Facing the Truth

Anyone catch it? Quite an interesting show, especially the meeting between the policeman and the IRA man. Was quite surprised the policeman was so understanding about his assailant not being at all repentant and that he understood what had led him to such a position. I’d started watching the show thinking that if you were a victim of a shooting or a family member’s killing that you’d like to hear the perpetrator regret their actions and wish they’d not done it. By the end of the show I was more inclined to think it better to hear that the person who wronged you still stood by their actions – I guess that way you’d feel you didn’t suffer for nothing, it just wasn’t personal.

I only caught last nights programme and the one just finished where Michael Stone came face to face with the wife and brother of a man he has 'admitted' to killing. It turned out to be unbelievably moving and to see the willingness of Dermot Hackett's family to forgive the man who directly had a hand in their husband/brothers/fathers murder.

There is now part closure for that family, but there never will be for Stone. It was very hard to decipher whether he was truthful in everything he was saying and whether the man is drained of emotion or not. He sat motionless and stone faced (excuse the pun) for much of the forum and never fully stated his detachment from Loyalism. He said he was "politically jaded"- which seemed to be a nice way of saying, 'I've had enough of this but I still hold firm in what I believed'.

I saw some of the highlights of that. His comments about the campaign and following orders, I thought the thing about Stone was that he wasn’t actually a member of any organisation or at least wasn’t following orders but just working off his own steam!?!