AT the end of a speech accepting the Democratic nomination to run for president in 1992, Bill Clinton said: "I still believe in a place called Hope."
It was a message of dual significance, since his birthplace was Hope, Arkansas and he was also striking an upbeat note as the party's campaign to recover possession of the White House began.
His words came to mind when considering the current state of Northern Ireland. Are they any grounds for hope? Most of the reasons for feeling positive are based on what isn't happening. There isn't, for example, any significant violence taking place in a political context, at least at time of writing.
Yes, we had the riots over the protocol last year and there have been some very disturbing and distasteful incidents in recent times. In the month of May just gone, however, nobody died as part of any sectarian or political agenda as far as I know. This was in sharp contrast to May 1974, for example, when 56 people died on both sides of the border as part of the Troubles, or November 1987, when the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen caused the deaths of 11 people and wounded more than 60 others.
Last week I accompanied a group of 22 foreign journalists on a day-trip from Dublin to Belfast. The Association of Editors from Finland were keen to get an update on the situation in the north. All participants had a good grasp of the English language and I was able to give them a background briefing on the tour bus. Stormont was our first stop and the staff at Parliament Buildings were very friendly and obliging. We got a most interesting tour of the place which gave the Nordic visitors a good historical insight.
The assembly had met the day before, but remained in suspension after failing to elect a new speaker. Nevertheless, the politicians seemed to be quite busy. My friend William Graham, former political correspondent of this newspaper, invited a wide array of MLAs from different parties to meet us but only three could make it; the DUP and SDLP sent apologies. Mike Nesbitt of the Ulster Unionist Party spoke with his customary eloquence, giving a useful perspective on the current political situation. Patrick Brown from Alliance was someone I hadn't met before: the highly-articulate 30-year-old from South Down said his party's stance on the Irish unity question was "genuinely neutral" and that he didn't know himself how he would vote in a border poll. Pat Sheehan of Sinn Féin said the journey towards a united Ireland was "irreversible" and he later gave a gripping account of his experience as a republican prisoner on hunger strike for 55 days after the death of Bobby Sands in 1981.
We then proceeded to another interesting meeting, with Tina McKenzie, Finnish Honorary Consul for Northern Ireland and chair of Policy and Advocacy of the UK-wide Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) who was accompanied by Roger Pollen, FSB Head of External Affairs for Northern Ireland. Their take was that they were convinced the protocol could be fixed, they have regular briefings with the British cabinet and they have also had meetings with Finnish businesses interested in investing in Northern Ireland, although these companies are concerned to some extent about the lack of an executive so far at Stormont.
As part of a very full day, we also travelled to the Shankill Road where we heard a talk from the inspiring Alan McBride of Wave Trauma Centre whose wife Sharon and father-in-law Desmond Frizzell were among ten people who died in the Shankill bombing of October 1993. Then it was on to the Falls Road where Paul Butler, former Sinn Féin MLA, led a walking tour which included a nearby Peace Wall location.
There were raised eyebrows among some of the Finns at the relatively small amount of integrated education in the north. The chair of the Association of Editors, Minna Holopainen said: "Many of us found it quite sad that the society is still as segregated as it is, with the Peace Wall still in place in Belfast. We hope that the Troubles could be left behind and people could build a common future, as we had to do in Finland after our own Civil War. Or as one of us put it: 'It's a paradox that there is no border between the South and North of Ireland, but the wall dividing Belfast still exists'."
The moral of the story is, that if you want to believe in a place called Hope, you have to build it first.
Email: Ddebre1@aol.com; Twitter: @DdeBreadun
