Can Yesterday’s Men Become Today’s Future?

Seeing Ian Paisley, the representative of everything wrong with my tribe, and Gerry Adams, the representative of everything wrong with his, trying it seemed to find a “final solution” to the “Irish question” - was for me not surprising. It was what both Sinn Fein and the DUP wanted all along, not peace necessarily, but power - the former to join Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic to fulfil the “1916 prophecy” and the latter to “keep Ulster free from Dublin interference”. Two polar opposite positions have now been brought to the middle ground, which sounds good for Tony Blair and Peter Hain, but is not the reality as far as I can see.

Of course I welcome any move to bring our province into the 21st century, and peace is what I desire, but I am not convinced (yet) that Paisley and Adams can bring that about. Watching them together, I felt a nervous hope, but for a brief moment I wished it would have been David Trimble and John Hume! Not because I like Trimble or Hume, but because I believed they could have had a genuinely equally beneficial working relationship, that they would truely have embraced the middle ground - rather than just talking about it.

Ian Paisley has not fundamentally changed his position, he himself said it was more pressure and threats from Peter Hain and the British/Irish governments, than a genuine desire on his part to make a deal. Gerry Adams has also not fundamentally changed, he has made it his lifes work to destablise and destroy Northern Ireland, he is not seeking reconciliation within our country but a United Ireland “by any means necessary” - even if it does mean turning his back on certain, what Republicans wrongly call “principles”, he will do it all for a United Ireland and more.

I am more of a realist, I do not believe a few photos and nice words are enough, as the British and Irish governments do, to hear them you’d think Paisley and Adams peacenik photo-op was the solution in and of itself. Of course I’d welcome the reconciliation of Loyalism and Republicanism (Paisley is no Unionist) but are these polar opposite idealogues the way of the future or the past?

Paisley is still the old fundamentalist preacher who sees Rome and Leinster House as one, and perhaps believes the devil is behind both, there is a conspiracy behind it all involving the Republican movement as well perhaps?

Republicans accuse him, quite rightly perhaps, of living in the 17th century - of course their enlightened socialists and revolutionarys? Perhaps Adams and his comrades spout Wolfe Tone quotes (a man of the 18th century) about uniting the religious communities, but it means little in reality, they are a sectarian movement with little or no support from Protestants - and their campaign of murder…”armed struggle” has set back their cause by decades - yet Adams and the Volunteers cannot admit that it was a complete and utter failure; Paisley may well live in the 17th century but Adams and Sinn Fein are right there along with him: of course Republicans think living in the 1960s/1970s makes them so much more…”groovy”?

Hugging Fidel, supporting Basque separatists, drawing support for Fatah/Hamas isn’t about ebracing the future; its about clinging on to the past. Fidels Cuba is a relic of the 1950s, complete with that unwashed revolutionary zing, its funny when Republicans talk of the UN Charter on Human rights - when possessing such a simple document in Cuba can get you thrown in prison - as for the Basques, their decades behind the Provos, and for the anti-semites in Fatah/Hamas who strap bombs to small children - their light years away from the 21st century. You can always know someone by their friends, Sinn Fein are not representative of the future or of the 21st or any other century, so the question remains on mine and i’m sure others, lips:

Can Yesterday’s Men Become Today’s Future? We’ll have to wait and see…