Yesterday Ian Paisley Jr. said of Martin McGuinness: “It’s not how you start your life that’s important, it’s how you finish.” This echoed the words of his father several years earlier when I heard a BBC journalist ask how he could possibly work alongside the former IRA leader who had never shown any remorse. The Rev. Ian Paisley’s unequivocal response was, “Remorse should be measured by how you live your life now.”
Despite a multitude of world leaders heralding McGuinness as a peacemaker whose actions allowed truth and justice to grow in Northern Ireland, others have said there was nothing noble about his struggle. And victims of the IRA who have never received justice have spoken with cynicism about a transformation they see as hollow and self-serving. For many he will always remain a man drenched in blood. Certainly for former cabinet minister Lord Tebbit, who in 1984 was injured and his wife paralysed by an IRA bomb in Brighton’s Grand Hotel, McGuinness will always be a ‘coward’ and a ‘murderer’. A few hours after the announcement of his death, Tebbit condemned any notion of forgiveness, declaring that “the world is a sweeter and cleaner place now."
One of the issues people have with McGuinness’s legacy is that he never adequately apologised, though over the years he did offer statements of regret for the pain and loss caused by the IRA. While regret is a starting point, the most important step on the journey from dehumanization to re-humanization is acknowledgement and the most powerful stimulus to reconciliation sincere apology. When in 1970 the German Chancellor Willy Brandt dropped to his knees in front of the ghetto memorial in Warsaw, the image of this spontaneous and silent apology for the atrocities of the Holocaust had a powerful and enduring effect. Brandt later wrote: “On the abyss of German history and carrying the burden of the millions who were murdered I did what people do when words fail them.”
For those of us sharing the stories of people who have in previous roles committed or sanctioned acts of violence, the dilemma is always how far can we pursue a debate around understanding and forgiveness without gravely offending those who have been most hurt. At The Forgiveness Project the way we choose to do this is to share the stories of perpetrators who have transformed their aggression into a force for peace alongside the stories of victims who have chosen reconciliation over recrimination, forgiveness over revenge. These stories demonstrate how forgiveness and reconciliation can mend broken hearts and repair fractured relationships, both personal and societal.
Forgiveness for Jude Whyte - whose mother was killed by an IRA bomb in 1984 was a pragmatic decision. “It meant that I lived a lot easier, I slept a lot better. You could say my revenge for the murder of my mother is my forgiveness because it has given me strength.” Whyte has never known who was behind his mother’s killing, and nor is it important to him. He believes that decades after the event punitive justice would only break another family apart. “I believe the only way to reconcile is to get to the truth and the only way we can do that is if we have a general amnesty for everyone on both sides. This would create the conditions for accountability where people feel safe enough to talk.”
Mahatma Gandhi said that “forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”. He meant that anger as a result of human injustice is a normal and accepted moral response and so to go against the tide isolates. Some see victims of atrocity who forgive as betrayers stampeding on the memory of their loved ones.
Shortly after hearing of McGuinness’s death, Jo Berry, whose father was killed in the Brighton bombing and who for the past 17 years has been in dialogue with the former IRA activist who planted the bomb, tweeted these words to Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain: “Tebbit not speaking for all, I value Martin McGuinness as inspiring example of peace and reconciliation. I lost my Dad in Brighton Bomb”. Later she added: “I understand all responses to losing a loved one and being injured in war or terrorism. After such trauma there is no one right way, we all survive the best way we can. For me I never wanted another to feel such pain and have dedicated my life to building peace and understanding the roots of violence.”
The acid test of reconciliation is the willingness of those who were harmed to live alongside those who once harmed them. It doesn’t mean they have to forgive, but only that they can coexist without resorting to violence. Nelson Mandela offered a role model when soon after his release from prison he paid a visit to the apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd's widow Betsie.
With peace still fragile in Northern Ireland, the biggest obstacle to the present is the past. This is why I believe that listening to the story of ‘the enemy’ is what helps to move things along, and restorative narratives like those of Jude Whyte and Jo Berry help to repair the harm done by humanizing violence. That is not to say they make violence more palatable but rather help us understand under what circumstances ordinary citizens resort to killing, and what might be done to prevent it.