Truth Commission needed in England
By Mary Nelis
The BBC's Here and Now programme last week was devoted
to Colin Parry, whose son Tim was killed in the
Warrington bomb. Mr Parry is considering giving up his
full time job as a personnel manager in order to set up
a peace centre in Warrington. Such a centre, he
claimed, would be modelled on peace camps he has
organised in the Six Counties ``where young people can
speak freely with friends and enemies in an atmosphere
free from coercion''.
The inspiration for the peace centre was a Catholic
teenager, a recipient of the Tim Parry scholarship, who
attended one of Mr Parry's peace camps.
This young man supported the concept that violence is
legitimate in pursuit of political goals but, according
to Mr Parry, after a week at the peace camp, he
renounced this position, in quite a dramatic way. If a
peace camp can achieve such a turnaround in the north
of Ireland, just think what a peace camp could do in
England.
The establishment of such a place deserves
consideration if it would do nothing more than reclaim
or rescue the word `peace' from the political language
of the current conflict.
But an English peace centre could do much more.
Young would-be recruits for the British Army could be
influenced in such a place by the Catholic teenager,
may help concentrate the minds of youngsters in English
job centres who are coerced through lack of work into
``joining the professionals''. They may learn in a peace
centre that the British Army has always pursued
violence in Ireland as part of their government's
political interest there. They may learn that children
other than Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry have died
tragically in the current phase of Britain's assumed
role as peacekeepers in a conflict which they
instigated and continue to maintain.
They may hear of those other children, not talked about
at peace camps or rallies, those children who died
horrific deaths, their skulls and faces smashed to
pieces by plastic bullets fired by British soldiers.
Some may wonder, as we do, why the names of Stephen
McConomy and Carole Ann Kelly are not as familiar as
Tim Parry or Jonathan Ball. Why there are no choirs or
scholarships or peace marches to commemerate their
deaths.
They may wonder why such a high value is placed on the
lives of some children, while others have no value at
all. But such a centre could have the potential to be
the first true standard bearer for the truth for those
genuine people. They may wonder why the highly
organised and in some cases, professional peace groups,
so eager to rush on to the streets with doves and
crosses when the IRA kill someone, all but dissappeared
during the recent almost daily assassinations of
nationalists. They may also wonder why the 17,500
soldiers as well 13,000 members of the RUC, armed with
the most sophisticated weaponry and technology in the
world, were unable to prevent such murders.
A centre for peace in England could have the potential
to address those questions and also to focus on the
issues that peace movements of the last 30 years have
either ignored or were prevented from addressing;
issues such as collusion of British security forces
with loyalist paramilitires and the arming of such
groups.
Maybe such a centre would give the families of those
killed by British forces the opportunity to ask
questions about the cover-up of the killers and the
character assassination of their loved ones by a
hostile media, briefed by British PR officers.
The greatest tribute that can be paid to all those who
have died in this conflict, including the children of
Warrington, is for Colin Parry to acknowledge in the
words of the great British writer William Makepeace
Thackeray, ``There is no crime ever invented by eastern
or western barbarians, no tyranny of Nero but can be
matched in the history of the English in Ireland''.
acknowledgement like this could form the basis for a
Truth Commission in England.
The Warrington Peace Centre could launch that
commission to address the sentiments contained in
Thackeray's comments.
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