A seemingly peaceful Northern Ireland masks deep-seated sectarianism — Malachi O'Doherty reports
“I thought that was all sorted.”
This is the kind of remark I often hear from people who don’t live in Northern Ireland when comments arise about recent violence or the depth of sectarian division there.
I heard it at a recent conference in Dublin, the kind you can’t quote from because of Chatham House Rules.
I had sounded off about the horror of segregated education. I was arguing that sectarian division is a social evil and that the education systems we currently have reproduce it from generation to generation.
I might as well have been talking to some of the panel there about arranged marriage customs in Pakistan or the dietary requirements of the Jains.
First, the people of the Republic do genuinely feel that they have done their bit in resolving conflict and division in Northern Ireland and that nothing more is expected of them.
And anyway, what is the point of me haranguing them about something they can’t actually intervene in? It is not for them to dismantle our sectarian systems.
It is however a problem they need to be aware of if they are inching towards joint authority or even a united Ireland, for then they will have to take some responsibility for managing the familiar tensions of Northern Irish society.
At this time of year, for instance, loyalist housing estates are building their massive bonfire towers, entirely disregarding health and safety regulations. A Northern solution to a Northern problem is for the fire service to hose down houses nearby that might be endangered by the flames.
They have even evacuated whole terraces to take people to safety. Anything but actually extinguish the blaze.
In recent years the police have moved in to dismantle some of the more threatening towers but this also raises tension. One day — God forbid — there may be a calamity. You would not want to be the fire chief or chief constable when that happens and have to answer to a public enquiry.
Anyone thinking about joint authority or a united Ireland should be thinking now about how they will reshape northern society more in the likeness of the Republic — for it is a mad place — or winding their neck in a bit and long-fingering any ideas about taking responsibility for sectarian education, segregated housing, bonfires, disputed parades, identity based politics, culture wars and a divided print media.
I only mention these things because some people at that conference seemed to think everything is fine here.
I happen to think that sectarian division is a social evil that should be addressed, even if it is going to take generations to dissolve it into a saner more mixed society.
People at a distance from here think everything is resolved because the main paramilitary organisations have wound down the killing to allow party politics to function.
But they have done so on the understanding that party politics will continue to reflect the sectarian division which their violence was promoting.
It was easy to assume, twenty five years ago that the violence of the IRA was symptomatic of injustice inflicted on the Catholic community and that if the symptom went away the problem itself must have eased.
But sectarian division, if that is the problem, has not eased.
Sectarian discrimination against Catholics has certainly eased but the preservation of continued division between Protestants and Catholics, educated apart, living apart, voting apart, buying a different morning paper and supporting different sports - all that continues.
And the great drivers of division are housing, education, politics and religion.
The biggest parties, Sinn Féin and the DUP seek only Catholic or Protestant votes. They seek them in residential areas that are almost homogeneously Catholic or Protestant, among people who only went to Protestant or Catholic schools.
You could argue, of course, that this division works well enough. Workplaces are mixed. The city centre shopping areas are mixed. It’s not as if you can tell us apart by the colour of our skin or our hair or eyes.
And people from abroad who come and live here testify candidly that we are wonderfully friendly people. So what’s the problem?
The loyalists can let off steam this month around their big fires and the nationalists can have their Easter ceremonies and St Patrick’s Day.
If you go to people who live beside the big peace walls that separate Catholic housing from Protestant housing and ask them if they’d like the walls to come down they will often say they would not.
I have done that.
So maybe we are stuck with this division since you can’t actually force people to shuffle around and mix.
And the experience of people who move first into areas of ‘the other side’ is that they are the first to suffer when tensions re emerge.
But the effect of this division is a failure of each community to empathise with or comprehend the other.
I was talking to a businessman in Co. Tyrone last week. He said politics is banjaxed here because, :they are a bitter lot”.
Who are a bitter lot?
“The DUP. The Prods. There’s no talking to them.”
And he knows this despite never having talked to them himself.
Malachi O’Doherty’s How To Fix Northern Ireland is published by Atlantic Books.
