Opinion

Tom Kelly: After DCI John Caldwell murder attempt, support for law and order will make 'never again' a reality

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

DCI John Caldwell was targeted by dissident republicans in front of children at a sports ground outside Omagh. Picture by Hugh Russell
DCI John Caldwell was targeted by dissident republicans in front of children at a sports ground outside Omagh. Picture by Hugh Russell DCI John Caldwell was targeted by dissident republicans in front of children at a sports ground outside Omagh. Picture by Hugh Russell

THERE is an iconic poster by the pacifist 20th century German visual artist, John Heartfield, of the dove of peace being skewered on a sword or bayonet.

It's a horrific image. Underneath the butchered dove in German it reads "Niemals wieder!" meaning "Never again".

These are words with which we in Northern Ireland are very familiar.

Bloody Sunday – never again. Black Friday – never again. Ballymurphy – never again. Darkley – never again. Enniskillen – never again. Greysteel –never again.

Omagh – never again. Kevin Heatley – never again. Jean McConville – never again. Anne Maguire, and her three children, aged 8 years old, 2 years old and six weeks old – never again. The Quinn brothers – never again.

Constable Victor Arbuckle in 1969 – never again. Constable Ronan Kerr in 2011– never again...

Time after time, 'never again' slips into again, again and again.

Last Wednesday Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell – a father, husband and police officer – was shot as he loaded footballs into the boot of his car at a sports ground just outside Omagh.

Mercifully he just about survived but is fighting for his life and make no mistake, this was a cold, calculated and murderous attempt to take someone's life.

No thought was given to the presence of children in the sports ground or indeed Mr Caldwell's own young son, who was reportedly sitting in the family car as his father was mowed down.

The already scarred community of Omagh is rightly outraged and revolted by this atrocity.

There's no cause or campaign which justifies this callous act. There never has been. There's no flag which can give cover to the cowardly perpetrators. Their allegiance is to a myth and their actions are not only misguided but unwarranted.

Real IRA, New IRA, dissidents, it matters little. They are a dangerous and delusional sect. Legends in their own minds. Minds warped and twisted by an corrupted ideology. Neither patriots nor martyrs.

The former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said, "He who resists change is the architect of decay."

Unfortunately, Northern Ireland is beset by those who resist change – people, mainly men it has to said, who are truly "architects of decay". They are found in the ranks of dissident republicans but thrive and are equally rampant amongst the fringes (and sometimes the not-so-fringes) of loyalism. Puffed up agitators and forked-tongued corner boys, histrionic rabble-rousers and armchair warriors, hate-mongering malcontents and past-their-sell-by-date stirrers, each and every one with nothing more to offer than hot air, anger, animosity and resentment.

They are of yesterday.

This writer was only six when the Troubles started; 11 by the time of the prescient but ill-fated power-sharing Sunningdale; 22 years of age at the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement; 30 when John Major and Albert Reynolds set out the blueprint for peace in the Downing Street Declaration; and 35 when celebrating the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

The greater part of the lives of my generation was dominated and ruined by the vacuous proponents of violence. But in fairness to those who truly championed the Belfast Agreement, they broke the cycle of violence. They proved there was no inevitably to a path of the armalite, paramilitarism and prison.

The Good Friday Agreement was never meant to be a place of arrival but one of departure. It requires constant nurturing and vigilance against the darker elements of society – those would-be "architects of decay".

It would be a huge let down and betrayal of this and future generations to allow 25 years of peace to be derailed by disruptors and dissidents. It's possible to defeat those who would either bomb or bully us back to the past.

The way to do this is by elected representatives physically and visibly showing the strength of togetherness. And by demonstrating a shared allegiance to making the political arena work.

Ultimately, thuggery is faced down when we support the legitimate enforcement of law and order, without fear or favour or political fallout. Only then can we truly say "never again".