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ANDRÉE: Time for leadership not lemmings

SO, Jeffrey Donaldson is going to the ditches over the Brexit Protocol. An interesting if unsurprising approach from the new(ish) leader of the DUP to convince us all that the DUP are the 'real' leaders of unionism, and still have the necessary backbone to satiate their critics. This positioning by the DUP is of course framed by the disproportionate attention the small cabal of anti-Protocol voices have received in recent months. The combined threat of loyalist violence and unionist chassis appears to be much more interesting to the mainstream media than the more boring stability and getting on with things that is the real world to most of us. Of course, all of this positioning both by unionism and by some in the media is an exercise in avoidance, when the real issues at play here are the shrinking of the pro-union population and the growth of the pro-united Ireland position. However, this avoidance is as familiar as it is ineffective.

ANDRÉE: Hectic September is all about getting to October in one piece

WHOEVER came up with the idea of Self-Care September is a cruel genius. September is one of the busiest months of the year for most of us. And for many of us it is milestone month. If we are lucky enough to have jobs, most of the staff will have had their holidays and we make plans for the autumn and there is a flurry of focused activity and commitment. Workplaces, remote or in person, are halfway through the financial year and set new, ambitious targets and really push on to make objectives happen before the year is out. In most workplaces September can be flat to the mat month. In homes that have children, there is the stress of purchasing uniforms and all of the gear required, which gets worse every year as the Department of Education refuses to regulate uniform prices and requirements. It is nearly as expensive as Christmas in many homes, with little additional support or recognition of the hardship. Those homes also see September as the month for getting into the routine of early mornings, proper breakfasts and lunchboxes. Military planning is required to ensure at least three smooth mornings a week! If we are facing education ourselves, especially in later years, it is all about getting into a whole new way of academic thinking and goal-setting, maybe even moving location. If our grown-up kids are the ones going to third-level education away from home, there is the chest-crushing hardship of a chick flying the nest. That is without the stress of student loans, maintenance grants, and fielding a bureaucracy and poverty which is gradually ensuring that only the middle classes can now afford to attend third level. For many homes, as the nights draw in mental health issues resurface and poverty bites as fuel costs soar again. It can feel pretty lonely, while adverts about planning Christmas parties are carried all over the place and buying dinner for tonight is a challenge.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: PSNI review must go beyond Crossmaglen

SO the South Armagh brigade of the PSNI has been subjected to a review by the PSNI Chief Constable and a report has been published with recommendations. At the heart of the need to do their review was an acknowledgement that the PSNI in South Armagh is “reminiscent of legacy policing”. “Legacy policing” is, I assume, the RUC. And apparently this “legacy policing” style is “heavy- handed and disproportionate with a militaristic style and tone” that is “not acceptable to the local population”. Despite the Patten report being published in 1999, yes 1999, policing in South Armagh is described as framed by “Cultural re-enforcement by visible artefacts and narrated anecdote... constantly present”. Most tellingly, “Officers with no experience of legacy policing quickly assimilate into the prevalent style and tone.” That style and tone is considered unhelpful. Strip that down and you get a picture of a PSNI that is in fact the RUC in culture and attitude. This report makes clear that the RUC is alive and well in South Armagh. But now the PSNI Chief Constable wants to do something about it. Which is good. But the obvious question is this: Why only South Armagh? We know that the review was conducted as a result of the horrific Christmas Day photograph of him with his militarised colleagues in South Armagh, which gave us all just a bit more indigestion than the Christmas pudding ever could, but why limit the issues and review to one geographic area? In February of this year the families and injured affected by the Ormeau Road bookies atrocity suffered RUCesque policing. Mark Sykes, injured by bullets fired at him from state weapons by state agents, was charged with disorderly conduct by an RUC/PSNI hybrid. The Chief Constable came under just as much heat and pressure about that outrage as he had done in 2019. The same issues of “legacy policing” were at stake, if anything more so, as the issues of state-sponsored collusion in five killings had been writ large. There are numerous limitations of this report, found on the Newry, Mourne and Down PSNI webpage, but that it is about perception and improving perception of a “local population” speaks to something important. It is handy if it is only about the South Armagh locals because that means that there is no real need to address actual abuses and harms – only how people perceive them in South Armagh. It means pretending the “legacy” of RUC policing hasn’t critically damaged the PSNI and so doesn’t need to be named, let alone held accountable. It means the PSNI can continue to pretend in courts that it’s capable of investigating the past, including in cases where the state is culpable. It means turning a blind eye to the Police Federation, representing the PSNI rank and file staging a coup on “legacy” and reject Stormont House while its Chief Constable is on record supporting the implementation of Stormont House. The entire PSNI needs a review. Putting up a few signs as Gaeilge is not going to cut it 22 years later. It requires a facing up to the real legacy of the RUC, its harms and abuses. It requires banning plastic bullets. It requires meaningful new policing instead of dancing with the pernicious ghost of the RUC.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: It’s all change when Páid hits the streets

HE had been brought to our home by a well-meaning friend who knew our previous dog had been tragically killed, and that I hankered after a mutt because I was still wary of being on my own with the kids after our home and my husband were determined to be targets of loyalists. The tiny white ball had an infected docked tail and a belly full of worms, but he immediately stole the hearts of the young children of the house. The husband of the house was less impressed. But the deed was done. Páid, the Jack Russell, was now a part of the family.Ours is the tale of many households. “You won’t have to look after him, I will clean up after him every day.”“I will walk him before school and after school.”“I will brush him and hoover after his hairs.”Fast forward three days.“Oh my God, I cleaned up last week!”“Oh my God, I’m tired!”“Oh my God, you can’t see the hairs.” Páid has their hearts, but not their motivation, and we dear parents are the ones with the heartbreak and picking white hairs from our suits, books and pens at work meetings, or having to clean the garden before a wash can be put on the line. Jack Russell ownership is a unique life experience other dog-owning families don’t understand.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Climate crisis is more than just a storm in a teacup

ON August 12 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report that held every news headline for an evening. Global warming is getting worse and global warming is as a result of human behaviours. Accompanying apocalyptic imagery of weather events this year provided the backdrop to breathless reporters outlining the gravity of the findings. On August 15 the Taliban rolled into Kabul as the American and British presence was withdrawn and their puppets fled. Accompanying images of men in headdress with guns and big Land Cruisers were played then replayed. Breathless reporters spoke of “fears” and US failures of “intelligence”. It was highly instructive that people locally had more to say about the Taliban and prospects for women living in that country than they did about rising sea levels. Television news is far less relevant than it was ten years ago, so news cycles have less impact than, say, social media. But if my social media is anything to go by it is clear that this is one occasion where one reflects the other.

ANDREE MURPHY: Plastic bullets: a campaign about the past – and about the present

THIS week the families bereaved by plastic bullets stood once again in the middle of the Andersonstown Road to say Ban Plastic Bullets. The vigil has taken place on the Wednesday closest to the August 9 every year since 1986. Led by Emma Groves, West Belfast’s First Lady, blinded by a rubber bullet in 1971 in her own living room, and Clara Reilly, our human rights laureate, the vigil has become a cornerstone of West Belfast’s August reflection.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Many living with cruel legacy of internment

“Armoured cars and tanks and guns”…. Lyrics to start many a sing song. “Came to take away our sons”… proving you know you are a rebel. “Every man will stand behind, the men behind the wire”… shouting out as evidence of your patriotism. It is fifty years since the events which provoked these lyrics and it is not without irony that the song is better known than the actual events, the actual harms, the actual legacy.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: On The Run letters symbolise peace process which put combatants before victims

IN February 2014 a well-known secret of our peace process became the subject of public scrutiny. The ‘On the Run’ letters became a matter of debate as the prosecution of John Downey failed. The process, begun in 2002 during the tenure of Tony Blair, was quite convoluted and had many ins and outs as it developed, culminating in the Supreme Court judgment that these “letters of comfort” were in fact of little material benefit to anyone who had them, as then First Minister Peter Robinson described, “stuffed in their pockets”. Whatever the limited benefit to the very few people who received them, they have had an impact on the debate on dealing with the past. The so-called OTR letters were indicative of how our peace process has put the asks and needs of those who participated in it ahead of the rights of victims and survivors. The RUC community in particular benefitted from extraordinary attention: gratuity payments, pay-off schemes, medals and all-round recognition and individualised fiscal benefit. The UDR/RIR similarly. This was a deliberate rendering invisible of state violations whilst families were simultaneously seeking processes of truth, justice and acknowledgement.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: British legacy plan graver threat to peace process than Brexit

ALL victims were cried for with tears that held an equal amount of salt. All victims missed – and were missed on – the best days in their families’ lives: the births, the marriages, the bursting-with-pride days. Every single lost life mattered. We don’t have to agree on our narratives of conflict to recognise that. While those who took lives reconciled those actions in a conflict context, for bereaved families that reconciliation was and remains impossible. That chair is never filled, that grave is always calling out, that photograph is always reminding us. It doesn’t go away, there is no line to be drawn. Since the ceasefires, families bereaved during our conflict have been told that their rights and their loved ones’ lives don’t matter. They knew that when the Good Friday Agreement didn’t pay attention to them.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Now is the time to speak our own language

AS this summer of remembrance continues the catalogue of conflict anniversaries give us pause to remember. On just one evening last week families in Springhill, the Falls Road and Ardoyne were joined to remember Fr Fitzpatrick, Paddy Butler, Margaret Gargan, John Dougal, David McCafferty, Norah McCabe and Danny Barrett. Adding to the sense of loss was the known truth that not one of these families has received due legal process. All of these families are currently engaged in fighting the myriad of obstacles placed in the way of families affected by British state killings. The killing of a loved one by the British state is accompanied by an experience of violent impunity that adds to the absolute horror and grief.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: The guard was dropped but it’s now back up

I WAS stopped in my tracks.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Let’s recognise Stormont majority for change

IT is 100 years since the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. A treaty Michael Collins called a “stepping stone to Irish freedom”. It was, of course, no such thing and its effect was to create a century of shame, where the northern six counties were condemned to a living nightmare. The next treaty signed, the Good Friday Agreement, was not framed with such words. It was framed as the end to the nightmare, the beginning of a new era of peace. Ironically, it did provide the clear and definite stepping stones that had been missing – unity is possible if Irish people vote for it. 77 years later, nationalists, unionists and the two governments secured what Collins and Griffith did not. In advance of using that pathway, we all agreed to share power. We did so on the basis of human rights frameworks and European norms and laws. Sadly, this opportunity was squandered.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Heed wise words of Black Mountain

I LOVE Belfast’s Black Mountain. And I love how it is now a living billboard to send out international messages of solidarity to people experiencing repression, to give voice to campaigns who feel censored and ignored, to assert the legitimacy of an Irish experience in a Belfast which remains in the British jurisdiction but free in its minds and actions. The use of the mountain prompts all of Belfast to think about the matters of the day, even if it feels uncomfortable. And being an environmentally aware bunch, the stimulating letters come down nearly as quickly as they went up, allowing the grass to grow green and the birds to feed on the insects buzzing about, as though nothing had ever taken place.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Broken pacts are draining the peace process

THE New Decade New Approach (NDNA) deal was sprung onto the local parties in January 2020 by Simon Coveney and erstwhile British Secretary of State Julian Smith. Within just a week its significance was critically damaged when Boris Johnson arrived to endorse it with no additional resources for its wide-ranging commitments. A couple of weeks later Julian Smith was sacked and replaced by Brandon Lewis. By March the NDNA was all but torn up by the British government when Lewis announced that the commitment to implement the legacy structures of the Stormont House Agreement within 100 days would in fact not happen, and instead the British government was thinking about amnesty for British soldiers.

ANDRÉE MURPHY: Loyalist Communities Council increased legitimacy must be questioned

THE origins of this peace process were all framed in talking. Who spoke to whom, when and how. There were secret talks, informal talks, talks processes, and there were even talks about talks. The aim of talks shifted as the peace process shifted. John Hume was considered a great risk-taker talking to Gerry Adams about the potential for ceasefires, and has since been widely praised for his commitment to peace. Unionism didn’t want to talk to republicans and the British pretended they weren’t talking to republicans, while they chatted away.

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Andrée Murphy

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