I’ve been watching events in Northern Ireland for some time now mostly because I don’t want the violence to return there. Yet every week it seems there is a report of a bomb, or a shooting, or rioting eerily like there used to be during The Troubles. Talking with others also following the latest news, the hope is that it’s just a small bunch of idiots trying to undo what no one really wants undone. Yet while writing this I’m reading about car hijackings and shots being fired. “Some people appear not to want to live in a peaceful community. They seem intent on causing hurt, fear, intimidation to innocent people living here,” one story reports. Aye, but that’s how it was last time, too.
The Irish Republican Army supposedly reformed to protect the minority Roman Catholics living in Northern Ireland from intimidation and brutality inflicted upon them by the Loyalists trying to force them out. At least that’s what I got from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in his book, Before the Dawn, and such instances of such intimidation and brutality are well documented. But the same is true of Republican intimidation against Loyalists. Neither side is exactly innocent. With the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which side was right or wrong became a moot point. The leaders declared PEACE in Ireland, and with that came peace. Or did it?
I flew to Ireland in 2001 to bury my dad, and while there I was determined not to let the circumstances of my trip overshadow my being there. So while arrangements took shape I ventured out to places that still haunted me, in particular Enniskillen and Portora Royal School. When I arrived in Enniskillen, I drove past a McDonald’s and chuckled, wondering if they served American hamburgers or Irish beef-burgers. I parked the car and walked into the main part of town anxious to see what other changes had been made. There was life everywhere. People going about their business, smiling some, and most of all, not a sign of the concrete barriers and security signs so prominent when I went to school there. I then drove out to Portora – but I couldn’t face actually going up to the school. Instead I decided to look around Gloucester House. To my surprise what used to be the prep school for Portora no longer existed, replaced with modern houses. Somehow the demolition comforted me. Change was good, I thought, and I reflected on just how much change I’d seen that day.
But on my way out of town as evening came, I noticed familiar olive drab Land Rovers had taken up strategic positions on the outskirts. Later, in Aughnacloy, a foot patrol dressed in fatigues and armed with automatic weapons passed by, darting from building to building, keenly on the lookout for snipers…trouble. I went back to Ballygawley for a couple of pints. The Protestant pub was more or less dead so I headed up the town to the Roman Catholic pub and enjoyed live music, laughter, and a warm, friendly atmosphere until closing time when the band started in on the Irish national anthem and everyone jumped to attention. All the fun vanished in an instant.
Ten years have since passed and, as I read the news, I can’t help but wonder if the peace is any more, or less, solid than it was. The Twelfth of July will tell.
