State Violence by Raymond Murray Read Free Book Online Page A

Peter Barnes and James McCormack, executed at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, on 7 February 1940.
    4. The repatriation from India and the reburial of the Connaught Rangers’ mutineers on 2 November 1970.
    In the High Court in Belfast on 5 May 1995 three judges ruled that the Secretary of State has power to exercise the prerogative of mercy and order that Tom Williams be exhumed and handed over to be reburied. The decision to release his body is now an administrative one. I write these words in the hope of persuading the Secretary of State to graciously accede to the request of relatives and a concerned committee who have sought to have Williams interred with dignity in a cemetery. Tom Williams was 18 years of age when he was involved with others in the fatal shooting of Constable Patrick Murphy.
    I also hope that the IRA will be likewise persuaded to restore to their families the bodies of victims murdered by them in the last 25 years. They are buried in secret graves. One calls to mind, for example, Captain Robert Nairac of the British army abducted by the IRA on 14 May 1977 and presumed dead.

‘Sleeping with my fathers’
    In the Holy Bible there is a passage in the Book of Genesis, 47:27–31, which the Jerusalem Bible translation calls ‘Jacob’s last wishes’. We read that although Jacob had prospered in Egypt, he asked Joseph to promise not to bury him there but in Canaan. He says, ‘When I sleep with my fathers ( i.e. when I die), carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their tomb’. Joseph promised to do this and his father died in peace (49:29–33; 50). When the time comes for Joseph to die in Egypt, he says to his brothers there, ‘I am about to die, but God will be sure to remember you kindly and take you back from this country to the land that he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’(50:24). The text continues, ‘And Joseph made Israel’s sons swear an oath, “When God remembers you with kindness be sure to take my bones from here”’ (Genesis 50:25–26; cf. Exodus 13:19).
    The Jewish expression for dying was ‘sleeping with my fathers’ or ‘being gathered to my fathers’; for this reason, burial among their own people was very important.

‘Those who sleep’
    Before rising from the tomb where he has freely ‘gone to sleep’, Jesus has expressed by signs his mastery over death, and over sleep, which is its image. He commanded the daughter of Jairus and his friend Lazarus to rise from their sleep, thus prefiguring his own resurrection to which the baptised will be mystically united. Jesus, St Paul says (I Cor. 15:20), rose ‘as the first-fruits of those who sleep’.
    We who ‘sleep in the tombs’ also hope to rise again. The hope of immortality and resurrection which comes to light in the Old Testament has found a solid foundation in the mystery of Christ. For not only has union with his death made us live with a new life, but it also has given us assurance that ‘He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give new life to your mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit’ (Romans 8:11).

Community of saints
    While putting an emphasis on the salvation of the individual, Catholicism also puts a great emphasis on the ‘kingdom’, the ‘church’, the ‘community’, the ‘people of God’. This is carried on from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament the image of resurrection is used to express the collective hope of the people of Israel. God triumphs over death for the benefit of his people. Following this tradition, all the communal aspects of Salvation in Jesus Christ interest the Church. The baptised as a community have a vital union with Christ. St Paul says, ‘We are all baptised in one Spirit to form one Body’. The baptised constituting the Church are, therefore, ‘one Body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 12:13). This unity is