Truth and reconciliation

I caught the last Facing The Truth (BBC2, Saturday–Monday) in which Desmond Tutu moderated a meeting between the widow of a Catholic killed in the Ulster troubles and Michael Stone, the Milltown cemetery killer, who was behind her husband’s murder by loyalist gunmen. It was slightly less moving than expected — at least before the startling finish. At the risk of being forced to go to Belfast and apologise, like the previous editor of this magazine in Liverpool, Northern Ireland people do grief well — they have what would now be called the ‘grammar’ of grief; they know what’s expected, they have the tone of voice, they have lists: how the victim was innocent, how he was desperately ill, how his wife was pregnant, how he would never have harmed a fly…

I don’t mean they are insincere; merely that long practice and familiarity with 38 years of the situation has told them what to do and how to say it. I’m afraid I became slightly resistant to it when I worked there; both sides believe that their acts of terrorism are regrettable but understandable reactions to intolerable provocation, whereas what the other lot do cries to the heavens for vengeance. But Mr Stone seemed contrite and taken aback by the widow’s outpouring of rage and misery. She told him she forgave him, then said something in an accent so thick that even after four tries I couldn’t understand it, but the tone of which implied something rather different from forgiveness. The Archbishop, with a television producer’s instinct, teased out the ‘money shot’ — a handshake, which he obtained by hinting strongly that that was what God wanted to see. So she suddenly shook Stone’s hand, shouted, ‘Oh my God, my God!’, and ran screaming from the room. It was very sudden and very shocking.