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Andree Murphy of Relatives for Justice writes a column in the Belfast Telegraph today. We expected to statement from moderate nationalism to balance the column from moderate unionism written by Alex Kane.
Kane's was polite and accessible (he quotes To Kill a Mockingbird", etc.) and he admits that we need to talk about a "shared" future.
Murphy has no time for courtesy or literary allusion. She paints a fantasy picture of a nightmarish Northern Ireland which had a "system of laws which was the envy of South Africa's apartheid regime".
She says the "British state" was at the heart of the conflict. The main obstacle to justice for relatives is not the IRA (unmentioned) but the British state's wish "to sanitise its own record and history in this place". (The word "place" used with contempt.)
When it comes to Northern Ireland (and its centenary) there is no "us" except in the phrase "us" (nationalists deprived of "basic human rights") and "them" (unionists soon to get their comeuppance). The notion of centenary celebrations is a "sick joke".
The only conversation happening, she says, is the one about unity. British heritage is never mentioned. The mixed record of the RoI never mentioned. In republican eyes , unionists have no point of view that is deserving of a nanosecond's consideration.
This tribal diatribe has an unmistakable sectarian message: northern Protestants should pack their 300 year old bags and go into what the Nazis called ‘ night and fog’. So much for Wolfe Tone’s vision of a unity of ‘ Catholics, Protestants and Dissenter.
Let me tell Andree Murphy that likf most southern democrats I had rather share this island with most northern unionists than with the type of toxic nationalist revealed by her ignorant article in the Belfast Telegraph.
