It was a beautiful piece of art and it was clear that the lads had done this sort of thing beforehand, though Gerry wondered what else they might have been up to throughout their lives, and what might change now. Thanks to the man painted on the wall, it was finally over.
The mural seemed to stare right past him, towards Donegal where the British army checkpoint was finally being removed. The cease-fire was holding, just about, and despite the drizzly conditions the site of traffic flowing freely from the Republic and towards it was a sight he’d had to see even if he hadn’t had a particularly major role in the achievement. What was more important was that he was here at all, Strabane had a community that looked out for each other, and a Provisional on Official territory used to have to watch his back around here. Not anymore.
This was lucky, for Gerry had a distinctive look, and whilst he had failed in his campaign to become an MLA in the new assembly he was nonetheless a famous face. Nowhere near as famous as that on the wall, of course. The picture was arguably the most famous in the world despite the radically changed appearance of the present-day man. The Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland didn’t wear a beret anymore though, not that mattered much to the community.
The Worker’s Party of Ireland had supplanted the SDLP under his leadership in much the same way as the Officials had pushed the Provisionals into irrelevance during the seventies. Sinn Fein had been crushed inbetween. It was hard to compete with a living legend and even during the war in Angola it had been made clear to the PIRA council that they were to stick to community defence and not get any ideas above their station, Che was still watching them.
By then the Argentinian revolutionary had taken a far less active role in the fighting as he hopped between continents but even in swapping the balaclava for the armchair he had remained a tactician, his measures became more brutal and his strategies more ambitious. Soviet weaponry via East Germany and Libya and his own cult of personality had allowed him to pursue his beloved countryside strategy to the extent that it seemed, at least temporarily, that victory was approaching in 1982. Thatcher had been underestimated, the Falklands could be lost but Britain could not lose the north if the country wanted to remain a United Kingdom. Thatcher wasn’t going to allow that to be her legacy.
The “surge” turned into a nightmare for both sides, it was later alleged that the pictures of the RUC using children as human shields had been faked but Gerry knew for a fact that the Official’s had made sure that necklacing migrated from the Eastern Cape alongside their leader. Regardless of whether or not they were informers, some of them had had children. Some of them were mothers.
Who had sanctioned what was always debatable of course and on the basis of the peace agreement it was likely that no-one would ever know whether the old man was accountable as he puffed away at his beloved pipe with David Trimble and John Hume trying desperately to act as he was having the most normal time in the world. Big Ian still hadn’t come round of course but if Che had managed to sign off on a peace agreement then surely anything was possible.
Gerry had signed the agreement too, yet he had felt like a bit player in another man’s life story even as history was made around him. Angola, Bolivia, the Congo, Cuba and Ireland, two successes, two defeats and who could say what the fifth would mean. The British had made it clear that re-unification wasn’t possible, the Loyalist community had lost children too, far too many of them for a united Ireland in Gerry’s lifetime. Che hadn’t made it clear if he’d gotten what he’d came for, only that he was here to stay.
Gerry had remembered hearing the tales of the daring escape from Bolivia whilst he’d still been doing bar work. Gerry’s involvement in Sinn Fein was just beginning yet this was Che’s second failure to spark revolution and perhaps the establishing moment that assured that he’d see his next attempt through till the end. Gerry remembered bandaging his head after it’s collision with an RUC truncheon when the stories of the first appearances began to circulate. Ernesto Guevara, the international revolutionary with a Grandmother called Lynch, had somehow shipped himself from Santiago to Strabane shortly after what would become known as “The Troubles” had begun.
Gerry had stuck with Sinn Fein, he placed himself somewhere within the socialist pantheon but Guevara was a Marxist of the Moscow persuasion and the scenes of protestors being scattered by tanks in Prague were all too vivid, other’s had apparently only seen the strength and the legend, the Official’s had called the shots in the wake of the ideological split and Che had decided when it was time to talk.
John Major had arguably been instrumental to the whole thing although Gerry expected it would be a while before any British Prime Minister featured on a mural in Strabane. There were stories that suggested Major had been a fan of Guevara in his youth and had been involved in a number of People’s Front of Judea-type outfits before the working class lad from Brixton had eventually put on a proper suit and joined the Labour party. Nonetheless the connection between the two men had finally delivered peace, civil rights and a form of power sharing. One that Gerry had now been left out of. He wondered if that was for the best.
As he applauded the murals unveiling with the rest of the crowd, he realised he was just another bystander in history.
