In England yesterday, the story broke that the IRA man convicted of bombing Brighton's Grand Hotel has been invited to the event commemorating its 25th anniversary.
By now, you won't be surprised to learn that I heard about this on the booming, incessant works radio.
The announcement was met with widespread derision, both from the MP interviewed on the news, and from my work colleagues - none of them could believe that Patrick Magee, the perpetrator of an infamously murderous and well-planned act of terrorism should be offered an olive branch by the British authorities.
The collective pronouncement on the subject was approximately this: we're fucking caving in to a man who's drowning in the blood of others - again. If Magee was a child-killer, the public would turn on him en masse, and rip their morsel apart like a pack of wild dogs. Few seconds, it'd take. Few fucking seconds.
I wasn't popular, then, when I suggested that the decision by the British government to invite Magee to the 'reconcilliation' at the House of Commons showed an impressively mature attitude from an administration which is otherwise eating itself alive.
I wasn't popular, but I stand by it. If the poacher has finally turned gamekeeper, then it is safe to invite what was formerly the worst of the foxes into the hen-hut.
History acts as a polarising force - the very best and very worst acts of our species are dissected, examined and scrutinised to approaching infinite magnitude, with the vast majority of decisions and occurrences left to wither, unremembered and unremarked upon.
Magee's act is unquestionably one of the most notorious to have ever taken place on this island. Its high-profile targets - including the unsuccessful obliteration of the then Prime Minister, and mutilation of a member of the cabinet - and audacious negation of the (apparently limited) security at the Tory Party conference ensure it will live long in the memory.
Similarly, the invitation to Magee should be considered as one of the most magnanimous ever extended by a state to an indivual. It does not insinuate that terrorism is acceptable, or that Magee is forgiven, or that history is forgotten. It is, instead, the assertion that Britons and Irish, channelled through the figure of Patrick Magee, can truly live adjacent to each other (and together), and it expresses the hope that the past is not condemned to be repeated in a future of frequent memorial services and tearful loved ones.
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