Fourthwrite ..........................Issue No. 8

Reflecting on other days

An Ex-POW’s view

by Owen O'Neill

The mere mention of the decommissioning of IRA weapons may well have had dire consequences for anyone in the H Blocks. It would have provoked an angry reaction, or worse, from those who saw themselves as the bulwark of Sinn Fein strategy. To even subtly suggest that the destruction or handing over of IRA weapons or explosives in whatever form would happen would have incurred severe censure or worse even expulsion from the republican controlled wings.

Today the H Blocks are empty and the debates, discussion and arguments are only a distant echo. The political landscape has been transformed; decommissioning is now a fait accompli. The unexpected is no longer the unexpected. There is anger among a generation of republicans and there is disillusionment and confusion. The old language has changed and the new language is keen to validate. It is all part of this so-called 'new dispensation'.

There are of course those who see current strategy as the only way forward if not the best one. Who knows, maybe they will be proven right but who really believes that things will change and change utterly in the wake of 2016. Many ex-POW's and indeed ex-combatants are reflecting on the sacrifices that have been made over thirty years. There is a tendency to nostalgically review republicanism when it was radical, revolutionary and anti-establishment. In the past tense.

Much has changed. Ex-prisoners like myself look back both individually and collectively on the sacrifices made by themselves and their families and wonder that so much has changed and in such a short time. If decommissioning has happened to save the Good Friday Agreement it seems to me that it is a house built on sand. What has really changed? As I write a UDR man has cold bloodily murdered an innocent catholic in Tyrone. Pipe bomb pogroms are being orchestrated by loyalist murder gangs throughout the six counties. Meanwhile republicans are being taken down a road less travelled.