Liv Tyler is tall and slim with long dark hair. So is Queenie. Liv Tyler cannot tell left from right and finds driving intermittently challenging. So does Queenie. Liv Tyler knows a lot about hobbits. So does Queenie. Liv Tyler sleeps with rock stars (well one in particular). So does Queenie, when she gets the opportunity (although she doesn’t narrow her options so much, not having bagged one yet).
However, Queenie is not Liv Tyler. She knows this, because she does not have incredibly beautiful eyes and translucent skin, nor does she have a lifestyle that involves getting paid to go and live in New Zealand, or free dresses to wear to the Oscars.
Queenie is quite upset about all the kerfuffle around the nasty IRA and their lying and thieving and hoodwinking of just about everyone over the last few years. She is more than a little miffed at the thought that all the overtime she put in during the nineties, when she helped out on the fringes of the peace process, might be about to be flushed down the toilet. She is pissed off that, having grown up in a country where it was possible to watch people being murdered live on television, her views are not considered important. She is particularly upset that seventy people saw Robert McCartney have his throat ripped open in a Belfast bar last week but they’re saying nothing because they’re too scared (she doesn’t believe that for a second, pack of fence sitters).
But mostly she is upset, because Martin McGuinness, who she knows to be a very clever man, seems to be under the illusion that he is NOT currently a member of the IRA Army Council. She was having her breakfast on Sunday morning when she heard him, quite clearly say that he was not, on live radio. And then he said that Gerry Adams NEVER was, and Queenie nearly choked on her toast.
Queenie is like everyone else riding the Celtic Tiger. She would like the peace process, and its dreary steeples, and its brown suited men, and its suave apologists, and its oppressive righteousness to go away. But it never does. And now she has to think about it again.
She thought about it this morning when she saw a photo of Gerry Adams addressing a gathering of his supporters at a memorial for three IRA operatives who were assassinated by British troops (Queenie is being diplomatic in the use of her language here, knowing that some people felt the Troubles was a war). These people were wearing green military clothes and berets. Like the F.C.A., or the Territorials. Only cooler of course, because Gerry Adams, architect of the peace process was there.
Now Queenie is prepared to consider the possibility that her government is lying to her, that’s what governments do after all (isn’t it?), but she thinks that if she went to a memorial to commemorate her dead comrades, she would expect their leader to address the gathering.
Queenie also thinks that traditionally, Irish revolutionary movements that did not have a joint military/ political leadership usually ended up having a split when the political route was chosen. And that never happened in 1997. Not really.
But mostly, she wonders why these mysterious men (or maybe women) who make up the IRA Army Council have never made themselves known. They must be very unassuming. They fought the British army to a standstill, after all. They must be very proud of what they did. They must have wanted to win seats in the Houses of Parliament. To beard the hated enemy in its den. To use his phones and photocopiers and expense accounts to build a brave new world. Queenie wouldn’t have been able to resist. She wouldn’t have been able to contain herself enough to let some unblooded mouthpiece take her place for the next stage in the process. No sirree, she wouldn’t.
But maybe Queenie has it all wrong. She isn’t Liv Tyler after all, despite the superficial similarity and the driving dyslexia and the penchant for rock stars and the diploma in hobbit lore.
Just because Gerry Adams calls himself the leader of the republican family, and addresses military gatherings, and calls all the political shots north and south of the border, and speaks authoritatively on all aspects of the peace process, and struts around like he owns her goddamn country, doesn’t mean he’s a member of the IRA Army Council.
Whatever it is, and Queenie has her suspicions, up until now, she was prepared to let all this slide, because she thought that the Army Council members didn’t name themselves to prevent their enemies using it against them politically. After all, it’s a dirty game. But whatever about stealing money from a bank, or smuggling petrol across the Border, or running parts of Belfast like a personal fiefdom, ripping some bloke’s throat out in a pub because he dissed your capo is not on. So Queenie is not going to let it slide anymore. And neither is anyone else.
And so the appalling vista reopens itself, just in time for the next round of elections. Legions of martyrs and not a hero in sight!
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