Recalling an afternoon that I shall never forget

I had come to seek his advice and for the first half hour he had to listen to a tearful, fairly desperate woman, sure that what had happened to her was very wrong and someone was accountable.

That was years ago when the only law I had studied was newspaper law and having to face a proper solicitor, blubbing about how my rights had been ignored and how I was sure I would suffer long term ill-health as a result, was an afternoon I shall never forget. That I eventually found justice, which went a long way to my recovery, was down to that young man who listened to every tear soaked word that afternoon and promised he would help me.

That solicitor was Trevor Ringland, also a former Irish rugby international who has had a significant role in brokering peace in this province and whom the esteemed journalist Ruth Dudley Edwards described recently in her column in the Belfast Telegraph as ‘one of the most tireless and effective workers for peace Ireland has ever produced’. She had been responding to Trevor Ringland’s own declaration in the News Letter three days earlier that there was ‘no space in New Ireland for me’.

In this newspaper he revealed he had detected ‘hardening attitudes’ on the part of Irish nationalists at a function in 2017: “Just after the last NI Assembly elections I challenged a senior Sinn Fein figure. I said ‘you have pressed the hate button during that election campaign and it’s going to be very hard to put this back in its box’. His response was, he says, “I’ll not take lectures from the likes of you’.

That comment has led him to the conclusion: ‘No matter what I say, there’s no space in their Ireland for me’. He believes Nationalists have become ‘emboldened’ because of the Brexit uncertainties and the ‘renewed hype around calls for a border poll’. ‘They listen but they don’t hear’, he believes.

We could all answer this by simply declaring ‘we could have told you so’ because it’s what the entire Protestant community feels right now, I’m certain.

Mr Ringland has been involved with a number of cross-community organisations so it’s a bit depressing to hear him so downbeat.

Maybe we are at a proper crossroads now; just maybe there are others out there seeing through the insincerity and untruths coming from the nationalist/republican side.

American author Lionel Shriver, who is in the North doing research for her next novel, claims she has found herself at odds with the IRA and thinks it is unfair for terrorists to be rewarded while forces of law are pursued. The latter has left most of us fuming and it has angered veterans so much they are believed to be plotting to boycott the Cenotaph remembrance parade in protest at the prosecution for murder of a former paratrooper over Bloody Sunday.

Sadly, Westminster is in such a shambles at the moment over Brexit it’s doubtful if MPs will be paying much attention to how our armed forces are being hung out to dry. Then there’s the argument that a ‘new Ireland’ should `consider’ joining the Commonwealth. I suspect such a move will get short shrift and that Ireland would rather starve for the next half century which is pretty much what they did when they forced the English out of the country back in the 1920s, only to be rescued by joining the EU.

It’s entirely possible I’m wrong and that we are on the cusp of something big and peaceful but I’m not holding my breath. Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald with her very public backing whilst in America of a stupid flag demanding England get out of Ireland shows a mindset that is still deeply entrenched in old style republicanism. And that suggests that people like Trevor Ringland still won’t be listened to.

By the time my interview with him was completed all those years ago I had dried my tears and left his office confident he had listened. Through him I got justice.