Trevor Ringland’s view of who is entitled to a pension for those severely physically injured during the conflict (August 2) is blinkered and plays divisive politics with victims.
Trevor knows the history and complexity of the conflict. His partial, almost simplistic, presentation is more about maintaining a flawed narrative than victims’ needs.
This narrative seeks to criminalise non-state participants while ignoring the state.
Predictably Trevor makes no mention that injured members of the UDR, RIR, British army, or RUC should be excluded from a pension given the criminal role of these organisations in the conflict.
His conclusions are astonishing. Arguing that republicans have plenty of financial resources to support their own injured he writes loyalists ‘…are more likely to be in financial difficulties’, inferring they are entitled; but he’d hope they’d just not avail of the pension quoting a senior loyalist as saying ‘…we’re not victims, we were victim makers’.
This singular statement is true and can be said of all sides in the conflict, including the state. But it equally ignores the complexity of victimhood as witnessed during our conflict in that those who were engaged in the conflict can also be victims of that same conflict.
Trevor needs to stop viewing the legacy of the past and its resolution through the binoculars of the RUC and other former securocrat agendas. All victims of the conflict have human rights and entitlements.
Reparations and pensions should be readily available to all the injured and bereaved of our conflict that struggle financially and where their potential is limited by such experiences.
Since the implementation of the Patten recommendations on policing approximately £1.2 billion has been paid to members of the RUC, UDR/RIR, former prison staff and their families; not to mention hearing loss and retiring and rehiring by the PSNI of former RUC as ‘civilian workers’ who are unaccountable to the Police Ombudsman.
The same voices that championed this gravy train are the very same that seek to exclude others. Double standards is alive and well in these circles.
If Trevor’s claims of wanting to move forward into a new society are based upon exclusion and leaving some victims, the ones he deems so, behind while ignoring glaring state crimes then that’s not a future I want to take even one small step into.
MARK THOMPSON
CEO Relatives for Justice
Belfast
It would benefit Mr Sullivan to step out of his own county
In response to a letter by Corkonian Robert Sullivan (July 21), I would like to invite the fellow to step outside his own county and contemplate the possibility that a world may exist there. He in turn was responding to an article which claimed that should a Cork accent be detected in the north, the owner would be met with hospitalisation. I sympathise with Mr Sullivan’s frustrations in response to this but could he not have exerted himself to step back and imagine the situation as a little more complexly rather than deriding the entire place and writing it off as ‘a very dangerous entity’ which in any case is a ‘foreign jurisdiction’.
This attitude is symptomatic of the bad consensus towards the north which one finds in so many places south of Drogheda. So many people will be unable to imagine how such a conflict can exist – as their memories are too short to stretch back to 1921. There is also this perverted notion that ‘the men of 1916’ and Michael Collins were heroes but the Provos were murderers plain and simple. Regardless of the fact the old IRA were not only just as brutal but were also the aggressors of the war of independence.
Though there are still tensions in Northern Ireland (understandable after 30 years of war and 20 subsequent years of stagnation) and real conflict is limited to three or four streets.
Again, I would encourage Mr Sullivan to visit these parts and to pad out his knowledge in order to develop a fuller and more well-rounded view of Irish history.
FIONNBHARR RODGERS
Rostrevor, Co Down
Can’t blame EU for home-grown dictatorship
The right to one’s own property is being sorely challenged by the current government and will even be taken to higher elements of dispossession if Fianna Fáil gets its way.
This fear tactic began with Leo Varadkar and his urging of our friends and neighbours to spy on folk they might wish to report who, on a tiny suspicion or none, might be making a few bob on the side while also in receipt of a dole payment.
All despotic regimes throughout history began with this type of sinister permission given to the citizens.
The latest disgrace is the setting up of a website where people can post an address of a house or property which may lay idle for a time.
The government can then insist from the owner the status of the house/property with a view to buying it, even when not advertised for sale.
Fianna Fáil spokesman Barry Cowen (yes, another one)suggested vehemently on RTÉ radio news, that “the state” must impose a levy on those who will not be willing to sell up.
Perhaps Mr Cowen does not know that ‘the state’ is the people and not government and civil servants acting as loose cannons without sanction. This country is in ruins when we see the desperate and cruel measures taken against the people who did everything right during their lives only to now see, for elderly pensioners especially, who in the twilight of their lives are threatened with despicable ultimatums.
We cannot even blame the EU for this home-grown dictatorship.
ROBERT SULLIVAN
Bantry, Co Cork
Pursuit for justice continues
Last Sunday I attended the 19th anniversary of the Omagh bomb in a service that truly brought people together in a spirit of proper peace and reconciliation. It was an honour to stand with the many brave families who are been victims and have suffered such terrible loss. Their pursuit for justice continues to be painful for all involved and a reminder that there are many failures when it comes to the needs of victims and their families.
We are almost 20 years on from the Omagh bomb, and from the Good Friday Agreement, yet many stones are left unturned for victims of the Troubles. There are many victims out there who have not received the truth nor closure on the deaths of their loved ones and this truly is a travesty.
I would like to personally thank the families and Omagh Support and self-help group for hosting the memorial anniversary. I would also like to thank numerous faith representatives who attended, the NIO, the Republic’s government representatives and representatives from Westminster.
This memorial was a reminder of how important it is to get truth and justice for families regarding these atrocious and wholly unnecessary acts. It’s therefore important, as we move forward, that the needs and wishes of victims and survivors here are put first.
DANIEL McCROSSAN MLA
SDLP, West Tyrone
