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Moral emotions, dealing with the past and recalibrating the relationship between victim and

victimiser.

Introduction

The emergence of a strong vein of research on emotion and transitional justice is unsurprising.

Transitional justice processes, after all, include the release of prisoners, the issuing of apologies, the

granting of amnesties, the holding of criminal trials and sometimes even the coming into political

office of those once engaged in political violence. Rarely, is any of this uncontested, particularly by

victims who have, for ulterior political purposes in many cases, been afforded the ‘moral authority’

to determine the justness or otherwise of how these processes deal with their victimiser.1 Victim

constituencies, though, are not heterogeneous nor do they speak with a united or unanimous voice.

On the one hand there are what the literature calls ‘forgiving victims’ who support the process of

transition and accept that this might necessitate taking a broadly more tolerant approach to the

post-conflict treatment of their victimiser.2 On the other hand there are those who are labelled

‘unreconciled victims’3 and ‘resentful victims’4 who are unwilling, perhaps even unable, to accept

transition because they believe justice has not been dispensed to their victimiser. Add to this the

further complication that these calculations encompass not only what the victimiser did during the

conflict but also what they are doing after it,5 and we begin to get a fuller view of how complex the

emotional terrain of transition is.

Martin McGuinness

1 Ruth Jamieson, ‘Framing Blame and Victimhood in Post-conflict Northern Ireland’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War, eds. Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 169 – 187.2 Kieran McEvoy, Ron Dudai & Cheryl Lawther, ‘Criminology and Transitional Justice’ in The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (6th ed) eds., Alison Leibling, Shadd Maruna & Lesley McAra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 403.3 Michael Ure, ‘Post-Traumatic Societies: On Reconciliation, Justice and the Emotions’, European Journal of Social Theory, 11 (3) (2008): 283 – 297.4 Panu Minkkinen, ‘Ressentiment as Suffering: On Transitional Justice and the Impossibility of Forgiveness’, Law & Literature, 19 (3) (2007): 513 – 531.5 John Brewer, Peace Processes: A Sociological Perspective (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).

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In the context of the North of Ireland, this point arguably applies to Martin McGuinness more so

than to any other figure associated with the conflict or transition there. McGuinness was a self-

confessed Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander, reputed to have been its Chief-of-Staff at one

stage. While appearing at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin in 1973 he told the judge ‘I have been

a member of the Derry IRA for two years and I am very, very proud of it’.6 Far from revising this

during transition, McGuinness continued to publicly state his pride at being in the IRA.7 However,

McGuinness was also what John Elster refers to as a ‘driver’ of transition.8 He was integral to

persuading most Irish republicans to accept the peace process and to subsequently work the process

of transition that followed. As a ‘driver’ of transition McGuinness; served as Minister for Education

and then as Deputy First Minister in the power-sharing executive, stood with Unionist political

leaders and the then Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable in publicly

condemning spoiler violence, engaged with the British monarchy in the spirit of outreach to

Unionists, and engaged in reflectively self-critical discussions with victims of the IRA. Throughout all

of these endeavours McGuinness never hid nor disavowed his IRA past, frankly accepting that this

posed difficulties for some people but nonetheless arguing ‘I was once in the IRA. I am now a

peacebuilder. I don’t expect anyone to take me at my word. I expect them to take me at my deeds’.9

Following his retirement and death last year, media commentary on McGuinness’ transition from

IRA commander to peacemaking statesman was loaded with the reactions of both ‘forgiving victims’

and ‘resentful victims’. In order to help us further conceptualise and understand emotion,

transitional justice and the relationship between victim and victimiser, this paper will critique that

6 ‘McGuinness should tell his story and set record straight to help victim families, accessed via http://campus.ie/surviving-college/mcguinness-should-tell-his-story-and-set-record-straight-help-victim-families (accessed 27 January 2017).

7 ‘Martin McGuinness ‘proud’ of his IRA past’, Derry Journal, 12 October 2015, http://www.derryjournal.com/news/martin-mcguinness-proud-of-his-ira-past-1-7006716 (accessed 3 November 2017).8 Jon Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).9 ‘Interview with Martin McGuinness & Colin Parry’, Right Word Comms, http://rightwordcomms.co.uk/interview-with-martin-mcguinness-colin-parry/ (accessed 20 March 2017).

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coverage. Accordingly, two theoretical points are relevant; firstly that emotion involves moral

judgement, and secondly that moral emotions are relational. Mihaela Mihai, in her work on emotion

and transitional justice, recognises both of these, conceptualising emotion as a judgement that is

comprised of a ‘target’ (the person/thing judgement is directed at), an ‘instigation’ (the cause of the

emotional response), and an ‘objective’ (the outcome of an emotional response).10 While agreeing

with Mihai, this paper goes further to argue that changes in the emotional relationship between

victims and their victimiser mirrors a change in where the victim, as ‘judgemental self’, emplots their

victimiser (ie ‘target’) on their imagined ‘politico-moral’ spectrum. From an initial position of

distance where the ‘instigation’ was premised on standing in moral and/or political opposition to

their victimiser, ‘forgiving victims’ have moved in proximity on their imagined politico-moral

spectrum towards their victimiser with the ‘instigation’ now being to recognise them as transitional

fellow travellers. Before examining this in the case of McGuinness, it is worth drawing out the

theoretical underpinnings of moral emotions a little further.

Moral emotion

Socio-legal studies on emotion argue that it is central to the process of moral judgement.11 Moral

emotions can therefore be best understood as a judgement of what is right and wrong, what is good

and bad and what is just and unjust. They can be positive or negative – that is, the ‘instigation’ may

derive from an adherence to or a violation of imagined moral codes. They can also be directed at the

self or at others. Moral emotions can be ‘self-critical’ when they directed at oneself for violating the

moral code or they can be ‘other-critical’ when directed at others for their violation of the moral

code, and they can be ‘other-suffering’ where they relate to witnessing another experience

something bad or they can be ‘other-praising’ where they derive from seeing someone do something

10 Mihaela Mihai, Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).11 Susan Bandes and Jeremy Blumenthal, ‘Emotion and the Law’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 8 (2012): 161 – 181; Susanne Karstedt, ‘Emotions and criminal justice’, Theoretical Criminology, 6 (3) (2002): 299 – 317.

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good.12 Further to this, in post-conflict societies moral emotions can either be ‘future focused’, when

positively concentrating on a peaceful present and better future, or they can be ‘past focused’,

where negative emotionality is carried from past conflict into the transition.13 Transition, as Cheryl

Lawther recently argues, also creates emotional friction between loyalty to past (to lost ideals,

victims and dead comrades) and loyalty to the future (to a new peaceful dispensation and the

development of one’s community).14 Finally, moral emotions can be directed at a ‘target’

individually, on the basis of something they personally have done, or directed at them vicariously on

the basis of their association with a particular group.15

If we condense this theory and apply it to Martin McGuinness, then, we will see that differences in

the moral emotions exhibited towards him by ‘forgiving victims’ and those exhibited towards him by

‘resentful victims’ reflect the not only the difference between positive and negative moral emotions

but also differences between ‘future focused’ and ‘past focused’ emotions, ‘other-critical’ and ‘other

praising’ emotions and loyalty to the past and loyalty to the future. Likewise, these emotions can be

seen to be directed at McGuinness due to his own personal role in the conflict and the transition and

because of the collective role of Irish republicans in the conflict and/or transition.

McGuinness ‘does’ transitional justice

To truly understand the moral emotional relationship between McGuinness and IRA victims, it is

necessary to critically examine the interaction he has had with them while, as Kieran McEvoy has

labelled it, ‘doing’ transitional justice.16 On a practical level, he has engaged with victims in order to

help bring closure and truth to them. For example, he personally intervened and appealed for those

12 Jonathan Turner and Jan Stets, ‘Moral Emotions’ in Handbook of Sociology of Emotions eds., Jan Stets & Jonathan Turner (New York: Springer, 2006), 550.13 John Brewer, ‘Guilt, Righteous Anger and Forgiveness as Issues in Transitional Justice’, paper presented at ‘Transitional Justice, the Legacy of Guilt and the Question of Punishment’ University of Warwick 4 March 2016, http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/guilt-righteous-anger-and-forgiveness-as-issues-in-transitional-justice(ee1dcde9-cb36-4747-9682-6926e43b1431).html accessed (23 October 2017).14 Cheryl Lawther, ‘The Truth about Loyalty: Emotions, Ex-combatants and Transitioning from the Past’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, (2017) advanced online access.15 Turner & Stets (2006): 551.16 Kieran McEvoy & Lorna McGregor eds., Transitional Justice from below: Grassroots activism and the struggle for change (London: Bloomsbury, 2008).

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with information on the Disappeared to come forward and help the families secure the retrieval of

their loved ones remains.17 Perhaps, though, it has been engagements on a symbolic level that have

been most significant in recalibrating the moral emotional relationship he shared with victims of the

IRA.

In public engagements with IRA victims McGuinness demonstrated a capacity to step outside the

Irish republican comfort zone. He expressed regret for the actions of the IRA, acknowledged the hurt

they had caused their victims and spoke of his willingness to not only repair this hurt but to consign

such hurtful violence to the history books. The most instructive example of this can be found in the

following comments he made during a speech at a peace conference marking the 20 th anniversary of

the Warrington bombing where the IRA killed two young boys:

As a republican leader it would be hypocritical of me to seek to distance myself from

the consequences of armed struggle or the IRA’s role in it. Nor can I or would I

attempt to excuse the human loss caused by the IRA bomb in Warrington… it’s

shameful that two young boys lost their lives... Regrettably, the past cannot be

changed or undone. Neither can the suffering, the hurt or the violence of the conflict

be disowned by republicans or any other party to the conflict.18

In critically evaluating McGuinness’ comments we could say from a theoretical perspective that he

exhibited ‘self-critical’ emotions through the expression of shame and regret at the killings and

‘other-suffering’ emotions like empathy and compassion in recognising the hurt caused to others by

the IRA.

However, in the same speech McGuinness also added:

17 ‘McGuinness’ missing victims vow’, The Express, 9 May 2007, http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/6581/McGuinness-missing-victims-vow (accessed 27 January 2017).18 ‘Interview with Martin McGuinness & Colin Parry’

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The challenge for all of us engaged in the peace process... is to ensure that there can

never be a repeat of what went before. We must learn the lesson of history; we

must build a durable and just peace... Peace building, like conflict, is a joint

enterprise. I challenge all of the parties to the conflict to pledge their commitment

to the type of acknowledgment, respect and compromise we need to move forward

in the years ahead.19

In terms of moral emotions, McGuinness is striking a redemptive tone here when speaking of the

need to repair hurt and build the peace further. In doing so, he is demonstrating future focused

emotions that are ground in loyalty to the future.

Away from the glare of the public eye, McGuinness was also ‘other-suffering’ too. This is

demonstrated in the following account of a meeting he had with a victim whose brother was shot

dead by the IRA – notably, McGuinness had later had given the eulogy at the funeral of his brother’s

killer. Recollecting the encounter the victim said:

I was at a meeting in Stormont…. Edwin Poots [Unionist politician] introduced me

mentioning how my brother was shot by the IRA. McGuinness asked me if he had

been killed, when I told him he was, he said he was sorry to hear that… he

approached me afterwards and said “god bless you Ronnie”. He gave me the

impression he was being genuine, so I bear him no ill will.20

Even if McGuinness did not disavow IRA violence, on the occasions examined above he was able to

display empathy and compassion in recognising the hurt that republicans had inflicted on others

without trying to qualify this with an ideological defence of that violence. Accordingly, we might say,

19 Ibid.20 ‘’I feel pity for McGuinness’ says IRA victim’s brother’, News Letter, 18 January 2017, http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/i-feel-pity-for-mcguinness-says-ira-victim-s-brother-1-7779157/amp (accessed 27 January 2017).

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following the lead of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, that he is showing remorse by not trying to

rationalise or justify past acts.21

Reception by ‘resentful victims’

Notwithstanding this, McGuinness’ approach of being ‘self-critical’ and ‘other-suffering’ without

repudiating either his own past or the legitimacy of the IRA campaign failed to impress ‘resentful

victims’. Having McGuinness lauded as a peacemaking statesman fuelled their negative emotions

because it betrayed their moral expectation that those victimisers like McGuinness would be

punished, shamed and excluded during transition rather than being included and legitimised as a

bona fide political actor.22 Anger, understood as the emotional response to the actions of others that

are ‘judged unfair and unjust’,23 is thus discernible in the protests of one victim of the Shankill bomb

that ‘our politicians are falling over each other to wish him well, have they forgotten already who he

is and what he has done?’.24

Resentment, understood as the feeling that a past wrong has not been righted, 25 is present in the

reaction of other IRA victims. One victim of the Claudy bombing said on the occasion of his

retirement:

He is being hailed now as a great champion of peace. I can’t agree with that,

because if he was truly a peacemaker he would have went over all the things he was

involved in, talk to the people who have lost loved ones and told them why he did

it... Maybe he thought that he was justified because of his cause or politics. But

21 Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, ‘Remorse, Forgiveness, and Rehumanization: Stories from South Africa’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 42 (1) (2002): 7 – 32.22 Mihai (2016), 40.23 Turner & Stets (2006), 554.24 Leona O’Neill & Rebecca Black, ‘Troubles victims who will not forgive ill Martin McGuinness for suffering IRA inflicted’, Belfast Telegraph, 23 January 2017, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/troubles-victims-who-will-not-forgive-ill-martin-mcguinness-for-suffering-ira-inflicted-35389273.html (accessed 27 January 2017).25 Trudy Govier, Forgiveness and Revenge (London: Routledge, 2002).

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nothing justifies taking a life. It is a hard thing to say, but I will never, ever forgive

him.26

Likewise, one of the Enniskillen bombing victims argued:

He’s been hailed as this hero and statesman, (but) I still see him as Martin

McGuinness, the terrorist whose organisation brutally murdered my father. I live in

pain for the actions of his organisation. He legitimises what the IRA did and shows

no remorse, and I find that very difficult to accept.27

For these victims McGuinness’ personal involvement in and commitment to the transition was not

enough because while he may have expressed regret or remorse over certain transgressions he did

not cede any ground in relation to the legitimacy of his ideological cause nor did he disclose details

of his own past violence. In effect, the crux of the matter rests on the fact that in order to legitimise

them as victims and to delegitimise himself as a victimiser McGuinness needed to frame the past

within the politico-moral framework ‘resentful victims’ subscribe to.28

Because this did not transpire McGuinness, framed as an ‘unrepentant terrorist’, remained a ‘target’

of personally and vicariously directed ‘other-critical’ negative moral emotions. The ‘instigation’

underpinning this is both his IRA past and how he addressed this during the transition; anger at his

initial involvement in political violence and resentment over his failure to disavow that violence, to

divulge what he knew to the victims of it and perhaps even too for the perception that he was

benefitting from it. These emotions are conditioned by loyalty to the past; loyalty to an ideological

belief in the illegitimacy of McGuinness’ cause and loyalty to the memory of lost loved ones. Rather

than recalibrating their relationship with McGuinness as victimiser, these ‘resentful victims’ have

locked down their existing relationship with him and cemented his position on their politico-moral 26 O’Neill & Black (2017).27 Allen Preston, ‘Ruthless Provo or builder of peace? Victims split over Martin McGuinness legacy’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 January 2017, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/ruthless-provo-or-builder-of-peace-victims-split-over-martin-mcguinness-legacy-35385253.html (accessed 20 March 2017).28 Jan de Vries & Jacinta de Paor, ‘Healing and Reconciliation in the L.I.V.E. Program in Ireland’, Peace & Change, 30 (3) (2005): 329 – 358.

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spectrum. At the time of his retirement and death in 2017, after almost 20 years of transition, he

remained in the same relationship of distance from them along that spectrum as he did during the

conflict.

Reception by ‘forgiving victims’

Having asked to be judged by his ‘deeds’ rather than his ‘words’, and standing to his record as a

peacemaker, McGuinness’ redemptive deeds of engaging with political opponents, the British

monarchy and those allied against spoiler groups have led to some victims recognising both the

value and the sincerity of his personal endeavours. In being sufficiently self-critically reflective in

addressing the legacy of a conflict that he individually, and Irish republicans collectively, were a part

of, he had shown the necessary emotional and personal investment to the ‘moving on’ process. 29

This allowed some victims to acknowledge the redemptive underpinning to McGuinness’

engagement with them, with some victims even prepared to extend gratitude to McGuinness for his

personal role in consigning the violence that had hurt them to the past. Alan McBride, for instance,

said that Northern Ireland ‘owes a debt of gratitude’ to McGuinness because while his ‘fingerprints

are all over the Troubles... they are also all over the peace process’.30 Likewise, Colin Parry whose son

was killed in the Warrington bomb commented that McGuinness ‘deserved great credit’ for venturing

beyond the republican comfort zone in the cause of peacebuilding and, in so doing, ‘put[ting] himself

at some risk within some elements of his own community in Northern Ireland’.31 While such victims

have not forgotten, nor necessarily forgiven, McGuinness’ past role in the conflict they are

nonetheless cognisant of the role he has personally played in driving forward the process of peaceful

transition. One victim of the IRA summed up this reality when he said:

He and others did cause an awful lot of pain and hurt within the victims community.

But he did get (the peace process) to the table. People aren’t dying anymore and

29 de Vries & de Paor (2005).30 ‘Martin McGuinness: IRA survivors and their families speak out’, BBC, 21 March 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39337760 (accessed 21 March 2017).31 Ibid.

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bombs aren’t going off. I think that he will be missed when he goes and I wish him

well.32

Here we can see a common convergence between the moral emotions shown by Martin McGuinness

when he was ‘doing’ transitional justice and those expressed by the victims above; both are

characterised by ‘future focused’ emotions and both reflect loyalty to the future. Granted,

McGuinness may not have repudiated his own violent past or the violent past of Irish republicans

more generally, and fundamental disagreement over the legitimacy or otherwise of that violence no

doubt persisted, but in being sufficiently ‘self-critical’ and ‘other-suffering’ in his approach to the

legacy of that past, McGuinness provided the scope for some victims to change the moral emotions

felt towards him. He became the ‘target’ of ‘other-praising’ moral emotions like gratitude, the

‘instigation’ being his personal investment in the transitional process and the resultant movement

out of protracted everyday political violence. The ‘objective’, then, is to have McGuinness recognised

and credited as a peacemaker.

Through his involvement in the transition, McGuinness the peacemaker had changed his location on

the politico-moral spectrum of such victims, transforming himself from an avowed political enemy to

a fellow traveller in the process of bringing peace to Northern Ireland. In forging a new relationship

of proximity that displaces the old relationship of distance, these victims no longer set themselves

up in competition to McGuinness as ‘terrorist’ but now see themselves as sharing common ground

with McGuinness as peacemaker.

Conclusion

In conclusion, then, what does this tell us about recalibrating the victim-victimiser relationship in a

context like the North of Ireland where the past is still contested and still in the process of being

painfully dealt with? Well, if we choose to be pessimistic we might point to ‘resentful victims’ as

evidence that unless and until there is a total and unconditional repudiation of long held ideological

32 Preston (2017).

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frameworks the scope for recalibration of the victim-victimiser relationship is marginal. The type of

personal and collective ‘sackcloth and ashes’ disavowal they seek is simply not going to happen – yet

even if did it remains questionable as to whether this, absent the most severe retributive sanctions,

would actually sate their demands for ‘justice’ as they understand it. However, if we choose to strike

a more optimistic note, we could similarly point to ‘forgiving victims’ to say that a wholesale

repudiation of one’s personal and collective past is not in fact required for a tentative recalibration

of the victim-victimiser relationship. The McGuinness example shows that a genuine and sincere

expression of ‘self-critical’ and ‘other-suffering’ emotions by victimisers that falls short of disavowing

one’s past can foster a future focused emotional climate that allows a new relationship based on

loyalty to the future to slowly emerge between victim and victimiser.