Conor Gearty, Rausing Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and professor of human rights law at the LSE, has written a number of books on terrorism and human rights.
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Vol. 23 No. 17 · 6 September 2001
pages 18-21 | 5493 words
An Escalation of Reasonableness
Conor Gearty
- To Raise up a New Northern Ireland: Articles and Speeches 1998-2000 by David Trimble
Belfast Press, 166 pp, £5.99, July 2001, ISBN 0 9539287 1 3
I had been living in England for just eight months when Bobby Sands died in the Maze Prison hospital after spending 66 days on hunger strike. Speaking on the day of his death in the House of Commons, Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, described him as a ‘convicted criminal’ who ‘chose to take his own life’. This did not stop a crowd of nearly a hundred thousand people attending his funeral in Belfast. One week later, Francis Hughes died, and eight more men – Patsy O’Hara, Raymond McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine – starved themselves to death in the months that followed.
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Letters
Vol. 23 No. 18 · 20 September 2001
From Philip McGarry
Conor Gearty makes very limited reference to the daily reality of a society which is more polarised and overtly sectarian than ever. He claims that some Unionists don't want to share power with 'undefeated Catholics', but ignores the fact that the Taoiseach and the Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan have both explicitly said that they wouldn't share power with Sinn Fein because of its 'private army'. The single reference to 'so-called punishment beatings' ignores the fact that the IRA/UVF/UFF, which are all 'on ceasefire', continue to beat, maim, shoot and murder people. The IRA has killed 20 people since the Good Friday Agreement, all Catholics.
Almost all our schools remain religiously divided, as events on the Ardoyne Road make all too clear. More 'peace walls' are going up, residential areas are increasingly segregated and all academic research shows an increased level of sectarianism. The dramatic gains made by the hardline parties in the June elections, coupled with the virtual disappearance of the non-sectarian centre, augurs ill for the future and contrasts with Gearty's bland optimism. A lasting peace in Northern Ireland requires us to tackle the fundamental divisions over religion and national identity. There is little evidence of any real will to do this.
Philip McGarry
Belfast
