The Realist Idealist

I arrived in Dublin before the sun. It was cold, and the air tasted like sea water. I found my way to a bus that would take me the two and a half hours to Belfast, where I would meet with the rest of my SAIS companions – Professor William Zartman and 16 students interested in understanding the conflict that is Northern Ireland. I have watched many a sunrise through the paned glass of public transportation. I remember how, over the low-lying hills of Romania, the rays, like fog, kept low to the ground, like a sulking creature of the night; I have driven over the Alps as day broke, blinded by the sun reflecting off a snow white mirror.

The sunrise on the way from Dublin to Belfast was different. It was subtle, calm. As the rays spread from below the horizon, there were no bright oranges, no violent pinks. Instead, a delicate, greenish-yellow blended into the pale blue fading night sky. Sunrise is timid here, at least this morning. Maybe, I think, after so many years of violence, the sun is afraid of what daybreak would bring. Another bomb, news of another night beating. Suddenly there was an explosion – of yellow golden light, and the sun leapt into the sky. Not crimson or burnt, but fresh and new, like the start of a new day should be – like the start of a new country could be. Maybe Northern Ireland’s sun is trying to tell its people something…

It’s night now, and we’ve spent the day meeting with the elected representatives of Northern Ireland’s people. Every story has three sides. Yours, mine, and the truth. In the case of Northern Ireland, it’s his, him (rarely her), and God knows what is the truth. Further, it’s who knows whose God it is who knows what is the truth. Today we spoke with unionist (generally Protestant) and republican (Catholic) representatives. We spoke with the DUP, the UUP, the PUP, the SDLP, Sinn Fein, a former IRA leader, an ex military man, a 15-year prisoner, an activist, a politician, and the son of a preacher. We heard tales about colonialism and tradition, mass murders and freedom fighters, armed action and terrorism. We heard stories about winning, about compromising, about power sharing and majority rule. If you think you’re confused, imagine how I feel…jet lagged and nutrient deprived (so far, vegetables have been scarce), this day has been a whirlwind of fact, fiction, and something in between.

Because I’m not coherent enough to put it all together, let me share with you a few sentences from my notes, some thoughts I had while listening to four men and one women talk about Northern Ireland, it’s past, present, and future.

“Keep the light of justice alive.” First, let me tell you a bit about the setting where most of our meetings took place today. Stormont – the home of the recently instituted Northern Ireland Assembly. Historically, Stormont has, for many, represented division and Protestant majority-rule. Etched into the marble walls just outside the room where the Assembly’s members meet are two statements, in memoriam of murdered men shot, it reads, by “terrorists.” Given the dates, one can gleam that it was Protestant unionist men who were shot by Catholic republic “terrorists.” The inscription finishes with the statement: “Keep the light of justice alive.” This wall is just outside the room where unionists and republicans now meet regularly to craft the future government of Northern Ireland – a government that is ostensibly going to be “power-sharing.” I ask my self how two people can dissolve the animosity between them when the brutality of their history and the chasm between their causes is etched in stone, literally, just outside where these negotiations are to take place, and the necessary relationships are supposed to build. When I pose a similar question to a republican representative, and ask him if any movement has been made to remove the inscription, he tells me that it would be a distraction to try and deal with all of the symbols and emblems representative of the conflict (for in Northern Ireland there are many); first he says, his people must deal with the substance of what has divided them, then they can deal with the stone-carved monuments to those divisions.

“Against all odds, it has been working so far.” That’s how one republican representative described the peace process since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which laid the groundwork for the present day power sharing government. What happens, he asked, when you have an agreement, and no trust in which to root the agreement? That’s what Northern Irelanders have spent the last decade since the 1998 accords trying to figure out. In any conflict, he said, there are two ways to come to conclusion: 1) total defeat of one side over another, which happens rarely if ever, and 2) negotiation and dialogue. After decades (some would argue centuries) of trying to defeat each other, Northern Islanders have decided to try the latter. Still, he said, as Catholics tend to be two and a half times more likely than Protestants to be unemployed, major issues threatening the ideal of “equality” still remain.

“The country I think is shell-shocked,” said one unionist representative, and “it’s quite hard to leave the past behind.” That being said, much of today’s five hours of presentations, questions (from, I might say, some very intelligent SAIS students) and answers all spoke to the same desire: to leave the past behind without, in a sense, leaving the past behind. Each person had a different way of approaching that goal, and that is where the conflict still arises.

I haven’t written about all of the rhetoric that I heard today. I chose to save that for a later post. Today, I wanted to write a little about the hope we heard – hope that it seems comes in the form of many a party line.