Remembrance and Reconciliation: Reflection and Hope
Talk given by Janet Quilley at a
NFPB 'Peace is Growing' day in Manchester
on
11 November 2000
| Last
year we visited the Holocaust Memorial in Boston; it consists of a
series of translucent towers connected by a pathway and engraved with
the prison serial numbers of 6,000,000 Jews who perished in the
concentration camps. As I studied the numbers the anonymity of the
endless list seemed to exacerbate the horror and somehow reinforced the
need to remember the victims as individual human beings. There is an innate human need to remember those who die. We choose our own ways; sometimes we need elaborate ceremonies and services; sometimes we rely on more private memories. But I am convinced it is not healthy to deny completely the need to say proper goodbyes; we need to leave ourselves space for memories. In Britain we have tended to squeeze out this space. Funerals have become clinical, partly because cremations are less personal than old-fashioned burials, although alternative 'green' funerals have begun to recognise and address this. In Ireland, both North and South, many of the older ways remain. The body is usually laid out before the funeral for people to pay last respects; coffins are followed to the cemetery by crowds of mourners on foot; oncoming traffic comes to a standstill in respect. The need for continued remembrance is seen every week in the local newspapers, both British and Irish; there are notices marking anniversaries of deaths from illness, accidental deaths, unnatural, violent deaths. All societies have their ways of coming to terms with death and remembrance, both in personal terms and also as communities. National memorials provide a potent way of defining a people. A number of monuments stand out for me as significant in my impressions of a place: the memorial to the Holocaust victims in Boston and another in Warsaw; the Vietnam memorial in Washington; the Peace Park at Hiroshima; the Cenotaph in London, and countless local monuments commemorating the dead - our dead - of two World Wars. That phrase 'our dead' is a clue to why such memorials can so easily be divisive; we are often implying exclusion, ignoring the dead of the other side - the Vietcong do not feature on the Washington memorial to the dead American soldiers; no German names appear on our British war memorials. Red poppies, like war memorials, have become a national symbol of remembrance. The main reason for wearing a poppy may be to remember those who sacrificed their lives on our behalf. It may signify acceptance of a war mentality, implying that our side was right. It may indicate a positive glorification of war. For pacifists and peace campaigners the red poppy has always posed problems and one solution has of course been the idea of combining poppy for remembrance with white for peace. White poppies, can be a witness to the futility of war; they can represent an attempt to acknowledge the need to remember the dead without linking this to war; they can be a challenge to the perceived triumphalism and nationalism surrounding Remembrance Day. I have to admit that I am ambivalent about poppies. I have never liked wearing a red poppy, just because of its military associations. But I have always been uneasy about wearing only the white poppy, because I feel that the symbolism is not really understood by those who would disagree, and therefore the message is likely to be lost and a lack of respect assumed. I have often ended up not wearing a poppy at all. The issue became more complex for me in Northern Ireland, because wearing a red poppy there is a political statement. If you do not wear one, you must be a nationalist, anti-British and anti-unionist; being a pacifist is a non-argument, and wearing a white poppy will do little to neutralise this assessment. Wearing a red poppy, on the other hand, confirms that you are truly loyal to the British to the Orangemen's list of events deserving crown. The Battle of the Somme has been added commemoration, alongside the Battle of the Boyne (although Catholics fought shoulder to shoulder with Protestants in the 36th Ulster Division - their contribution is conveniently ignored both by Unionists and by embarrassed Nationalists.) The Ulster poet Michael Longley
made use of a true incident which illustrates the strength of feeling
which has always existed concerning the red poppy: Poppies Some people tried to stop other
people wearing poppies I remain uneasy about wearing a poppy of any kind - but feel that two is better than one. More important is the discovery that the poppy is not a static symbol - it has become part of a different battle in Northern Ireland. I see the need first and foremost to show respect to all groups of people who attach importance to acknowledging their dead, whether they are my own community or another. I realise that I have a responsibility for not being dismissive of other people's feelings - and indeed of other people's sacrifices. This is an integral part of the search for ways to remove the causes of conflict and my witness for peace will not be helped by shutting my eyes to the ways in which others need to deal with the past. Remembrance can thus perpetuate conflict; people want to remember different aspects of their past and this is especially problematical when that past is shared for instance by different traditions within one country. In Northern Ireland, remembrance became one of the first issues people began to address once there seemed to be a real peace process starting. It was soon obvious, however, that it provoked intense emotion and bitter division - how could opposing communities remember together 3000 dead, when they couldn't agree on the definition of victim? It is difficult, for example, for some people to include paramilitaries killed 'in action'; for others to include members of the security forces. What about IRA/Loyalist bombers killed by their own bombs? A stone-throwing youth killed by a rubber bullet? Can a young member of a paramilitary's family be an “innocent victim”? There is also a problem in deciding which events to commemorate each year; the Battle of the Somme, with its special resonances for the Orange Order, or the Easter Rising, so significant for Irish Nationalists? Do you take part in a peaceful commemoration for the children tragically killed by the Warrington bomb - or do you interpret this event as a slight to the many children who have been injured or killed in the Troubles within Northern Ireland itself - particularly those injured by the actions of the security forces- and who did not attract this spontaneous expression of sympathy? It is always possible in Northern Ireland - and no doubt in S. Africa, Middle East and Kosovo/a - to counter the remembrance of one atrocity or tragedy with a reminder of another - what about so-and-so? 'Whataboutery' is how they describe it in Northern Ireland - the politics of the last atrocity. And that does nothing to promote efforts for reconciliation. Remembrance and Reconciliation. Time and again the connection between remembrance and reconciliation is highlighted in peace negotiations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa sought among other things to acknowledge the suffering of the victims in the hope that this would enable the country to move on towards reconciliation. Antjie Krog, in her moving and compelling account of the TRC is under no illusion that the Commission was a total success in achieving reconciliation, but she does recognise its importance in enabling the experience of victims to become “part of the national psyche and part of our country's acknowledged history for the very first time,” even though it did not heal and repair the trauma. In Northern Ireland, the setting up of a Victims' Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, a former head of the NI Civil Service, was an integral part of the Good Friday Agreement. He held public and private meetings across the country and one of the most striking aspects was the outpouring of pain and suffering expressed by victims and people bereaved in the past thirty years - particularly those who had lost family members twenty or more years ago and had never felt properly heard, let alone properly compensated. It was clear that reconciliation would have no chance whatsoever if this deep, pent-up well of pain were not released. There had in effect been a conspiracy of silence on all sides as long as the community felt it was living under threat: e.g. injured or murdered policemen; a bereaved wife whose claim for compensation was too late; the disappeared. Antjie Krog has some interesting and thought provoking reflections on reconciliation. She sees the term as being rooted in the concept of restoration of a relationship - implying that a relationship did exist previously, although this may well never have been the case. The desire for reconciliation might be seen as a cover-up for responsibility for past events; she says Afrikaner politicians often used it as a threat: “give us what we want or we won't reconcile with a black government.” She distinguishes between Tutu's reconciliation theology, which sees reconciliation as being a key to unlocking transformation and change in society, and the view that reconciliation can only take place after social transformation and justice have been achieved. She concludes her book by pointing out that reconciliation is not simply a religious or ideological process: it happens among apes as well as humans and is essentially about survival. She says: “ The goal is not to avoid pain or reality, but to deal with the never-ending quest of self-definition and negotiation required to transform differences into assets.” There is thus a fine balance to be achieved between remembrance and reconciliation. Both concepts are essential in the search for resolution of conflict; we deny and ignore what has happened in the past at our peril; but we have to forge a basis for future right relationships, which might well require some agreed way of acknowledging and remembering what happened - giving people the possibility of redefining their identity so that it does not depend on historic enmities. Bloomfield's report paid attention to the question of how best to remember the dead in Northern Ireland, and listed many constructive ideas. The difficulty with a physical memorial which lists names was well recognised. Any memorial in a divided society has to avoid making judgements and avoid triumphalism -perhaps these are helpful criteria for us more generally, as we consider our attitude towards remembrance of those who died in war. Coming back to red poppies and remembrance of the dead of two World Wars, I will share with you an encouraging story from Ireland. A few years ago, co-operation between a politician from the Irish Republic and a hard-line loyalist from Londonderry led to a remarkable project to build an Irish round tower at Messines in Flanders commemorating the sacrifice of all soldiers from the island of Ireland at the battle of the Somme in World War I. The work was done by young Catholics and Protestants, who would normally have found such co-operation impossible. It led to a meeting between the Irish President and the Queen to lay poppy wreaths on Remembrance Day. It was a real boost to the peace process in NI, involving joint commitment and shared work as well as being non-judgemental. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield quotes
John Hewitt - and I would like to end with his words - good advice, I
think, if we wish to make the best use of remembrance in our search for
reconciliation. Neither an elegy nor a
manifesto Bear in mind these dead: I cannot urge or beg you [...] John Hewitt, 1972 |