“Ireland already suffers from too much history; in that country history is a disease, a canker from the past that poisons the present. History is a weapon, a poker you keep in your pocket to beat the present senseless and so reorder its alignment to the past and justify present murder.”
Kevin Toolis's emotional exploration of the Troubles spanned 10 years, documenting with precision the war between the Provisional IRA and the British Army. "Rebel Hearts" gets off to a slow start, as the author seemed to struggle to figure out what this book was supposed to be and how large a role he should play in the telling.
“Ten years of journeys within the Irish Republican Soul have made me weary of such political passion and the sacrifice of lives for ideals. But I remain a Republican, albeit a constitutional Republican, both for Ireland and for my adopted country, England. I am a product of my people, I too remain possessed of a rebel heart.”
Toolis eventually emerges as an ancillary character, forced to reckon with his Irish origins and his feelings about the IRA. Fortunately, he eventually moved mostly away from centering himself as part of the story.
“Clausewitz said that war is politics pursued by other means. In Ireland, murder was politics pursued by other means.”
Followers of current events will easily draw similarities between British and Ulster organizations and ICE. Similarly, the author was careful to point out that the parameters of the aggression are unique.
“The Troubles, and this is important to remember, were acts of rebellion rather than revolution. No one had a plan to proclaim a ‘liberated’ Northern Ireland a Marxist state.”
“The IRA were fighting to remove the British Crown from what they regarded as Irish soil and reunite Ireland. The British Government were fighting to defend the Northern Irish state and the desire of the 850,000 strong Northern-Irish-born Protestant population to remain separate from the rest of Ireland. It is the longest war the world has ever known.”
Published in 1995, right near the end of The Troubles, "Rebel Hearts" features a variety of acronyms, and the sprawling number of names and incidents can be difficult to follow. However, Toolis does a tremendous job of documenting the impact of the violence on families on both sides and tying in the lengthy history of the Troubles themselves.
“It was the final bitter contradiction of the Troubles; the justness of the political cause was invalidated by the cruelty of the murders carried out in its name.”
No comments:
Post a Comment