Harold GoodThe Methodist preacher found himself standing in a cold farm shed in 2005 IRA weaponry.

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

In 1922, two weeks after the start of the war Civil warHis uncle and aunt in 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.

At the height of the IRA’s 1956/1962 border campaign, his Enniskillen-based father RJ, then president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, argued against the use of face-to-face violence with the IRA leadership in Dublin.

Now Good, a witness to the 2005 sacking of the IRA, has written In Good Time, “an accurate and sure guide” to the challenges facing peacemakers, quoting former president Mary McAleese.

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

The House played a key role in ending the Troubles with people like Sinn Féin. Martin McGuinnesstrade unionist Jeffrey Donaldsonloyalist paramilitaries and many other anonymous individuals get to know each other around the kitchen table.

“The only rules were ‘talk, truth and trust,'” says Good, now 87.

The first thought that comes to a visitor’s mind is: How can conversations in a penthouse stay secret? In the lane next to the Belfast/Hollywood railway?

“There was a situation where I was nervous. I noticed workers working on the roof. I thought, ‘These guys are looking to see what’s going on.’ But people were careful and always made sure to come and go at different times,” he says.

Meetings, often fueled by pots of tea and Clodagh’s scones, were held at the back of the house, around the kitchen table, overlooking a garden that could not be missed through the patio doors.

After several years in the USA, Good returned to Northern Ireland in August 1968 to take up a post at Agnes Street church on Belfast’s Shankill Road, just as the Civil Rights campaign began.

Even now he wonders whether the “frank and generous response” of unionists, backed by the determined leadership of the Protestant churches, could drown out the cries of “Not an Inch”. Reverend Ian Paisley.

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

They were “as unaware of their deprivation as any nationalist or Catholic”, living in housing as poor as they were, “yet spending many laborious hours repainting the red, white and blue railings”.

To remember Bombay Street attack in August 1969It describes how “an invading loyalist mob” set fire to houses and threw out “an entire Catholic street” in one of the worst sectarian attacks in “living memory”.

Visited the scene the next morning Father Des Wilsonand offered help. On Sunday, she told her congregation on Agnes Street about her Catholic neighbors’ need for clothes and “baby items.”

As they were leaving, his congregation, most of whom had very little money, handed him a total of £70. Before long, she had “a trolley full of clothes and baby supplies”; it was “a tangible expression of the interest and concern of a Protestant community in the Shankill”.

Throughout, young men from both sides were weaponized by others, including Ulster Vanguard leader Bill Craig, who was Stormont’s home secretary until he was deposed by the Protestants. Terence O’Neill.

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

Years later, when he was a chaplain at Crumlin Road Prison, Good sat in a cell with two others. the so-called Shankill ButchersMoments after William Moore and Robert Bates were sentenced to life imprisonment for murders that were considered barbaric even by the standards of the time.

Both men had attended Craig’s parade: “I wouldn’t have recognized them behind their balaclavas, but they remembered me and told God how much they wished they’d listened to me.

“‘We thought we were going to get a medal,’ they said, ‘but instead we got our lives,'” recalls Good, who later received a beautiful, hand-embroidered leather cover for his Bible from the two murderers. Bates was released in 1996 and Moore in 1998.

Good believes that even today the people of Northern Ireland (both Catholics and Protestants, as well as those from such backgrounds who are no longer of faith) have not fully come to terms with “the history of this place”.

Some Protestants “deny the history of what their part of the community has done to others. We are not going to accept this from within the Protestant unionist community. “There’s always ‘Oh, but’,” he says.

Meanwhile, some of those with a republican background are hesitant to say “we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.” Sometimes – and the closer they get to that point – they will experience pain and bitterness of regret.

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

Having spent decades working quietly, if not always in the background, Good became known internationally as: Witness the IRA’s dismissal Following McGuinness’ telephone approach in November 2004.

Almost a year has passed. In mid-September 2005, he went to Dublin and met her. Father Alec Reid. Because he had hours to kill, he went to Christ Church Cathedral and met worshipers for bread and wine at the daily Eucharist.

Even today he is bound by a duty of secrecy, but fills in some of the “colour” surrounding the days that followed, including a meeting with senior IRA figures at the Redemptorists’ Marianella home in Rathgar, south Dublin.

Although he wasn’t blindfolded, he and Reid greeted them, traveling in the backseat of a windowless van. Independent International Commission Under Decommissioning, Canada General John De Chastelain“no one is stupid”.

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

Everything was prepared, including boiler suits, wellingtons, a well-stocked wash bag as well as “plenty” of spare clothes, including socks and underwear, “all in perfect size”.

Before the lights went out on the first night, the two said their nightly prayers, and Good shared Paul’s text to the Ephesians 6:10-18; this text speaks of the “sword of the Spirit” being clothed “with the good news of God.” peace”.

Thus armed, the two men slept.

They traveled to multiple locations over the following days and at one stage “concern” about the amount destroyed, compared with intelligence on the IRA’s arsenal, increased. Eventually the gap “narrowed significantly.”

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

There was a young man everywhere during the week. So much so that he eventually became “part of the landscape” while everyone else remained “indifferent to his presence.”

He came to the fore on the last day: “His role in this series has been determined. In accordance with the best military traditions, he walked up to the general, carrying his rifle on his shoulder, stood at attention in style, saluted and handed him his weapon.

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

Good did not doubt the sincerity of those involved at the time or the remorse they felt for “a bloody and senseless conflict”… “they did not want their children’s children or anyone else’s children to go through what they had experienced.”

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

Given his connections throughout Ireland, he believes it is Protestants, not Catholics, who are undecided today. Looking at interfaith marriages, known in the past as “mixed marriages,” Good says Catholics accept them “much more easily.”

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

Many Protestants and unionists say “some are still learning slowly” when it comes to understanding why Catholics feel the way they do about Northern Ireland, given the discrimination they endure.

“I think the opposite is also true. If we are to talk about the future of this island, people in the nationalist Catholic community need to start understanding the fears and feelings of Protestants and unionists.

“Yes, it is about fear of loss of identity and loss of control, but it is about a general sense of anxiety,” he says, calling on those who most want a united Ireland to first establish a successful, happy Northern Ireland.

“To be honest, if I were focused on a united Ireland I would say: ‘Let’s make this a happy, contented and successful entity in its own right.’ Then there would be something to bring to the table.

But unifying a failed and unhappy Northern Ireland won’t do much: “If I were in the south I’d be a bit worried about that. My Southern relatives would worry about this too. And they would be Protestants in general.”

In Good Time: A Memoir is published by Orpen Press