Here’s a really positive story, in contrast to all the other pieces in the news about how politicians both at home here in Britain and across the briny in Ireland and America, are wrecking our great countries. The other day I came across a piece on one of the Irish news channel that Sinn Fein main woman Mary Lou MacDonald had condemned the sectarian abuse hurled at the Fine Gael presidential candidate, Heather somebody or other. This lady had come under attack because fifty years ago her Presbyterian husband had been a member of the Orange Order.
The Orange Order has been highly controversial for a very long time. They caused a lot of outrage a few years ago by deliberately marching through Roman Catholic areas in Ulster. They were following their old, traditional routes. When the marches started, these had been Protestant areas. Or so the argument went. But the demographics had changed, and they were now Roman Catholic. And instead of tradition, it looked to many people like deliberate intimidation and provocation. And distrust and opposition to the Order goes right back to the 19th century. When I was working in the Empire and Commonwealth Museum I found a Blue Book from the 1890s about a governmental investigation of the Order, following complaints about them from Roman Catholics. In this instance, however, the Fine Gael’s lady’s husband’s membership of the organization was fifty years in the past and so should have been of no relevance to her campaign for the presidentcy.
I’d never thought I’d ever see the day, growing up as I did in the 1980s when Ulster was riven by sectarian terrorism between Nationalist and Loyalist. This was a time when Sinn Fein spokesman Gerry Adams talked about ‘the ballot bomb’. The IRA killed Lord Louis Mountbatten, Tory politician Airey Neave. The terror group’s bombing of the Brighton Hotel during the Tory party conference shocked Britain. But now, decades later following the Good Friday Agreement, things are definitely changing. Sinn Fein are trying to reach across the sectarian divide in the hope of peacefully uniting Ulster with Eire. And some Loyalist politicos are responding.
I was greatly impressed by MacDonald’s meeting with the King, where both spoke politely and respectfully to each other. In Ulster, Sinn Fein have organised meetings with members of the Loyalist communist to discuss the position of Loyalist within a united Ireland. Loyalist politicians have stated that a united Ireland is inevitable and that they should do what they can to secure a place in it for their people. One politico said this a week or so ago, but other Loyalists immediately condemned his remarks and sought to distance themselves from him. The Presbyterian church in the Six Counties has encouraged Protestants to learn Gaelic. They’ve put on displays of Presbyterian translations of the Bible into Erse, while historian have found records of Irish Loyalist Gaels fighting in the British army. This is also a very positive step. The Irish language is very much associated with Irish nationalism. At one time speaking it to a policeman would get someone arrested. A few decades ago, Private Eye Reported that Ian Paisley had been outraged by buses in Ulster going around with what he thought was Gaelic writing on them. Er, no. The vehicles were tour buses, and the language was French.
The Northern Irish border is also a nonsensical mess. It crosses people’s gardens and there’s one stretch of road which crosses and crisscrosses it four times in the space of a few miles. Decades ago people were smuggling goods from NI across the border to Eire that were unavailable in the Republic. Ordinary items like Omo washing powder. Brexit, and the issue of a hard border with Eire, or an Irish backstop in the Irish Sea, has been an insurmountable problem. Even for those idiot like Tweezer who claimed it has been a success. . But
Sinn Fein have said that they want to start moves towards reuniting Ulster and the rest of the island of Ireland within ten years. The demographics in Northern Ireland support it, as for the first time the Roman Catholic population is bigger than the Protestant. But there are problems with this, quite apart from the sectarian divided. These are simply the practical issues surrounding the integration of Ulster’s very different legal and governmental systems as well as the NHS. The two establishment Irish parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Foil, were accused of trying to black Irish reunification. I suspect that if this was the case, it was because they were trying to avoid these difficulties. Former taosioch Bertie Aherne, one of the signatories to the Good Friday Agreement, discussed these problems and the economic cost of reunion last week. He said that this was way down the list of problems, but union between north and south wouldn’t pay off for ten years, as well as the other problems mentioned above. But his real concern was that reunification should be done peacefully and in a spirit of reconciliation.
There’s till much bitterness and hostility on both sides which will have to be surmounted. But this clear condemnation of sectarian abuse by the chief of Sinn Fein has shown how far Nationalist politicians have come in rejecting sectarian hatred in pursuit of peacefully reuniting North with South.
If anyone can do this, and create a peacefully united Ireland where Protestant Loyalists live alongside Roman Catholics in the spirit of reconciliation called for by Bertie Aherne, it will be through the efforts of MacDonald and people like here on both sides of the divide.
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