Victimhood and Attitudes towards Dealing with the Legacy of a Violent Past: Northern Ireland as a Case Study
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-856X.12050 |
| Author | Bernadette C. Hayes,John D. Brewer |
| Date | 01 August 2015 |
| Published date | 01 August 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Victimhood and Attitudes towards
Dealing with the Legacy of a Violent
Past: Northern Ireland as a Case Study
John D. Brewer and Bernadette C. Hayes
Research Highlights and Abstract
• Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article provides the first nationally
representative and systematic study of victims’ views on how to deal with the past;
• Focusing specifically on Northern Ireland, it both investigates and provides a com-
prehensive account of the marked divisions between the various religious
groupings—Protestants, Catholics and the non-affiliated—in terms of a range of
truth recovery mechanisms to deal with legacy of its violent past;
• It empirically investigates and validates two key predictors—perceptions of
victimhood and general attitudes towards the past—in determining the source of
these divisions
• It outlines the implications of our findings for other societies emerging from conflict.
Truth recovery mechanisms have become a cornerstone of peacebuilding effortsin societies emerging
from conflict. Yet, to date, the view of victims in post-conflict societies concerning such arrangements
remains highly anecdotal and often second-hand in nature. Mindful of this omission and using
Northern Ireland as a case study, this article investigates the views of victims towards a range of
mechanisms to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s violent past. Based on the 2011 Northern
Ireland Social and Political Attitudes Survey, the results suggest some marked divisions in relation
to this issue, with victims within the Catholic community being significantly more supportive of such
initiatives than either Protestants or those with no religion. Moreover, while perceptions of
victimhood emerge as the key predictor of attitudes among Protestants and the non-affiliated,
general opinions on how to deal with the past are the key determinant of views among members of
the Catholic community.
Keywords: victims; truth recovery processes; Northern Ireland; post-conflict soci-
eties; peacebuilding
Introduction
The past is a slippery thing. There is the ‘actual past’ of real events and then the
‘remembered past’, as actual events are selectively stored in memory. The actual
past disappears almost immediately when actual events are subject to normal
processes of forgetting and misremembering. It is this remembered past that has
social and political currency. The remembered past can be used culturally, to help
define group boundaries and collective memories, and politically, as part of a
political project, such as for nation building and peacebuilding. At the heart of all
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doi: 10.1111/1467-856X.12050 BJPIR: 2015 VOL 17, 512–530
© 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014
Political Studies Association
efforts to bring about reconciliation in societies emerging from conflict is the
question of how to deal with the violent legacy of their remembered past. The
ability to deal, or come to terms, with the remembered past has now moved centre
stage as a key mechanism in conflict resolution and reconciliation.
In order to better access this remembered past, various types of truth recovery
process have been established, ranging from official initiatives, such as the estab-
lishment of truth commissions, amnesty dispensations, public inquiries, and crimi-
nal investigations and prosecutions to unofficial initiatives, such as local forms of
memorialization, documentation, oral history and storytelling. Unlike official truth
recovery mechanisms, which are state-sanctioned and often part of the negotiated
peace agreement, unofficial truth recovery mechanisms are operated by civil society
organisations and tend to be community-based, highly localised, and grass-root in
nature. Of these various initiatives, however, formal truth recovery mechanisms
like truth commissions have become one of the most common options for transi-
tional societies emerging from conflict (Hayner 2011).
One key conundrum facing both formal and informal truth recovery processes is
the peace versus justice dilemma (see Sriram and Pillay 2009). Increasingly,
however, the primary purpose of truth recovery is to foster reconciliation and
societal healing. Even formal truth recovery processes like truth commissions have
moved from a predominantly truth-seeking model to a truth-telling process (Millar
2011). By publicly telling their stories and exposing the truth of past crimes, truth
commissions, it is argued, provide victims and survivors with both a sense of justice
and healing from the trauma of war. Through public performances of truth-telling,
victims help to create a ‘collective memory’, or a shared understanding of the past,
which facilitates reconciliation between former adversaries within society at large.
In fact, as Mendeloff (2004, 359), points out: ‘The process of truth-telling is con-
sidered just as important as the truth itself.’
Yet, as a number of commentators note, the effects of truth recovery processes
appear to be extremely limited and this is particularly the case when formal
mechanisms like truth commissions are considered (Mendeloff 2004). Moreover,
what we know about people’s views of truth commissions remains highly anecdo-
tal, contradictory and geographically specific (see Brahm 2007). For example,
whereas some studies point to the positive and cathartic effects of such truth
recovery mechanisms at both the individual and societal level, others highlight
their psychologically damaging and post-traumatic effects, as well as their inability
to offer genuine redress. In fact, some scholars go so far as to suggest that rather
than facilitating societal reconciliation, truth commissions not only fail to transform
inter-group relations between previously warring parties, but they also rekindle
anger and resentment among victims (Wiebelhaus-Brahm 2010).
Even the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has not been
immune from such criticisms. It is now generally accepted that although the TRC
did contribute to a greater understanding and awareness of the suffering and
injustice inflicted by all parties to the conflict during the apartheid era, it also
sharply divided public opinion along political and racial lines, and it both disap-
pointed, and in some cases, re-traumatised many victims (Hamber 2003;
DEALING WITH THE LEGACY OF A VIOLENT PAST 513
© 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014 Political Studies Association
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