Sunday 5th February

We thought, stupidly as it turned out, that we had put this one to bed almost twenty years ago.  Possibly the greatest achievement of Blair’s Government was The Northern Ireland Agreement.  It took a couple of years of hard negotiation and a lot of compromise to achieve, thanks largely to dear Mo Mowlam.  If only Blair had put half as much effort into helping find a settlement in the Middle East the World might have been a safer place, but that is for a later post.

So, exactly what has gone wrong with the Northern Ireland Agreement.  It has tottered a few times and even been suspended, but has survived.  With its unique form of power sharing Northern Ireland has thrived, paramilitary killings almost completely eradicated and a sense that slowly Northern Ireland was becoming more tolerant and like the rest of the United Kingdom (ahem, more of that later too).

The current stalemate and fresh elections (which will achieve little) have come about because of a financial scandal involving grants for a green scheme; badly administered Sinn Fein claims by the now First Minister and Leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster.  Now, the most unlikely of bed-fellows, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness had found a way to work together despite their huge Political and Religious differences but since Mr. Paisley’s demise things have got slowly worse.  And now that Martin, who is seriously ill, is departing too – it must fall to a new generation of Politicians to find a way of getting on.  Or not.  And it would seem, that despite the success of the last few years, there are plenty on both sides who would rather go back to some former time. Everyone claims they do not want a return to violence, but without some form of agreement that is looking more and more likely.

So, what is the core of the problem in Northern Ireland.  Does it really go back to King Billy and his Orangemen’s victory over the Catholics of Ireland over three hundred years ago?  Or is it the years of oppression by the Protestants in the North which led to the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties and ultimately to the troubles.  Much of the problem is that almost every family knows someone or was directly affected by the troubles.  It is once more the older generation who cannot forget, most youngsters are better educated and realise that a person need not be defined solely by their Religion.

But dig a bit deeper and read some Victorian novels and you will realise how much hatred there still was of Catholics in Britain as a whole only a hundred or so years ago.  It is actually the losing of our religion in England that has been our saving grace (apologies for using a biblical reference).  Our religion is now so poorly observed that most of us don’t really care what, or if you have any, religion at all you profess to believe.  But just under this bland surface lies a deep suspicion of the ‘different’, of ‘foreign’ cultures and religions.  And UKIP has successfully scratched these almost healed scabs and is itching to let the blood flow again…