Despite years of detective work and the expenditure of millions of pounds of public money, another attempt by the UK state has failed to bring truth and justice to scores of victims of the violence of the so-called Troubles period in Northern Ireland.
This attempt, known as The Kenova Report, is the latest in a line of successful obfuscations, generalisations, duplicities and the ‘washing of hands’ typically produced by all regimes hell-bent on maintaining power, by not owning up.
No one will stand and give account. No one is accountable.
No one will be charged. No one is accused.
No one will be condemned. No one is guilty.
No Monarch, Lord, Lady, Minister, MP or General will face consequences.
The accomplices of the scot-free UK State Forces are in the Irish Republican Army. Like their handlers in the UK secret services, police and army, they will not be brought to book.
At the centre of the activities under investigation are those of British state agents running members of the Irish Republic Army (IRA) as double agents, by covering their activities of murder, kidnap, torture and defaming. One dead IRA member is worth less than one double agent in war activities carried out in tight areas of cities and towns and among small rural communities, leaving legacies of hurt, grief and shame long after the state agents retire on top-end civil and military pensions, easing into armchairs offering good views of mantlepieces laden with honours, gongs and medals, for service to the Crown.
The takeaway message from the report is that the state, in collusion with the IRA, conspired to murder some of its citizens.
The body, with a bullet in the back of a head, dumped on waste ground or on a country road, is the legacy of this report. The sickly taste of having been traduced one more time sours the mouths of the victims’ families.
The writers of the report call for apologies from the British State and the Irish Republican Army, who colluded to kidnap, torture and kill people without any consequences.
Could this happen in any other part of the UK or Ireland?
A leader of the Republican Movement, a cover-all term for political and military groups and their supporters, if not their members, and now the leader of Government in Northern Ireland, immediately issued an expression of sorrow and regret.
It is no more than anyone would say. We are all sorry for what happened.
The Secretary of State for the UK says that now is not the time for an apology. When is it the right time? It awaits the issuing of individual case briefings and the finalisation of the report, likely to happen on the other side of a UK election. Hand-washing by electioneering?
How does a human make an apology, when it isn’t meant to have any consequences?
The classic steps are similar in all human languages. More arcane versions are being developed in computer languages, as part of Artificial Intelligence advances to equip robots with this vital piece of software.
In English, a classic apology goes as follows:
I am sorry for …
action/occurrence/event
I will …
action/redress/recompense
By way of illustration, consider an incident involving two footballers, in a heated game in a women’s tournament.
Player 1 says
I am sorry for breaking your leg.
I will not do it again.
She may go further.
I will visit you in hospital and bring grapes.
Player 2 may accept the apology. She may consider it insufficient. She may not consider it sincere.
A variation on this classic formula is widely found in contemporary public life.
I am sorry that you were...
emotion
The notable changes from for to that and from I to you clearly demonstrate the shift of agency from the apologiser to the person receiving the apology. A further significant change is from action to emotion.
This form of the algorithm is commonly used in cases where the apologiser is under pressure not to give way.
Player 1 says
I am sorry that your leg was broken.
I am sorry for the hurt this has caused.
Player 2 may accept this apology. Or she may doubt Player 1’s trustworthiness.
Elaborations on this variation occur widely in public life. It is known informally as The Half-Apology and, more formally, as The Politic Apology.
Only by actively ensuring that war never again gets a grip in a just and equal society will there be no further need for apologies.
The Apology Algorithm
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