The Reunion, Radio 4
We are good at anniversaries.
What’s that old saying about how the trouble with some of us is that we can’t remember, and with the rest of us that we can never forget?
The anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement prompted a deluge of interviews, features and documentaries; stories and memories – here we are and where are we?
In The Reunion, Kirsty Wark delivered a potted history of the Troubles – the long and bloody road where 3,500 people lost their lives.
At the time of the Good Friday Agreement, the Belfast Telegraph gave negotiators a 5 per cent chance of success, she said.
There were plenty of ups and downs and “wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole” and “Sunningdale for slow learners” moments.
In The Reunion, if you wanted colour then there were voices to provide them: the Paisley “Never, never, never” speech; the broadcasting ban and the flat voice-overs; the shock of Canary Wharf, the end of a ceasefire.
The programme brought together a mix of people who had a role 25 years ago.
Monica McWilliams from the Women’s Coalition said that looking back, there was “bad behaviour, a lot of hurt, a lot of harm was talked about and finally we got down to business”.
Years earlier, she said that her boyfriend had been murdered – not only did he get four bullets, but he was tortured, and there was no counselling back then.
Violence was nasty and terrifying, she said.
Everyone had a story to tell – a mortar bomb going off, the murder of Edgar Graham who might have played a pivotal role had he lived; John Hume’s wife Pat terrified as he was bundled in a car to meet the IRA Army Council; the row between Clinton and Major after Gerry Adams was granted a US visa.
“Looking back at it, it was right – it gave Adams the ability to persuade the hardliners there was a way out,” said Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff.
When you lived through the twists and turns, the highs and lows, the slow torturous birth of that agreement – with not a little of the Beckett about it – it’s hard not to feel jaded by it all.
The Reunion held a mirror to a past that’s a different country – one that was painful to revisit... but a different country nevertheless.
