Bill Rolston
Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast, 2000, £12.99
This contains a couple of dozen accounts by people who have had a relative killed in Northern Ireland by British state forces – accounts chiefly of their attempts to get the authorities to investigate the killings. All but one of the accounts is by a member of the nationalist community. (The solitary account from the Loyalist side of the fence is in some ways the most interesting in its portrayal of the absolute refusal of the Loyalist community to assist in the pursuit of justice when it meant attacking the state’s – their state’s – position.)
This is not a fun read; hundreds of pages of stories, many very similar, of people trying to fight their way through an endless diet of petty humiliation and the parade of bullshit offered by police, Army and courts to conceal or provide quasi-legal pretexts for killings by state forces. Nothing else I have read conveys so powerfully what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of the British state’s campaign in Northern Ireland.