Two political activists – one a former member
of the IRA and one a former member of the Ulster Defence Force
(UDF) – have said that getting people on both sides of a conflict
to meet and understand each other is the key to healing divisions
and forging peace.
Joe Doherty and Martin Snoddon - both of whom
now work with former activists and their families - served a total
of 38 years in prison for their involvement in terrorist
activities. The two men were invited to share their experiences and
specialist knowledge this week at the Royal College of
Psychiatrists’ Annual Meeting in Liverpool.
At the meeting, Dr Oscar Daly, consultant
psychiatrist at Lagan Valley Hospital in Lisburn, Co Antrim, said
only 10 per cent of politically-motivated activists who killed had
mental illness – compared with 57 per cent of ‘non-political’
murderers”. “You often hear that people who kill for political
motives are mad. Whatever they are, they are not mad,” he told the
conference.
Mr Doherty, 54, an Irish Catholic, joined the
IRA at 15. He recalled being regularly stopped on his way to school
by British army patrols and his home being searched by soldiers in
the early hours of the morning. “It wasn’t a normal society,” he
recalled.” I was working class. I wanted to be a carpenter or an
electrician and have a family. But I was in a back room learning
how to put bombs together, how to strip machine guns and how to
kill.”
His motivation was the removal of the British
from Ireland. “The more bombs we put in London, the more force we
could put on the British government to leave,” he said. While in
prison, he read of the death of a part-time British soldier killed
on the border. The 57-year-old man was a farmer by day and a
soldier by night. He was shot dead on his tractor by the IRA in
front of his child. “It hit home to me then that the armed struggle
wasn’t working,” he told conference delegates. Since his release 10
years ago, Mr Doherty has worked with the Republican ex-prisoners
group and has supported 20,000 former prisoners. He has met the
victims of violence, including the relatives for British soldiers
killed during the conflict.
Martin Snoddon, also 54, and on the other side
of the political fence, became involved in terrorist activities
through “love and fear” – love for his family and community and
fear that it could be destroyed. At 16, he was given a gun and told
to “defend his community”.
“I chose voluntarily to take up arms in
defence of my community and take the fight to the enemy,” he said.
“I was brought up to respect and love people and I was going out to
kill people.”
He was part of a mission to destroy a unit of
the IRA. The bomb exploded prematurely, killing two people and
injuring another 17. He was captured and imprisoned in HM Maze
prison, Northern Ireland. During his time in jail, he forged a
friendship with a young member of the IRA. Mr Snoddon said: “We had
grown to realise that the use of violence wasn’t going to win the
war for anyone.“
Like Mr Doherty, on his release in 1990, Mr
Snoddon began to meet former political activists and their
families, as well as members of the provisional IRA. He is
now director of Northern Ireland’s Conflict Trauma Resource Centre,
helping those who have been left emotionally troubled by the
conflict. He said: “There were issues around overcoming the
difficulties of dehumanising other people and dehumanising
yourself, as well as issues around families and relationships with
partners and parents. I started to realise the legacy of armed
combat.”
Mr Snoddon has since travelled to Nicaragua,
South Africa, and Gaza to help the recovery of activists and their
families there. “The similarities are immense,” he told the Annual
Meeting.
“Honesty, trust, talking to and understanding
both communities on either side of a conflict was the key to
peace,” said Mr Snoddon. “Try to understand what the leadership is,
what the local economy is like and what their constituency is and
how you can engage with them. It was only through engaging with the
men of violence in Northern Ireland that we achieved a peace
process.”
Both men agreed there was a considerable
legacy left by the conflict, and unless this was addressed, the
seeds for future conflict would be sown. “The last thing that I was
is for my son to take up arms and commit to the same path as I
chose,” said Mr Snoddon.
For further information, please
contact:
Liz Leicester
or Deborah Hart in the Communications
Department.
Telephone: 020 7235 2351 Extensions. 6298 or 6127
References:
Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, BT Convention Centre, Liverpool, 2 -5 June 2009