Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Agreement's 25th anniversary should encourage reflection on the Lost Lives of the Troubles

Lost Lives - first as a book, then as a documentary - records the names of the Troubles dead and the circumstances of their deaths
Lost Lives - first as a book, then as a documentary - records the names of the Troubles dead and the circumstances of their deaths Lost Lives - first as a book, then as a documentary - records the names of the Troubles dead and the circumstances of their deaths

Another major anniversary brings hoopla at various sites for the Good Friday Agreement’s 25th birthday. The ghost of Stormont Present AKA the DUP’s boycott has dictated arrangements, a staggered semi-celebration matching the state of northern politics. Ex-British prime minister, ex-taoiseach and former president turn up and everyone pretends not to notice they were tarnished long ago. George Mitchell makes an online appeal; elderly even then, sage of ages now.

Memories from participants and bystanders in those 1998 negotiations prompt ‘Ah yes, I remember that too’ with a dollop of ‘Get away out of that'. So many alive now who would have been killed if wholesale violence had continued; this has been much-repeated. Yes, and the majority of the dead recalled only by relatives or friends, if those remain alive. And so many dead for decades who should have had years more to live.

The annual service in St Stephen’s Green Unitarian church heard over 3,000 names read for nearly three hours. Colin Davidson’s Silent Testimony, portraits of people who suffered Troubles loss, is on show in otherwise empty Stormont. The recently re-screened Doubleband/BBC film Lost Lives ends with the 3,765 names of the dead scrolling up the screen. But how to represent that sort of inclusiveness in any permanent memorial?

Brid Rodgers was interviewed by the Irish News to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement:

Those who have tried to ignore the anniversary hoopla might nevertheless agree that this is a particularly good time to focus on the dead. After a recent poll suggested startling ignorance among the Republic’s young about Troubles deaths, memorials and the form they should take turned into a social media theme, with some jarring suggestions.

The Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green in Dublin reads out the names of the Troubles dead, as compiled in Lost Lives
The Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green in Dublin reads out the names of the Troubles dead, as compiled in Lost Lives The Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green in Dublin reads out the names of the Troubles dead, as compiled in Lost Lives

A list can be a simple statement. In a public memorial it becomes something else. A chronological list, for example, would put those killed in the Shankill bombing, the nine other dead including two children, beside Thomas Begley, killed by his own bomb.

In the book Lost Lives, inspiration for the film, which some saw as itself a memorial of sorts, the circumstances of each Troubles death are catalogued in the same format, tone and vocabulary deliberately restrained. The good, the bad and the ugly are all there. But while all are recorded with equal care it is not hard to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. There is a hierarchy of ‘victims’, the word itself contentious.

Lost Lives records the dead; fine if families are pleased by inclusion in the record but the purpose was to document, not to honour. Let paramilitaries honour their dead in roadside shrines, ‘rolls of honour’, gable walls. It is surely not the job of society to honour dead paramilitaries.

We do not react to the Troubles dead in a united way. Reactions to Bloody Sunday, to the Hunger Strike deaths, show northern society divided on this as on so much else. The Belfast City Hall Memorial Garden plaques which list 1,512 lost in the Titanic and Washington’s Vietnam Wall have both been cited as worth copying now. But Vietnam and the Titanic are not comparable to the Troubles.

There is obvious, undivided sympathy for those who died in the icy waters of the north Atlantic. Americans could disagree about Vietnam but still grieve for soldiers sent there to their deaths. Waterfalls and reflecting pools, the 9/11 memorial at the site of the destroyed towers; again, the American nation could unite to honour the 2,977 killed. The names of the 19 hijackers are not listed. And not for us names carved into stone or glass, ah no; not UVF multiple killer Lennie Murphy, say, honoured like Marie Wilson, crushed to death by the IRA’s bomb in Enniskillen.

Perhaps a memorial without names could work – a tree for every death, a shared space where people could bring their own thoughts: respect, grief, maybe guilt. Scholarships/grants for socially beneficial purposes; further research on the gap in life expectancy between prosperous and poor, Republic and north? Though not for ‘paramilitary transition schemes’, whose benefit to society remain distinctly unproven.