The real heros

It was a weekend of meeting my heros last weekend. About twenty years ago there was a documentary about a lawyer who defended death row inmates in Louisiana. I think it was called 'Two weeks in May', in which it followed the lawyer's involvement with one of his cases. The appeal he had been mounting didn't succeed, and his client was put to death. We were able to see the man's last meeting with his family, which was very shocking to my young mind. Evidence came forward two weeks later that exonerated the man involved. This played on my mind alot as a teenager, and I thought about becoming a lawyer - a thought that was unceremoniously dumped though after I spent a week in a local solicitor's office when I was seventeen, where all the solicitor did was execute divorces or attend to traffic accidents. He even pushed 110 mph with me in the car on the way to one of the trials! So much for the law.

Anyway, the original, the inspiring lawyer of the first example came to Belfast last Friday and gave the annual Amnesty International lecture, coinciding with the publication of his book on Guantanamo Bay called 'Bad Men', aping the way Pres. Bush talks about them there. He volunteered his aid to the inmates, even though they are not allowed representation, and miraculously is being allowed some access. He does his best through his organisation to highlight the plight of the hundreds there, only four of whom were taken from a battlefield. He hightlights the torture methods they use, such as waterboarding - forcing water into the men to make them feel that they are drowning. Sleep deprivation is another technique used, which can lead to death. But quirkily, his lecture was filled with a great sense of indefatigable humour, through which you could easily see his zeal, and it was hard not to be caught by it. His name is Clive Stafford Smith and the website of the death row defense organisation he set up is http://www.reprieve.org/ i think. Well worth checking out.

So that was Friday. Then on Saturday I had the honour of meeting John Hume. I was at the SDLP conference in Armagh just to see if it is true that they are doing a deal to merge with Fianna Fáil, and sure enough it seems it is, so I suppose I'll be leaving the party now! But anyway, my local politician heard that I wanted to meet him and kindly introduced me. So another childhood hero met and I was able to give him something of my thanks for his self-sacrificing work for peace in our country. It is sad to say that many in the party seem to be downplaying or turning their back on his achievement by playing politics with the institutions he helped to set up. People seem to blame him for bringing the party's popularity down, which had to happen if Sinn Féin came out from the cold of their armed struggle. But when the history books are written in a few years time, and without the narrow bias of personal interest, he'll remain head and shoulders above the petty squabbling that we find presently passing for criticism.