The Disappeared BBC 4 presented by Darragh McIntyre

The Disappeared, as the name suggests, were those taken from their homes by the IRA in Northern Ireland during the troubles and their bodies hidden in bogs and ditches in unmarked graves, often in the Republic of Ireland. The most poignant of these was thirty-seven-year old Jean McConville. Her husband had died of cancer. She was a widow and mother of ten children aged between six and sixteen when the paramilitaries came for her in 1972 in the Divis flats. She was an outsider, a Protestant in a Catholic stronghold and there was a rumour she’d helped comfort a wounded British soldier. Her eleven year-old son Michael, recalled the paramilitaries wore masks, but some of them didn’t and he recognised one of the woman, a neighbour and his mother shouting ‘Help Me. Help Me’ as the kids wrapped themselves around their mum’s body. Later, he too was taken away by the IRA’s youth wing and beaten for spreading malicious rumours that his mum had been disappeared by the IRA. They’d put out a press report that she’d been seen…This was a common tactic. Disappeared like Kevin McKee aged 17, he’d been seen…Seamus Wright executed, he’d been seen…’  

            After the IRA Amnesty there was a promise that the disappeared bodies would be returned to their loved ones. After excavations looking for the body of  Jean McConville in the Republic had failed, she  was found by a dog walker on the same beach, but further along.  I found this interesting because her eldest daughter Agnes had a vivid dream she’d been buried on that beach and also because even when the disbanded IRA had offered to help find the body they didn’t know where it was. Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Bog Queen’ provides a backdrop for the different accounts. But to understand the small town mentality of the IRA it’s perhaps worth reading Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal.  

            The kingpin in Cal in Mr Crilly. The kingpin in real life was and is Gerry Adams. He accuses Darragh MacIntyre of recycling the same stories, which he does, of course, because they’re all essentially the same. The Disappeared disappear. He also recycles the story of us all being in some way responsible. What he doesn’t do is admit to be Operational Commander of the IRA when many of those who were disappeared were taken and executed. An old comrade Brendan Hughes says quite plainly he’s lying. Those that came through the IRA ranks with him, Dolours Price (factionalised in Fifty Dead Men Walking) and Brendan Hughes who claimed to be very close to Adams also accused him of lying. Both of them are dead and so not able to refute Adam’s contention that they’d their own reasons for not agreeing with him. Gerry Adams is a politician. His legalese language reminds me of Glasgow’s own Tommy Sherridan. Friends are always disposable. A liar is someone that doesn’t agree with you. Make your own mind up. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen/tv/episode/b03hcfdm/