Created partition and called it peace
Nick Cohen takes a critical look at sectarianism.
The old sectarian leaders [Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley] looked like a pair of exhausted warlords, who, after 30 years of a pointless conflict, were content to settle for a division of the spoils. There was no hint of a common political culture, no shared understanding of the principles of secular democracy, just a truce between bosses in which each left the other free to run his fiefdom and the quangos and ministries which went with it. A bus ride through Belfast should convince doubters that the Good Friday Agreement created partition and called it peace. The walls that went up to separate Catholics from Protestants in the Seventies have not been torn down. There are more of them now than ever. Catholics travel for miles to avoid a Protestant leisure centre and Protestants go out of their way to avoid a Catholic newsagent.
Doesn’t that sound lovely? Just like Baghdad, and Darfur, and Kashmir, and Kano, and Trincomalee, and Istanbul, and all the other dulcet harmonious fragrant bits of the globe where people devotedly hate each other for being in the wrong Whatever?
Mutual loathing ought to have been combated by breaking up Northern Ireland’s segregated schools…For all the praise given to them, just 5 per cent of Northern Ireland’s pupils attend integrated schools today…[T]he overwhelming majority of Ulster’s children can go from four to 18 without having a serious conversation with a member of a rival creed. They mingle only when they reach the workplace because, oddly, the religious discrimination on which the education system rests is illegal at work.
Yeh that is odd – because whatever it is that makes religious discrimination a bad idea at work – bad enough to make it illegal – is also what makes it a bad idea at school; only more so because children are more credulous than adults.
Down with sectarianism, up with universalism.
OUGHT?
People stop shooting each other, yet this fascist almost wants to make it compulsory to attend the politically correct NEWSAGENT?
People have minds, if they will use them. Get them a few years without murdering idiots ruling the place and see about it.
Meanwhile, its bad ideas that launch killings. How about cracking down on teaching hate and stupidity?
Excuse me?
I’ve made that mistake. It’s called “typing under the influence.” Wait a minute. Isn’t ChrisPer in Oz? I think it’s mid-day there now. ChrisPer, we hardly knew you.
Yah, incoherent, even to me in hindsight.
The best thing is that people are not shooting and killing each other over there. Picking on attitudes because they are a bit gun-shy about their neighbours is a touch arrogant, I thought.
I was struck by your quote about the newsagent, cf the prescription to stop school segregation.
As the article says about the race context, a parent would be nuts to put their child in the ‘wrong side’ segregated school. The sure consequence is a haunted child, bullied and beaten, and lost opportunities to grow among peers.
Remember the deadly effect of bad ideas; ideology does support hatred and self-righteousness, and family and friends are the main sources of teaching it, not schools. So our author says this ‘Ought to have been combatted…’ by sitting in different deck chairs perhaps?
Like the collossal success bussing was in the US?
Bear in mind this segregation is state-funded, and happens in a little fly-spit of a non-country… We, the UK, ought to be ashamed…
If by “ashamed” you mean “copying this as the future of our educational system on the mainland” then you’re absolutely right.
Those who don’t look at the present are doomed to make a hash of the future.
“copying this as the future of our educational system on the mainland”
whaddya mean, ‘future’??
Admittedly, the rise of evangelicals starting to get stroppy about other faiths, etc, in CoE schools is relatively recent, but here in Sconnie Botland we’ve had faith schools since, oooh, forever, and look how little harm that’s done in the charming and delightful city of Glasgow, f’rinstance…
:-)
Andy G, have you ever seen Jerry Sadowitz talk about being a skinny motor-mouthed jew who grew up in the gorbals ? The one things the ‘taigs’ and the ‘huns’ could agree on was that he (Jerry) had killed Jesus. Hilarious, if a tad brutal…
“I was struck by your quote about the newsagent, cf the prescription to stop school segregation…So our author says this ‘Ought to have been combatted…’ by sitting in different deck chairs perhaps? Like the collossal success bussing was in the US?”
That still makes no sense. The ‘quote about the newsagent’ was not a demand for mandatory bussing to a particular newsagent, it was an observation on the massive extra effort people make to go to a particular newsagent because the nearest one belongs to the ‘wrong’ group.
Nobody said a word about bussing, and it took a very effortful roundabout journey for you to get there, it seems to me.
Look at MURAL SECTARIANISM
IT WILL GIVE ONE A BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE NORTH.
“Drawing Support: Murals in the North of Ireland by Bill Rolston”
A couple of years ago I was by someone for a weekend invited up to Donegal.
I decided to modify route on homecoming expedition to WEXFORD in to take best advantage of shifting scenery. I ACCORDINGLY VALIANTLY drove through DERRY, NOT KNOWING WHAT TO ANTICIPATE.
It was as it tuned out to be a great deal more ramshackle place in assessment with Donegal. The look – outs were an appalling eyesore. There was an air of melancholy/subjugation about the entire region. Nonetheless, in spite of all I determined to roam freely about, and went in to a café for tea. in order to experience the place. It did not worry me too much having a southern WX registration car whilst driving through Catholic areas. Nevertheless, as soon as I arrived in PROTESTANT VILLAGES I was petrified OF THE THOUGHT OF RUNNING OUT OF PETROL AND LOSING DIRECTIONS. ALL SORTS OF SCARY FEELINGS ENTERED MY MIND AS I would have to them STUCK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB, VEHICLE-WISE. I could not help but notice how beautifully well- kept the houses were in comparison to THE Catholic areas. The MURALS TOLD ONE INSTANTANEOUSLY WHAT RELIGIOUS DIVIDE ONE WAS IN. It served as a warning marker. The surrounding land too was very fertile and rich. In fact, AMIDST ALL THE FEAR I WAS SO TAKEN WITH – THE BEAUTY OF NORTHERN IRELAND. There was not, by me, here or there in the built up areas – for practically miles a sinner seen in sight . The unkempt nature of the border towns, specifically the Catholic side hit me when I arrived in the south.
Next time I go up to the North, I will definitely go by bike.
“Nobody said a word about bussing”? What a shame – Well, now I will just have to leave that to the both of yE eh!…? :~)
As a former resident of Belfast, I find it incredible that people think you can undo 400 years of carefully fostered sectarianism and bigotry by signing a few scraps of paper. It is a step in the right direction, no doubt, and I wish them every success but it is a bit rich to see Brits wagging a scolding finger at those damnable Irish and their confounded tribalism when it was they who created the monster in the first place and continued to feed it.
For its entire history, the misbegotten statelet of Northern Ireland has been at the bottom every measurable social scale – housing, education, etc. – or as my father (Belfast born and bred) was fond of saying, “last in every thing you want to be first in, and first in everything you want to be last in”. It also had the lowest wages and the weakest trade unions; a point that was not overlooked by the powers that be. In short, NI was profitable for the Brits, albeit miserable and fractious.
If Paddy and Sammy won’t drink in the same pub and is firmly convinced that the other is going to burn in hell, then it is a bit difficult to form organizations to demand a better lot in life. So drag out the bowler and the sash, wave the tricolor and the Easter Lilly, and for god’s sake keep ‘em at each other’s throats – it keeps the costs down and the profits up.
“Paisley, who spent decades refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, conceded he had often refused to budge in years past but was ready now.
He lauded the Irish Republican Army’s moves to renounce violence and disarm, and Sinn Fein’s decision to cooperate with the province’s mostly Protestant police as genuine.
“From the depths of my heart, I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in this province,” Paisley said”.
I never thought I would live to see the day when Paisley in any way would acquiesce to the Catholics – LET ALONE concede TO THE FACT THAT HE WAS FUNDAMENTALLY obstinate obdurate, intractable, inflexible, BOLSHIE. HIS NO, NO NO NAY NEVER SPEIL… I ascertained, would be on his very Evangelical holy lips till the very last drop of blood left his bodily being. He must have had an overnight conversion.
Alternatively, someone is – putting the gun to his head.
For example,
Hypothetically, I think Britain may have been threatening him with all sorts of things, [if the truth was known] – if he did not cooperate.
Paisley had it so good in the Thatcher era.
THIS ‘ULSTER SAYS NO’ – bible thumping, No surrender, evangelical WARLORD HAS DEFINITELY SEEN THE LIGHT, OR IT HAS BEEN SHONE BRIGHTLY IN HIS FACE FOR HIM TO WAKE UP TO THE STARK REALITY.
There is no way back.
Northern Ireland has to go forward. It has no other choice. All sides must have been by the Government given an ultimatum. I heard that lots of money will be pumped into B=Northern Ireland if both sides agreed to work with each other.
Blair/Ahern shoulders will not be available for too much longer. I reckon.
Tuesday’s speedy, trouble-free formation of a 12-member administration jointly led by Paisley and McGuinness heralded an astonishing new era for Northern Ireland following decades of violence and political stalemate that left 3,700 dead.
Paisley, 81, affirmed an oath pledging to cooperate with Catholics and the government of the neighbouring Republic of Ireland — moves that the fire-and-brimstone evangelist had long denounced as surrender.
“As a former resident of Belfast, I find it incredible that people think you can undo 400 years of carefully fostered sectarianism and bigotry by signing a few scraps of paper”.
I, for one, do not believe that the people can, forget [all of a sudden} – about 400 years of forced division, with the signing by the Warlords – of A FEW SCRAPS OF PAPER. But I do believe THAT IT CAN ACT AS SOME KIND OF A SYMBOL WHEREBY PEOPLE IN THE NORTH/others CAN BEGIN TO SEE BY ITS WRITING BY ALL GOVERNMENTS – A FLICKER OF GLIMMERING HOPE.
People in the South have suffered by association and that for us has been very painful.
I FULLY RESPECT THE PAIN OF THOSE WHO COME FROM THE AREAS OF THE TROUBLES AND UNDERSTAND THE HOPELESSNESS, FRUSTRATION, ANGER, AND ALL THAT GOES WITH IT – THAT HAS BEEN ON THEIR SHOULDERS FOR NIGH ON GENERATIONS.
Marie-Therese, I wholeheartedly support ANY step towards peace and reconciliation regardless of its symbolism. The “few scraps of paper” remark might have, on second thought, been a bit dismissive, but I wanted to highlight the naivety of thinking the past (in Ireland of all places!) was going to magically go away.
There is a bit of good news to report, if anecdotal: my mother and sister recently returned from a visit and reported that most of the young people they spoke with didn’t give a flying f*ck about the Troubles and just wanted to get on with life and partake in some of the good fortune their neighbors to the south have been enjoying. Calvin Trillin the humorist would refer to this as “babbitry over bigotry”. Given the history of the past four hundred years, we’ll take what we can get.
I READ,
“The innocent assumption that truth is important can be dangerous in our capitalistic mad-house, where no truth is of sufficient importance that it may be permitted to stand in the way of profits. But, we are not to despair of the ultimate triumph of truth, for truth is a part of the universe and must prevail. Truth is one and immutable–Error has as many forms as Proteus. Truth and fallacy go their opposite ways. They do not gravitate in the same direction. They do not revolve around a common centre. But truth is of value only in a world that lives by it. Bigotry and bluff do not always stand for truth: more often they merely camouflage ignorance and failure.
Through education and through everything that he hears and sees about him, a child acquires so many lies and blind follies mixed with the essential truths of life that the first duty of the young man or woman who desires to grow into a healthy adult is to cast away all truth and untruth that he or she has acquired at second hand, everything which has not been learned by personal observation and experience, and take a fresh start. No idea, however old, no “truth,” however grand, should be looked upon as a sacred cow.
All should be thrown into the fire together and have all the dross burned out of it. During adolescence, when the mind is still pliable and green, is the ideal time for this unburdening to occur. The adolescent who achieves this elimination of tradition and convention and, who loses his or her cultivated admiration for things old, may then enter adulthood fully prepared to think with courage and without the warping influence of blind credulity.
The blaring racuous Babbitry and bigotry like weeds in the corn flourish alongside. But in the finality the weeds see the end of their day at harvest time as only the truth – which is the corn lives to nurture and sustain.
“my mother and sister recently returned from a visit and reported that most of the young people they spoke with didn’t give a flying f*ck about the Troubles and just wanted to get on with life and partake in some of the good fortune their neighbors to the south have been enjoying”.
Yeah, Barney that would be about right. The Celtic Tiger roars can be heard up the north and by the sounds of it it does not seem to have any “troubles” in the least with its lungs. Its joyful capitalistic message has resounded throughout the Emerald Isle.
But it is not that very long ago when southerners were being frowned upon because of their poverty-stricken status. The glove is NOW on the other hand. I hope it permanently fits AND REMAINS COMFORTABLE. I hope too that your relatives bask in the newfound wealth as it belongs to all, not just the young.
Yeah, when I lived there in the seventies, Ian and the boys were always rattling on about “popery” and “poverty” in the south as if they had created some sort of protestant paradise. While to some degree the north appeared more prosperous (the better kept farmsteads, etc.) it was still on the bottom wrung compared to the rest of Britain.
TIT BITS WITH A NORTHERN FLAVOUR.
Vagant bishop Pat Buckley described Ian no surrender Paisley as the “baby dinosaur of the 21st century
It is very interesting to note that David Trimble has joined The Conservative Party.
I remember on a March in London in London. Gosh, it must have been in the seventies. I was walking behind Bernadette Devlin/McAllister. For some daft reason or other I retain information of her having a hole in her tights.
I also recall, in the eighties, walking along Trinity College and coming in my direction were protesters by the new time. They were holding massive banners which said “Free Bobby Sands”.
I got John Hume’s autograph. The reason it was given to me – was because I had the same name as his Daughter. He was a real Gentleman.
“most of the young people they spoke with didn’t give a flying f*ck about the Troubles and just wanted to get on with life and partake in some of the good fortune their neighbors to the south have been enjoying…“babbitry over bigotry”.”
Yeah. I keep hoping that will come into play with all the world’s impassioned grievance-entranced jihadists – and sooner rather than later. It’s bound to eventually, if only via generational struggle (oh, the ummah, that’s the parents’ thing, yawn yawn), but sooner would be better.
“For its entire history, the misbegotten statelet of Northern Ireland has been at the bottom every measurable social scale – housing, education, etc. – or as my father (Belfast born and bred) was fond of saying, “last in every thing you want to be first in, and first in everything you want to be last in”. It also had the lowest wages and the weakest trade unions; a point that was not overlooked by the powers that be”.
What did I have, said the fine old woman
What did I have, this proud old woman did say
I had four green fields, each one was a jewel
But strangers came and tried to take them from me
I had fine strong sons, who fought to save my jewels
They fought and they died, and that was my grief said she
Long time ago, said the fine old woman
Long time ago, this proud old woman did say
There was war and death, plundering and pillage
My children starved, by mountain, valley and sea
And their wailing cries, they shook the very heavens
My four green fields ran red with their blood, said she
What have I now, said the fine old woman
What have I now, this proud old woman did say
I have four green fields, one of them’s in bondage
In stranger’s hands, that tried to take it from me
But my sons had sons, as brave as were their fathers
My fourth green field will bloom once again said she.
Should have read three posts up >Bernadette Devlin McAliskey,
There is a great write-up/comments on bbc.uk.BBC Northern Ireland regarding another recent moment in history when Ian Paisley was quoting the bible inside Stormonton the same day that the Northern Ireland Humanists were outside distributing books in the furtherance of a “godless political system”.
…[T]he Humanist Association of Northern Ireland [Humani]…presented copies of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion to party reresentatives…It is worth reading. See: Recent entries, Northern Ireland.
How ironic that Cohen supported an invasion that killed 600,000 created 4 milion refugess and turned a dictatorial secular state into a sectarian killing field.
No wonder he prefers not to write about Iraq any more.