50 TheEconomistFebruary 15th 2020
1J
ude whyte’smother Peggy was a devout
Catholic and part-time taxi driver, well-
known in the market district of Belfast. In
1983, a member of a Protestant paramilitary
group tried to bomb the family home and
injured himself horribly in the attempt.
She nursed him as he lay in the street. Her
son thought this kindness might spare the
family further attacks, but a year later the
same group attacked the house again, this
time killing Peggy and a policeman.
Yet Mr Whyte, a social-work lecturer,
says that if he knew the name of his moth-
er’s killer, he would not tell the police. He
sees no benefit in incarcerating a man who
would now probably be around 60, like
himself, and can hardly have understood
the conflict in which he was involved. “In
my mother’s name, I forgive him,” he says,
explaining that although he has not inher-
ited his mother’s faith he tries to emulate
her empathy.
On the Northern Irish spectrum, Mr
Whyte is an extremist in his advocacy of
forgiveness. A commoner position is that
of Alan McBride, a Protestant whose wifeand father-in-law were killed, along with
eight others, when republicans bombed a
fish shop in the Shankill Road, the heart-
land of loyalism, in 1993. He cannot quite
forgive Sean Kelly, the surviving bomber,
but says he has no desire to see him suffer.
After a struggle to overcome bitterness, he
has come to the point where what happens
to the bomber is a “matter of indifference”
to him, and no longer keeps him awake at
night. He devotes much of his life to coun-
selling victims of the 25-year conflict and
to advocating reconciliation between the
communities.
Jim Wells, an evangelical Protestant
politician whose views on sexuality proved
too hardline even for the socially conserva-
tive Democratic Unionist Party, is—like
many of the more intensely religious par-
ticipants in this debate—at the opposite
end of the spectrum to Mr Whyte. By the
lights of his faith, he says, a wrongdoer can
seek forgiveness only by owning up to his
misdeeds, begging the pardon of those he
has wronged, accepting the penalty that is
due and mitigating the damage done. “Thatis how our Baptist congregation would
treat a member who did wrong,” he says. In
a land in which there is no consensus on
what amounts to a misdeed, that bar is
hard to reach.
Like most places recovering from viol-
ent conflict, Northern Ireland is divided on
the question of whether past wrongs
should be forgiven or atoned for. Forgive-
ness may help a peace process, but leave
justice undone. Atonement may satisfy the
wronged, but punishing wrongdoers risks
reviving conflict: among the issues that
could blow apart the newly re-established
power-sharing government in Stormont,
the cluster of questions known as “legacy”
ranks high. And on the scale between for-
giveness and atonement, Northern Ireland
is moving towards atonement.
Both the Democratic Unionist Party
(dup), which is backed by most Protes-
tants, and Sinn Fein, the Irish republicans
who reliably gain a plurality of Catholic
votes, have trenchant views on legacy, a
catch-all term which includes judicial re-
dress, truth discovery and financial com-
pensation for people affected by the Trou-
bles. Neither talks much about empathy for
the other side, let alone forgiveness. Both
sides want their set of grievances aired.
And the direction of travel in Northern Ire-
land suggests that both are going to get
their way.
When the Good Friday agreement was
signed in 1998, Tony Blair, the then prime
minister, gave secret written assurances toNorthern IrelandBlessed are the merciful
BELFAST
Between atonement and forgiveness of past wrongs, Northern Ireland is moving
towards the more dangerous pathBritain
51 RestoringartefactstotheMaasai
52 Bagehot: The perils of LennonismAlso in this section