Omagh memorial - Catalyst for a prosperous united island

NEXT August we will mark the 10th anniversary of the Omagh bombing.

Omagh was one of the terrible atrocities that finally made it impossible for paramilitaries to continue their campaigns of murder and terror.

Mass murder on that dreadful scale, such an amoral contempt for human life, galvanised a growing and determined opposition to terrorism among all democrats on this island. Twenty-nine people died on the streets of the unremarkable Tyrone market town that summer’s day. By trying to push us apart the men of violence brought us together.

Such barbarities made it impossible for terrorists to find the kind of refuge and support they relied on in the communities they imagined they represented through their appalling deeds.

Yesterday an “independent facilitation team” to consider the Omagh Bomb Memorial narrative was launched.

There are hundreds — maybe thousands — of monuments all across this island, where communal memory remains such a potent force.

They represent a kind of historical document recalling all the wrongs and atrocities that made this such a divided and bitter island for too many centuries. Some monuments remember 1798, others mark Great Famine graveyards. Others honour Catholic Emancipation or the Irish men and women who died in the two world wars. Too many more recall those who had no option but to leave this island as emigrants.

Each monument is a focus for a day or two each year when those who support the vision it represents bring wreaths of laurel, beribboned in green, white and gold. Others honour those who served their culture with poppies and ribbons of red, blue and white.

Each ceremony attended by ever-older guards of honour, each determined to ensure that the memory of the achievements of those long dead live on. Others mark smaller, local engagements but nearly every monument is a thread in the same heartbreaking narrative.

Earlier this year an event that could not have been imagined — or accepted — by most of those honoured by these monuments took place. An English team stood under the Union Jack in Croke Park and were afforded a respectful silence while they sang God Save the Queen. It was a great day made possible by the generosity and bravery of the GAA and in many ways closed one book while opening a door to a more tolerant and respectful Ireland.

That day indicates that the time may have come to consider a single, 32-county, grand-scale monument to remember all of those — from every tradition — who died during the struggles that divided this country for so many generations.

Just as Washington’s Vietnam memorial or the battlefield graveyards of Europe have become the most poignant and articulate arguments against war or violence, it could be a reminder that violence achieves little but destruction. Be it a statue, a garden or whatever it could become a symbol for the new Ireland untroubled by division and united in ambition and purpose.

In a country so respectful of symbolism, it could be a reminder, a recognition, and most of all a catalyst for a unified people at ease with their past and determined to realise their most optimistic ambitions.