Opinion - The hardening of gentle hearts

The hardening of gentle hearts

Although most everybody instantly recognizes what is (kinda-sorta) meant by the term "Radicalization", I have misgivings about it's use. (Yes, I named this folder 'Radicalization'. But that was more for reasons of clarity, than joy at the actual label) My reservations about the term stem from having heard it used, way too often, in a pejorative, sarcastic, belittling fashion. Especially by Government. Loaded, with the none-too-subtle innuendo that 'Radicals' by definition are mentally unstable, low IQ morons. Easily brainwashed, with a cult-like devotion to supremely evil leaders. I believe this to be unhelpful, as the process is often more a case of 'the hardening of gentle hearts'. I've seen it happen. It happened to me.

My first novel ("Jeremy's War") goes to some trouble to describe the steady (and tragic) transition from musing gentleness, to hardened fighter.

Willing to take incredible risks. I thought it was important. When our flying ace hero, Lt Jeremy Armstrong, smashes up his dearly beloved gramophone player (we are in the midst of WW1), the explosive act marks a milestone on his pilgrimage. It represents the deliberate, cold-blooded smashing up, of the soul's erstwhile peace. A break from the past. Now, angered to searing intensity, hate has become the dominant driving force. Astute readers have suggested to me that they picked up on several clues hinting at partial autobiography. Discretion seals my lips on that aspect. Suffice it to say that the road from average young fellow, heavily into motorcycles and women, Poteen and poetry, towards a far more shadowy occupation, is a long one. It also tends to be? Irreversible. Something breaks. The soft heart? The trust in one's fellow man? Is lost, along the way. Once an actor, feigning moody indifference to yet another military checkpoint? The fifth one, that day? As you roll up in a big truck? Hand over your papers, for inspection? Saunter down to the back doors, to routinely, open them for their search? With a hidden cargo, that -if found- will send you to jail? Or worse? Life is never again the same. You remain, forever, the cursed actor.

In older age, when, as now, in 2022-23, we stare in stunned incredulity at what is occurring in the countries we love? What is being inflicted on the people we care deeply about? We find ourselves pondering the fate of Man. And how,in retrospect, we see the 'rules for radicals' that applied then. And apply, still, today. You, poor fellow, know them. All too well. For you lived them.

For me, it started on my mother's knee. As we would sit at the bottom of the stairs. Our favorite place. And she, a devout Irish Catholic, would tell me, softly, of the infinitely tragic History of the Irish. The persecutions, the potato famine. The repeated, failed insurrections. The executions of prominent Patriots.The terrible Black & Tans. She would tell of the day, when she was six. And three men marched in to her father's Chemist shop. Ignoring the child, present. The little girl was a witness to the whole, terrifying, scene. The shotgun, leveled across the counter, at her Daddy's chest. And the words they spoke to him, harshly, in no uncertain terms, to get the hell out of Belfast. Or else... I remember we would whisper, and look about, fearfully. In case, somebody, malevolent, unseen, hidden, was quietly listening in. It made no sense, for at the time we were living in Holland, and my mother's family had long since fled Belfast. Leaving behind a successful Chemist Shop business. Sold off at a loss. My Grandfather had been, of course, a Catholic. A Republican. And, worst of all? A poet and a writer. A recipe, for feeling, and calamity. And all those years later? We, still, whispered.

Oddly, I suppose, my Father hailed from Protestant stock. Northern English and Scottish. It became clear enough, later, that his family never really approved of his marriage to a Catholic. The way things were, in those days. And often, yet, today. Worse was to come as my Irish Mother refused to marry him, unless he became a Catholic. He cannot have been terribly committed in his Faith, I suppose, as he obliged. Matrimony, and the fact that my mother was a very pretty girl, seems to have outweighed theological niceties. The marriage was fraught, to say the least, and existed, on paper, and on the rocks, I believe only because of the deep Catholic faith of my mother. My parents had three boys. But he, with the roaming eye, I suppose, managed to father two more sons out of wedlock. Altogether he had five sons, and shipped two off to an Australian orphanage. The out-of-wedlock boys. (At age six and eight, utterly bewildered, they saw their father for the last time, ever, waving them goodbye, from a London dockside). He was in fact to disown three of his five sons.

I was the third...

And it was one day, at the dinner table, that I learned a valuable lesson. By observation. I, very young, had asked my mother a question relating to the IRA. The Irish Republican Army. My father, instantly irate, sneered some vicious comment. About the IRA being a bunch of yellow cowards, hiding behind stone walls, shooting at unfortunate soldiers, minding their own business. My mother had flinched, cowered down, pale, and gone silent. And I, wet behind the ears? Learned to never broach the subject again, in my father's presence. The impact of childhood exposure? On later life Radicalization? The hardening of the heart? Is inestimable.

Fast forward to 1969-1970, and I was in my final year of High School, at Rockwell College, Cashel, County Tipperary. Events in Northern Ireland reached a boiling point, with the Loyalist invasion of Republican areas. "The invasion of Bombay Street" (Jew-tube) gives a good synopsis of what really lit the long-smoldering fuse.

A year later, I achieved my heavy goods vehicle driving license...

F.M.