Letter: Players in Drumcree spat should ‘take a beat’ - if you make friends, you remove your enemies
A letter from Trevor Ringland:
The characters in the hit TV police show Blue Lights often advise one another to ‘take a beat’.
In other words, step back, slow down and consider your situation and its consequences.
Perhaps this would be good advice for all the protagonists in the Drumcree dispute.
The thirty-five Orangemen who want to walk down the Garvaghy Road will no doubt have lots in common with the residents.
If they could talk to ordinary people there, rather than their gatekeepers, they would find common ground on all sorts of issues.
Then, perhaps a compromise could be arrived at as there are plenty of examples as to how to do relationships better.
Instead, we have hate-filled rhetoric from too many who should know better.
We should never forget that such obvious hatreds subjected Northern Ireland to the misery of decades of violence.
If you make friends, you remove your enemies! It may seem like a simple principle, but much has already been achieved in Northern Ireland by applying it.
Trevor Ringland, reconciliation campaigner