The Kettle's Boyled: Who pays the piper, calls the tune

I try not to think about Northern Ireland much, it can be depressing. I was in Tyrone a few days ago and it was good to head for home. Nowadays I feel a sense of relief every time I cross the border after a visit to that part of the world. It’s nothing to do with the reasons for avoiding the place back when they were all busy killing each other, but it’s a sense of feeling that their attitude to life, their obsession with minor cultural differences, is the stuff that drags you down. I’m almost relieved that I won’t see the two parts of this island united in my lifetime, that I won’t have to listen to that whole ‘them and us’ garbage that seems to define life north of the border.

Because the truth is, Irish unity is now further away than it was when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. Instead of using the relative calm that followed the ending of hostilities to mend fences, the main parties have used that time to build higher walls. I blame Sinn Fein for most of this, because the ball was and is in their court. Unionists don’t want a united Ireland, and that is understandable, so it was up to Nationalist parties to make the running on Irish unity, and they haven’t. If anything, they have made it worse, and continue to do so every day with talk of border polls and with point-scoring against the other side.

Sinn Fein invested heavily in having Catherine Connolly elected as President, and she seems to now dance to their tune if you look at her ill-timed visit to Northern Ireland a couple of weeks back. Leaving aside a visit to Sligo County Council where a family member is a councillor, this was her first high-visibility public appearance after her election, setting down a marker about what’s important in her presidency. 

She risks being seen as a proverbial red rag to a bull for Irish Unionism as could be seen by her being challenged by DUP MP Gregory Campbell. He rightly said she should have referred to Derry by both its names, to avoid insult to its minority population. If you want unity, you have to start with unifying language. When referring to the bloody Sunday killings, she should also have brought balance to her speech by mention of other sectarian murders like the Kingsmill Massacre or the La Mon bombings. Unity is not a one-sided concept.

Admittedly our President is new to the job, but she must learn to be balanced.