A name that we must not forget
(Editorial, Irish News)
Many different dates have been suggested as marking the start of violent conflict in Ireland.
They go back as to 1169 and beyond , and will obviously include 1690, 1798 and 1916, but there is a strong case for confining the debate to periods within living memory.
Forty years ago yesterday (Sunday), John Patrick Scullion, a 28-year-old Catholic, was found slumped on the ground outside his home at Oranmore Street in west Belfast.
It was initially believed that he had suffered some form of collapse, while doctors later came to work on the theory that he had been stabbed.
Mr Scullion suffered several cardiac arrest in hospital, and died two weeks later from brain damage.
The IRA, to all intents and purposes, did not exist at the time, and few suspected that the UVF had started to reorganise in loyalist parts of Belfast.
There had been riots in the Divis Street area of the city two years earlier, largely inspired by confrontational speeches from a young Ian Paisley.
He believed that a single Irish tricolour in west Belfast was unacceptable, a sentiment which he would be unlikely to advance today, but in any case calm returned fairly swiftly.
The authorities either never imagined, or simply refused to consider, that Mr Scullion might have been the victim of something much more sinister than a random robbery or an unexpected personal grudge.
He was buried with little publicity, but concerns subsequently grew to a level which necessitated his body being exhumed.
A more detailed autopsy revealed that he had been shot several times, and it emerged that the UVF had indeed been responsible.
It was established beyond doubt that Mr Scullion had been murdered for no other reason than his perceived religion.
Some blamed the atrocity on passing tensions associated with the 50th anniversary of either the Dublin Easter Rising or the Battle of the Somme.
There was little or no hint that a motivated and determined group was determined to revive a nakedly sectarian agenda and force it upon an entire community.
Before long, the entirely legitimate aims of the civil rights movement were countered by increasingly reactionary elements on the loyalist side.
Suddenly, the north was gripped by equally unjustifiable murder campaigns from both loyalist and republican paramilitary groups which had devastating consequences for enormous numbers of innocent people.
The forces of the state struggled to respond, and frequently became involved in unacceptable activities which only escalated the crisis.
Mayhem followed, and the name of Mr Scullion has largely been forgotten after well over 3,000 similar and equally tragic funerals.
He deserves to be remembered today, as all parties finally agree that our differences can only be resolved by purely constitutional methods.
June 13, 2006
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This article appeared first in the June 12, 2006 edition of the Irish News.
