IN Enniskillen they still haven’t built a fitting memorial to the dead and maimed of the Remembrance Sunday bomb. But, 13 years on, they are getting round to tidying up the mess.
Last week, the diggers finally went into the bomb site, a boarded-up hole on Belmore Street, hiding the former St Michael’s Reading Rooms. It is just yards from the cenotaph where a 40lb IRA bomb exploded as hundreds gathered to remember the dead of two world wars.
A community education and arts centre will go up on the site where 11 people were murdered and 63 injured on Nov 8, 1987. Many in the town are unhappy, first because the site of the atrocity was left as a physical scar for so long and because the new building seems inappropriate.
Support for Sinn Fein is now strong in the town and the county of Fermanagh. In the outraged aftermath of the bombing, the IRA’s political wing looked to be on the ropes. But look what happened. Even across in Tyrone, the 1998 Omagh bomb which killed 29 people did not prevent Sinn Fein from winning a recent council by-election by an astonishing margin.
And it all sinks into the Protestant psyche in quiet Ulster towns. No arrests, nobody charged, no jail sentences, no republican remorse. Yet, hard though this may be to believe, the Ulster Unionists of Fermanagh are so fair-minded that it was their votes which swung last November’s Ulster Unionist Council meeting in favour of David Trimble’s motion to enter government with Sinn Fein without IRA decommissioning. Will they do it again on Saturday?
James Dixon suffered massive injuries at Enniskillen. His pelvis, hips and legs were smashed. His eye sockets were blown out and now he cannot close his eyes and has no tear ducts. He still lives in pain but says he is not bitter even though he has more reason than most to hate.
Instead, at 63, he channels his considerable energy into politics. In the assembly elections he stood for Robert McCartney’s UK Unionists, failing to win enough votes to gain a seat. He is, however, scathing of the Ulster Unionist leadership’s determination to trust the IRA and share power with Sinn Fein.
He said: “We’ve been led down the garden path.” Mr Dixon claims that local Ulster Unionists, who would have crossed the road to avoid this “extremist”, now tell him he was right all along. He said: “There is more and more support for saying ‘no’. There’s been a vast change among the Fermanagh Unionists.”
In spite of his differences with the late Gordon Wilson, who became an international icon of peace for telling the world that he bore “no ill will” to the murderers of his daughter Marie, Mr Dixon said that the two were always on good terms.
He was appalled at Mr Wilson for talking to the IRA leadership in 1993, which gave the bereaved father no hope that they would ever give up before achieving their objectives. “I never really wished to denigrate Gordon. I had him at home for tea a week after he went to talk to the IRA and he was disgusted by their attitude. He regretted a lot of things he said after the bomb. He never did say that he forgave the IRA. It was media hype.
“The IRA will never repent. They will get their guns out again if they don’t get what they want. And I don’t forgive. My message is that Mr Trimble has been bought and paid by the British Government.” Sam Foster sees it differently. He was there too when the bomb exploded. His reward from Mr Trimble for delivering the Fermanagh vote was the job of environment minister. He does not seem certain that he can achieve this feat again.
He said: “There’s lots of things I don’t like in the deal, but this is the most positive agreement we are going to get. The IRA statement is at least a sign that there has not been a backward step. The vote is of vital importance. If this fails, what else is in its place?” This, according to Mr Foster’s niece, Arlene Foster, is the essence of “the management of the decline of the Union”.
She was one of the “baby barristers” who backed Mr Trimble’s leadership. “I’m a hardliner now because I’m against the Good Friday Agreement, but before it I was one of these new, pluralist Unionists. Now I’m a baby dinosaur!” she laughs.
“The no alternative argument is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard. It’s all part of the demoralisation campaign to get Unionists to accept something they would never have accepted six months ago. They are dimmer-switching our Britishness all the time
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You don’t say where this article came from. I have a feeling that this is from the website of whatever far right party you are a member of now.
As I said earlier, both Republicans and Unionists are now working together in government at Stormont. And you begrudge that. I have Irish blood and am proud of the fact that there is finally peace there and hope that it stays.
You have asked questions in the past about civil war in Britain – so why ask about a past atrocity from a few years ago? Why drag up the past? Are you trying to start civil war again in the North of Ireland?
Finally, why have you conveniently forgot that Loyalists haven’t laid down their weapons?
I’m Roy West!