The political reaction to our stories on the forthcoming Historical Enquiries Team
report on the Loughgall shooting has been duly predictable.
It finds against the IRA account of events so it has been welcomed by unionists and
rejected by republicans.
The past is often treated like a political football. Politicians take sides and
blame the referee if he does not agree with them.
The Historical Enquiries Team is a case in point. Up to now it has been mainly
loyalists who have cursed this ref, accusing him of picking on them and turning a
blind eye to republican foul play.
This weekend the HET is taking flak from the opposite side because it is challenging
the republican narrative of a high-minded freedom fight, eventually brought to a
successful conclusion by power-sharing with the DUP.
This will not be the judgment of history.
The overall picture of the IRA campaign is one in which the security forces and the
weight of public opinion, not always acting in concert, gradually wore down an armed
resistance.
The violence was ended because, although it could have been continued for some
years, it was incapable of advancing its desired objectives.
It was ended on the best terms available, but terms which had nonetheless been
rejected at an earlier stage.
The Enniskillen report shows an organisation that misjudged the mood of both
nationalists and unionists. It discovered that few were prepared to accept an attack
on British Legion ceremonies as an extension of the war. Loughgall showed an
organisation outgunned and incapable of taking on its chosen adversary despite the
determination of a membership which was armed to the teeth with Libyan guns and
explosives.
By that point in the campaign, nearly 20 years in, any insurgency with a hope of
winning would have controlled a "liberated zone", a safe base from which to strike,
deny its enemy access and eventually fight battles with the British Army.
Loughgall showed that they were incapable of making this leap and had, eventually,
to sue for terms.
The rhetoric of Sinn Féin politicians shows the contradictions. Barry McElduff,
whose own brother-in-law Paddy Kelly led the IRA assault at Loughgall, tried to deal
with this unpalatable truth as he remembered the deaths.
"If it was a war then the British Government are wrong – they have said all along
it wasn't a war. They were bound by the laws of democracy, law enforcement and all
of that, and if that's the case then they should have attempted to arrest them," he
said.
His only way to make his point is to accept the British Army's contention that it
was not a war that was being fought. His suggestion that the republicans should have
been arrested risks implying that it was simply a matter of law enforcement and
crime prevention.
If the men who died had been arrested, they would have held themselves to be
soldiers – prisoners of war – when they were shot, they were civilians.
Such distinctions were hard fought over in the Troubles, but now the way to move
forward may be to accept the tragedy of what happened in those wasted years without
indulging in double think.
Ian Phoenix, a detective who died with other intelligence specialists in the 1994
Chinook crash, was in charge of Operation Judy, the surveillance operation that led
to the Loughgall killings.
His wife Susan co-authored a book based on his diaries. In it he tells of the
tension in the control room in Gough barracks in Armagh as the news of what had
happened came in. "Eight," reported Frank Murray, the Special Branch officer in
radio contact with the SAS. "Eight arrested," he asked, and then turned round to
Phoenix and gave the thumbs down, to indicate death.
Initially there was elation, but later, as he walked amongst the crumpled bodies of
the dead, his heart fell. He found two civilians had been caught in the gunfire, but
survived. One was Oliver Hughes, whose brother Anthony, like him an innocent
civilian, was killed. The second was a Guinness rep who took shelter in a house and
was discovered by the SAS who, seeing he was unarmed, spared him.
Phoenix's spirits fell. He was struck by how hopeless the IRA's situation had been,
caught in the gun sights of highly trained soldiers, by the youth of those who had
died, and of the waste involved in the conflict.
When he was at home with his wife that evening he lost his composure and broke down
as he told her "young Irishmen should not be throwing their lives away like that".
The biggest message from the Troubles is that they should not be repeated. But first
we have to face the facts. If we can't do that, we will deny ourselves the lessons
of history.
