Mary Kelly: Troubles victims deserve better than the government's flawed legacy plan, Irish News November 12th, 2022

I STARTED writing this on the 35th anniversary of the Enniskillen bombing, one of the awful events of the Troubles which I saw close-up as a newspaper reporter.

Few could forget the terrible scenes after the IRA bomb exploded, killing 11 people and injuring more than 60 as they attended a Remembrance Day service at the town's cenotaph. A twelfth victim, Ronnie Hill, died after 13 years in a coma.

And no-one who heard them, would ever forget the words of Gordon Wilson, who described how he held his daughter Marie's hand as her life ebbed away under the rubble. Yet he was able to speak of forgiveness: "I bear no ill-will, I bear no grudge."

Some years later, researching for a television programme about the IRA man, Eamon Collins, I met a family who had lost their young son, hit by shrapnel in a bomb attack on Banbridge town centre.

They too spoke without bitterness and some time after the incident, they corresponded with an IRA prisoner who had written to them.

The boy's father met the prisoner in jail and took him a bible to read. "We live by it," he said simply.

I remember my mum once said she couldn't understand how people weren't consumed by anger and a desire for revenge when they lost a loved one to the violence.

But when she lost her own sister in a UVF bomb attack on her home, she did understand: "You're just too filled up with sadness. There isn't room for anything else. Hate won't bring her back."

Gordon Wilson wasn't the only one who showed what forgiveness meant. There have been many more, including Patrick McGurk, whose wife and daughter were among the 15 killed in the UVF bombing of his bar in 1971.

I also interviewed a woman whose husband had been shot dead by the IRA after he was mistaken for an RUC detective of a similar appearance, one of the many single-incident deaths that are rarely remembered by the wider public.

They hadn't been long married and she felt her life had effectively stopped with his murder. She wouldn't do a recorded interview because she said she felt ashamed that she was unable to be like Gordon Wilson.

"I know it's the Christian thing to do, but I just can't forgive them," she said.

There were others bereaved and injured in the Enniskillen bombing who did not share Gordon Wilson's views. He also faced criticism from his own community for meeting with IRA men to appeal for an end to violence. He did the same with loyalists, both to no avail.

Victims do not speak with one voice. They are individuals who have different opinions on what happened during the years of conflict and what should happen now.

Forgiveness should not be demanded of them nor should they be asked to 'move on' from the past. But they deserve better than the flawed legacy proposals in the bill now making its way through Westminster. They are united in their opposition to what amounts to a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.