The Truth Commissioner

The book I finished recently was about four men. The titular figure leads a panel that hears from combatants during the Troubles. The other three men are combatants. The combatants are given immunity in return for their honest recollection of their role in a murder or murders. The idea is that the relatives have some closure by finally knowing what happened to their loved one.

Northern Ireland hasn’t had a truth and reconciliation commission. The short explanation is that the British Government and the British Army was up to its eyeballs in the atrocities. It had agents in both camps (IRA and the various Protestant squads) who passed info back to the Brits but who also were involved in the worst atrocities. By being British informants, they managed to secure themselves immunity. The British may even have arranged bombings or killings in order to incite hatred toward whomever they pinned the blame on.

Back to the book. It focuses on the disappearance of a teenage boy who was picked up by the IRA and accused of being a tout (informing). The truth commissioner is made out to be a hard bitten, vain, immoral man, who is hated by his daughter. He sees the commission as agitprop and as delivering nothing of value to the suffering families.

The other three men are portrayed as good family men, as hard workers, as very likeable, conscientious characters. But all three are undone by the truth commission. Facing the pain of the boy’s mother and sister--and a tape recording of his “confession”--two witnesses break rank and give evidence that was not approved by their handlers in the IRA and the RUC. Their testimony implicates a Sinn Fein minister.

It’s odd that the unlikable truth commissioner ends up looking the hero--with the possibility of reconciliation with his daughter--while the other three have lost everything. None of the three killed the boy, but they were in the orbit of events surrounding his death. If that makes any sense. I came away thinking that for many people there were no good choices during the Troubles, so which bad choice would you make?
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