Philip McGarry: I recall the day hunger striker Bobby Sands died - a milkman and son who wished no harm to anyone were killed
I was very struck by a recent article by the highly regarded Belfast journalist Suzanne Breen.
In discussing the controversy over the Bobby Sands statue she wrote: “To the vast majority of nationalists — even those who never backed the IRA — Sands is a hero ... he is an icon to this generation of nationalists.”
Suzanne has always been a keen and insightful observer of nationalist sentiment. I particularly recall her reporting in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 IRA bomb that killed 29 people in Omagh, when Suzanne spoke to a local woman from a strongly nationalist background who said to her: “They may be b....rds, but they’re our b....rds."
This laid bare the genuine reality of the deep and bitter division that underlies our society, an important antidote to the superficial banalities that were and are typically trotted out on similar occasions.
I personally have an extremely clear recollection of the death of Bobby Sands.
At that time I was just starting my final exams in medicine at Queen’s University in Belfast. I was living in the Mater Hospital, as our family had been burnt out of our house three months previously. My father, a surgeon at the Mater, had sustained a broken leg, and my sister had been taken out of the house, unconscious, by the Fire Service.
On the morning after Bobby Sands’ death, the main preoccupation around the hospital was that in ICU (intensive care unit) there was a father and son, Eric and 14 year old Desmond Guiney, both effectively brain dead. Eric Guiney, from a Protestant background, was a milkman.
Despite being aware of the intense emotions pervading, and the presence of angry crowds on the streets, Mr Guiney wanted to serve his long standing customers on the New Lodge Road and took his milk float out at 4am. It was attacked by a crowd and crashed into a lamppost, causing father and son fatal head injuries.
I understand from my sister that my father was called in to try and save them, but to no avail.
When I think of May 5 1981, it is of these two decent Irishmen who come to my mind, a man and a boy who wished no harm to any other human being.
The argument about the legitimacy of violence in Ireland was very clearly exhibited two years later, in 1983, after the murders by the IRA of Irish soldier Patrick Kelly and Garda Gary Sheehan.
These took place during the rescue of the businessman Don Tidey, who had been kidnapped and held for three weeks.
At the funeral of Private Kelly, Bishop Colm O Reilly said: “Patrick Kelly was serving his country no less truly than those who fought for our freedom and the rights of Irish people in the history of our patriotic struggle in the past."
At the funeral of Garda Sheehan Bishop Joseph Duffy of Clogher struck a totally different note. He said: “We have all sinned in glamourising the use of arms in Irish history. If we look more closely we get a different picture. We see the gun as a tyranny, as a destructive wasteful instrument of division and hatred.”
This is a debate which has never been resolved; indeed it has rarely been honestly addressed.
Traditionally, the IRA of the current day are strongly criticised for using violence … by those who did exactly the same a generation before.
The brilliant Sinn Fein strategist Danny Morrison in his book ‘The Good Old IRA’ perfectly captures this cognitive dissonance. I agree with him that it is morally and intellectually unsustainable to condone the 1919 era IRA for killing Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers riding their bicycle to work, and abducting, murdering and dumping opponents at the side of the road, while simultaneously condemning the Provisional IRA for killing RUC officers driving their car to work, and abducting, murdering and dumping bodies.
The cycle continues. The New IRA, who have bombed two police stations, will not pay any heed to criticism for bombing police stations from other nationalists who still justify the bombing of police stations (with much greater lethal effect).
Suzanne Breen has highlighted a vitally important issue, based upon the most basic civilised principle, which is the right to life.
Whether the cause of Ireland (and rationally therefore also the cause of Ulster) is of such salience that it justifies controverting the one core and indeed existential value of every other democracy on the planet, that violence can never be used, must surely be at the heart of any serious debate about the future of our society.
I will finish these comments with something my father told the medical students: ‘A Catholic spleen with a bullet in it looks exactly the same as a Protestant spleen with a bullet in it’.
• Dr Philip McGarry FRCPsych is a consultant psychiatrist in Belfast