Sept. 10, 2023, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:
The price of conflict: Tears flow from Irish eyes
By Mike
Haynes
June Proctor delivered her son,
John, on Sept. 9, 1981, in a small Northern Ireland hospital. Five days later
her husband, Johnnie Proctor, was surprised that he had been able to visit the
mother and baby longer than usual, because the strict Sister Woods had been on
duty when he had arrived about 6:45 p.m.
After about two hours the 25-year-old Johnnie, who had taken a job as a local constable, said goodbye and headed downstairs toward his car. June watched out the window, hoping to see him driving away. Instead, out of sight, she heard multiple gunshots.
Johnnie had been murdered by
members of the Irish Republican Army, and his family’s story was chronicled
later in the Belfast Telegraph.
He was one of about 3,600 people
who were killed on both sides of the brutal conflict between nationalists, also
called republicans, who were mostly Catholic, and loyalists, also called
unionists, who were mostly Protestant, from the late 1960s to 1998.
IRA members were considered
terrorists by Protestants and freedom fighters by Catholics. The same was true
of paramilitary groups on the other side.
For the most part, the Good
Friday Agreement in 1998 ended those decades of back-and-forth violence that
came to be called “the Troubles.” The main dispute was between those in
Northern Ireland who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom as they had
been officially since the 1920s and those who wanted to unite with the rest of
their island, the Republic of Ireland.
Residents of separate Catholic
and Protestant neighborhoods in urban Belfast and other northern regions hurled
doctrinal insults at each other, but the main quarrel was more political and
societal than spiritual.
Catholics claimed discrimination
in jobs, voting and their place in the culture. Civil rights protests evolved
into violence by paramilitary groups on both sides – the Irish Republican Army
(Catholic) and groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (Protestant).
With street fighting, shootings
and bombings becoming common, British troops were sent in to keep the peace;
Catholics and the IRA saw the soldiers – as well as local law enforcement
officers such as Johnnie Proctor – as the enemy.
The suffering went both ways. Ten-year-old Richard Moore, headed home from school in 1972, ran past a British army lookout post. A soldier fired a rubber bullet that hit Richard in the face. He was blinded for life. In 2006 Richard tracked down the soldier, Charles, forgave him, and the two men became friends.
Another young boy, Buddy, fares
better in Kenneth Branagh’s 2021 outstanding fictional movie, “Belfast.” Based
on Branagh’s childhood, it illustrates the effect of the Troubles on one
family. And even more poignant is the PBS documentary, “Once Upon A Time In
Northern Ireland.”
The five hour-long episodes,
also available on Amazon Prime and PBS Passport, consist of interviews with men
and women – including June and Richard – from both sides who lived through that
chaotic period. Whether you identify more with Protestants or Catholics,
British or Irish, establishment supporters or social activists, it’s hard not
to empathize with the tears that still flow from Irish eyes 25 years after the
Good Friday Agreement.
One woman recalls a bomb she
planted in a department store, assuming it would go off after hours. She admits
that had it been set to explode when customers were there, she still would have
done it for the nationalist cause.
Another woman, Fiona, was Miss Derry 1986. She
recalls how she didn’t mention to other contestants in the Miss Ireland pageant
that her brother had been murdered by the IRA.
Religious zeal has been the
rationale for many a conflict throughout history – usually resulting from
distorted interpretations of spiritual teachings. The 22nd anniversary
of the 9/11 attacks will arrive Monday, and families, friends and politicians
will memorialize the 2,977 people who were killed in New York, Washington,
D.C., and Pennsylvania by Islamic extremists motivated by politics but
primarily by zeal for their religion.
In the case of the Troubles, the
sides that opposed each other were split more by governance issues and civil
rights disparities than by their two versions of Christianity.
Sometimes,
people believe in their causes so strongly that they think anything, including
murder of innocent people, is justified to achieve what they consider justice.
“Once Upon A Time in Northern
Ireland” reveals the personal cost of such thinking. The emotion in the recent
interviews is that of people who have not forgotten their pain.
One of my friends who is helping
plan a 2025 Christian retreat in Belfast says the organizers will urge those
attending not to bring up politics with the Irish locals they meet – and
certainly not to ask whether they are Protestant or Catholic.
The Irish band U2 wrote about
“Bloody Sunday,” when in 1972 British paratroopers shot 14 Catholic protesters
to death: “How long, how long must we sing this song? How long? How long?
“The real battle just begun … To
claim the victory Jesus won … On Sunday, Bloody Sunday…”
