Of Divided Families: in two parts

Blog 38  Of Divided Families

Religion divides.

It was a terrorist episode. It happened in Northern Ireland in 1976.

The terrorist was shot and killed by police, but then crashed his car over the curb, killing three young children. Their mother, Anne Maguire, survived, but later committed suicide. Who suffered most from this stupid violence?

When the children's aunt, Mairead Corrigan, spoke on television that evening, another Irish woman, Betty Williams, who had witnessed the episode, began collecting signatures to stop this stupid violence.

What was it all about? Briefly, certain patriotic Catholic Irishmen lived for the day they would see North and South united into "One Ireland".

On the other hand, certain Northern Island, Protestant, Irishmen feared that their own particular version of Christian worship would be swamped by the Catholic majority version if "One Ireland, ever came to be. (As history, that is grossly oversimplified. Forgive me.) I will conclude only that I think "Jesus wept" at this stupid violence.)

So Williams' and Corrigan's work to stop the stupid violence in Ireland by organizing Mothers' Marches resulted first in their being co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, and, recently, being credited in this blog (#37), as the sharpeners of the turning-point that ended the stupid violence of the Northern Ireland "Troubles."

Do you detect a theme in those last six paragraphs? Good! Let's carry that to the next topic.

"Law and Order" Divides.

It should not be so. Law and order - to be a little more subtle, let's call it the ideal of justice - this ideal is one of the great inventions of the human brain. Every sensible body is in favor of it. In practice, it usually requires a force to thwart or apprehend clearly defined disturbers of the peace. Ideally, a clear definition of what is disturbing can be found in a written law. One mark of a democratic society is that most of the people have agreed to these written laws. Peace, law, public agreement.

In modern times, the credit for creating a body of civil servants whose job is to maintain law and order, usually goes to Sir Robert Peel, a British politician. In 1829 Peel established the London Metropolitan Constabulary of 1000 men. The English called them "bobbies" or "peelers", after Sir Robert. The idea was copied around the world.

The bobbies walked their beats in the city wearing high hard hats with chin straps, and enforcing the agreed-upon laws with their billy-clubs. They looked the law-breakers in the eye, and only if necessary bopped them. Policeman and suspect sometimes knew each other by name. Today, in certain places, they prefer to know only the colour of the skin.

We don't see the bobbies walking the streets much anymore. Where do you look for bobbies now? Pat your back with both hands if you said, "In cop cars," and blame Henry Ford for some of the increase in stupid violence in our cities today. It's always so satisfying to find some one to blame, isn't it?

The automobile has always been a marker of social division. Now it separates the police from the people. Armed with their automobiles instead of billy-clubs, urban policemen have lost touch with their people. That's not to deny other factors to explain the citizen/policeman fatality stories crowding the good news out of our media. But it a good point to start looking for a process to get them both back peaceably on the same side of the street.


To be continued... with a return to the law of money.