Now we must nurture our flimsy peace
THE murder of Lyra McKee in Derry on Thursday night was like a punch to the gut, a reminder to the older among us of this island’s dark days. That it happened just minutes before Good Friday and the dawn of the 21st anniversary of the agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland, made it unbearably poignant.
Lyra, an award-winning journalist, was just 29, one of the ceasefire babies who grew up without the fears of a previous generation, though not entirely free of them. As she once wrote: ‘We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us.’
Lyra was not shot in a war. Like the thousands before her during the Troubles, she was shot by thugs who hide behind the Tricolour to shield criminal activities.
But these are times of great political uncertainty. Northern Ireland has had no government for two years. The consequent vacuum has allowed a worrying reemergence of paramilitary activity stealthily to creep in to fill the political void. As the detective leading the investigation into Lyra’s murder said yesterday: ‘What we are seeing is a new breed of terrorist coming through the ranks,’ a very worrying situation. The only comfort is his observation that there has been a seachange in the community’s attitudes, demonstrated in the revulsion expressed by so many at the killing.
At the same time as politics has stalled in the North, an unnecessary general election in the United Kingdom left the Conservative government reliant on the support of the DUP, which not only does not represent an entire community in Northern Ireland, it does not even respect the result of the Brexit referendum there. The majority, at the time of voting, knew that their peace was a fragile thing that needed constant nurturing, and they did not want it threatened. In the bubble of Westminster, though, it was never even on the radar. To many there, the Good Friday Agreement is just a piece of paper to easily be discarded, when it is anything but. It is a document paid for in lives, a sacred covenant that underpins a flimsy peace.
Lyra’s murder came on the same day that Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the US House of Representatives visited Derry, and in the same week she emphatically ruled out any post-Brexit US-UK trade deal in the event of a restored hard border. America was a good friend to Ireland, north and south, in the peace process. It brings some comfort to see it so aware of the importance of the accord.
Lyra understood all these complexities and wrote about them with insight and passion. Like all ceasefire babies, she knew what had gone before and she never wanted to witness it herself. The wretched past cannot be allowed to return. We are at a crossroads. Sectarian divides are being reinforced by nakedly self-serving politics in Northern Ireland and in Westminster. The disaffected young are being radicalised to sign up for a hollow cause.
We should all be haunted by Lyra’s final words, typed to accompany a photo of a burning car in Creggan she posted just before she was shot. ‘Absolute madness.’