Seeing Past the Scars
by Cody Keenan, Opinions Editor on April 18, 2007 in Opinion
The morning of St. Patrick’s Day 2004, I looked up from my desk in the U.S Capitol and my heart skipped a fearful beat. Not ten feet away stood Gerry Adams, in town for annual meetings with American politicians. The leader of Sinn Féin, the Irish nationalist party and the Irish Republican Army’s longtime political front, he cut a quietly imposing figure, hands clasped behind his back, signature beard flecked with gray.
Though he has always denied being a member of the IRA, the group responsible for nearly half of the 3,700 deaths during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, many suspect Adams’ direct involvement in the organization, if not its leadership. Indeed, it would be difficult for him to have held his Sinn Féin position for the last three decades without being an active member. But his moves to reform the IRA, along with the heroic efforts of other stakeholders, have built steps toward lasting peace, the most important of which took place just last month.
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, widely considered the end of the thirty-year Troubles, created a new Northern Ireland Assembly. Nationalist John Hume and unionist David Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize that year for their bold efforts, and Tony Blair’s unrelenting work then and now deserves credit. At the time, however, fringe ideological parties were obstacles to success. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), favoring Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain, refused to support any deal with Sinn Féin at the table.
But times have changed even if age-old feelings haven’t, and yesterday’s fringe parties are the ones firmly in control today. Last month’s new power-sharing agreement, set to take effect May 8, is the most important step toward peaceto date, symbolized by the historic sight of Adams and the DUP’s hard-line Reverend Ian Paisley seated just feet apart. The two refused to shake hands, but the simple fact that Paisley appeared with Adams, after long refusing to even speak to him over Sinn Féin’s IRA ties, makes the meeting all the more momentous.
The two parties are the most polarized in Northern Irish politics and – quite literally – mortal enemies. But Adams and Paisley no longer have a choice; voters made clear their desire to set constitutional quarrels aside in favor of tackling pocketbook issues. So last month’s agreement is all the more remarkable – and, perversely, all the more likely to work – in that the principals at the table have legitimacy as the chief unionist and the chief nationalist. Ironically, the extremists who criticized Nobel winners Hume and Trimble will now undertake what the peacemakers intended in the first place.
But alongside optimism, we should be mindful of recent history. The shocking August 1998 bombing in the town of Omagh, an act of the offshoot Real IRA that claimed the lives of twenty-nine civilians, shattered lives and shredded the optimism of the Good Friday Agreement. But it also tore away most of the remaining credibility held by IRA splinter groups. And the brutal IRA-related murder of a Belfast man and its attempted cover-up caused an international furor just two years ago.
Despite such isolated incidents, Northern Ireland has enjoyed an extended period of peace since Omagh. Only if that continues can the agreement succeed. There will be trials – scars of the past remain, and the new deputy first minister is a former IRA leader.
So must the people of Northern Ireland continue to do their part. Their repeated calls for peace and declarations at the ballot box prove they don’t care who establishes peace – only that it gets done. They’re now responsible for holding the combatants-turned-peacemakers to account.
Nearly forty million of us can claim Irish ancestry. We should be overjoyed that the bloody brutality that scarred most of the last century in the territory between our finest ally and the green island from which so many of us hail might be near its end. As one whose surname is Northern Irish, I plan a return pilgrimage this year to the ancient motherland, newly optimistic for its future.
Beliefs won’t change, but the healing passage of time creates legitimacy. Ten years of a functioning Northern Ireland Assembly may work wonders. And so let us join the hope that hardened men can be brave enough to overcome decades of all they know to create a future of peace that is all their heirs know.
Written by Cody Keenan, Opinions Editor · Filed Under Opinion
Cody Keenan (MPP2) is Opinions Editor of the Citizen. Prior to his time at the Kennedy School of Government, Cody worked in the United States Senate from 2003 to 2006. He spent last summer on a leading presidential campaign.
A Chicagoan and graduate of Northwestern University, he blames his Midwestern roots for his affinity for meat products and perennially losing sports teams. In this space, he hopes to write columns on string theory, metaphysics, and behavioral economics, but will probably just stick to politics and American culture.
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