It is Sunday morning in Mexico – already night-time in Quatar where Canada is moments from losing against Croatia in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. My boyfriend just asked me why Ireland isn’t playing. I explained that yet again, Ireland failed to qualify, but I am quick to point out, that when the Boys in Green did qualify – albeit only three times – they produced a World Cup finals record to be proud of, with no losses until the fifth game and unbeaten over 90 minutes against Spain, Germany, and England. Then there’s that summer night when they beat Italy at Giants Stadium.
I was in Northern Ireland in 1994, home from the US on an impromptu visit for Father’s Day. I remember my dad was adamant that we would not go to the pub to watch the match between Ireland and Italy. Perhaps because it was the day before Father’s Day – June 18th – I let him convince us to watch from the comfort of our living-room and maybe have a pint or two and something stronger should Ireland win.
By the end of the first half, we had forgotten all about the pub. We didn’t care where we were, because Ray Houghton had scored, and the national team was up 1-0 against the formidable Italians. We roared with pride, my father on his feet, and my mother cheering and at the same time disappearing to the kitchen to make tea at half time. Jubilant, she was also afraid to watch.
Giants Stadium, usually home to the American kind of football, shimmered from a little TV in my parent’s living room. Resplendent in emerald green, natural grass on top of its artificial turf, its stands rocked with 60,000 Irish fans singing the Fields of Athenry. When the referee blew the final whistle, we erupted as though we had won the whole tournament. It was official. Ireland 1, Italy 0. So this is what it feels like to win.
Unbeknownst to us and almost everyone else was that while we were beginning our victory dance during the second half, two men in boiler-suits, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into The Heights Bar, a pub on the side of a country road in Loughinisland, County Down.
With an AK47 and a Czech-made rifle, they shot indiscriminately at the 15 men who were gathered around the bar, their backs to the door. They killed six of them and, according to witnesses, laughed as they made their getaway.
The first killed was Barney Green, a grandfather in his 80s dressed in his best suit to mark Ireland making it to the World Cup.
I didn’t know anyone in that pub. I didn’t know Colm Smyth, who was there only because, like myself, he had spent most of the afternoon convincing his best friend’s father to come to the pub to watch the match. His son was away working in England, so the deal was that Colm would buy him a pint for Father’s Day. At half-time, as elated as the rest of us, Colm bought another round, and then the thing that only ever happened on the news was happening in O’Toole’s bar.
Almost 30 years later, he can still see the brilliant flashes of gun fire in the mirror behind the bar, the balaclavas that cover the faces of the gunmen. He can smell the acrid cordite, the blood pooling on the floor around him.
Shot four times, Colm is down, the weight of his friend’s father – dead – on top of him. Three, four bodies are in a heap next to him. All dead.
“Turn it off!” He cannot understand why the ref didn’t stop the match when the shooting started. Then he realizes that the referee doesn’t know. The fans don’t know. The victorious Irish national team doesn’t know. The families of the dead and injured around him don’t know. Others knew – and know today – what was happening and why – yet, almost 30 years on, no one has been charged; the families of those murdered and maimed in Loughinisland denied truth and justice over and over again.
Today, Northern Ireland’s youngest football fans have never known a bomb scare, a security checkpoint on a country road, or a civilian search. Great progress has been made, with attempts to undermine the facts and the truth and the unacceptable persecution of victims, whittled away by truth-seekers – the families, the documentarians, the artists and journalists, the ordinary people who continue to fight for acknowledgement, accountability, and justice. But we have so far to go to recover from decades of sectarian tension and a multitude of lies, and from our wounds, physical and psychic. The British government’s proposed Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill would halt all progress, betraying all victims. In their joint statement, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin and Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland John McDowell point out that the legacy of The Troubles remains “an open wound and the frailest of seams in our political and social life.” They also express serous doubt about whether “the case ‘review’ provisions of the bill will comply with the provisions of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which require access to a proper investigation of loss of life.”
This past week, after 34 years, the family of civilian, Aidan McAnespie, secured justice. He was only 23 years old, walking through a British Army checkpoint in Aughnacloy on his way to a GAA football match when he was struck in the back by one of three bullets fired from a soldier’s machine gun. If this were my brother, I would want justice. I would want accountability. I would want the truth. While the McAnespie family is relieved today, they must also carry great sorrow for those family members including Aidan’s parents, who didn’t live to hear today’s judgement. Like the McAnespies, like the Loughinisland families, there are so many ordinary people in Northern Ireland who have spent decades pursuing justice, with extraordinary grace, tenacity, and courage. They deserve peace and due process and their day in court. It’s not too late for the British government to do right by them, by so many people so terribly wronged.
World Cup football has placed a spotlight on the Gulf states, giving the Qatari dictatorship a significant platform to pedal its propaganda. At the same time, Quatar’s human rights record has come to light as never before. It’s not too late for the country to salvage its World Cup legacy by remedying its human rights abuses not just during the tournament but beyond it. In recent days, during the House of Lords debate on the human rights record of Gulf countries, Labour Party peer, Lord Cashman argued that
FIFA and world football have placed a spotlight on the Gulf states. It is a spotlight that will last long after the final match. It is a spotlight that reminds us that that which is done against people in other countries is as important and as urgent as if it were happening to us.”
True. And, that which was done to people gathered around a tiny television to enjoy a World Cup game, should be as important and urgent as if it happened to you or those you love.
