A hierarchy of deaths
Enniskillen: The Remembrance Sunday Bombing
By Denzil McDaniel
Published by Wolfhound Press
Price £8.99
The publicity that accompanied this book says it was released to
mark the 10th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb. It goes on,
``this incisive book cuts to the heart of the day's events, not
only revealing how the IRA carried out the bombing, but also
assessing its emotional impact on a closely-knit community''.
Frankly, for me the book didn't say anything new about the
bombing. It was an incident that happened which should not have
happened, where innocent life was lost and an incident over which
republicans have expressed deep regret. Unlike Eyewitness Bloody
Sunday, incidentally also published by Wolfhound, which
demolished the myths sowed by the British about Bloody Sunday in
Derry, a book which was eloquent in the use of the words of those
who witnessed the actions of the Parachute regiment on 30 January
1972, Enniskillen served only to open the floodgates to a feeding
frenzy for a media intent on making anti-republican propaganda.
I must note here that I am not comparing massacres, I am
comparing books.
Perception is everything, some media presenters say; reality,
however, is defined by your experience, is what I say.
The reality for me is that this book (and I am not questioning
the author's intentions) was picked up by a media which has a
hierarchy of death when it reports the war in the North.
We saw the footage of ten years ago, we saw the interviews, we
were served up a diet of documentary programmes explaining and
remembering Enniskillen.
It was good propaganda because these innocents killed by the IRA
served to remind us that violence is ``evil'', a recurring theme of
the book.
However, it seems that some ``evil'' is worse than other evils.
This book was published on 22 October, the day before the third
anniversary of the Shankill bomb, yet the press seemed more
content to ``go with'' Enniskillen. On scouring the media I saw
very little coverage of the commemoration for those Protestant
innocents killed on the Shankill. Even more telling, Thomas
Begley is not even regarded as a victim of the conflict, his
experience of sectarianism and oppression don't count. And why
was the Shankill bomb ignored?
Was it because the essence of the Enniskillen bomb was that the
IRA had killed respectable middle class Protestants and it was
captured on video?
Or was it that on `Poppy Day' a great institution of the British
state was attacked, that the real evil of the IRA on 8 November
1987 was to carry out an operation on a day sacred to the British
state?
The saturation media coverage indicates that the Enniskillen
bombing has now become another stick with which to attack
nationalists, a stick to beat us all into submission and wear a
poppy.
My grandfather fought for the British in `the Great War'; two of
my uncles died. In my view they were foolish young men duped into
fighting and dying for a rotten, corrupt regime.
We owe the British nothing and the honour we can do anyone who
died fighting British wars is to regret they died for a bunch of
scroungers. And while we should also regret and be sorry for all
those whose lives have been cut short in this conflict we should
regard their deaths as equal tragedies.
By Peadar Whelan
On the Yellowbrick Road
A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s
By Cormac O Grada
Published by Manchester University Press
Price £9.99
Imagine yourself in this position. You want to write a book about
the Irish economy since partition. Where would you start? What
would you include in your source material? How would you judge
those who took command of the economy, those who made the
decisions that shape the Ireland we live in today? Would this
even be a consideration when writing your opus?
Cormac O Grada has taken a strange path through these obstacles.
His book is one of the best accounts I have ever read of the
Irish economy since partition. It is easy to read. It is
accessible and full of useful facts, figures and explanations
that provide a concise road map of the twists and turns the
partitioned economy has taken over the last 77 years.
But it is also strangely deficient in a number of ways. A
stranger to Irish history could easily read this book and go away
not knowing that the British Government imposed the very
geographical structures that framed the two states. Partition is
never mentioned. No, this is a historical tale that begins with a
`Once upon a time there were two small states side by side trying
hard to develop their economies...'.
The first historical characters are Cosgrave and de Valera. There
is no mention of the ideological aspirations of the
revolutionaries whose struggles even in 1920 were shaping the
political climate. There is no discussion of the economic
aspirations of the voters who returned de Valera to power in 1932
and no discussion of the agrarian socialism of the early Fianna
Fail, a radical ideology abandoned when in government. There is
no room either for the egalitarian radicalism of Clann na
Poblachta who were stymied in power and amazingly no discussion
of the monetarist hegemony that has dominated economic policy
formulation since 1981.
The sections on industrial development, on agriculture, on
poverty and inequality are written informatively and in some
cases definitively. But there is a missing element, as if the
author is trying to present the work to its audience without any
ideological or personal interpretations.
This may be the stock in trade of academia but is also a flawed
theory in two respects. The first is that there is a supposition
that readers will have knowledge of the missing elements of
recent Irish history unmentioned in this book. In the preface O
Grada states that the book is aimed at both undergraduate
economics students and ``the interested general reader''.
Having been one of the under-mentioned graduates I can safely say
that what many knew about the political and economic forces that
shaped and formed the 26 Counties could have been written on the
back of the proverbial fag packet.
The second deficiency is that throughout the book O Grada merely
plays the role of describing the actions of those who held
political power. What this book needs is more of the why. Why did
the IDA come into being? Why did Cosgrave and Dev when faced with
a blank sheet in terms of what they could have done take the path
towards perpetuating the capitalist structures of their former
oppressors? Why did the path to offering our economy as a haven
for international capital seem the obvious one for Lemass?
It is not enough to tell us merely what happened Cormac, a little
bit of the why and what were the alternatives would be a
worthwhile exercise for the UCD undergraduates as well as any
other readers. Anything else is cheating them out of the truth
and merely displaying one's proficiency at academic gymnastics.
BY NEIL FORDE
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