'Shared future' mustn't be forced on Ulster people
MY first - actually, my only - encounter with the Rev Norman Hamilton, the new Presbyterian Moderator, was at a Stratagem/Slugger O'Toole-sponsored breakfast on the morning following the general election.
I had just finished a short contribution on the outcome, expressing my view that the electorate and the wider community seemed fairly comfortable living in tribal circles and voting along tribal lines. Mr Hamilton's response was that I should 'go home and lie down'. Is this what he means by the 'intelligent, gracious, informed public discourse' that he called for a few weeks later in his address to the general assembly?
During that address he also said: "It seems to me that we have all settled into what I would describe as a social apartheid, where it is very comfortable to live without any meaningful contact with folks who are different from us. The failure to agree a community relations agenda and community relations strategy is, in my view, a public disgrace, given our history. That disgrace is heightened by the apparent failure of much of wider society to even be concerned about it, never mind outraged by it."
Yet what we have in Northern Ireland isn't the apartheid that there used to be in South Africa or the segregation of the southern states of America. People here are making a conscious and deliberate choice to live apart. They choose, in the main, to live and socialise within their own communities. They play their own sports, read their own types of newspaper (many towns still have us-and-them weekly papers), drink in their own pubs and clubs, go to their own churches (and Protestants, in particular, have dozens of varieties to choose from), attend their own schools and even employ solicitors, dentists, estate agents and builders whom they perceive to be from their own community.
And they also, in the main, continue to vote for the tribal parties: Roman Catholics choosing between the SDLP and Sinn Fein, while Protestants trawl through the pick-and-mix options of unionism. Those parties which have attached the pluralist label to their baggage - Alliance and Conservative (albeit before the UCUNF project) for instance - have tended to remain in single figures in terms of electoral percentages.
What Mr Hamilton, along with a veritable army of heavily funded, self-justifying community workers and peace activists have failed to notice, is that the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland have already agreed upon a 'community relations agenda and a community relations strategy'. They are, in fact, happy enough to live apart and remain apart. No one is forcing them to do so: they choose to do so. Better still, in 1998 and subsequently they have endorsed political structures and institutions which are built upon a power-sharing system which props up their desire to be treated as separate communities.
For those who do want to 'integrate', there is nothing stopping them either. There are no laws to prevent Protestants and Roman Catholics, or unionists and republicans from co-habiting politically, socially or in the workplace. Indeed, Northern Ireland is drowning in legislation which protects all of us from sectarian discrimination.
So why try and queer the pitch with the palpable nonsense that is the 'shared future' doctrine? Why do the professional do-gooders - and yes, Norman, I include you in that description - insist on trying to push us together? Let's face it, if the Christian denominations, churches, sects, off-shoots and missions seem congenitally and textually incapable of agreeing upon unity for themselves, why do they expect the rest of us to do it? And am I the only one to note the irony of the fact that the leader of one of the Protestant factions in Northern Ireland is complaining about the 'sectarian demon' in our midst?
Norman, what's the point of complaining about voluntary social apartheid, while remaining mute on the similarly voluntary apartheid which allows the Presbyterians, Methodists, Church of Ireland et al to promote their own nuanced version of Protestantism: while, at the same time, other Christians are heading off to their own separate chapels, halls and tents? What is happening on the political/electoral front in Northern Ireland is mirrored by what is happening on the religious/faith front. Mote and beam, Norman, mote and beam.
In his installation address he added that, 'I might even be bold enough to say that I would like to help kick-start the moribund, even non-existent, public discussion about what a coherent, shared and healthy society looks like'. Has it, perhaps, dawned on him, that the public discussion is moribund and non-existent because the public isn't really all that exercised by the subject matter? For in precisely the same way that the Presbyterians whom he now leads tend to live, work, socialise and pray within an overwhelmingly Protestant environment, so too do unionists - which most Presbyterians happen to be. And they do so by choice. If he really does want to pursue the shared future option then maybe he should try fitting out a few of his churches with confessionals and rosary beads and see how his congregations and kirks respond.
Sinn Fein and the SDLP love the idea of a shared future, but only because they define it and promote it in rigidly political, constitutional terms. For them - and I have said this over and over again - a shared future involves treating unionism and republicanism as equals. And in so doing you remove all of the influence and importance that should be associated with majority opinion. For let's not forget the fact that the pro-Union opinion is still the opinion of the majority here and I for one will never endorse a shared future doctrine which seeks to dilute or diminish that opinion.
My fear about those who do promote the shared future doctrine is that they are, in reality, promoting a very dangerous concept of political and social engineering. They want to turn Northern Ireland into something that most of the people of Northern Ireland don't want it to be. The legislative methods and machinery they wish to deploy are every bit as invidious as the laws - in some cases enacted for 'natural and Christian' reasons - which underpinned both apartheid in South Africa and 'Jim Crow' in the US.
The greatest damage is usually done by those whose defence is that they thought they were doing the right thing: which is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So if I promise to stay out of religious matters, maybe Norman will promise to stay out of politics. I'm fairly sure that the PMS shareholders believe he has greater priorities at this time, anyway.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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