the Northern issue: the fact that a crazed zealot may shoot dead a doctor who has carried out abortions does not retrospectively mean that it was wrong for an Irish voter to support the 1983 amendment to the Constitution extending rights to the unborn. If there is to be any hope of solving the underlying issues which led to the Omagh bombing, it will surely be through the expression of political difference by means other than violence. Once again we can see, in the wake of Omagh, the deep reservoirs of national shame as they swirl and toss under the assault of a degradation which no thoughts or words can dissipate. The idea that there is a concept of nationhood, of sovereignty, of patriotism, that is sole and indivisible, and that this should now be jettisoned for good because it has shown itself capable of spawning such barbarism, is one that is difficult to argue with right now. But argue with it we must. For patriotism is not some optional extra to the smooth running of an already functioning society. It is the very blood that runs through the veins of our collective humanity. Patriotism, far from being the cause of such outrages as Omagh, is the quality which stands to protect us from such things. Patriotism is the love of our country and our countrymen. At its best it unites us in fellow-feeling with other peoples who love their own nations. True patriotism has no place for hatred. Quite soon, as part of the continuing peace efforts, we will need to begin a process of inquiry into the reasons why the concepts of Irish nationhood and patriotism have become so contaminated by barbarism. This should not take the form of the standard comparisons between the deeds of the present and the deeds of the past, but be an honest examination of why it is that the arena of patriotism has fallen into the hands of contemptible thugs and pitiable wretches. Those among the leadership of the republican movement who have lately walked away from violence have a responsibility to help us explore these questions with truth and courage.

It has been alleged that the planters of the Omagh bomb could not be called cowardly because they risked capture or self-destruction in planting their bomb. To this I would respond that there is some factor to be accounted for in explanation of why such alleged patriots, who might once have been expected to be found engaged in mortal combat with the might of the British army, are now mainly associated with the killing and maiming of passing children, women and men. I fail to see how this can be distinguished from cowardice.

It often seems that the greatest damage inflicted on the Irish nation has not been at the hands of the occupying forces of the British crown, but by some of the self-appointed defenders of the Irish people from such occupation. This has certainly been true of the most recent phase of this unfortunate historical circumstance.

But that does not mean that the occupation of Irish lands and hearts and minds was virtuous and proper, and that it should not have been resisted by honourable means. It does not mean that the Irish people should have stood idly by and allowed themselves to be walked into the ground. It does not mean that all those who, at various times in our history, stood and fought invasion, interference and the inhumanity and criminality of the invader were villains or fools, or that their resistance was always immoral or wrong.

The message of Omagh is not that we should abandon our sense of nationhood, or the cause of our collective realisation, or our patriotism, or our national pride. The message of Omagh is surely that we must pray all the harder that no one who claims to serve such causes will ever again dishonour them by cowardice, inhumanity or rapine.