| First Word
By Patricia Harty, Irish America
I don't remember Bloody Sunday. I don't remember seeing footage on TV
or being shocked by the carnage that left 13 people dead and a 14th who
would die later from wounds.
How do I explain this? The Ireland I grew up in largely ignored the North.
It seems strange now, Ireland looks so tiny from an American perspective,
that we were so "detached" from a place that was so nearby.
Prior to Bloody Sunday, I'd been to Belfast once - on a shopping trip.
I bought a coat that was totally inadequate for the Irish winters. (I was
reminded of this every time I walked across Limerick's Sarsfield Bridge
with the wind tearing the pants off me).
What I remember of that trip to Belfast was being slightly afraid as
we ate fish & chips, or was it chips and beans, in a restaurant overlooking
a street where British soldiers patrolled, but mostly I worried about the
trip home.
It was before the IRA started bombing the train lines, so my main concern
as we journeyed south was whether the customs men boarding the train at
the border would charge duty on my coat.
A couple of months after Bloody Sunday, in July 1972, I left Ireland,
as it turned out to be, for good.
I have fond memories of that summer. I worked in Atlantic City and the
people I met were mostly students from Ireland, trying to earn enough money
for college.
We were young, happy to be away from home and reveling in the sunshine,
the beach and the American way. We had money in our pockets for the first
time.
What I also remember about that summer was that it was when I came to
have an understanding of what it meant to be a Northern Catholic.
The Northerners I met, and there were many there that year, didn't dwell
on what was becoming known as "The Troubles," but over the summer as friendships
flourished, I got to hear first-hand of a brother who was interned; of a
nose broken on the way home from school; of a house whose floorboards had
been ripped up in the middle of the night by an army looking for guns.
Once or twice, in Feeley's Irish Pub, when drinks were taken, I was called
a "Free Stater." There was an edge to the gibe. The resentment against what
was seen as "my" country's - The Free State's - desertion was familial,
and as keenly felt as anything the Unionist ruling class had rendered the
Northern Catholics.
We, it was said, had turned our backs on our brothers, leaving them to
deal with a discriminating, gerrymandering government, and when they fought
back we labeled them trouble-makers.
And even as we extradited various "fugitives" from Dublin to the tender
mercies of Belfast's kangaroo courts, we put media censorship in place barring
Northern nationalists from speaking on radio or television.
We even banned Irish "rebel" songs from the airwaves. None of this is
by way of excusing the horrendous British approach to Northern Ireland.
It has been well covered in this magazine, but along the way there have
been a few English heroes, including John Stalker, the chief constable who
investigated the Northern police "shoot-to-kill" policy, and whose career
and personal life were ruined because he refused to be other than a good
policeman.
It is something to remember that Paul Hill, a Guildford Four member who
spent 15 years in jail for an IRA bombing that he did not commit, said,
"Irish people did not get me out of jail. It was English people who got
me out of jail."
One of those "people" is English lawyer Michael Mansfield, who is profiled
by Anne Cadwallader in this issue.
Mansfield, who has worked on a myriad of Irish cases, including the Guildford
Four appeal, is now representing the families of the Bloody Sunday victims.
Another Englishman, David Tereshchuk, writes in this issue on returning
to Derry as an eyewitness in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.
As a young TV journalist covering the Civil Rights march on that day,
he was there when the British Parachute Regiment opened fire on the marchers.
The pain of remembering, Tereshchuk tells us, is excruciating for the
families concerned, but there is the hope that the Inquiry will uncover
the truth and thus bring consolation.
Also in this issue, Sarah Buscher talks to Adi Roche whose work on environmental
issues and creating a peace and justice program in Ireland's schools led
her to the children of Chernobyl who are suffering the aftereffects of the
nuclear explosion. It is a heartbreaking story, but it is also one of hope.
On a lighter side, there's Ciaran Carty's interview with the latest Irishman
to take Hollywood by storm, Dubliner Colin Farrell, who will play Jesse
James (who it is said came from Co. Antrim) in the upcoming American Outlaws.
Seth Linder interviews Susan Lynch, the star of the Scottish thriller
Beautiful Creatures. Mollie Maass writes about what it is like for an American
couple to get married in Ireland.
And Irish writer Maeve Binchy has a look back on her life and career.
All in all there is lots of great reading.
Happy summer!
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