A woman's struggle
Terrible Beauty
Peter T. King
$22.95 Hardback
United States Congressman Peter King has found himself the subject of
vitriolic abuse from the usual suspects in the Tory British press with the
publication of his first novel, Terrible Beauty, which he has set in the
Six Counties.
When Tom Clancy and his bold type ilk set their formulaic thrillers in
Ireland or in situations featuring Irish guerillas, the results are
unerringly predictable. The Oirish characters are usually bloodthirsty
psychopaths bent on wiping out as many `Brits' as possible, and beggar the
consequences.
But dare try to write a book grounded in reality, rather than using the
North as a convenient backdrop for the good guys to take on the evil
terrorists, and the vipers of the right-wing press start sharpening their
poison pens.
The criticism is something Peter King likely wears as a badge of pride,
because his novel is unashamedly written from the point of view of a
Belfast woman suffering through some of the worst excesses the British
state could inflict in its dirty war against the nationalist and republican
community in the 1980s.
Congressman King has been a regular visitor to Ireland for many years. He
is a key participant in the peace process and a diligent worker promoting
Irish justice issues in the United States. He is very familiar with the
discrimination, persecution, human rights abuses and minor everyday
oppressions that confront northern nationalists and has been an unerring
voice in highlighting these abuses and attempting to redress them. It is
this knowledge of state-sponsored violence and discrimination that he
relates in a fictional arena with the story of Bernadette Hanlon's path
towards involvement in the IRA. Hers is a road lined with arrests,
supergrass trials, loyalist assassinations, fallen Volunteers, child
victims of plastic bullets and all the other trappings of Britain's dirty
war in Ireland, a burden that forces her to take the decision to fight
back. That road leads from Ireland to the United States and back again,
showing at least a glimmer of hope for a resolution amid the bleakness of
war and loss.
If his book sometimes overly displays his personal feelings at the expense
of drama, it is merely a measure of how deeply the situation in the Six
Counties and the knowledge of nationalist grievance and persecution has
affected King over the years. All in all, an honest opening effort.
BY MARTIN SPAIN
Hidden Wounds
Hidden Wounds: The problems of Northern Ireland veterans in Civvy Street
By Aly Renwick
Published by Barbed Wire, Price £4.99
This slender volume feels like an introduction to a more substantial piece
of work. Renwick sets out to explore the reasons why so many former British
army soldiers, particularly those who have served in Ireland, end up
serving prison sentences, often for crimes of quite astonishing brutality.
However, the work he has done raises more questions about the topic than it
manages to answer.
The central premise of the text is that many of these former soldiers are
suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), brought about by
their experience of the conflict in the Six Counties. Their brutalization
in the `morally corrupting' atmosphere of colonial warfare creates, Renwick
argues, a trauma which is directly played out both in psychological
breakdown and psychotic behaviour after their return to civilian life.
Although Renwick has done some good research - the book is crammed with
instances of former soldiers indulging in violently criminal activities -
what it lacks is a sufficiently coherent and systematic analysis of PTSD
and its external effects. Merely describing the symptoms and providing
anecdotal evidence of their effects is not enough, and several promising
avenues of investigation are left unexplored.
For example, one question which arises is this: Is there a difference in
the type of PTSD experienced by those who have witnessed atrocity during
conflict and those who have indulged in it? Much of what Renwick has
discovered suggests strongly that there is a qualitative difference in the
behavioural patterns of men who have been traumatised by what they have
seen and those who are traumatised by what they have done. What, if any,
relationship is there between indulging in random violence or atrocity
whilst in military service and subsequent violence in civilian life?
It is interesting in this respect that Renwick uses Shakespeare's
description of the heroic soldier of Henry IV Part I, Hotspur, to
illustrate the effects of PTSD; sleeplessness, loss of appetite and libido
and the onset of depression. No accusations of atrocity can be levelled
against Hotspur and a useful Shakespearean comparison of his symptoms might
be made with those experienced by Macbeth, who descends from being a
fearsome soldier who has ``supp'd full with horrors'' of battle into a
calculating criminal who indulges in a murderous rampage of unparalleled
ferocity, including the slaughter of women and children.
Furthermore, it can be argued that Macbeth's brutality is latent in his
psychological makeup and is merely triggered by his encounter with the
witches. In Renwick's account, what is also left unexplored is whether
those with previously undiscovered violent or socially deviant tendencies
are drawn towards the armed forces where those tendencies are often given
full rein. To understand why one soldier commits atrocities it is surely
necessary to understand why another, in the same situation, does not, and
understanding this may also illuminate the variations in the effects of
PTSD on different individuals.
But perhaps in arguing this I am letting the army off the hook, because
illustrated very well by Renwick in his use of soldiers' accounts is its
absolute ability to churn out amoral killers. One former soldier explains
that, ``...The circumstances of our training, coupled with our peculiar
existence in Northern Ireland ... turned us into savages. We begged and
prayed for a chance to fight, to smash, to kill, to destroy...''.
d although this book is superficially about soldiers, those who were
fought, smashed, killed and destroyed haunt its pages like Banquo's ghost.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)