The sorry truth – Are we healing or hiding from the past?

By AM Friday, September 14, 2012

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Brian Rowan with a piece that was originally published on Eamonn Mallie's website on the 9th of September. It is reproduced with the author's permission. 


It is six months since Declan Kearney introduced the word sorry into a reconciliation debate here; sorry in a humanising context to acknowledge the many hurts of war.  Since then he has described the events of Bloody Friday – the IRA bombing blitz of Belfast 40 years ago – as “unjustifiable”.

Republicans are stretching their words and language, but is it about healing or hiding? Hiding the real truth of events; concealing the detail within that changing language and generalised apology? It is a question that is being asked as this reconciliation conversation develops; a question I will return to later in this piece.

Martin McGuinness, the now Deputy First Minister, was part of a leadership that directed the IRA war. Recently, he described the bombing of Claudy 40 years ago as “indefensible”. Then, at the weekend, Kearney spoke again, at a Sinn Fein summer school in west Cork, stating “there is no excuse for the human loss and suffering of the Shankill bomb”.

Why this specific mention of one dark day that dates back almost twenty years? It was because he was sharing a platform and a debate with Alan McBride, the victims’ campaigner who lost his wife and father-in-law in that explosion on a Saturday afternoon in 1993.

I remember being there that day; remember the people digging in the rubble of the blast; remember the body count rising; remember the then assistant chief constable Ronnie Flanagan whispering to me the possibility that one of the bombers had been taken to hospital.

It was one of those days that speak out loudest from this conflict, because of the civilian dead, the nine Protestant people killed in a botched attempt by the IRA to target the UDA leadership, including Johnny Adair.

I remember many months later an interview with a police officer, who was at the bomb scene that day; an interview with me in which he described seeing a child’s foot poking through the rubble and not wanting to dig any deeper because he knew what he was going to find.

Declan Kearney is right. There is “no excuse” for what happened that day, and on many other days, many of which are forgotten or ignored because the body count was not as high; not as numerically startling; the scenes not as dramatic or dark.

These are not just days for republicans to speak to, but those on the many other sides of this conflict. The story of the Shankill bomb should not end with Thomas Begley, the IRA ‘volunteer’ killed in the blast, or with Sean Kelly, another IRA man, injured and later jailed. He was freed from prison in July 2000 as part of the early release arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement and for almost twenty years has been the ‘bogeyman’ of that bomb and that day in October 1993.

So, much of the picture is missing; the detail relating to planning, the decision to deliver a bomb on a short fuse to a target on the Shankill, the inevitability that even if the IRA had been able to target the loyalist leadership, civilians were also going to be killed; sacrificed to achieve the goal. Begley and Kelly had parts at the end of the plan, but who designed it, who made it happen?

In whatever process is constructed to answer the questions of the past, individual accountability is not going to happen, but in an organisational sense, the IRA or republican leadership could speak about that day. It could expand on what Declan Kearney said about there being “no excuse” for what happened; could answer some of the questions above.

There is something else I remember from that day; a statement from the UDA-linked Ulster Freedom Fighters warning that a “heavy price” would be paid for “today’s atrocity”. Part of the context of that period, long before the events of that October day, was a re-arming of the loyalist organisations and a marked surge in their activity – spanning the years of the early 1990s.

Amanda Fullerton’s father, the Sinn Fein councillor Eddie Fullerton was shot dead in Co Donegal in May 1991 – shot dead by the UDA-linked UFF during a declared truce by the then Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC).

Amanda was also part of that weekend debate in west Cork, during which Declan Kearney made clear that dealing with the past and all its hurts is a challenge not just for republicans: “That means accepting and acknowledging hurt was caused on all sides; to both Alan McBride and Amanda Fullerton’s families; and, many others,” he said.

I was one of a small number of journalists to whom the CLMC truce statement was given; and I remember weeks later asking questions of the UFF after the Fullerton killing. There was an explanation that the truce did not extend into the Irish Republic, but there was no reference to this in the original statement.

In this period of the early ‘90s I took scores of statements from the loyalist leadership, delivered with now defunct codewords including ‘The Ulster Troubles’ and ‘Crucible’.

I spoke to that leadership on the Fullerton killing, to a man since exiled from Northern Ireland – ordered out under threat. I am not referring to Johnny Adair, but to another one-time ‘inner council’ leader. As far back as January 1993 this source told me that Ulster Resistance sold guns to the UDA, to individual units. He was describing a significant development in that re-arming of the loyalist organisations that sparked that surge of killing in the years immediately pre-dating the 1994 ceasefire.

The information was part of a BBC news report I compiled in January 1993. Will those loyalists who know the story of this period come forward to fill in the missing detail that relates to their decisions; the orders and actions, how the strings were being manipulated in the background?

This takes us back to the earlier question of healing or hiding; hiding in terms of burying detail and information. We don’t know what republicans are prepared to reveal, because we don’t know the contributions and responses of many others.

No one knows where this reconciliation debate is going; no one knows its potential because the question of amnesty has not been addressed and there have not been the conversations to determine levels of co-operation from all sides and within what type of mechanism.

Building that process and finding the international architects who can design it – make it happen – should be the principal aim of any on-going conversation. Alan McBride suggested the report of the Eames/Bradley Consultative Group on the Past  – binned three years ago – should be given another chance, but it has a design flaw.

It left the question of amnesty hanging, and suggested a Legacy Commission with investigation and information-recovery units.

Investigations won’t work, won’t deliver the missing detail, and there is no point establishing a Commission of any kind until levels of co-operation are known and terms and conditions agreed.

This is the unfinished work; determining who will co-operate – republican, loyalist, security forces/intelligence services, politicians/governments, churches, media and others; deciding how much information can be delivered and how best that is achieved; and remembering that a process on the past is not just about the IRA’s answers, but also about the questions those republicans want answered.

Who will help and who will hinder are questions for everyone – not just the IRA; not just Adams and McGuinness.


The full text of Declan Kearney’s address to the summer school in West Cork.