The Troubles, The Ferryman, and Philip Metres, Ph.D. - CSP Episode 0402

yeah i mean i think what you say is exactly spot on it's it's it's one of the themes of my course you know what is the cost and consequence of violence of armed armed struggle or of political violence um because it impacts not only victims but perpetrators you know it hollows them out in some way um so um i think that This play does a really good job at seeing how that always comes home,

kind

of literally and figuratively.

So one of the things I should just say about Northern Irish, the peace process is they had this incredible several year process where they finally came to a political settlement called the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998.

It is still in place.

There have been subsequent agreements that have further solidified and anchored it.

But one important element of that story is that there was no winner.

It was a stalemate.

The IRA and the British Army fought to a stalemate.

And as a consequence, the agreement was not going to decide who won or what the true story was.

So they said it was going to be a fresh start.

But, you know, they've never had an official truth process like they had in South Africa or Colombia or other places, because in those situations there was kind of a winner in a sense, if not a military winner, a sort of moral winner where another story needed to be told.

So actually, the arts play a really, really powerful role in the society to help process and tell truths that the politicians could not come to an agreement on.

And one of those simple truths is also a truth of the Good Friday Agreement, which is the losses have been incalculable and ongoing.

You know, whatever your idea of the cause.

So the IRA would say, you know, we were fighting for freedom.

We were fighting for liberation.

We were fighting to free ourselves from 800 years of the yoke of British rule and colonialism.

And the, you know, the Protestant community would say, you know, we're fighting against terrorism.

We were trying to protect ourselves against a majority island.

who would do anything to remove us sort of thing.

And both of those stories have truth in them, but the fact that people were willing to kill for that truth is kind of, and the consequences of you know, those decisions, what this play really explores.

Yeah, so the concept of the disappeared is just so powerful and devastating because, you know, on the one hand, having someone in your family killed is bad enough, but imagine having them just go away.

Apparently, this was a debate within the IRA.

Like, is this too cruel, actually? Can't we just, you know, prove that they did something bad, kill them and leave them on the street and warn others that you cannot collaborate with the British? And they decided, you know, for whatever reason, for a handful of those cases, maybe 20, at least 20 people, they just disappeared them.