Ben Lowry: A joint anthem at Northern Ireland games would be ploy to undermine the very existence of the team

Gerry Armstrong’s goal against the host nation was one of those magical boyhood memories.

I had no idea at that age the difference between Catholic and Protestant. If someone had asked me if I was Catholic, I would have said yes.

If they had asked me if I was Protestant I would also have said yes. I thought they were both synonyms for Christian.

(When Pope John Paul had come to Ireland in 1979, an exciting moment that I watched on TV, I assumed that our neighbours had gone to Dublin, and not us, because the Pope was head of their church, but still did not know that it was any different from the various other churches).

By the time of the 1986 World Cup, when the Northern Ireland heroes qualified for the Mexico finals, I did know that there was a difference between Catholic and Protestant, but only because I had by then become interested in politics, and had begun to read about such things.

This ignorance of the tribal divide was a common experience among children whose background was middle class Protestant, and I suspect more common than it was among Catholics of a similar background, because church going levels were far, far higher among Catholics than Protestants until quite recently.

In 1968, before the Troubles had begun, already under half of Anglicans and Presbyterians in NI were weekly churchgoers. Among Catholics in NI, it was well over 90%. This experience is one way of illustrating how wrong Mary McAleese and the late Fr Alec Reid were to say that Protestants were brought up to hate Catholics (happily, both of them retracted the claim).

But even in 1986, while I had become aware of the divide between Catholics and Protestants, I had not come to think of any such division among the players the Northern Ireland football team, nor did I — or any of my school friends — spend so much as a moment thinking about the religious background of the other sporting names who gave us such joy in those increasingly distant days, from Alex Higgins to Barry McGuigan to Dennis Taylor.

(The latter’s 1985 world snooker champion victory is still the BBC’s biggest ever after-midnight audience, of 18 million people across the UK. All of my young school pals in Holywood stayed up to cheer it, as I did with my dad and brothers).

As I became older I thought more and more about how difficult it must have been for NI players of a Catholic background (including Martin O’Neill and Pat Jennings) in the 1980s.

Tensions were high in the province in the aftermath of the hunger strikes and in the run-up to the Anglo Irish Agreement and republicans were waging a campaign to destroy Northern Ireland.

So many of the key figures in the NI team over the decades were from a nationalist background. I have no idea what their political affiliations were, if any, and no desire to find out. But there is something particularly admirable about someone who showed loyalty to the Northern Ireland team when they might privately have wanted an all-island team.

My thoughts returned to the subject this week when I was asked on the BBC Radio Ulster Nolan show to discuss comments by the former NI manager Michael O’Neill and others that the British national anthem, God Save the Queen, might not be the best song to be played before Northern Ireland games.

It is a concern that unionists should take very seriously. It would be awful if footballers and fans from a Catholic background started to drift away from the NI team — as some have always done but so far in relatively small numbers.

I mentioned on Nolan that the News Letter facilitated a debate bout changing the anthem away from GSTQ more than a decade ago. The idea attracted strong opinions among NI fans, both for and against.

My own view is that the national anthem is less than ideal for any one of the four home nations because it is the anthem of the UK, rather than any one of its countries.

However, finding a specific anthem for Northern Ireland would prove tricky, both in getting something that had musical merit and in finding wording that was acceptable to a broad base of fans.

The debate about whether or not to use the national anthem or an NI-specific one is quite separate to the suggestion by the football agent Gerry Carlile that both God Save The Queen and the Republic of Ireland’s national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier’s Song), be played at Northern Ireland games.

That would be completely unacceptable, because it would strike at the heart of what the NI team is about — which is a team that represents the northern jurisdiction of this island, the existence of which republicans themselves finally came to accept in 1998.

The mere fact of the Northern Ireland football teams (now including the women’s one) present a considerable challenge for republicans, because those teams have very widespread and instinctive support, even among people in NI who are apolitical.

They are, indeed, one of the last representations of Northern Ireland that are openly embraced.

Think of what has happened with the centenary. Republicans have in effect thwarted any celebration,

Beyond the front page of the News Letter, barely any local institutions have dared to so much as say Happy 100th! — not even ones that have Northern Ireland in their name,

While London has slightly stepped up its support for the centenary at the end of the year, the anniversary is still largely invisible.

If the football team is undermined, another plank of Northern Ireland life will be removed.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor. Other articles by him below and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the paper:

• Ben Lowry Dec 4: It is a great pity to see York St road plan in Belfast slipping away

• Ben Lowry Nov 27: EU will see John Kyle’s remarks as sign of unionist support for NI Protocol

• Ben Lowry Nov 20: The prospects of Article 16 being triggered are receding

• Ben Lowry Nov 20: Reticence around requiring NHS workers to be vaccinated

• Ben Lowry Nov 13: Essays in 2010 about NI on its 2021 centenary foresaw province staying in UK but not change from within

• Ben Lowry Nov 6: A poll that finds support for UK, DUP and ending protocol checks – not something you hear often

• Ben Lowry Oct 30: The return of inflation will suit debtors and punish savers

• Ben Lowry Oct 30: Tribute this week to a great News Letter columnist Ralph Bud Bossence

• Ben Lowry Oct 23:Centenary church service should have celebrated Northern Ireland

• Ben Lowry Oct 16: Lord Frost’s speech on NI reflected notably more robust UK tactics

• Ben Lowry Oct 16: David Amess was a conscientious Tory MP who always seemed to be smiling

• A message from the new editor Ben Lowry

• Ben Lowry Oct 9: Echoes of 2019, as Boris Johnson fails to proclaim his unionism in speech

• Ben Lowry Oct 2: Unionism could make great headway lobbying in the United States

• Ben Lowry Oct 2: A belated happy 284th birthday to ourselves at the News Letter!

• A link to 2021 columns by Ben Lowry

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