How do we reconcile the irreconcilable?
Carrying on from Mr Levee?s discussion in Armchair Experts & Keyboard Critics, we need to ask whether Nationalism and Unionism can ever live in harmony. This is not a simple question and will not have an obvious answer. Protestants are akin to white Afrikaners in South Africa who, when forced to relinquish control to blacks at the end of apartheid, felt marginalised and forsaken. Protestants perceive favouritism towards Catholics in Northern Ireland; they can not comprehend why the British are now indulging Republicans while being tough on them, despite their loyalty over many years.
Protestants feel that the British government is being hoodwinked and they are angry at this apparent naivety. In their eyes the IRA can?t be trusted to legitimately have abandoned its military campaign; they remember many IRA atrocities, pointing to their duplicity and deceitfulness and are cynical and suspicious of this new development. In the eyes of many Northern Irish Protestants, any compromise is a concession. At one point in time Nationalists felt marginalised, abandoned and discriminated against and this frustration was played out in rioting, now the disillusionment is felt by ?the other side?.
How do we resolve this while trying not to alienate either community?
I am a Catholic although I do not feel that I am Nationalist, for example, I do not want a United Ireland and a United Ireland forms the very foundation of Nationalism in Northern Ireland. On the other hand in some ways I feel that my views may be perceived as Nationalist, for example I utterly condemn the blatant discrimination and abuse of civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland in the last century. However, I feel that the occurrence of this discrimination is fact; it is not based on partisan anecdotal evidence but on reality and therefore does not mark me out as Nationalist. Thus, I feel that I can question whether the current Protestant dissatisfaction with the system in Northern Ireland is justifiable without being accused of being a typical Nationalist indulging in Protestant bashing. It must be difficult to give up positions of power and security to people you have viewed so often as terrorists and the enemy (by this I mean not just the IRA but all Catholics) but it has to be done, there is no logical way to deny equality.
Most people in Northern Ireland want peace; they want their children to grow up in a safe world, devoid of the bitterness felt by many in Northern Ireland. The only way to ensure this is to promote equality; the only way to promote equality is to compromise. It may seem that the Protestant community are compromising more that the Catholic community but that is that nature of the beast, the community that had more must sacrifice more. In my opinion there is no way to unite Unionism and Nationalism, the very premise upon which both are based are incompatible, but we can unite Catholics and Protestants, the actual people in Northern Ireland, in order to achieve what we all want, a society in which we are all equal and of which we can be proud. Only then can any durable peace settlement be attained.
Excellent well said: I will return to your comments Tuesday. This has been a busy week and its late and I have an early start, so come Tuesday; preprare to be challanged, sister in law. Kind Regards Parnell.
Note to Moderator - this reply might be better placed on your discussion board
A CONSIDERED RESPONSE:
To sister-in laws- How do we reconcile to the irreconcilable:
I am a walking anomaly, an example of that rare flower, a Protestant Republican. I come from a Protestant family background, but I am not a unionist. I am anti-monarchist and I believe passionately in a United Ireland of united people. So how come a Protestant Republican has become a curiosity, a sort of political oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, an impossible political balancing act?
Irish history in the early 20th century is dominated by one date ? 1916. But for me and my constitutional, democratic tradition there is another great date ? 1932. For it was in 1932 in the Free State that the party which had won the Civil War a decade earlier handed over power peacefully to the losing side, because the losing side had won an election.
In Northern Ireland, we constitutional nationalists had a hard time of it. David Trimble talked about a cold house ? actually it was freezing and nationalists were on the outside. From the setting up of the Stormont parliament in 1921 until its abolition in 1972, it is easy to sum up the total legislative achievement of nationalist members of the parliament ? one single, tiny amendment to the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1961.
The unionist regime which made it impossible for nationalist democratic politics to work meaningfully must accept a great deal of responsibility for the eventual political collapse of Northern Ireland. But of course, the political representatives of unionism will accept no such thing, for they are deeply in denial. They still try to claim that the demand for civil rights was a republican plot, when in reality it was the diametric opposite ? a demand that the British state treat everyone equally
So how do we move on? Wars eventually end, and then we are back to good old boring constitutional politics. This is the bit that the war-makers ? or most of them ? just don?t get. Peace, real dull boring ordinary everyday old peace, is all about the constitutional practices they abandoned. There is no victory which removes the need for politics. In the last analysis, they all have to come back to square one.
Well said Parnell. I have often wondered how Northern Ireland politicians would fare in a ‘normal’ political system where they are not elected because of past deeds, religion or the ability to stand and win on a single issue. Old boring constitutional politics, as you put it, is more important to people’s everyday lives than whether they are a Nationalist, constitutional, cultural or otherwise, or a Republican or a Unionist.
The difficulty as I see it Parnell is how do we get the wider electorate interested in broader political issues? They are so used to the stimulation and dare I say excitement of violence and political horse trading in Northern Ireland that routine politics may perhaps leave them feeling a little empty and cheated. There is that possibility that after the years of agitation and tension, peace and politics could be an anticlimax. Also, could the voting public from which the politicians are drawn admit that their revered leaders are not capable of managing real issues? Bear in mind that in many communities these leaders are sacrosanct, they are celebrities and to admit that they have flaws is nigh on blasphemy.
There is hope, however. This hope manifests itself in many ways. For example, when we look at us two we see one Protestant who passionately wants a United Ireland and one Nationalist more mercenary than ideological who is quite happy to remain a part of Britain because it suits her. This may not sound like evidence of a beacon of light calling Northern Ireland towards peace but don?t be fooled. Once the boundaries become blurred and it becomes impossible to draw lines of demarcation between the two communities in Northern Ireland we will find ourselves in a position so radically different from that which we have found ourselves before that the rule book will need to be ripped up and reworked.
I only hope that the modifications and improvements to politics in Northern Ireland which I have optimistically forecast transpire during my lifetime.
WoW. Sister in law respondes to me - An Arch Advocate of Nationalism. If there is someway, given, I donate my email confidentialy, which I will respond to. I will allow you to put your and mine considered opinion, on a higher stage. This offer is un-conditional.
Kind Regards Parnell