Half time core

The dust has settled. The circus has folded its tents in Seoul. The backs have been slapped. The caravan departs, like a hail of meteorites, to return in four years time. And then, who knows? But now we’ve passed the equinox. The year is half-gone, more or less. We should be getting a sense of what it adds up to (possible Osama-strikes apart).

Looking at what happened in the World Cup, we could have been winners, not participants.

The players will be remembered fondly. But otherwise, the rosy glow is fading fast. Certainly, at this growing distance, the manager seems to be good at cosseting and coaxing lesser talents, as he was himself once coaxed and encouraged. But his stubborn support of certain players and persistence with Duff in the wrong position is poor team management. His decision not to have the team practice penalties fulfils Keane’s mordant forecasts – fail to prepare, prepare to fail. As they did.

Yeah, I know it’s been chewed to death, so I won’t labour it. But this was the minnows’ chance. And there’s no escaping it. As you read this, we could have been just recovering from celebrating a victory in the final. It’s true! There was no great team, unlike 1998, when France towered above the rest.

Europe won’t be half as easy.

In our parallel universe, the more or less real world, this now looks like being another year of revelations and reports. More and more stones are being turned over regarding clerical sexual abuse. You thought there couldn’t be more? There is. And the first reports are about to emerge on financial matters – the Ansbacher affair is to lead the way. The tribunals will follow, slowly and surely.

The preoccupations in Northern Ireland are different, but equally pressing. There aren’t tribunals. But there are Inquiries – the Saville enquiry into Bloody Sunday, and the Stevens inquiry into policing matters. Complementing these, there is the growing persistence of reports, for example by the BBC programme Panorama, of collusion between elements in the security forces and loyalist killers in the past.

They instanced a range of murders of convenience, one of which was the assassination of solicitor Pat Finucane, and introduced a cast of characters, each one seamier and more sinister than the one before. Names have been named.

Panorama was fascinating and chilling in equal measure. There was dirty work at the crossroads and evil on the hoof. It seems that some of Sinn Féin’s allegations weren’t so farfetched as they might have seemed at the time. That’s not a comfortable realisation for many.

Make no mistake – the kind of criminal collusion indicated was not unlike the kind of covert activity condoned by American administrations in the 1960s and 1970s in South East Asia and Chile, to take just two examples.

And yes, it’s true that a guerrilla war makes extra demands on security forces, who often feel that they are being made to fight with one hand strapped to their back. Ask the Israelis, who have no scruples or compunctions when it comes to covert or overt action.

But it’s no excuse. There is a democratic imperative to operate within the law, even when your enemy is anti-democratic and violent, as the IRA is in Northern Ireland, as ETA is in Spain, and as the Hamas movement is in Palestine. By this basic rule, the security forces in Northern Ireland failed miserably, and that’s bad for all of us. The sooner the inquiries get their reports into the public domain the better.

That said, given the horrors of the last 30 years, some way should also be found to bring other truths into the open. Like, where are the bodies of the Disappeared? Why was Tom Oliver murdered? And so on. It is right and proper that the security forces be subject to scrutiny and review. But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander... So, bring on the Truth Commission.

Talking of democratic imperatives, I am reminded that the wording for the Nice treaty referendum is available. Study with care. This is important, so tell your friends as well.

We’re not voting on globalisation, although a lot of people will campaign against the treaty on general anti-globalisation principles. There may be reasons for voting against it, but that’s not one. We’re also not voting on GM foods, immigration policies (as such), the environment or Third World debt... so spare me those as well.

In addition, people are introducing topics that should have been addressed in the debate on Maastricht and (especially) Amsterdam. No point in bolting the stable door Maud, the horse is gone.

But one big thing that will certainly come up is neutrality. Even here, there’s confusion. What do we mean by neutrality? Neutrality used to mean that you didn’t take sides in a hot war. Then it came to mean military non-alignment during the Cold War. But some people now think it should include the ‘war on terror’. Yet others think it means we are opposed to militarism. And where do we sit regarding terrorist groups and armed insurrections? Neutral there? Where does Northern Ireland fit in this? Are we neutral there too?

A substantial minority of Irish people thinks neutrality means staying out of NATO or the Partnership for Peace. Some even argue that it involves other things, like global debt. These are key questions – finding out what exactly we all mean by the word will be interesting in itself...

This one is just warming up!

The Hog