Henry Patterson: Terrorism is being legitimised in the Basque Country as it is in Northern Ireland

The previous weekend there had been an international conference in the Aiete Palace in the Basque city of San Sebastian.

The highlight of the event was a declaration by Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of EH Bildu the radical nationalist party descended from Batasuna the political wing of ETA.

Otegi declared that ETA’s campaign should never have happened and that it ought to have laid down its arms far earlier than it did.

Most comment focused on the few sentences devoted to the victims of ETA violence: ‘We want to express to them our sorrow and pain for the suffering they have endured.

‘We feel their pain and that sincere feeling leads us to affirm that it should never have happened.’

The San Sebastian event was designed to upstage the anniversary of the end of a campaign which had cost almost 850 lives and the inevitable media coverage of five decades of the devastation caused in the pursuit of an objective, an independent Basque state, which is no nearer achievement now than it was when the campaign began in the 1970s.

The most recent opinion poll shows support for independence at 22% and opposition at 38%.

Despite this the statement, hailed as important and powerful, by one of the international conflict resolution experts invited to the conference, ended with a declaration which will be familiar to observers of our own peace process: ‘The resolution of the causes of the conflict is still a pending issue. The democratic resolution of this national conflict is imperative.’

To which two thirds of those polled reply that they are happy with the political situation in the Basque country as it is.

A few days before the ETA ceasefire in 2011 there had been another, but much more high-powered conference at the Aiete Palace: the ‘International Conference to Promote the Resolution of the Conflict in the Basque Country’.

Attendees included Kofi Annan, Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and Jonathan Powell, chief of staff to Tony Blair.

It was choreographed by radical nationalists to use the prestigious visitors to help extract political concessions in return for the ceasefire that was about to be declared.

Its declaration, which was read by Ahern, called on the governments of Spain and France to enter into discussions with Basque nationalists ‘to deal with the consequences of the conflict’ and suggested a role for third party observers, like themselves to facilitate the dialogue.

This was seen by both the main Spanish parties, the Socialists and the centre-right Popular Party as unwarranted interference by a group, most of who had only the most superficial knowledge of the situation the Basque Country, and were being used by radical nationalists to help them achieve the political objectives ETA had been killing for.

The declaration was ignored which may explain why the only figure of significance to come to Santander last week was Powell.

Within a few days the value of Otegi’s word to ETA’s victims were thrown into doubt when he claimed that the five EH Bildu deputies in the Spanish parliament might not support the Socialist government’s budget if the law was not changed to release the 177 ETA prisoners still in prison.

Many of these were guilty of multiple killings.

Bildu militants are also in the vanguard of ‘Ongi Etorri!’ (welcome in Basque) celebratory home-comings for ETA prisoners when they are released.

Marta Buesa, daughter of the leading Basque socialist, Fernando Buesa, murdered by ETA in 2000 commented that she found it difficult to take Otegi’s concern for the victims seriously while his supporters organise these triumphalist displays: ‘If you feel our pain, you should also know that to organise a homage to a terrorist is painful and humiliating.’

Like Sinn Fein, the end of a terrorist campaign has brought political rewards.

EH Bildu has over a third of the total of town councillors in the Basque country, 21 out of 75 deputies in the Basque Parliament and five deputies in the national parliament.

More importantly as historian Luis Castells points out, ‘ETA has been defeated, not delegitimised. A section of Basque society does not reject the attempt to impose its ideology by force’.

In Northern Ireland, as the decade of centenaries draws to a rancorous close, five minutes on social media will demonstrate that, as in the Basque Country, the legitimation of terrorism continues apace.

• Henry Patterson is emeritus professor of politics at the University of Ulster and author of Ireland’s Violent frontier: The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations During the Troubles

• Other comment articles below and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the News Letter

• Henry McDonald: Absence of Queen at centenary service was spun beyond credulity

• Ben Lowry:Centenary church service should have celebrated Northern Ireland

• Owen Polley: Unionists need to match the relentless energy of nationalism

• Ruth Dudley Edwards: Nasty article gloated over Sinn Fein centenary snub

• John Cushnahan: To those who distorted nature of centenary service — Shame on you!

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