Friday 16 May 2014

WRITING THE GHOST OF JEAN MCCONVILLE





In the only photograph of Jean McConville, taken in 1965, she stands beside a row of her children. She’s pregnant, her arms folded, hands hidden, wearing an apron. Her head is tilted, dark wavy hair pulled back and eyes scrunched up against the light.


Recent events involving the arrest of Gerry Adams TD bring the ghost of Jean McConville before us. She and all the other ghosts of the conflict in Ireland remain with us. As a woman, she was 'disappeared'. As a ghost, she remains with us forever.


She was a witty woman and she liked a laugh.


The laughter of the ghost of Jean McConville resounds with the grim laughter of all the dead.


The dead abound, the dead abound.
How do we keep them in the ground?
The past remains, the past remains.
How do we satisfy its claims?
The truth cries out, the truth cries out.
How do we still that urgent shout?


That urgent shout is now a clamour. Every day ghosts appear among us, manifesting their own pain and triggering pain among the living who anguish, then berate themselves for failing to satisfy the claims of the past in a way that would give rest to the ghosts.


The needs of victims and survivors are complex and multi-faceted.


Four areas have been identified that need to be addressed, namely:
Acknowledgement; Truth; Justice, and Reparation.


Addressing these fours areas is both a personal and a public matter. The personal grief of the injured survivor and of the loved one left behind can be told in small occasions of sharing, in acts of silent witnessing, in gestures of solidarity and kindness and in the endeavours of citizens of good will to re-create a civil world.


The public address to these four matters is more complex. It occurs in a contested arena of politics. It is a locale of war continuing by means other than military, involving state and non-state actors.


A narrative needs to be constructed and that a collection of existing narratives should be made out of which, with additional material, the contours of a narrative can be constructed, without conflicting narratives being adjudicated. This will inform the process of moving into a future in which the past will not repeat itself.


Who will write this narrative? Who will collect these existing narratives? Who will not adjudicate the conflicting narratives?


The ghosts will not write it, though their stories are the core of it.


She said no, she had done nothing wrong, and she was not running from anybody. We talked that night. She asked me what I wanted from my life. She told me she missed Arthur and she said she hoped I would find a good man. She gave me a cigarette.


The living are writing it, many of them victims and survivors themselves.

It shouldn’t have happened.


And in the writing of it, they can give rest to the ghosts and succour to themselves, the living, by asserting that it never will happen again.


It was my mother’s first place of her own. Four rooms with an outside toilet, but it was her wee palace. I remember her buying material to make curtains, and going down to Smithfield Market to get junk.





AH 6905; stage-play; Dave Duggan from Plays in a Peace Process; Guildhall Press; Derry; 2008
Advice on Dealing with the Past: A Victim Centred Approach; Commission for Victims and Survivors; Belfast; 2014
Diary; London Review of Books; Volume 35 No. 24; Susan McKay; London; 19.12.2013 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/susan-mckay/diary




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