We had a way of doing these things, which was to keep the world in which we really lived separate from the world of martyrdom and blood sacrifice. It had functioned well enough ever since I was born – honour the martyrs but do not follow them. Pray for them and sing about them but close your ears to their siren call. Bury them with honour but bury them deep. Leave them to their underground afterlife. But this wasn’t working anymore. The dead did not want to be prayed for or sung about. They wanted to be avenged, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant doing what the IRA had done after
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