Albert Camus agonised over his divided country
Algeria haunts France as Ireland haunts Britain. The spectres of its history have proved just as hard, or harder, to confront. Imagine, for example, that the Bloody Sunday killings of January 1972 had taken place not in Derry but around Parliament Square. Imagine that armed security forces had killed not 14 peaceful protestors but an estimated 200. Imagine that many bodies were then dumped into the Thames from Westminster Bridge. Imagine, too, that this state atrocity had been dropped into a pit of denial that lasted for half a century. And that a British leader’s eventual, modest admission that these events had been “inexcusable” still provoked howls of outrage.
