For all the charities and pressure groups registered in Northern Ireland that are concerned with victims’ rights and reconciliation, and for all the air time which is devoted to the matter by politicians of all stripes and pedigrees, seldom does any conversation on the subject address victims as anything more than props to illustrate political opinion.

Nils Christie, Norwegian sociologist and criminologist, constructed the concept of the “ideal victim” which he defined as a “little old lady” who is on her way back from caring for her poorly sister when she is set upon by a much larger, stronger, and younger man who strikes her round the head and steals her handbag. This is the sort of scenario, an open-and-shut case as far as morality is concerned, where the victim will receive the utmost sympathy from most juries; the key is that the victim is unsuspecting, out-matched, and someone who fears crime.

This idea of Christie’s can be applied to a wider array of situations than the scenario described above, certainly within the context of Northern Ireland where everybody has their own victims and the other team will have to wait a while. There is little regard paid in mainstream discourse to victims as individuals, with their own needs and circumstances; nor to victims as people, who have been swallowed into the belly of a dirty, little war. Victims are only cared for as far as they are politically useful, for one side or another; Jean McConville is a name that can be used to tar Sinn Féin, whereas Joan Connolly is the retort.

Last month at An Cuan, on the shore of Rostrevor, an event was held by the Truth and Reconciliation Platform, with the only agenda being to provide a stage for victims of conflict to tell the truth as they understood it to be. The main speakers for the evening where Eugene Reavey, whose three brothers where killed at their home in Whitecross in 1976 by the UVF and Special Patrol Group of the RUC; Alan McBride, whose wife was killed in the Shankill Road bombing on 23rdOctober 1993; Stephen Travers who was a member of the Miami Showband, the band ambushed on the road to Newry by the UVF and UDR on 31stJuly 1975; and Joseph Campbell, whose father was a Catholic sergeant in the RUC, murdered at his Cushendall station in 1977 by loyalist paramilitaries and suspected “rogue elements of the security forces.” The evening was chaired by Newry solicitor, Rory McShane.

Travers summarised the tone of the evening when he said, “I tell you these stories, they tell you these stories, but we don’t tell them in isolation,” but rather each man told his story in the context of a bitter conflict with no winners and where no-one came out on top.

Alan McBride described the years after his wife was killed that he spent in pursuit of some sort of recognition from Gerry Adams, who had carried the coffin of Thomas Begley who had planted the bomb that day in 1993. After a string of letters to Adams with no reply, McBride decided that writing to him as Gaeilge might glean a response, and so went to a library in Belfast where he struggled to write out a letter in “pigeon Irish.” His efforts bore fruit as Adams replied, and wrote back that what had happened to Sharon McBride was wrong. That bit of recognition was followed by the word “but,” and went on to describe that there was “nobody working harder for peace than Sinn Féin.”

McBride contrasted that with a story of being in Edinburgh to film a television programme, along with a former member of the IRA, and a former member of the UVF. After the recording the three of them decided to go for a drink, and as the Guinness moistened their larynxes and softened their attitudes, the IRA man put his hand on McBride’s and said that what had happened to his wife was wrong, with no addendum. With that recognition offered without clauses or obfuscations McBride was then open to the other man’s story which, growing up in the New Lodge in Belfast, was not entirely alien to his own.

Joseph Campbell said that, “you hear about the Reavey brothers, the Miami Showband, you might even hear of Cushendall, but you hear very little about the people behind them.” This followed on from an earlier point which was made by Travers that he was the “most head-hunted bass player in Ireland on the 30thJuly,” but on the 31stno one would go near him; they would have him in the studio but wouldn’t appear on stage with him because they didn’t want to be associated with what had happened to him. When victimhood is put upon someone, it obscures the person that they were before and overtakes their identity.

The question at the head of this article still remains: who considers the complexity of these individuals, and the complexity of their needs, and who reflects those thought processes in their public life?