Kettle's Boyled: Northern Ireland? Leave them at it

Northern Ireland has been blighted by tribal conflict for a long time. At its nadir, this festering sore burst open in the late 1960s and gave us the so-called ‘troubles’ and the loss of 3,720 lives. The two sides eventually ran out of steam and signed up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and the period since then has enjoyed a fragile and uneasy peace, but the divisions created by that conflict will last a hundred years.

You’d think the politicians in Northern Ireland would have used the time since 1998 to start mending fences, to start bringing people together instead of driving them apart. If they want a future as part of this State in particular, they all need to be on the same page, but that will take a lot of work.

Two recent events point to where the main parties in Northern Ireland are taking us. During the pandemic, Sinn Fein’s Mary-Lou McDonald defied government restrictions and took part in a ‘show of force’ event around the funeral of IRA man Bobby Storey. In echoes of that event last week, at the funeral of IRA man Ted Howell, McDonald, Michelle O’Neill and Gerry Adams carried the coffin of the man once kicked out of the USA for gunrunning. Adams described him as a successful revolutionary, and McDonald described him as a patriot. He was neither.

In Northern Ireland of course, they’re not alone. There are elements of Unionism that are equally determined to keep communities apart. Last week, Unionist Education Minister Paul Givan turned down a bid by the Bangor Academy, the biggest school in Northern Ireland, to become an integrated school. Despite the majority of parents and pupils favouring integration, Givan refused to approve that proposal, as well as a similar proposal in relation to another primary school in Bangor.

If there is ever to be real peace in Northern Ireland, not to mention Irish unity, there must first be unity of the two tribal groups, but that cannot happen while politicians are stirring up division. The sight of Sinn Fein politicians carrying coffins at IRA funerals may help keep the dollars rolling in, but it does nothing for the supposed ambitions of Sinn Fein to unite the country. Coupled with the ‘not an inch’ stand taken by Minister Givan this week, it is clear that the only way Northern Ireland is going is down the road of deeper division, in the opposite direction from any kind of an end to tribalism and sectarianism.

But as a wise friend of mine said to me recently, at least they are confining a lot of that madness to ‘up there.’ ‘Leave them at it,’ he said. ‘As long as we’re not paying for it, leave them at it.’