Peter Preston: Omagh and the limits of the politics of peace
[Peter Preston is a columnist for the Guardian and the Observer.]
It's a "wicked and cowardly act", says the British prime minister. "And a pointless act of terrorism," echoes his new Dublin counterpart. These guys, whoever they may be, are "betraying their community", says Martin McGuinness. Absolutely, echoes his new sort-of Stormont boss, Peter Robinson, "they're Neanderthals". One dead policeman, blown up by a car bomb outside his Omagh home; so many voices from north, south, east and west condemning any hint of a return to random killing.
You can choose to be reassured if you wish. Northern Ireland's grand coalition still functions (with Robinson, not Paisley). In the 13 years since the last, traumatic Omagh bomb signalled a formal end for even the Real IRA, peace has survived, flourished, become normality.
Why, isn't the Queen off to Dublin soon? Didn't Chancellor Osborne dip his hand in our pockets to bail out Ireland's tottering banks? Who on earth wants to see a few demented deniers, with leftover lives to kill, reignite the carnage because they are bored, mad or terminally stupid? There is surely no "continuity" for this soiled brand of republicanism, only oblivion? Globalisation, take it away.
Yet this commonsensical chorus only takes you so far. It clears the bloody detritus of the past; it provides a suitably united response to the murderers who remain; but somehow it still fails to address or secure the foundations of a quite different future...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
It's a "wicked and cowardly act", says the British prime minister. "And a pointless act of terrorism," echoes his new Dublin counterpart. These guys, whoever they may be, are "betraying their community", says Martin McGuinness. Absolutely, echoes his new sort-of Stormont boss, Peter Robinson, "they're Neanderthals". One dead policeman, blown up by a car bomb outside his Omagh home; so many voices from north, south, east and west condemning any hint of a return to random killing.
You can choose to be reassured if you wish. Northern Ireland's grand coalition still functions (with Robinson, not Paisley). In the 13 years since the last, traumatic Omagh bomb signalled a formal end for even the Real IRA, peace has survived, flourished, become normality.
Why, isn't the Queen off to Dublin soon? Didn't Chancellor Osborne dip his hand in our pockets to bail out Ireland's tottering banks? Who on earth wants to see a few demented deniers, with leftover lives to kill, reignite the carnage because they are bored, mad or terminally stupid? There is surely no "continuity" for this soiled brand of republicanism, only oblivion? Globalisation, take it away.
Yet this commonsensical chorus only takes you so far. It clears the bloody detritus of the past; it provides a suitably united response to the murderers who remain; but somehow it still fails to address or secure the foundations of a quite different future...