Gary McMurray conducted this research, which was funded by CRC, to ascertain what victims and the groups they belong to, actually believe about the inclusion/exclusion issue.

When politicians, funders, academics, most reconciliation industrialists talk of the Northern Ireland as it relates to victims, they use inclusive languag exclusively.

This has had a negative effect on victims because it drew a moral equivalence between them and the perpetrators of terrorist violence. 

Further, victims feel that it is much easier to secure decent funding if groups are to use inclusive language, whereas those groups that seek to be more honest in their language, are penalised.

Gary's research report raises some very important points that we all need to take on board.

Reports

 

 

 

West Tyrone Voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inclusion and Exclusion in the Experience of Pro-British Victims

 

 

 

Gary McMurray

 

Summer 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This research project was funded by the Community Relations Council for Northern Ireland, for which grateful acknowledgement is made.

Table of Contents

 

Executive Summary………………………………………………………3

Introduction……………………………………………………………… 4

What the experts say………....…………………………………………..5

Exclusive and Inclusive: the victims’ experience…………………….....7    

Use of language………………………………………………………....12

Inclusive language……………………………………………………....13

Differentiating language……………………………………………......14

Additional questions?...............................................................................17

Practical considerations………………………………………………...21

Conclusions………………………………………………………..……25

References ………………..…….………………………………….…..27

Appendices………………………..…………………………………….28

Questions……………………………………………………….............28

Participating Groups…………………………………………………....31

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Executive Summary

 

This research project attempts to investigate, from theoretical and empirical perspectives, the views held by victims’ groups within the pro-British victims’ sector on the use of inclusive and exclusive language, and how this affects them.  These victim participants have suffered personally at the hands of the Provisional Irish Republican Army through bereavement and injury, both physical and emotional.

 

This project sets out to position the question within its wider context as identified by a short literature search.  It demonstrates that these victims’ groups prefer the use of differentiating language when describing those who were involved in, and suffered from, the terrorist campaign, rather than the almost exclusive use of inclusive language.

 

This is a victims’ perspective that is not really recognised within the broad reconciliation industry, yet one that affects many victims within this sector.  This viewpoint should not be overlooked by the statutory bodies, policy makers or by the funders. 

Introduction

 

There can be no doubt that inclusion and exclusion are big topics, not just in the sphere of victims’ groups, but across the world. For example, search in Google for ‘inclusion’ and you will return 269,000,000 sites; ‘exclusion’ returns 158,000,000; ‘inclusive’ returns 176,000,000 and ‘exclusive’ 627,000,000.  Granted that many of the ‘exclusive’ sites will be offering an exclusive holiday resort, or the journalistic scoop, this may be an early indicator that exclusivity is a common feature of our world, and may not be entirely negative.

 

However, this piece of research is not concerned with the patterns or linguistics of websites. Its focus is on the use of language in connection with victims’ groups, particularly relating to the notions of inclusion and exclusion.  This is a vitally important issue for the groups involved, from the individual members, through to staff and committee, encompassing all their activities and fundraising.

 

It is our contention that the notions of inclusion and exclusion can be seen clearly in the groups through their membership policy, networking, activities and locations.  We will attempt to discover the effects of inclusive or exclusive thinking on these elements, and seek to come to an understanding of why the policies have been introduced. We will also see the effect of such language on the victims.

 

In order to carry out the research, we conducted a literature review on the topic of inclusion and exclusion theory, which directed and informed the remainder of the study. Having considered the issues being raised, we then interviewed key people involved in five victims’ groups to look at these issues.

 

The report, therefore, is the distilling of the findings from the research, as viewed through the lens of the victims’ views and experiences.

 

 

 

What the experts say!

 

In setting out on the research, it was necessary to come to an understanding of the terms of reference, and the key terms. The two main terms were obviously inclusion and exclusion, considering that the main focus of the report is on these terms. However, the definition of victim was also considered important at this early stage, and was in fact vital as the research continued.

 

So what do we mean when we refer to inclusion?

 

Leading on from this, we consider exclusion.

 

The task of defining victimhood in Northern Ireland has been contentious for a long time. While official policy seems to favour an inclusive approach, in accepting everyone as a victim, this approach is not favoured by all. So we find the differences emerging between the definition of a victim as found in the Report of the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield who classes all as victims, regardless of guilt, with that of the victims groups – who are more specific in their definition.

 

A further refinement of these three terms was then needed, as we focused on the relation of these concepts to language, particularly as we considered the ideas of ‘inclusive language’ and the ‘language of differentiation’ – which may be thought of, in some senses as, exclusive language. Our thinking on the language of differentiation has been stimulated by various writers, in various contexts.

 

Volf, in his book, Exclusion and Embrace, discusses the possibility of a scenario where, building on the ideas discussed earlier as we considered exclusion, he proposes to draw a distinction between exclusion and differentiation, which leads to a distinction between exclusion and judgement.[1]

 

However, our direction has also been moulded to some extent by the thinking of Morrissey and Smyth, who argued that there were two approaches to defining victimhood.[2] The first approach is that of universalism, which tends to ‘emphasise that all resident of Northern Ireland – and those who live beyond Northern Ireland – have all been affected by the cumulative effects of three decades of violence.’[3] This approach is based on the social, political and institutional ‘victims’ of the violence, across the community, and the wider level of ‘grievance’ held by individuals and yet, it is not viewed as acceptable or practical by those in authority.  Indeed, it was Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, in his work as Victims’ Commissioner, who acknowledged this approach, before asserting that it was impractical.

 

The reasons for this lay partly in the remit for the Victims Commission – to ‘aim its effort at a coherent and manageable target group,’[4] that is, on practical and resource driven grounds, but also ‘in moral terms, such definitions failed to differentiate between the enormous loss and suffering of some and the lesser suffering of others, thereby creating further grievance.’[5]

 

The second approach is that of inclusivism, which regards all who have experienced human suffering to be collected together. In the words of Morrissey and Smyth, this was a decision to ease the problems of bilateral approaches to the conflict, and therefore, ‘inclusive definitions relying on human suffering as the qualification for victim status were operationalised.’[6] This was the approach eventually taken by Bloomfield, in keeping with the terms outlined by the government.  It is this process of moving through the two above approaches which led to the definition of a victim in the Bloomfield report: ‘

 

However, Morrissey and Smyth then record a third approach which is the most relevant for our study, as it seems to inform or explain the position of the victims groups involved. This is the exclusivist approach, where ‘the use of the terms ‘innocent’ or ‘real’ as qualifications for victimhood began to appear’.[7] Indeed, the groups involved would contend that the ‘moral’ distinction in victims should not be Bloomfield’s distinction, noted earlier, between those who have endured ‘enormous loss and suffering’ and those who have endured ‘lesser suffering’. Rather, the moral distinction would apply to the actions of the individuals involved, as we shall see later.

 

 

 

Exclusion and Inclusion: the victims’ experience

 

In order to ease the participants into the interview, the first question asked about their own experiences of exclusion. This was to allow them to reflect on personal experiences before discussing the concepts in relation to the group, and would also test to see if they used such differentiating language.

 

Participants were able to provide ways in which they had been excluded, ranging from normal family life, through to places they could not travel to. As these reflections were offered, there was a sense of regret, and sadness, as if the victims felt they had made their families miss out on so much of ‘normal’ life.

 

My life hasn’t been my own; it has been dictated by terrorists: where I live, where I can go, where I can eat, where we can gather socially together.[8]

 

You had a severe loss of friends; you didn’t socialise with people because you didn’t want to put them at risk, so you lived in a very limited, excluded area.[9]

 

You couldn’t take the children to the swimming pool… it was listed in the out of bounds areas for security forces… so they missed out on a lot of social life… if they were playing football, you couldn’t go to see them… it was a whole swathe of life that really, you condemned yourself to miss out on… Odd family life – it’s a very short sentence, but boys, it covers a multitude of things that we missed out on.[10]

 

[There are places in our local area] where you don’t feel comfortable going to shop, because the areas are still controlled by republicans and your life would actually be at danger going into them.[11]

 

As well as these pressures inflicted by terrorists, participants also identified a measure of exclusion imposed by the wider community, which itself led to self-exclusion.

 

I always felt you were suspected, because you were a member of a police family. People always looked askance at you, and never felt comfortable even talking about what had happened… And this sort of message was put across – if he hadn’t been in the police this wouldn’t have happened, you know, so in a sense it was our fault; so from that point of view you were being excluded from normal society. And it wasn’t something you wanted to do; it was something imposed by community pressure.

 

I think there’s an element of self-exclusion, because you didn’t want to talk about what happened, because it wasn’t always safe to talk about it to some people, even within your own community.[12]

 

Being stereotyped as being anti-agreement, and anti-peace.[13]

 

As a supplemental question, in order to lift the mood, and also to enable the participants to focus on some positive elements from their experience, I asked had they found any elements of inclusion or welcome as a victim.

 

Some participants spoke of the safe place they had found in the security forces, with the comradeship involved, and the shared watchfulness of colleagues on patrol. However, this also led them to reflect on how their families had been excluded while they were on patrol.

 

The safe place for me was, I have to say this, in all shame, my safe place was away from my family, out with the people I was out with on duty… I don’t know how the victims that were left behind coped, which was family, because I felt my safe place out there.[14]

 

When you went on duty you had another seven pair of eyes alongside you, you had another seven weapons coming with you, you had a guard at camp if you wanted a drink in the bar.[15]

 

All participants were then able to identify the victims groups as a place of safety, inclusion and welcome, and extolled the benefits of the groups.

 

I had no help till I found the group. Now I have found self-esteem since then, found it being able to talk since then… It was a haven… I got help through it. But I felt, if the group wasn’t here, my family life was going down the pan too, because … nobody just could live with me at the time.[16]

 

The group is the first place I ever was prepared to speak publicly about what happened.[17]

 

Somewhere that would be the biggest place [for inclusion and safety] would be the group, the victims group itself. For everyone in it is the same as yourself, and you know, you’re comfortable in that fact, and you do feel safe.[18]

 

If someone comes to you and says, look, I have a son, a brother, a grandson going off the rails, I have a son who lost his dad… and he needs help; you’re able to react to that then. You can put intervention in then.[19]

 

At the end of the day, what you’re trying to do is put yourself out of work, because you’re trying to give them the wings to fly… And what was interesting this year, for us, was we… actually had 14 of our key women away on the one week in May… they were on holidays of their own volition, not group organised… I would say you would have been lucky six years ago if you would have had two of those fourteen away – that says it all to me.[20]

 

A couple of them wouldn’t even have gone outside their own front doors until [our group] came along. You know, there was a lot of isolation in the area.[21]

 

We then moved on to consider their view on the government and funding bodies, and how inclusive or exclusive they were in relation to victims.  This provided a mixed response, with participants identifying a range of ways in which they see government and funders as sometimes being exclusive (in excluding victims groups), sometimes as being inclusive (in welcoming and involving all), and sometimes being ‘exclusively inclusive.’[22]

 

There was a strong feeling that the victims were excluded, or felt themselves to be excluded, by both government and funders. This manifested itself in a number of ways.

 

[We were] not asked to certain events. Not asked to work in certain areas, presumably in case we offend in what we say. And there’s always a feeling of being outside the government loop, because we took a moral stand on issues of justice and truth.[23]

 

We would have found out about events, seminars, conferences, things like that that were on that we weren’t told about… we were excluded from that.[24]

 

They want to sideline us, and what we can see, they don’t want to include you, they want to forget that there is such people as victims.[25]

 

Not for a number of years have we had any interest in government ministers dealing with victims issues.[26]

 

Participants could identify ways in which the government and funding bodies had been inclusive, implementing the definition of victim as produced by Bloomfield. Examples included the initiatives organised by the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund, and the PEACE II funding.

 

However, it was felt that these measures, intended to be inclusive, produced the opposite effect in the mind of victims.  In the words of one participant, they were being ‘exclusively inclusive.’[27]  In other words, with the government pushing such an inclusive agenda, in including both terrorists and victims, the victims felt excluded and could not participate in such schemes. Participants were forthright on this issue.

 

Government inclusivity actually excludes pro-British victims from being able to participate comfortably in their initiatives. Now, we have been involved in some of the government initiatives but it hasn’t been a comfortable experience for us. The Northern Ireland Memorial Fund… They couldn’t give any guarantee that victims and perpetrators would be kept in separate buses and there was a whole shindu about that.[28]

 

With the experience I have had with [the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund], and especially with the short trips. There’s some of those from the Falls Road and Andersonstown that I got on the bus with who really made themselves known what they were and didn’t try to hide it… I felt if I could have got home the next day I would have went home… You’ve to go with who they say you’re to go with… Otherwise you’re excluded, or you exclude yourself.[29]

 

Because the government have pushed so much this whole thing of inclusivity, the net effect of that has been to exclude people like us… Their policies and language have actually backfired so far as trying to get the victims on board with any of their initiatives. Because with them wanting to include everybody in everything they have actually excluded us because we don’t feel comfortable and don’t feel it’s right to be there.[30]

 

This inclusive approach was particularly illustrated by the most recent round of PEACE Funding, in which the separate victims and prisoners measures had been combined into one fund. Thus, prisoner groups and victim groups would be applying to the same pot of money. How did this make the participants feel?

 

We had it pushed to us over the years that our funding would be more favourably looked at… if we were standing hand in hand with the people that made us victims, They have even went as far on funding that the funding for the perpetrator and the funding for the victim comes out of the same pot, which makes us feel bad about accepting funding from a pot that is funding the people who murdered our loved ones. We’re in competition with the people that perpetrated the troubles and done the murders and the blowings up, making the victims, and doing that, they’re pushing us farther back.[31]

 

I thought it was disgraceful. For the victims measure in it, it was a very small pot, compared even to what PEACE I had for victims; which really, all the peace money should be going to. To see terrorists and victims banded together is really quite unbelievable; and people seem to forget in these funding bodies that the Troubles are still ongoing.[32]

 

One particular funding body was seen as a source of trouble for victims groups, in their general attitude to victims, and their push for inclusiveness.

 

 [One of the funders] has tried to change our views to be more accepting of republicanism, and some [of us] spent hours here with [people from the funding body] trying to indoctrinate us, to get us to change our minds, but they didn’t.[33]

 

They’ve seen the European funding for victims turn into a complete farce… simply because [the funder] is blatantly sectarian, it has been run to achieve a political agenda for groups that continually open wounds and sores of trauma victims across Northern Ireland.[34]

 

[Funder] are the worst funding body as far as we are concerned,that we would work with, for they can’t even hide their discrimination… Even workers have come down from [Funder] and have said very rude things about victims and very hurtful and derogatory remarks to us.[35]

 

Leading on from this, we asked if there were pressures on the groups to be more inclusive, perhaps on the grounds of funding?

 

It has to be just denials of funding from a certain key funder again. The excuse given all the time is that there’s not enough reconciliation work going on, and they use this as an excuse to deny funding… It’s always subtle, it’s almost as if you’re being accused of being a doorkeeper if you don’t open up your people to aspects of dialogue with people who have been involved in the murder of people; if you don’t open up to what they term to be cross-community work… But I think so much of the funding is driven by this term reconciliation or cross-community or whatever and when you’re meant to use certain inclusive language or whatever.[36]

 

You’re always being asked to appease terrorists… [Funder] won’t even fund us, because they said we haven’t done enough for peace and reconciliation in our area.[37]

 

I think the pressure I have found there has been that our funding has been threatened because we have refused to have tea and buns with the provos locally, We’ve actually been refused funding because we didn’t align ourselves with what I believe to be a flawed definition of reconciliation.[38]

 

As we can see, the feelings of exclusion were high amongst the victims. This was in the first instance, due to the perpetrators of terrorist violence and evidenced by the lack of a normal family life, and has been exacerbated by the policy of government and some funding bodies. Yet even when these bodies seek to promote inclusion, the effects on victims can be the opposite, and leads to further exclusion.

 

From our investigation so far, we have noted, though, that the victims groups were seen as a welcoming and safe place. Later we will discuss the notions of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the groups, but for now, we turn to the key issue – that of differentiating language.

 

 

 

Use of language

 

Having now considered the main concepts, we will focus on this use of language, in its varying forms. As we discuss such differentiating language, we will reflect on its usage, before considering its source, and the outworking of such language. In other words, we will seek to understand how and why the victims’ groups use differentiating language, before looking at the effects.

 

Even a cursory glance at the leaflets, newsletters or websites of victims’ groups will provide evidence of this language of differentiation.  So, for example, it is possible to read:

 

-         ‘Speaking and acting for the innocent victims of paramilitary terrorism’[39]