Firstly, happy New Year.
2021 was only partially better than 2020.
But why be surprised at Northern Irish politics being caught in the same tired, old worn and bitter diatribe as usual?
Northern Ireland is a swamp of sectarianism. Always was and always will be until people learn how to live side by side without culturally clubbing each other into submission.
Let’s face it, much of the claptrap dressed up as cultural activity here would make Tracey Emin’s bed look like a room in the Ritz Carlton!
I did have to laugh at the tittle tattle in the recently released state papers, especially the letter from veteran unionist Jim Rodgers to the then Secretary of State Sir Patrick Mayhew outlining his displeasure at the appointment of former Presbyterian Moderator, the Very Reverend John Dunlop, to the North Review on parading.
The reasoning was worthy of Fr Ted.
The unenlightened Cllr Rodgers said many in his community believed that Dr Dunlop was deliberately appointed because of his “liberal and ecumenical views”. Ah, I never thought of parading as being an ecumenical matter.
A bigger chuckle occurred when I noticed that apart from not being very ecumenical, Mr Rodgers wasn’t very ‘au courant’ with ecclesiastical matters as he described the former Church leader as the “former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic”.
Of course, the Presbyterian Church, like other Irish Churches, is organised on an all-Ireland basis and therefore is known only as the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Alas poor Jim of the UUP in 1996 is like another Jim, leader of the TUV, in 2022, both time travellers with a broken down Tardis.
Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Féin, seems also to be caught in the haziness of time as she clearly doesn’t understand that the Good Friday Agreement was not a toolkit for a united Ireland.
It was primarily a framework for co-existence, a totality of relationships within Northern Ireland, between NI and RoI and between UK and Ireland. It was the establishment of full power-sharing institutions built on goodwill, mutual respect and democratic principles.
More importantly all this was done without the threat of violence hanging over the new institutions like the Sword of Damocles. The Good Friday Agreement marked the end of any perceived legitimacy to physical force republicanism in pursuit of unity and reinforced the primacy of politics as envisioned by John Hume.
McDonald is right though, now is the time for Sinn Féin to clearly set out its stall for unity and inclusivity, which means going beyond throwing a few baubles at the unionist community.
It’s worth noting that Sinn Féin’s success in opinion polls in the Republic is not based on any surge of nationalist sentiment but on the frustration and disillusionment of the economic aspirations of tens of thousands of younger Irish citizens unable to buy a home.
If and when, Sinn Féin holds the position of taoiseach, the economic literacy of their policies may be more useful than any empty and outdated Republican rhetoric on Irish unity. It is easy to see (lip service-commemorations aside) that Sinn Féin is assiduously cleaning their stables of the old guard.
Another apparently shaking of the shackles of past is football pundit and commentator, Joe Brolly.
Brolly is a Marmite character. His trademark is in making indelicate comments and he likes surprising audiences.
Donating a kidney is an extraordinary act of generosity whatever the motivation, so Brolly’s recent disclosure about donating his kidney as a form of atonement for the taking of human life by people close to him is even more startling than a normal Brollyism.
But perhaps it was cathartic for him to mention it.
So victims spokespersons clamouring for PSNI involvement over the remarks should instead leave it as it is. Brolly has earned that much. After all, 2022 is a new start.
