Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: After the horror and sadness of Manchester came the exploitation

A man stands next to flowers for the victims of the Manchester bombing PICTURE: Emilio Morenatti/AP
A man stands next to flowers for the victims of the Manchester bombing PICTURE: Emilio Morenatti/AP A man stands next to flowers for the victims of the Manchester bombing PICTURE: Emilio Morenatti/AP

Nobody, to be fair, has enough shock in them to cover the waterfront.

Some of us screen out or try to screen out the scores dying as drones drop in a blaze of heat and darkness, toddlers drowning when pitiful dinghies tip over in the Mediterranean, poor battered Aleppo.

Manchester, just across the water and full of our cousins and children, cannot be blanked.

After horror and sadness came, as it always does, the exploitation.

Politicians compete, rattling out ‘monster’ and ‘evil’ and demands that others disown their own past; in this case republicans, and Jeremy Corbyn.

The whole point of linking someone to old IRA atrocities is that in retrospect they cannot blame the IRA enough.

Nobody can condemn enough to satisfy people whose consciences irk about some atrocities, not all. Disowners are also meant to declare unionism and Britain innocent.

Up to this, Jeremy Corbyn had held his nerve about associating with Sinn Féin while they still fronted for the IRA.

Gormless Corbyn can be, feeble on Brexit when he could have been strong, slow to make capital out of Theresa May’s weaknesses.

He was right on Iraq, and knows many agree with him. With the faces of the Manchester dead still on front pages he had the gumption to say, as many no doubt also agree, that British foreign policy has left Britain vulnerable to Isis-type attacks.

But amid bogus outrage and tabloid ‘fury’ – tempers not improved by the spectacle of the Tory lead shrinking - Corbyn began shifting away from his own past words and solidarity with Gerry Adams.

It cannot be done. He would do better to stop, and to keep Diane Abbott off the air.

Unionists leaped on to the bandwagon as though the IRA had re-formed to attack Manchester.

They made the point, how could they resist, that the IRA bombed Manchester, and how was that ok in 1996 but wrong now?

Sinn Féin attempts at condemnation were damned as hypocritical.

Arlene Foster as Fermanagh unionist recalled the no-warning bomb under her school bus, and as DUP leader denounced the statements from SF leader Michelle O’Neill.

But Foster insists she wants Stormont devolution restored with no preconditions.

Why harp on Past SF when she must share a Stormont executive with Present SF?

A man shot to death on Sunday in a crowded Bangor car park drew less horror.

But mainstream unionists rarely show spontaneous outrage about loyalist mayhem. DUP MLA Gordon Dunne did say people were shocked and disbelieving and those responsible must be brought to court for this ‘terrible deed’.

He was also keen to play down the likelihood that this was Carrickfergus loyalist feuding transplanted to north Down. That would be ‘speculation’. While canvassing he and colleagues sensed things were ‘stable and settled’.

Though this is not a plea for more condemnation. The ritual as perfected here through the years of full-scale conflict and revived tirelessly since is iron-clad, seldom an outburst of genuine grief and horror.

After the violence of those who use bombs, guns, knives, hatchets, heavy lorries and speeding cars to terrorise in the name of politics or religion or hybrids of the two, it would be good if nobody except the bereaved voiced horror and anger.

Let citizens hold quiet vigils, let states bury the dead with dignity, help the injured, pursue suspects, certainly, and also determine not to deform the law in their responses.

After an attack like that in Manchester - as in Omagh, or Loughinisland, or Crossgar where the IRA shot and killed Trelford Withers in his butcher’s shop, their last victim before their 1994 ceasefire, or Antrim where the UDA took Sean MacDermott from his lodgings to kill him hours before the 1994 ceasefire was announced - grief and pain is the first bad outcome.

The next is roused by people who speak hate and refusal to forgive, whether the loss is theirs or not.

Does it help any mourner to hear rage and disgust?

One of the very few, if not the only reported deterrent to the IRA at the height of their killing was Gordon Wilson, heard around the world describing how he held his dying daughter’s hand in the rubble of the Remembrance Day bombing. "She was a pet, and she’s dead.'' That gave apologists for the IRA more trouble than the decades of denunciation by church, state and their own community.

In the aftermath, some admitted as much. Grief is hard to outface.