A couple of very interesting posts in this thread. Pandy's and Alistair's in particular resonate with me. I grew up the son of a British Army infantry officer, who did his National Service in Malaya in the late 50s and later served as both a company and battalion commander in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s.
I spent a couple of years living on base in Ballykelly at the end of the 1970s; like Alistair, I can remember the palpable sense of tension when "the men" were off living in a sanger in South Armagh, and recall the sense of relief when the airborne taxis brought them home. Habits picked up then, as a not-quite-teenager, are still followed now: little things like always crossing a room to close the curtains at night, before coming back to the doorway to turn the light on so as not to present a silhouette to a sniper.
I wholeheartedly agree that it's rich of Republican terrorists-turned-politicians to be baying for "justice" through trials of RUC officers and former servicemen, when there was such a big deal made out of commuting sentences of (both Republican and Loyalist) prisoners in the work up to the peace process. Nobody's end is served by raking over 30-year-old evidence - too many people will be upset whatever the outcome of any trial, and it won't do anybody any good at all to have more people imprisoned as a result of the Troubles.
It's also worth pointing out, I think, that it's far more complicated than "Catholic=Republican" and "Protestant=Unionist." The very term "sectarianism" paints the Northern Irish situation as a battle between Catholic and Protestant - I think it has always been much more temporal than spiritual, and the veil of religion has been used to mask the very earthly politics and economics behind much of the Troubles. The combatants on both sides long ago abandoned any semblance of allegiance to any concept of Christianity. On both sides, they maintain spurious links to one Church or another in a convenient attempt to try to normalise or excuse otherwise abnormal and inexcusable actions.
Throughout most of the last couple of centuries, the heads of both Churches, as Archbishops of Armagh, have at various points been both responsible for feeding the fire of sectarianism, and instrumental in dousing it. It took a lot of effort for the Churches to reach across the aisle. In particular, Robin Eames on the Church of Ireland side and Cahal Daly on the Catholic side did a huge amount of work, often in the teeth of strong opposition, to promote peace in the early 1990s, and the people of Northern Ireland are greatly indebted to both. More so, certainly, than to Mr McGuinness.
