For as long as I can remember back, my childhood and young adulthood was overshadowed by what we in Ireland rather disarmingly called “The Troubles.” Almost everyone — even those outside Ireland — know what that was, over thirty years of sectarian violence, bombings, assassinations, protests, marches and general upheaval which essentially equated to all but a war across the border from me. Northern Ireland was, from my point of view and that of my family and friends, virtually another country, almost another continent. Nobody went there unless they had to — apart from shopping, and even then you kind of took your life in your hands, even though most of those who did venture over the border went no further than Newry, which is really, well, just over the border.
Belfast was the watchword for terror and fear. Belfast was (as far as we knew) where all the killings happened, where the IRA (Irish Republican Army) were based, and where the British forces were present in the thickest numbers. It could be a terrifying thing just going up there, as the members of the Miami showband found out when they encountered a Loyalist checkpoint in 1975 on their way home from a gig. Three of the five band members were executed after a failed attempt by the paramilitaries who stopped their tour bus to plant a bomb on it.
Nobody went to Belfast.
Today, the Irish Government, following the example of their counterparts in the UK, released previously sealed and secret papers which detail events about the latter years of The Troubles which have never before seen the light. Our national TV station’s website is running articles on these papers over the next few days, and while you can of course if you want just click the link and read them, for those of you not born in Ireland they may not make much sense, so I’m going to run my own series here explaining what has been revealed, what we here in Ireland knew about such things, if anything, how these revelations might impact us thirty years on, while at the same time giving my own personal views and recollections of the times when we listened with increasing boredom to reports on the news about “yet another bomb in Belfast”. Our attitudes changed slightly, when the bombs came closer to home, but that was soon forgotten. Then we had Omagh.
Well, all of this to come. The records released cover, so far as I can see, the years 1991 — 1998 (the last year there being the year the Good Friday Agreement was, well , agreed and theoretically peace came to Northern Ireland, though we then had “splinter” groups like The Real IRA and The Continuity IRA to deal with), so if you’re interested in Irish history and the actual all-but-realisation of peace in a country where such a thing never seemed possible, who was involved, what happened and how it might have fallen apart at the last minute, stay tuned.
First episode tomorrow.