24 hours later, Karen Bradley has finally offered an apology for her deeply wrong comments in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
Karen Bradley is not some woman off the street. She is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Given that there hasn’t been an Assembly in Stormont for more than two years, the role she plays in NI politics and administration is crucial. It goes without saying, it should go without even thinking, that someone in her job should be able to talk about Northern Ireland for a few minutes without making a total fool of herself.
Alas.
Yesterday, she said of killings during The Troubles: “The fewer than 10% that were at the hands of the military and police were not crimes. They were people acting under orders and under instruction and fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way.”
And breathe.
John Teggart, whose father was killed in the 1971 Ballymurphy shooting said: “For Mrs Bradley to come out with insulting, despicable insults to families, it’s an absolute disgrace. If she can’t handle her position, she should resign.”
In an ideal world, Bradley should resign her post. Of course she should. She certainly cannot handle her position.
She has repeatedly demonstrated her plumb ignorance of Northern Ireland. So sclerotic is her grasp of Northern Irish politics that one would not even trust her to hold a conversation about it in a pub for 60 seconds without offending a nearby table and starting a brawl.
Northern Ireland Secretary of State Karen Bradley has apologised for her comments regarding The Troubles. pic.twitter.com/yatVKPupLi
— JOE.ie (@JOEdotie) March 7, 2019
Would we go so far as to say that Karen Bradley is an idiot? It wouldn’t be too harsh. After all, anyone who takes on such an important brief while being so woefully under-qualified is doing no less than putting a precarious peace at risk. She may not be malicious, but she is dangerous in her ignorance.
But cruellest of all, it doesn’t matter whether or not she resigns. After all, who would take over? What? Is Theresa May, that bastion of incompetent nonsense, going to finally make a good appointment?
It would be some other know-nothing Tory shill without even a fleeting interest or understanding in their country’s butcherous history — if not a know-nothing Tory shill in outright denial.
It should tell you all that you need to know that Bradley’s comments were virtually ignored by many English news outlets and newspapers. Indeed, last September The Telegraph published an article titled ‘Think Karen Bradley knows nothing about Northern Ireland? Think again.‘
That was after she said: “I didn’t understand people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties, and vice versa.” And breathe.
But I digress.
The facts of events like Bloody Sunday are clear. Not a single victim of the massacre was armed. No warning was given by the soldiers before they opened fire on the civilians they killed. The Savile report concluded that the first shot was fired by British soldiers. Shots fired by Irish paramilitaries were therefore fired in defence of civilians under fire.
As if this wasn’t monstrous enough, and it is, it’s also beyond dispute that some of those who were killed were fleeing, crawling away, or coming to the aid of those who had already been injured.
I’ve realised that, when we write about England’s history with Ireland, the reason we might spell out the details of these atrocities is in the vain hope that some imaginary English person reading will better understand the dynamic between our neighbouring islands. There is little evidence that this approach is working, but it feels wrong not to try.
In perhaps the noblest moment of his regrettable tenure as Prime Minister, David Cameron delivered what appeared to be a sincere apology for the war crimes of his soldiers.
“There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities,” he said in 2010. “What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.”
This was way back when, if nothing else, British politics seemed to exist in the same reality as the rest of the world. Beholden to the principle of cause-and-effect, maintaining at least the charade of decency.
He deleted it in shame pic.twitter.com/9NqXk7BiKu
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) March 7, 2019
But chaos reigns in the United Kingdom now. All available information would suggest that there is not a single member of the Tory party who can be expected to competently carry out the duties of their role. Davis. Resigned. Raab. Resigned. Johnson. Resigned. Rudd. Resigned in disgrace. Grayling. Responsible for mistakes worth £2.7billion to the economy. Fox. Doesn’t know what WTO stands for. Theresa May. The less said the better.
Ireland’s relationship with the United Kingdom is no longer adversarial in any active sense. If anything, the Irish government has spent the last two years trying to save Westminster from itself.
Sadly, the British state’s relationship with Ireland is just as it has always been. One of casual indifference, if not proud ignorance. One of callousness to the point of violence. One of disinterest, to the point of dehumanisation.
As sad as it must be for the families of those killed by the British government, and indeed Ireland at large, there is nothing we can do. This will not change. Karen Bradley might resign, she might not. She will be replaced by someone else who will make the same mistakes. Britain is broken beyond repair, or at least any repair that would be achieved by replacing Karen Bradley. This malaise is root and branch, and until Britain is free of this colonial mentality, Ireland will not be free of their ignorance, nor their harm.
Ireland must now brace for the possibility of news that the soldiers will not be prosecuted over Bloody Sunday. What the British politicians will come out with then doesn’t bear thinking about.
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