McConville a reminder of dark days

Recent arrests remind us, lest we forget, of the tragic conflict that engulfed the North for three decades. Taoiseach Kenny is correct in reminding us that this story is about a murdered woman and her bereaved orphan children.

Unionist politicians tempted to feel smug should reflect on their role in starting the Northern conflict. Many of them conveniently forget that their quasi apartheid policy of a ‘Protestant State for a Protestant People’ relegated the minority in their community to a second class status. When the oppressed community threw off its shackles it was met with an enraged and violent response, with Rev Ian Paisley the rabble-rouser in chief.

As Yeats put it — “Great hatred, little room. They fed the heart on bitterness, the heart’s grown brutal with the fare”.

Violence begat violence. Out of the ashes of the anti-Catholic pogroms, the IRA was reborn, initially as a defender of its community. Unfortunately, it changed course and circa 1972 went on the offensive. Many of its victims were from its own community.

Woe unto him who takes upon himself the power of deciding who is to live and who is to die. Unchecked power corrupts to the degree that its wielders can take a widowed mother of 10, their hearts immune to her terror and to the pleas of her stricken children, bring her to a deserted beach, put a gun to the back of her head and murder her.

Those who took Jean McConville did so indifferent to the fact her children recognised them.

In the aftermath of her murder, did they walk past her children with shame, or did they hold their heads high?

Think, if you can bear it, of this woman’s dreadful last hours. Bundled into the back of a vehicle, she must have feared the worst. Imagine her terror, her fear for her children, her desperate pleas, her prayers.

It is said when people think they are going to die they panic — when they know they are going to die they often grow calm. Did Jean McConville know peace at the realisation she was to be murdered?

I hope she did, I hope she found serenity in her last moments. I hope the quality that allowed her to see beyond a uniform to the humanity of an injured soldier gave her the strength to look her murderers in the eye so that they quailed and unable to face her could only murder her by shooting her from behind.

Rest in peace Jean McConville. Perhaps those who murdered you were so stricken by their actions that their hearts softened, became human again and turned them into peacemakers.

Perhaps Jean McConville you were the ultimate architect of the peace.

Gerard Fitzpatrick

Ballyhool

Mallow

Co Cork