One Mother's Quest for Justice - Rose Gentle

dublin | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Wednesday September 07, 2005 00:15 by Deirdre Clancy - Pitstop Ploughshares deeclancy at gmail dot com 086 151 2013

Rose Gentle speaks in Dublin on Thursday the 8th of September at 7.30 in Wynne's Hotel, Abbey Street, in a public meeting organised by the Pitstop Ploughshares and Dublin Catholic Worker. What follows is a brief perspective on the importance of voices like hers, and a brief summary of the ordeal that led her to become a leading antiwar spokesperson.

Huge swathes of those who marched on February 15th 2003 retreated back into their daily routines in defeat. It became apparent that possibly the largest protest in the history of the world had not made a difference to the nefarious plans of the coalition of the willing. Some committed activists moved on to new issues, new platforms, some proclaiming the antiwar movement a success for their particular organisations, due to the size of the mobilisation. Truthfully, though, the peace movement became demoralised and confused, and consequently disorganised after the invasion of Iraq. It’s been a struggle for even the most well-intentioned of antiwar activists to engage creatively, faced with the daily news about death tolls in the Middle East.

Those of us, and there were many, who made a stand could be forgiven for being tempted by the prospect of crawling back into our protective shells, detaching from the daily death tolls we hear about in the media and resigning ourselves to our essential impotency in the face of the dangerous politicos of the free world. In our heads, perhaps, are the voices of those who tell us it is time to move on, that Iraq is old news, that the US military must stay to ‘finish the job’, because even if the venture was pure folly initially, it would be counterproductive at this stage for the troops to pull out – despite all compelling evidence to the contrary. As the antiwar community splintered following the bombardment of Iraq, it seemed at times to turn in on itself, as people got burned out, cynical or eccentric. The lure to pull back has been strong. This is why fresh, relevant voices with something real to say are vital. We don’t need any more jaded theoreticians, amateur or professional. We have enough of them already.

There has been a growing chorus of voices against the War on Iraq, comprising the mothers of those human beings used as cannon fodder in the Bush/Blair misadventure. There was Lila Lipscomb, the grief-stricken mother at the centre of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”. For the past few months, America has been exposed to the articulate grief of Cindy Sheehan, who in her righteous anger camped outside George Bush’s ranch in Texas, demanding a meeting with him. She wished for an explanation for the death of her son, Casey, in Iraq. A mother’s grief for a dead child is often searing. Most mothers would wish to feel that their child did not die in vain. It takes a particular kind of courage, a courage those of us who have never experienced such a loss cannot imagine, to face up to the possibility that your child may indeed have died needlessly, under false pretences.

Facing up to the possible futility of such a death is one thing, but admitting it as a probability and mobilising to find justice is another. This is what Lila Lipscomb and Cindy Sheehan have done in speaking out. It is also what the Glasgow mother, Rose Gentle, has been doing since the loss of her son Gordon, who died when a roadside bomb exploded beneath him in Basra in June 2004.

Like Cindy Sheehan, Rose Gentle quite reasonably felt she deserved an explanation for her son’s death – particularly in the face of the spectacular public crumbling of the initial pretexts for war – and she wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. In the face of real, human loss, political protocol is irrelevant – Rose Gentle knows this better than most. Soon after her son’s death, she and her 14-year-old daughter Maxine went to Downing Street to hand a letter to Tony Blair, who was on holiday at the time. Instead, she spoke to John Prescott, then leaving the meeting in frustration, declaring that Prescott was talking ‘rubbish’. Subsequently, when Gentle began to highlight publicly that her son’s life could have been spared but for the lack of availability to his regiment of standard-issue counter-measures, she was censored by the Ministry of Defence in a little-publicised ‘Defence Advisory’ notice. Despite such censorship, Gentle has remained steadfast in her quest to speak truth to power.

When Gentle stood for election in 2004, she stated:

“If my son had died for a noble cause, I would be just as heartbroken. If my son had died defending his country, I would have cried just as many tears. A noble and just cause would be some wee consolation for my boy’s death.

But my son died for a lie and I want justice. Justice is two things. It is seeing that people get what they deserve. And it is making things right, the way they are supposed to be...

...Like many youngsters across the country, Gordon joined up for the promise of escaping poverty for a better future – to travel and learn a trade. Yet with only 6 months training he was sent to die in Iraq, without even having the proper equipment.”

It is vital that we listen carefully to voices such as Rose Gentle's, for they bring the invasion home to us, and to those in power. They interrupt and disrupt powerful people's vacations. They highlight the reality of those craven presidents and prime ministers who would rather face anything than the naked truth of a mother’s righteous anger and grief. And as the leaders of the free world holiday with their own cosseted and privileged children, who will never have to join the army to escape poverty, the public gradually begins to smell a rat. A mother’s grief for her needlessly slaughtered child, whether it be in Iraq, in a tent in Texas or in Glasgow, is a voice we disregard at our peril.