Repeating History
I felt very old listening to the radio last night and this morning. Arts Extra had an item about a revival of the play "Somewhere Over the Balcony" written by Marie Jones about women living in Divis Flats. Kim Lenaghan reminded listeners that it was 20 years since the Charabanc theatre company first put on the play.
"20 years!" I felt staggered as I have vivid memories of the time, as I was then sharing a house with Marie Jones and her fellow Charabanc member Eleanor Methven. It was a lively time, but the news was terribly dark.
I also have memories of heading in to work to help out on the coverage of the IRA Enniskillen bomb. This morning Good Morning Ulster spoke to my old 91Èȱ¬ colleagues Mike Philpott and Keith Baker who recalled the trauma of covering the Poppy Day atrocity. Today people in Enniskillen attended a remembrance service twenty years on.
20 years, I thought, well at least that is history...then just after dropping off my own child at school I learned about what had happened to the off duty PSNI officer, blasted by a shot gun as he dropped his child off at Lumen Christi Grammar School.
Of course May 8th wasn't, to borrow Francis Fukuyama's phrase, the end of history. But twenty years on from the Enniskillen bomb, who really thinks that a cold blooded shooting of the kind perpetrated today can play any part in building a better future?
I'm 
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I heard a snippet of Talkback in the background today, and somebody was on saying that the perpetrators had no support in the community, and did not represent any part of the community, and that the people would not stand for this sort of behaviour.
Sounds familiar doesn't it? It also sounds wrong. For the duration of the troubles, the vast majority of us were of the opinion that our futures would be better and brighter if we did not personally do something about the people who were responsible for the dirty, nasty, depressing, debilitating period of history we have come through. The people would stand for this sort of behaviour. We just did.
The paramilitaries didn't come from outer space and pick on poor wee us. They came from here, from us.
I can't think of a single instance where any community rejected them in a practical way, and I can't see it happening to the people who did this now.
We will have to rely on the powerful and the rich - not the mouthy - to do something about them.
And another thing, can we please stop this practice of acting like the troubles make us special and interesting, particularly in the presence of outsiders. They don't. They make us stupid, wasteful, ignorant fools. Nobody envies us.
I am in total agreement with RJ's comments.
We are the poison.
Not quite true to say no one from any community rejected the para militaries. Support for loyalist paramilitaries has always been minimal at the ballot box in fact paramilitary figures have been overwhelmingly rejected unlike the nationalist community who voted in tens of thousands for those who had butchered their fellow citizens in Northern Ireland and caused years of grief and pain.
W McKeown's argument is a tired old argument used to make unionists feel vindicated and pleased with themselves, and to provide an excuse for them to say, "look at that lot there. Look at what they're doing. They're really bad."
If Protestants/Unionists were serious in saying they didn't want loyalist violence, they would have stopped it.
1 million Protestants. A few hundred loyalists. No contest - if it had of been entered. And they wonder why they get a bad press.
It is absolutely true to say that the people of this country did not reject terrorist paramilitaries. We bred them, we encouraged them and we did nothing to stop them.
You don't have to vote for something to support it. Remember John Taylor on "Loyalists"? He said that most Protestants had a sneaking admiration for the loyalist paramilitaries.
I would go further. I would say most Protestants were happy enough when the UVF/UDA killed a Catholic. I would say most Protestants tried to believe the "we killed him because he was in the IRA" rubbish they got after every murder. I would say most Protestants blamed the IRA for loyalist violence. I would say most Protestants were bigots.
And I would say most Catholics were exactly the same, only the other way round.
The difference shown at the ballot box is a product of Protestants trying to appear all British and civilised by keeping their hands clean from the muck they are up to their necks in, that they created.
Catholics, disgracefully, aren't a bit ashamed of it.
They're both as bad as each other.
RJ says protestants are bigotted? He should try reading his own post!! Pot, kettle, black? I, as a protestant, never supported the Loyalist paramilitaries nor did any of my friends and family. They're hoods and criminals and always have been.
Two points Rob:
1. If you read my post properly you would see that I called most Catholics bigots too.
2. I went to state schools in Portadown. I was brought up in a church-going family. I attended the Boys' Brigade. I joined the Orange Order. I went to watch football at Shamrock Park. I have encountered members of paramilitary organisations.
I have seen all shades of Protestant. Most of them were bigots.