Not since reading Paddy's Lament have we had a more thorough example of
engaging historical sociology than Padraig O'Malley's Biting at the Grave; or one so emotionally challenging. It has been a
continuing theme in this program to develop an intellectually realistic and emotionally honest response to the Irish problem. Yet,
each time the solidity of our view becomes apparent, the ground is caused to shift. And so it is with the reactions I have found in
myself toward the sectarian violence and intractability of an Ireland divided. For in looking at the history of this struggle it is easy to
feel for the underdog of Irish Catholic Nationalism; O'Malley never the less makes each of the participants in this struggle an equal
partner in this spiraling escalation of mutual victimization. The Catholic Nationalists in Northern Ireland who view themselves as
members of a community not only under siege from their Protestant jailers, but at war with the occupying forces of English
Imperialism. The Protestant Unionist shocked at the moral ambiguity of their Catholic neighbors condoning violence in order to
smash their social, economic, and political hegemony, as well as the fear that the English will sell them out. The English trapped
between the Scylla of responsibility to the Ulster Unionist and regional stability, and the Charibdes of a public opinion reminiscent
of the Vietnam conflict in America.
We learned early on in the last quarter the use of the hunger strike in Irish history. "Their object was to bring the pressure of public
opinion to bear on what they perceived to be an unjust aggressor in order to bring a redress of grievances." Even though their
demands were couched in language that would insure their broadest acceptance, the essence of the demands was to reestablish
the status of IRA members as prisoners of war. As O'Malley points out RUC and SAS members with shoot-to-kill orders
vindicated these views subsequent to the ending of the hunger strikes in the massacre of Loughgall in 1987. Jeanne Knutson gives
an apt description of the need the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland felt towards supporting the 'revolution' of the IRA. She says
"this need for assertive activity as a protection against fears of ultimate annihilation is the unifying dynamic ingredient for the
violent acts of all who experience themselves as victim." It is ironic then that this attempt to force the hand of an intractable foe
did not in the end solve the dilemma, "all of it awakened a deeper Catholic awareness of their own inner sense of historic
victimization." Even though when they called off the strike after ten deaths it appears the hunger strikers had lost the battle for their
demands, they were essentially victorious for the concessions were implemented shortly thereafter. England "...won the contest of
wills, but little else. It lost the propaganda war, resuscitated an ailing IRA and politicized militant Republicanism." The hunger strike
rs were recognized as martyrs in their community, eulogized for the 'Christian' sacrifice of their lives for their companions. They
were portrayed in a sympathetic light in the world media at their military burials, but more importantly they generated a further
erosion of English support for the occupation of Northern Ireland. Unfortunately this further entrenched the fears and prejudices of
the Ulster Unionists.
The greatest difficulty the Ulster Unionists had with the hunger strikes was the duplicity of the Catholic hierarchy in not
condemning the violence of the IRA or the 'suicide' of the hunger strikers. The Protestants who were planted in Ireland by
Cromwell were Presbyterians of a strict puritanical Calvinist variety. " ... Right and wrong were not only morally distinguishable,
but absolutes, and they brought that same inflexible, no compromise stance to their attitudes on every issue, and the same distrust
of others, especially Catholics, who did not share their rigidity." It is ironic that the "word of a Protestant is his bond," when you look
at the long list of betrayals which the Protestant nobility have meted out to Catholic Ireland. For a people so concerned about the
word as bond, it is a powerful reflection on their innate insecurity when taken in context to their sure belief that they would be
sold-out and deserted by their English masters. Not to say that these feelings of insecurity aren't well founded, for instance the
dissolving of Stormont rule which is replaced eventually by the Sunningdale Agreement and the later Anglo-Irish Agreement. As
much as the Catholics view themselves as being under siege and clamoring for civil rights and power sharing in Northern Ireland,
the Protestants know that they are under siege at the hands of time and the inevitability of an all-Ireland nation. Where their 2:1
hegemony in Northern Ireland becomes a 4:1 marginalization into minority status in a united Ireland.
Perhaps the biggest loser in this battle of wills was Lady Margaret Thatcher, who's "Out! Out! Out!" showed her to be an
'arrogant, tyrannical oppressor whose hubris invites retaliatory aggression, (she represents) the unheeding Imperial power.
Never the less it is obvious that she was not about to give the IRA carte blanche in their continuing struggle in Northern
Ireland. For if she had given in, a "concession they would proclaim as a defeat of their captors, a success that would embolden
their comrades at large in further destruction of life and property." Her need to label the IRA prisoners as terrorists was dishonest
in that it gave little credence to the facts of history, much less the oppressive conditions that Catholics suffered under at the hands
of Protestant police who acted in a mirror image of the 'thugs' of the IRA. "Because they refuse to call it a war, preferring instead
to fall back on another myth - that it is all about law and order - they are slowly eroding the values indigenous to their own
democracy." It was also eroding support for their very presence in Northern Ireland at home. The ambiguity of their position is well
represented with the decision to use rubber bullets in England to quell protests while sanctioning shoot-to-kill orders in Northern
Ireland. The description of the hunger strikers as laying themselves, "before the juggernaut of imperialism, placing their frail bodies
there to be crushed" struck me as a precognition of the protest in China's Tinneamen Square. I was reminded of Sinead
O'Conner's opening lines in the song Black Boys on Mopeds
Margaret Thatcher on TV
Shocked at the deaths that took place in Beijing
Seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her
O' Malley succinctly summarizes the situation, "Too much death has robbed the people of their memories, when all the slogans and
posturing and politics were put aside we were left with the insanity of it, a self-perpetuating cycle of death that no one seemed
able or willing to stop."