Bereaved RUC families do not carry placards, but we mustn’t forget them

I read recently Ben Lowry’s piece on John Hume (Hume’s rejection of violence will be pivotal in battles over history, page 11, August 8) and his remarks about people not recalling anything of that era resonated with me. I write here in that connection.

During the months of coronavirus pandemic lockdown many little day-to-day pleasures we take for granted have had to be sacrificed.

I had plans for this year. been shelved and I feel, probably like so many others, that this pandemic has robbed me of a portion of my life span that I will not get back.

These sacrifices pale into insignificance considering that the virus has robbed many of life itself.

During the early days of my working life, I recall my boss lamenting how he had lost his teenage years as a young man growing up during WW2.

His words didn’t really resonate with me at the time.

Having got married in 1969 and raising a family over the following years I began to realise what he meant.

Eating out, going to the pub or even to work was tainted with danger. Walking the streets of Belfast after dark could be a dangerous gamble. Fear dominated every waking moment.

We maybe didn’t see it at the time but we were being robbed of the ability to live life as we should have been entitled to.

The new generation, especially within Unionism, are being fed the sanitised and rewritten version of events that others seek to record as the true history of the time.

Some sections of the community even revere the events in fable and song.

Now as we try to move on from those dreadful times the narrative has been dominated by calls for public inquiries and legacy investigations into actions of the Crown Forces. Fulsome Government apologies have been issued.

However, the one apology we still wait for is from the perpetrators. The people who lit the fuses, who pulled the trigger. The terrorists who took people away from their families, tortured and murdered them before disappearing them into a remote bog.

Before anyone reminds me that there were many authors of death, I would place on record that there are no “good” terrorists. Not then, not now.

The Crown Forces were, without a doubt, the people who prevented Northern Ireland from descending into full scale civil war.

I am proud to have played a small part, on a part time basis, by proudly pulling on an RUC uniform to assist in facing down the merchants of death and destruction. I saw at first hand the sacrifices made by the security forces.

I saw the toll on their mental health and family life. I walked behind the coffins of murdered colleagues. I saw the injuries that would haunt many of them for the rest of their lives.In this new era of public inquiries, history being rewritten, skewed reports and Government apologies, one group of people appear to have been overlooked.

That is the mothers and fathers, the widows and widowers, and the children of those murdered while serving in the Crown Forces.

Their silence and their responses have been incredibility dignified. That should not be seen as a lack of grief or loss. They don’t carry placards nor seek out a picket line to stand on.

Many are left with are small tokens to remember the honourable duty their loved ones performed. A service medal, the folded flag that draped the coffin, the gloves and uniform cap of the deceased.

However, the most enduring collective memory of all those who died in serving their country is not just their courage but their reputation. I make no apologies for especially referencing the widows of RUC officers killed during the Troubles.

How must they feel when they hear all the calls for inquiries, for suggestions that even deceased officers be investigated for minor non-criminal actions during their service.

If this was not bad enough how must they feel when they listened to unfounded claims of collusion? These allegations are thrown around like confetti.

The reality being that the claims are nothing more than a hurtful and disgraceful slur on the reputations of thousands of officers who served in the police with honesty, distinction, and selfless courage.

The authors of these false narratives are those keen to rewrite history, to wipe clean the impacts of their campaign of terrorism that was not only immoral and cruel but a complete failure.

It is always right to punish the very small number that may have been guilty of any provable crime.

However, Government must defend the reputations of the brave and principled innocent, many of whom were robbed of life itself. We cannot allow the reputation of the vast majority to be stolen by the stealth of false narratives.

We owe it to them.

l Alan Chambers served as an RUC reserve constable from 1972 until 1986. He has been a UUP MLA since 2016, and had been a councillor in North Down for about 25 years.