Harold Good became internationally known as a witness to the decommissioning of the IRA – The Irish Times

Harold Goodhis family had experience with paramilitary weapons long before the Methodist preacher ever found himself standing in cold farm sheds in 2005 watching the destruction scott armament.

His grandfather Isaac was one of the hundreds Ulster Volunteer Force Men who landed arms at Larne on the Antrim coast in 1912 to fight Home Rule: “He was prepared to fight the British to stay British,” writes Good.

In 1922, two weeks after the start The civil warhis uncle and aunt from Dungarvan, Co Waterford, supplied £70 worth of boots, laces, shirts and socks to anti-Treaty IRA commander Pax Whelan. He still has a copy of the invoice.

During the height of the IRA border campaign of 1956/1962, his father from Enniskillen, RJ, who was then president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, argued face to face with the IRA leadership in Dublin against the use of violence.

Now Good, one of the witnesses to the decommissioning of the IRA in 2005, has written In Good Time, “a sure and true guide” to the challenges of peacekeeping, to quote former president Mary McAleese.

Conversation at Good’s home with his Waterford-born wife Clodagh is frequently interrupted by Judy, a 10-year-old Border Terrier who is still learning to forgive her owners for going on a cruise to celebrate her 60th wedding anniversary.

The house played a significant role in ending The Troubles, with the likes of Sinn Féin Martin McGuinnessunionist Jeffrey Donaldsonloyal paramilitaries and several unnamed people to get to know each other around the kitchen table.

“The only rule was ‘speak, truth and trust,'” says Good, now 87.

The first thought that crosses a visitor’s mind is: how did secret conversations remain in a house located on a the lane next to the Belfast/Hollywood railway?

“There was one occasion when I was nervous. I noticed workers on a roof. I thought, “Those guys, they’re looking to see what’s going on.” But people were attentive and always made sure to come and go at different times,” he says.

For the most part, the meetings – fueled by tea with tea and Clodagh’s scones – took place at the back of the house, around the kitchen table, with a view through the patio doors to a garden that is not overlooked.

Good returned to Northern Ireland after spending several years in the US to take up a post in August 1968 in Agnes Street Church on the Shankill Road in Belfast, just as the civil rights campaign was beginning.

Even now, he wonders whether an “open-hearted and generous response” from the Unionists, supported by the determined leadership of the Protestant churches, could have drowned out the “Not an inch” revelations of Rev. Ian Paisley.

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Growing up in Derry, he confesses he was “ignorant” of the “legitimate grievances” of Catholics, but equally did not fully understand until he went to live on the Shankill Road how the Protestant working class was taken for granted understood by the Unionists. politicians.

They “did not know that they were as disadvantaged as any Nationalists or Catholics”, lived in equally poor housing, “yet they spent many laborious hours repainting the red, white and blue railings”.

Remembering The Bombay Street attack of August 1969recounts how “an invading loyalist mob” set fire to houses and drove out “a whole street of Catholics” in one of the worst sectarian attacks “in living memory”.

He visited the place next morning, accompanied by Rev. Des Wilsonand offered help. On Sunday, he told his Agnes Street congregation about the need for clothes and “baby stuff” among their Catholic neighbors.

As they left, his congregation, most of whom had little, put money into his hand – £70 in all. Soon she had “a car full of baby clothes and equipment” – “a tangible expression of care and concern from a Protestant congregation on the Shankill”.

Throughout, young people on both sides were armed by others, including on the Protestant side by Ulster Vanguard leader Bill Craig, who had been Stormont’s Home Secretary until he was sacked by Terence O’Neill.

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Craig and others later trained the young Protestants on the Shankill Road, leaving them with “good reason to believe that they were enlisted to serve and protect their community in a time of crisis”.

Years later, when he was chaplain at Crumlin Road Prison, Good shared a cell with two of the so-called Shankill butchersWilliam Moore and Robert Bates, moments after being sentenced to life for the crimes, barbaric even by the standards of the time.

Both men had taken part in the Craig parade: “Behind their balaclavas I wouldn’t have recognized them, but they remembered me and told me how they wished God had listened to me.

“‘We thought we were going to get medals,’ they said, ‘but instead we got life,'” recounts Good, who later received a beautiful, handcrafted leather cover for his Bible from the two killers. Bates was released in 1996 and Moore in 1998.

Even today, Good believes that the people of Northern Ireland – both Catholic and Protestant and those from such backgrounds who are no longer practicing believers – have not fully come to grips with “the history of this place”.

Some Protestants “deny the history of what their part of the community has done to another. We are not about to admit this from within the Protestant Unionist community. There’s always the ‘Ah, but,'” he says.

Meanwhile, some Republicans “are hesitant to say we shouldn’t have done what we did. Sometimes – and this is as close as it gets – they will regret the pain and the hurt.

“They are very reluctant to say, to accept that there was an alternative to violence. They’re very reluctant to say that,” says Good.

After spending decades working quietly, if not always in the background, Good became known internationally as a witness to the decommissioning of the IRA following a November 2004 telephone approach from McGuinness.

Almost a year has passed. In mid-September 2005, he traveled to Dublin to meet Rev. Alec Reid. With hours to kill, he went to Christ Church Cathedral, joining the faithful for bread and wine in the daily Eucharist.

Even today it is bound by secrecy, but it fills in some of the ‘colour’ of the days that followed, including meeting senior IRA figures at the Marianella home of the Redemptorists in Rathgar, south Dublin.

Although they were not blindfolded, he and Reid traveled in the back of a windowless van to meet them Independent International Commission per head of decommissioning, Canadian General John De Chastelain“no one is stupid”.

He shared a bedroom with Father Reid for the next few days.

Everything had been prepared, including suits, socks, a well-stocked wash bag, along with “a more than ample supply” of spare clothing, including socks and underwear, “all of the perfect size.”

Before lights out on the first night, the two said their nightly prayers, with Good sharing Paul’s text in Ephesians, 6:10-18, which talks about the “sword of the Spirit” being “shod with the good news of peace.”

Thus armed, the two men fell asleep.

In the following days they traveled to several locations, with “anxiety” growing at one point over the amount destroyed compared to information about the IRA’s arsenal. By the end, the gap had “narrowed significantly”.

As each weapon was destroyed, Good “thanked God” that he would no longer kill or maim, but he also knew that the forensic evidence that could put those who used it in prison was also destroyed: “We live in a messy world,” he says.

Throughout the week, a young man had been present everywhere. So much so, he had become “part of the scenery” by the end, with everyone “indifferent to his presence”.

On the last day, he stepped forward: “His role in this drama has become clear. In the best military tradition, rifle slung over his shoulder, he walked up to the general, stood smartly, saluted and handed him his weapon.

“The silence of this moment that descended upon us was broken when Father Alec whispered in my ear, ‘There goes the last gun in Irish politics.’ What a moment!” he says.

Good did not then, or since, doubt the sincerity of those involved or their regret for a “bloody and senseless conflict” … “they did not want their children and their children’s children or anyone’s children to live through what they lived”.

Speaking as “a Derry boy with a West Cork father, an Armagh mother and a Waterford wife”, Good believes he has “inherited a more than ordinary understanding of the whole island and its histories”. And it’s Derry, not Londonderry. Growing up, everyone he met, including his Protestant family and neighbors, called the place Derry. In his memoirs, he adds an apostrophe, “Derry ‘out of respect for those who call it Londonderry to express their British identity.’

Given his all-Ireland connections, he believes that Protestants, not Catholics, are insecure today. Looking at interfaith marriages – formerly known as “mixed marriages” – Good says Catholics accept them “much more easily”.

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“Is it because we’re on the defensive? We’re on the defensive because deep down we know it’s a bit like being in the second half of the game. We’re two down and playing against the wind.”

Many Protestants and Unionists were, and “some are still slow learners” about why Catholics felt the way they did about Northern Ireland, given the discrimination they endured.

“I think the reverse is also true. People in the Catholic Nationalist community must begin to understand the fears and feelings of Protestants and Unionists if we are to talk about the future of this island.

“Yes, it’s about fear of loss of identity, loss of control, but it’s about a general sense of anxiety,” he says, urging those who most want a united Ireland to first build an Ireland of North happy and successful.

“Quite frankly, if I was fixated on a united Ireland, I’d say, ‘Let’s build this place up to be a happy, contented, successful entity in its own right.’ Then he would have something to bring to the table.”

Bringing together a failed, unhappy Northern Ireland will do little, however: “If I was in the south, I’d be a bit worried about that. And my relatives down south would be worried about that. And they would be Protestants in general.”

In Good Time: A Memoir, is published by Orpen Press