This admonishment is delivered by the Irish
princess to her captor and lover in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde based on
a French medieval romance.
Variations on this sentiment have been
expressed by many people.
The enmity may be long gone at the time of
reconciliation, but it will have existed in the past, without
necessarily having been either universal or constant. The Montagues and
the Capulets were engaged in gang warfare in an Italian city state, but
it did not prevent their respective offspring Romeo and Juliet being
secretly married ‘by holy church’.
In the Irish context, reconciliation conjures up two
ideas, omitting a third one, which requires, but does not always
receive, equal emphasis. The first relates to Protestants and Catholics,
unionists and nationalists, not of course the same thing, especially
outside Northern Ireland.
The second idea relates to Britain and Ireland. The third
aspect, often neglected, is the reconciliation of past deep divisions
within the national community. Some republican-minded people seem to
find the idea of reconciliation with unionists easier than having to
tolerate Redmondites or revisionists!
Victims
We also need to remember the many non-aligned innocent
victims who paid the price of conflict and to reflect on those who found
themselves on ‘the wrong side of history’ with no way back.
John
Reynolds of the Garda College in Templemore has written a poignant
account in his 46 Men Dead: The Royal Irish Constabulary in County Tipperary 1919-22.
Most of the ‘old RIC’ came from similar backgrounds to the
Garda Síochána in its early decades, but their function in those
revolutionary years, to uphold in effect British crown colony government
against the Irish Republic, put them in a false position, forcing many
who survived to leave post-Treaty.
Inter-Church relations have improved enormously since the
1950s. The coldness has gone, differences have narrowed, and there is a
realisation that the Churches need each other.
The turning-point was Pope St John XXIII and the Second
Vatican Council (1962-65). While full Church unity is not in prospect,
clergy work together, as appropriate, share civic duties, and lead.
Pluralism today encompasses far more than the accommodation of
minorities and immigrant communities.
It is also the response of the Church to a society no
longer largely homogenous from a religious viewpoint, and where there
are loud but not always representative demands for secular change.
Where
the position of the majority is now often hard to discern, pluralism
provides some protection to those not wishing to rush into precipitating
change without adequate reflection on where it might lead.
It is not always appreciated how much the Churches have
restrained violence. The point was made convincingly at the conference
on faith-based education organised by the Irish Catholic that Catholic schools in the North did not swell the ranks of the paramilitaries.
It is true that militant Protestantism was a mobilising factor in unionism, but that is becoming more marginal today.
At the New Ireland Forum in Dublin in 1983-84, women’s
groups from Northern Ireland sought to throw light on what they
considered the benighted social backwardness of the Republic.
Only 10 years later, at a centenary celebration of the
Warrenpoint Golf Club, where my great-great-uncle had been Honorary
Secretary, a mature lady golfer wagged her finger, and told me: “You
know, we think the South is full of dangerous feminists”. There are
liberal, moderate and conservative strands in all the Churches, but the
sectarian divide on socio-moral issues has diminished. It is some time
since there was much talk about ‘Rome Rule’, outside an historical
context.
The threat today is not mostly long-gone shades of
theocracy, but a militant ‘liberalism’, which recognises rights of
conscience in only one direction, as illustrated by the case in the NI
Court of Appeal which found against a baker, who refused a cake order
that carried a campaigning message in favour of gay marriage, not yet
legal in Northern Ireland, with which he disagreed.
Politically, a great benefit of the Good Friday Agreement
and its successors is the acceptance by the vast majority of people and
parties of the necessity to work together and to put past differences
and hurts in perspective without first insisting on constitutional
finality.
Remarkably, the DUP and Sinn Féin, who had every reason to
despise each other, have been able to govern together nearly 10 years
without interruption.
There is also growing co-operation in opposition between
the UUP and the SDLP, without whom there would have been no agreement,
so that the NI electorate have an alternative.
The last few years may seem in retrospect a golden era in
British-Irish relations. They are now overshadowed by the unwelcome
prospect of Brexit, particularly as no one can predict what will be the
outcome of the negotiations.
The firm position of the British Prime Minister Theresa
May that everyone has to accept it regardless lays bare the power
structure of the United Kingdom, a lopsided English hegemony, which
comprises roughly 85% of the population, who mostly have little concern
for the outlying parts.
Remarkably, in the 95 years since the advent of devolved
government at Stormont, no Northern Ireland MP, unionist or nationalist,
has ever been a member of Her Majesty’s Government. Any visible
hardening of the border, when the Good Friday Agreement was underpinned
by Britain and Ireland’s continuing joint membership of the EU, will be
difficult to accept.
The commemoration of the decade of centenaries, which has
been open and inclusive, is highlighting other divisions not yet fully
healed.
Redmondites and Irish soldiers who fought in the Great War
were in opposite camps to the 1916 rebels and post-Rising Sinn Féin,
with a barrage of polemics on both sides.
Later, there were civil war divisions.
Whatever side we
most identify with, it is time to recognise that all made a contribution
to national freedom, a never-ending work in progress, and to a new
world order which made that possible.