Cillian McGrattan: Legacy Act offers Northern Ireland society an opportunity to reverse republicanisation of the past

However, here, I wish to touch upon another opening, which the Act has created, that has gone under-appreciated – namely, that Act’s joining of “reconciliation” to “anti-sectarianism” (under the “Memorialisation” section) is incommensurable with the ethnicization of the past by republicans. The Malone House Group pushed for the inclusion of anti-sectarianism as a robust way of promoting the recalibration of the story told about the past, which republicans have long-dominated.

Sectarianism involves a drawing of boundaries around what constitutes ideas that are acceptable to a particular community. This is why the revision of the past is tantamount to an ethnicization of history. Until now, there has been steady “progress” involving the reconciling of the memory of the Troubles to a fabricated (republican and anti-state) version of the past. This has been gaslighting on a societal scale.

The Act alludes to that latter point when it calls for “academic” work to be “carried out in a way that promotes (i) reconciliation, (ii) anti-sectarianism, and [the] (iii) non-recurrence of political and sectarian hostility between people in Northern Ireland”. That vision is to be welcomed, but, as I’ve mentioned in previous articles in this paper, academia in NI has been very receptive to republican narratives about the past. I’ve also pointed out here that the two universities offered a cold house to unionism during the Belfast Agreement “celebrations” earlier this year. All of this is part of the wholesale revision of the historical record.

Given the lack of trust the two academic institutions have created through that gaslighting, it seems incumbent upon the government and the more critical elements of the media and civil society to ensure that that work is carried out with regard “to the confidence of the people of Northern Ireland” – as the Act stipulates. Ideally, those tasked with that work should be free of conflicts of interest beyond political opinions – perhaps such as whether they have actually stood for political parties.

In truth, the government was playing with a bad hand – despite criticism from all quarters, none of the local parties proposed anything that would command widespread support. Commentators and the Irish government also conveniently forgot that the 2014 Stormont House model was rejected by unionists. But while it was dealt a bad hand, that does not mean it is impossible to play it – particularly, if the opportunities involved in reversing the republicanisation of the past are grasped by the non-Sinn Féin majority of political representatives.

Unfortunately, many political spokespersons have focussed on the legal aspects of the legislation, complaining that it rewrites the past, without suggesting how that is exactly what has systematically occurred over the past two decades with the republican hollowing-out of unionist collective memory. The linking of reconciliation with anti-sectarianism is not simply an opportunity but a demand that those parties who rejected violence step up on behalf of their constituents and the victims and survivors who bore the brunt of the terrorists campaigns without seeking retribution.

If there is something de haut en bas about the Alliance attitude that politics isn’t working, then there is also an element of wishful thinking to believe that republicans will apologize for their “war”. If they didn’t repudiate terror after Enniskillen, or Warrington, or Bloody Friday or any of the other atrocities in their litany of terror, they won’t now: Sinn Féin admitting to the wrongness of republican violence wouldn’t be Sinn Féin. They won’t be persuaded away from the platitudes and conceits involved in the mantra that, as Mary Lou McDonald recently explained, “We all have a different narrative, and we'll always have a different narrative, and people have a different perspective on the past”.

Republicans were responsible for the vast majority of the murders and were rejected by the vast majority of the people during that terrible time. The legacy legislation presents political, religious and civil society leaders with the choice to either indulge and enable the ersatz history that is the republicanisation of the past or to join reconciliation to anti-sectarianism and move beyond Sinn Féin’s sectarian war on memory.

l Cillian McGrattan lectures in politics at Ulster University

l This is the latest in a series of articles on the Legacy Act by the Malone House Group, which is concerned about the use of ‘lawfare’ against the UK state and an imbalance against the security forces.

See also:

Jeff Dudgeon: After years of imbalance against state forces in historic Troubles investigations, a new legacy law has been passed

Austen Morgan: Ireland would be advised to hesitate and consider these legal points before suing the UK over its legacy act