The truth will set us free, so let’s set up a commission to find it

THE parents of the late Brian Murphy, the teenage student who was kicked to death in a fight outside Club Anabel in Dublin in August 2000 — gave a poignant interview this week following the inquest into the death of their son. They are left with a life sentence of the pain of their loss.

Five people were charged with manslaughter, but ultimately nobody has been convicted. Brian Murphy’s parents emphasised that they were not looking for revenge. Their loss is aggravated by the sense that the system does not facilitate the expression of remorse. They were looking for the truth, but the rules of evidence in our adversarial court system do not facilitate finding the truth.

Looking back over the past 40 years there were so many senseless deaths on this island. The first killings of the most recent Northern troubles in 1966 were not the work of the IRA, but of the UVF.

The first victim was a Protestant woman, Martha Gould, who died in a fire after a petrol bomb, thrown at a Catholic-owned pub next door, hit her home. The following month Peter Ward, a young Catholic barman, was murdered by the UVF.

Three people were convicted of Ward’s murder. “I am terribly sorry I ever heard of that man Paisley or decided to follow him”, Hugh McClean told the police when charged. “I am definitely ashamed of myself to be in such a position.”

McClean died in jail, but his colleague Gusty Spence did emerge, after serving 20 years, to take a leading part in organising the loyalist ceasefire.

The godfathers of the Northern mayhem manipulated people on both sides of the sectarian divide, and we should learn from the mistakes.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa has afforded an opportunity for people to express regret for their misdeeds. It provides a means of getting to the truth, and John’s Gospel quotes Jesus as saying “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”. It certainly should help to prevent similar events happening again.

On August 25, 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old, blonde, blue-eyed American woman, was killed by four young black men in Guguletu, the notorious black township near Cape Town. She had spent 10 months helping black people and already had her ticket to return home to the US three days later.

In 1997, her murderers sought to have their 18-year jail sentences overturned by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On the night of the crime they were returning from a Pan African Congress meeting at which they had been urged to make the black townships ungovernable.

The meeting ended with chants of, “One settler! One bullet!”

On seeing Amy Biehl, they stopped her and one of the men hit her in the face with a brick. The four of them then stabbed her repeatedly just because she was white. Her parents listened to the horrific story and then stunned everyone by walking over and shaking hands with the murderers.

“There are plenty of things in my life I would like to be forgiven for,” her father Peter Biehl explained afterwards. It was a magnificent show of Christian forgiveness from which we could all learn. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be emulated.

Yet this week we again had the voices of division moaning about the rugby team standing for Ireland’s Call and a united flag instead of the Amhrán na bhFiann and the Tricolour. Some seem determined to make the same mistakes again and promote division instead of accord.

Last night’s match was considered most important because beating France and Argentina should mean that Ireland would avoid New Zealand in the next round. Back in January 1954, Ulster famously drew with New Zealand at Ravenhill.

“Nobody who was at Ravenhill, the other Saturday, when Ulster held the All-Blacks to a draw, could possibly doubt the essential unity of this country in the field of sport,” Irish Times editor Bertie Smyllie noted at the time. “The crowds in the North on both sides of the fence are not half as bad as they are painted. If they were only given a decent chance by the politicians, a couple of years would see the end of most of the political and religious bitterness.”

Rugby was one sport that crossed not only the border but also the sectarian divide in the North.

The pity was that people were not prepared to build on that at the time. This was when the GAA had its ban on foreign games, with rugby being decried as un-Irish.

Eamon de Valera caused some consternation in the mid-1950s by telling a dinner for past pupils of Blackrock College that he always preferred rugby. I remember the Christian Brothers at Tralee CBS being practically apoplectic. They could hardly have been more shocked, if Dev had renounced his religion.

There were opportunities then to promote understanding with and within the North, but politicians on both sides failed to provide leadership. Bertie Smyllie noted, for instance, that Seán Lemass had admitted during a speech in Ballinasloe in January 1954 that there was “far more give-and-take between the two states economically than either was prepared to admit”.

MANY people in the South remembered Brian Faulkner as easy to work with, but when sectarian strife erupted he played the Orange card in undermining Terence O’Neill. Later, when Faulkner tried to promote reconciliation at the time of the Sunningdale agreement, the Orange card was used to undermine him.

In its early years the Festival of Kerry called itself the Folk Festival of Ireland. A number of popular folk groups made their names in Tralee, among them the Wolfe Tones and Teddy Furey and his sons. A ‘Singing Pubs’ competition was one of the great attractions. There were the usual the drinking and rebel songs, but ‘The Sash’ was also popular at the time.

Many Northern people came to the festival and their mouths would drop in amazement when somebody would start The Sash. Before the song was finished they would join in themselves, and then say nobody was going to believe them when they got home — that they were singing The Sash in the Republic.

Donnacha Ó Dulaing recorded his Munster Journal for RTÉ at the 1963 festival, where he taped The Wolfe Tones singing The Sash. That was their first song ever played on air.

There was a window of opportunity to break down the sectarian barriers then, but the chance was missed. Of course, one of the worst culprits was Ian Paisley.

Privately, he got on with Southern politicians at Strasbourg, so long as he was not playing to an Orange rabble. !

There probably has never been a better chance of real advancement in the North than now while the two extremes are sharing power.

We should be using rugby and the likes to promote accord, not disharmony. It is important that as much progress as possible should be made during the opportunity afforded by the current cooperation.

It is Ireland’s call!