Just covered the Miami Showband killings. God I remember that - Warrenpoint - Mountbatten - Warrington - Inneskillen and the M62 bombings - what a fucking mess it all was.
Saw that last night and found it thought provoking.
I wondered about the timing of the program firstly and then the content and came away unsure what I thought of it to be honest.
It was very good as a reminder of what was endured and what the paramilitaries on both sides tried to destroy.
It did show the army side of things and it did show the futility of what they were being asked to do.
The soldiers on the ground are not politically motivated, they just carry out their duty, but what they were enforcing was basically disrupting ordinary life in local communities.
The closing of border roads isolated farmers from their lands and their markets.
It touched on the fact that the local Unionist landowners supplemented their farming income by joining the defence forces and that they all owned shotguns and had started patrolling the boarder themselves. Some had previously been members of the B-Specials.
It showed the horror of what extremists on both sides stooped to. The Miami Show Band incident was particularly poignant in that it showed the warped strategy and thinking that was going on in the UVF, but the killing of their own community by the IRA, not just targeting of the army, was also quite horrific and the program seemed to want to show just how low they had gone.
Like I said I wasn't sure what I thought of it at first. It was like it was trying in a very short time to show the degradation and the fueling of the septic atmosphere along the boarder. To show it from all sides including an ex-IRA operant who was repulsed by the killing of Patsy? can't remember the surname. A man that they took out of his home and chained him to the wheel of a van and made him drive a bomb in to town while his wife Kathleen was hostage at home. The man saved the lives of many by telling them people to run like hell. He himself was blown up.
I wondered where the program was going but then saw that it was trying to show that there can be reconciliation and there can be hope. The ex IRA woman Ann and Kathleen meet up and there was not the hatred that was expected. A soldier who had his 19 year old mate shot sees the releasing of paramilitary prisoners after the GFA and it angers him. But ultimately he thinks about it and feels it's the right thing to do.
I agree with the sentiments that were put forward but I did think who would it convince that is not already convinced. Would it change any minds? Is the timing of it quite intended as a stark reminder that we could go there again in an instance if things are not given due care, politically?
Good program. Thought provoking.