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Dublin Report Assembly alone won’t end Northern sectarianism

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By John Kelly

Shock, horror, condemnation, the sad old litany of Northern Ireland continues. While the assembly sat for the very first time, while Seamus Mallon, the deputy leader, shook hands with David Trimble, auguring a new sense of hope and beginning, a small group of bigots primed bombs throughout the province to hit the easiest of targets. Ten Catholic churches were devastated by fire in the dead of night.

Shock, horror and condemnation? Of course. But surprise? Never.

Religious bigotry, naked sectarianism, triumphalism, tribalism and an absolute, searing hatred fester in the scarred heart of Northern Ireland. It is a truly appalling vista. It is also one that certainly will not away, irrespective of anything. Not even the most spectacular success of the new assembly will dispel it.

Without the endemic divisions, the problem of Northern Ireland would not be a problem at all. The North is the problem. That is why Charles Haughey was perfectly correct when he described Northern Ireland as an “ungovernable entity.”

Without a huge change of heart, a massive cleansing of religious hatred and colonial prejudice, based on armed domination, the people of Northern Ireland are condemned to live in turmoil. No assembly can change the hearts and minds of men and women.

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The burning of 10 churches is not at all surprising. Loyalist paramilitary forces were quick to proudly proclaim that they were going to lay down their arms. But who were their targets?

Not the IRA. Very few members of the IRA were killed or wounded by members of loyalist paramilitary forces within the last 30 years. The targets of organizations like the Loyalist Volunteer Force were invariably innocent Catholics. Occasionally, even Protestants were killed because their murderers mistook them for Catholics.

Often, they were killed in the most unspeakable fashion. The Shankill Butchers were dreadfully sadistic. For their victims, death was agonizingly slow. The only reason their victims died was because they were Catholic.

Now that the marching season is on the boil again, now that the drums are ready to beat their message of triumphalist religious hatred, why should we be so surprised that 10 Catholic churches should be burned?

Have we all forgotten that in the Rev. Ian Paisley’s North Antrim constituency, a constituency in which he claims to cherish all voters equally, Catholics were attacked because they had the temerity to attend religious worship in their local church while Paisley and other members of his party, the DUP, stood aside?

The outcome of the Drumcree march is not as important as the fact that the Orange Order, ostensibly non-sectarian, insisted that it should have gone ahead.

Rational readers may wonder why there should be so much fuss about a simple march. They will understand the resistance much better if they contemplate the prospect of a parade by the KKK through the streets Harlem.

Orange marches are not held merely to celebrate the victory of King William at the Battle of the Boyne. Incidentally, it was a victory celebrated with a Te Deum in the Vatican. It was not a victory of Protestantism over Catholicism.

By insisting on their right to march through predominantly Catholic neighborhoods, the Orange Order is trailing the coat. The marches are designed to demonstrate Protestant domination over Catholics. While the act itself may not be overtly violent, there is an inherent threat.

Members of the various lodges are not celebrating the victory of one European king over another with all of the complex territorial considerations attached to such a victory.

They are celebrating the fact that they are the majority in a territory deliberately manufactured to ensure that it should remain a “Protestant State for a Protestant people.” They are also underlining their determination that there shall be no surrender.

They are by no means alone in their sectarianism and bigotry. At the opening of the new assembly, the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, exercised his prerogative to speak Irish in the island of Ireland.

Immediately DUP members, joined by the hearty hecklers of Bob McCartney’s UK Unionist party, the cabal supported by a former Irish Minister Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, who enjoys his Republic of Ireland state pension, joined in ignorant laughter and loud talking. Their contempt for the ancient Celtic language, the same language used by the Scots, the people from whom they claim as their forebears, was obvious to the world.

It revealed their true origins. They are not of Scottish origin at all. They originated in the north English border counties. They persecuted the Catholics of Scotland, scattering them to the highlands, just as they wish to continue to persecute the substantial minority in their midst today.

No assembly can dispel such indigenous sectarianism. But something can be done.

What was necessary and is still necessary in the North is that the people of good will on both sides of the sectarian fence, the vast majority of all of the people of the province, should fight the inherent bigotry without which, it seems, the province can hardly continue to survive at all.

The people who can do this best are the political leaders – and above all, the leaders of all of the various churches. With some brave exceptions, the clerics, in particular, have been notoriously silent. Whatever about the differences between their various flocks, they should certainly mount a united, coordinated, continuing campaign against religious bigotry.

It is not just good enough to come up the predictable reactions of shock, horror and condemnation that they invariably prattle after the latest atrocity. They must do it continuously. And they should adopt a united front. They should be willing to attack the sectarianism of the Orange Order. They should inoculate their school systems with the fruitful seeds of antisectarianism.

It is a fight that will be won so long as it is sustained. As Seamus Mallon commented after the burning of the churches: “We have seen the good and the bad. We have seen the hope and the despair. We will create a new society here. Good will triumph over evil.”

The Assembly is not the beginning or the end of anything. The real beginning lies in the hearts of the people of Northern Ireland. It is time that their religious leaders in a coordinated action pushed the plug in the socket.

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