By John Hume
This Friday, the 22nd May, the people of Ireland as a whole, North and South, will vote together in a referendum for the first time in our history in order to declare how we should share together the island in which we live. It will be a very historic vote. The people will not just be voting for themselves, they will be voting for their children and grandchildren. And they will be laying the foundations for lasting stability and lasting peace for the Ireland of the future.
These foundations will create new institutions in Ireland within the North, and between North and South, which will be shared for the first time by both sections of our divided people and will create the circumstances where we will all work together in a common interest. There will be no victory for either side because victories are not solutions in divided societies. There will accommodation of our diversity and respect for our differences.
Given that our essential problem is that we are a deeply divided people, in order to solve it we need a healing process. As I have often said, it is the people of Ireland who are divided, not the territory. The territorial division is a symptom of the deep division of our people and the real solution is the healing of that division. That can only be achieved by a healing process which respects our diversity.
Therefore, once our new institutions are in place within the North and between North and South, and both sections of our people start working together in our substantial common interest, spilling our sweat and not our blood, the real healing process will begin and the new Ireland will evolve in a generation or two built on agreement and respect for diversity. And its model will evolve by agreement.
Given that our substantial common ground is economic, our friends in the United States, particularly Irish Americans, can play a major role in that healing process by assisting us in seeking inward investment by American industry and marketing the products of our small industries as well as developing massively our tourist industry. The people of Ireland, North and South, and the Irish diaspora, can build the new Ireland together. That is the challenge that now faces us all and as we all work together we will build a trust that will undermine and remove the distrust and prejudice that has divided us for centuries.
Never miss an issue of The Irish Echo
Subscribe to one of our great value packages.
Let us, as we work together, put into practice a fundamental of the American Constitution to which so many Irish, particularly from the Presbyterian tradition, contributed, a principle written on the grave of Abraham Lincoln: e pluribus unum, from many we are one. The essence of our unity is respect for diversity. That is not only the message for peace in Ireland but the message in any area of conflict in the world. The answer to difference is not to quarrel about it but to respect it and to build institutions which respect difference and allow people to work together in their substantial common interest. That is the route that is now chartered for us by the Agreement that the people of Ireland will, I hope, confirm this Friday.
(The writer is the leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labor Party.)