One of the events that I often remember today is the Enniskillen bombing.
This is because as a teenager, I was an Air Cadet. Remembrance Sunday was therefore spent on parade at our local war memorial. It was always a major event; all the local regiments turned out as well ass many local organisations. We would meet up at a sister school (closer to the town centre) and march from there to the assembly point. From there, the entire parade marched to the memorial for the service. After the service, we marched past the town hall and the Mayor, and then the individual groups forming the parade dispersed. We would march back to the school, fall out, and make our way home.
In 1987, I left the school and walked to where my mother had parked, to warm up again and drive home. As I got into the car, she asked if I knew what had happened.
That one day sealed my opinion of Irish nationalism. To bomb innocent civilians for political ends is appalling. To do so on a day of remembrance; to target those assembling at a war memorial literally adds insult to injury.
I remain disgusted that so many of the people who ran the IRA are now free. That they are in government ... words do not express my views on that.
To bomb innocent civilians for political ends is appalling. To do so on a day of remembrance; to target those assembling at a war memorial literally adds insult to injury.
ReplyDeleteWell said. Pope John Paul II spoke very clearly on this:
"The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end."
But it's really GK Chesterton who sees the real problem:
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable."
"I remain disgusted that so many of the people who ran the IRA are now free. That they are in government ... words do not express my views on that. "
ReplyDeleteAmen.
That one day sealed my opinion of Irish nationalism.
ReplyDeleteAnd you were not, in my humble opinion, mistaken. I have spent many years thinking about Irish nationalism, and I remain astonished that it had, and still has, so much street cred in certain mainstream political circles.
In many ways this phenomenon is similar to the way that many of the British intelligentsia were quite taken with Stalin's Russia.