To reconcile society, it is necessary to deal with the past

Ballymena SDLP councillor Declan O’Loan will urge Ballymena Borough Council at its January Monthly Meeting to support a structured manner of dealing with the past as an essential element of creating a reconciled society. He will do so as the Council considers a report, “Making peace with the past : Options for truth recovery regarding the conflict in and about Northern Ireland” issued by the Healing Through Remembering Project.

The report analyses the case for and against mechanisms for dealing with the past, and discusses five possible mechanisms for doing so. These are

• Drawing a line under the past.
• Internal organisational investigations.
• Community based ‘bottom-up’ truth recovery.
• A truth recovery commission.
• A commission of historical clarification.

These could be used singly or in combination.

Councillor O’Loan said, “I am convinced that a formal method of dealing with the past will prove to be a vital element without which we cannot succeed in creating a reconciled society. Trust is needed in such a society. Without truth about the past and an agreed mechanism for determining that truth, I believe that we will not have that required degree of trust.

Spain provides an interesting comparison. When democracy was restored forty years after the civil war, there was an unspoken consensus that the past was best left alone. But now thirty years after that, there is a call for remembrance focused on the recovery of 30000 unidentified bodies.

In our situation we see a constant demand for the truth from victims of violence, whether from paramilitary groups or from the state. The needs of victims must be heavily reflected in any truth recovery process, but the process should embrace the needs of our entire society and not simply be victim-led.

A crucial requirement of the process will be absolute independence of government. It will also need to be independent of political parties and combatant groups.

I believe that a necessary follow-through from a truth recovery process would be some formal process of healing. This might involve any combination of remedies of past wrongs, compensation, commemorations and public apologies. This would be a key link between a truth recovery process and reconciliation.

For these reasons I regard the Healing Through Remembering report as a hugely important contribution to discussion around this issue. It needs to be widely discussed. There has in fact been little informed debate on this subject. In so far as there has been debate, it has tended to be around the South African model. This report gives a much more rounded appraisal of the arguments and the possibilities.

How should this move forward? I hope the Council will say to government that it is keen to see this work progress, and progress rapidly. The first stage is to design a widely acceptable truth recovery process. That in itself requires a large debate. But it needs to start with government making a commitment to the matter, and then bring forward proposals for discussion. That is the message that I am asking Council to bring before government.”