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Thu 11 Nov 2002An Irishman's DiaryThroughout much of the past century, generations of youngsters in this country grew up in a cultivated ignorance of the past of their own communities. Entire histories were consigned to a lumber-room which was never again to be mentioned. Behind those double-locked doors were confined the secret narratives of the Irish people, apparently as doomed to be forgotten as the memories of the people of Atlantis.For the desire to abolish any public narrative other than a purely nationalist and republican one was, until fairly recently, very powerful, as I remember full well: abuse and sneering contempt were the guaranteed portion for those of us who wished to visit a broader, more generous version of history. Yet ultimately it dawned on people that this limited, falsifying version of Irish life not merely comforted their own sense of identity, but was the moral authoriser for IRA violence. And nobody did more to strengthen the revisionist argument than the Enniskillen bombers.