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Anticipating
another account of a visiting journalist's tour of
duty--hunkered in a West Belfast flat, with a furtive
foray or two up the Shankill, before a junket to the
Bogside--I began Rucker's account wondering how he
would live up or down to my expectations. Apparently
lacking the family lore of Kevin Toolis, the upbringing
of Jack Holland, the political ties of Jonathan Stevenson,
or the media clout of Peter Taylor, American-born
Rucker (only in his late twenties) continues reporting
from the trenches--only this time digging in where
East Belfast pauses just shy of the Short Strand "on
that old, jagged fault line near Madrid Street."
(9) On this front line, the
familiar divide reifies itself, physically and demographically.
But, unlike on his student trip there in 1991, he
now types his tales while waving at those upon the
glass-roofed, double-decker tour bus rumbling past
his upper window.
Rucker's
itinerary often follows that of the tourists. Shorter
chapters on the chance meeting of ex-blanketman Anthony
McIntyre and a former prison officer from Long Kesh,
the UFF's "Post-Conflict Resettlement Office,"
Catriona Ruane's encounters with Protestant factions
over a Belfast St. Patrick's Day celebration, Breandan
MacCionnaith at the Garvaghy Road, Robert Hammill's
death at Portadown, and the love of Sharon and Kevin
across the sectarian lines drawn in rural Desertmartin
all broaden the scope of Rucker's investigation but
leave the reader wishing for more depth, or an engaging
hook with which to pull the reader closer to the people
he interviews. Necessary as recent coverage of such
situations remains, the tone of these chapters rarely
departs from the feature articles filed by an American
media outlet's Belfast correspondent. (Rucker's bylines
appear at the Boston Globe, the New York
Daily News, National Public Radio, and Newsweek.)
When
Rucker uncovers fresh stories energised by post-GFA
complications, he updates events sketched by Toolis,
Holland, Stevenson, or Taylor, among many others.
The Frizzell's fish shop bombing carried out by Thomas
Begley killed him and nine customers, among them the
parents of Michelle Williamson, and thirteen-year
old Leanne Murray. The efforts of the daughter and
parents, respectively, of the two victims, to seek
justice or the reticent struggle of the Begleys to
comprehend how their son could be manipulated into
such an act even as the first IRA cease-fire was planned
by his superiors: all three families remind the reader
of the living casualties of violence who never rest
in peace. Following up these vignettes in a tete-a-tete
with Johnny Adair and a wry take on Eddie Copeland's
feud further underscores the futility of gangland
hits carried out behind the guise of community defense.
Rucker's alertness to how both men play up to his
presence as the American witness to their preening
and boasting subtly sharpens his descriptions of their
complicity in the post-GFA cycle of retribution.
This
leads into chapters on punishment beatings and the
disappeared. Again, under Rucker's control, these
stories gain more depth than previous accounts, which
lacked necessarily the benefit of hindsight. Eddie
Copeland reappears. Liam Cairns' assault and especially
Andrew Kearney's murder at the hands of purportedly
fellow republicans highlight the hypocrisy of the
leadership claiming to speak for the republicans of
Belfast when these spokesmen are confronted by the
relatives of their victims with the truth. Likewise,
the long efforts of Jean McConville's family over
two decades to clear her name of being an informer
and to find her grave reveal the intransigence and
doublespeak of the supposed republican leadership.
(Her original sin was to cradle a seriously wounded
British soldier lying on her doorstep during a Divis
Flats firefight.) Again, the IRA and Provisional Sinn
Fein leave many of their decisions unwilling to be
appealed, even in the changed political climate in
which they assert their desire for reconciliation.
A
long chapter on Bloody Sunday, focusing upon the testimony
of Private 027 and the family of John Young, clearly
sets this by now familiar scene, but by keeping its
scope narrow, achieves an immediacy of detail often
blurred in more comprehensive renderings. Necessarily
incomplete due to the ongoing Saville inquiry, Rucker's
report nonetheless helpfully sets up the context and
aftermath clearly for those readers looking for a
current overview of the investigation and its effects
on two of its participants. The view from Derry does
make the reader wish throughout the book for more
detail on the effects of the war over the areas outside
Belfast; while brief parts of the book do this (excepting
the Drumcree chapter--pro forma for any visiting journalist),
the heavy concentration on the urban terrain leaves
one wondering exactly how those in Desertmartin or
the "Glen Folk" up in Armoy (a tantalising
aside) fared over the past decades.
A
lengthy chapter on "the last rebels" may
prove for The Blanket's audience the most intriguing.
Often we resistors from the Provisional diversion
of the republican contingent over the past decade
have been asked why we don't throw in our lot with
those who claim to continue the physical-force tradition.
Rucker's substantial treatment of RSF surveys Joe
O'Connor's murder and the subsequent denials by the
Provisionals of their involvement; Michael ODuibhir's
idealism as an RSF Falls Road office volunteer; and
Josephine Hayden's incarceration in Limerick. Rucker
views Hayden's commitment as more admirable than the
momentary enthusiasm of an office staffer, and his
visit with Danny Morrison (coupled with a look at
his role in the interrogation of IRA intelligence
officer Sandy Lynch) serves to contrast the official
party line of republicans with the activism pursued
by a dwindling cadre. The chapter's concluding glimpse
at the fate of one such CIRA volunteer, Maghaberry
prison's Tommy Crossan, leaves no doubt that Rucker's
opinion of current republican hard-liners finds them
as much pawns of the larger republican endgame as
their victims. He speaks to one RSF staffer who feels
betrayed by the Provisional use of comrades in the
early 1990s to carry out actions leading to death
or imprisonment even as the leaders prepared to call
a cease-fire. While Rucker cannot condone their subsequent
devotion to fighting for the betrayed ideals of 1916,
he sensibly presents the reader with a quandary.
Both
Morrison and Hayden, he ponders, "claimed the
same history and venerated the same martyrs."
(167) Does this make their difference--in
choosing a two-handed hoist of the ballot-box or clinging
with both arms to the armalite--"anything more
than a capricious personal conceit?"
The
lack in this otherwise welcome analysis of the current
state of dissident republicanism leaves out the role
of such as the former prisoner Anthony McIntyre and
those with whom he works to promote a third way forward,
one rejecting both the CIRA (or RIRA) armalite and
the (PSF-controlled) ballot-box. As well as the surreptitious
thuggery carried out by rogues in the shadows of now-legitimised
republican party politics. This reviewer still awaits
the book that brings forth this role for a twenty-first
century republicanism free of the violence of Hayden
or the compromise of Morrison. As Rucker asks, where
would readers of The Blanket weigh in? Where
is your place between or among such republican colleagues
as Josephine Hayden or Danny Morrison? Each of them
might deny the legacy of Pearse and Connolly to The
Blanket's audience. How do proponents of another
way forward unite behind causes and not caprice?
This
Troubled Land: Voices from Northern Ireland on the
Front Lines of Peace. Patrick Michael Rucker.
New York and Toronto: Ballantine Books, 2002. 230
pp. USD $24.95. Can $37.95.
Excerpts from the book may be found at the Amazon.com
website
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